At least 152 people died on Wednesday morning as a private commercial airliner, Airblue, crashed into Islamabad's Margalla mountains after being denied landing on its first approach to Islamabad Airport. The crash of the Airblue aircraft took place as the A321 aircraft crashed into the mountains
that skirt Pakistan's federal capital with civil aviation authorities saying that this could possibly signal pilot error.

Pakistan does not wish to enter an arms race but it will maintain conventional forces supplemented by a credible nuclear deterrence to defend its territorial integrity and safeguard its sovereignty, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Monday. "Pakistan harbours no aggressive designs against any state but we are determined to defend our territorial integrity and safeguard our sovereignty. We therefore, need to maintain conventional forces adequately supplemented by credible deterrence," Gilani said.

Pakistan's obsession with India is leading it to "dig its own grave" as the ISI's "destructive role" now stands exposed in the wake of the revelations by classified intelligence documents, a leading US lawmaker has said. "The ISI's attempt to distinguish good from bad militants will spin out of control. With its obsession with India, Pakistan is digging its own grave," Congressman Ed Royce told Press Trust of India (PTI) in the wake of WikiLeaks revelations.

Thousands of secret US military records leaked by a whistle-blower site reveal that Pakistan's spy service ISI was actually aiding the Afghan insurgency with a wing operating against Afghanistan and India given broad functional autonomy. Some 98,000 documents leaked by Wikileaks suggest Pakistan "allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders," according to the New York Times.

LeT, blamed for the Mumbai attacks, has expanded its operations to Afghanistan and the West and has become more active throughout the region, which calls for concerted action against the outlawed group, America's top military official said on Saturday. "I've watched LeT (grow) since the end of 2008, move to the West, become more active in other countries, more active throughout the region, more engaged with other terrorist groups,"

A US unmanned aircraft fired five missiles at a suspected insurgent camp in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghan border on Saturday, killing 16 people, security officials said. Several more militants were injured in the attack in Naiz Narae village in South Waziristan tribal district.

"The locals have pulled 16 bodies and some survivors from the debris of the compound that was hit by the missiles," an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.