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Malala Yousafzai Vows Support for Gaza after Backlash

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai participates in a panel discussion in Johannesburg in December 2023. PHILL MAGAKOE / AFP/File
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai participates in a panel discussion in Johannesburg in December 2023. PHILL MAGAKOE / AFP/File
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Malala Yousafzai Vows Support for Gaza after Backlash

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai participates in a panel discussion in Johannesburg in December 2023. PHILL MAGAKOE / AFP/File
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai participates in a panel discussion in Johannesburg in December 2023. PHILL MAGAKOE / AFP/File

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai on Thursday condemned Israel and reaffirmed her support for Palestinians in Gaza, after a backlash in her native Pakistan over a Broadway musical she co-produced with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Yousafzai, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has been condemned by some for partnering with Clinton, an outspoken supporter of Israel's war against Hamas.
The musical, titled "Suffs," depicts the American women's suffrage campaign for the right to vote in the 20th century and has been playing in New York since last week, said AFP.
"I want there to be no confusion about my support for the people of Gaza," Yousafzai wrote on X, the former Twitter. "We do not need to see more dead bodies, bombed schools and starving children to understand that a ceasefire is urgent and necessary."
She added: "I have and will continue to condemn the Israeli government for its violations of international law and war crimes."
Pakistan has seen many fiercely emotional pro-Palestinian protests since the war in Gaza began last October.
Yusafzai's "theatre collaboration with Hillary Clinton -- who stands for America's unequivocal support for genocide of Palestinians -- is a huge blow to her credibility as a human rights activist," popular Pakistani columnist Mehr Tarar wrote on social media platform X on Wednesday.
"I consider it utterly tragic."
Whilst Clinton has backed a military campaign to remove Hamas and rejected demands for a ceasefire, she has also explicitly called for protections for Palestinian civilians.
Yousafzai has publicly condemned the civilian casualties and called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The New York Times reported the 26-year-old wore a red-and-black pin to the "Suffs" premier last Thursday, signifying her support for a ceasefire.
But author and academic Nida Kirmani said on X that Yousafzai's decision to partner with Clinton was "maddening and heartbreaking at the same time. What an utter disappointment."
The war began with an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. Hamas also abducted 250 people and Israel estimates 129 of them remain in Gaza, including 34 who the military says are dead.
Clinton served as America's top diplomat during former president Barack Obama's administration, which oversaw a campaign of drone strikes targeting Taliban militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan's borderlands.
Yousafzai earned her Nobel Peace Prize after being shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban as she pushed for girls' education as a teenager in 2012.
However, the drone war killed and maimed scores of civilians in Yousafzai's home region, spurring more online criticism of the youngest Nobel Laureate, who earned the prize at 17.
Yousafzai is often viewed with suspicion in Pakistan, where critics accuse her of pushing a Western feminist and liberal political agenda on the conservative country.

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Pakistan Says Pausing Military Operations against Afghanistan Temporarily

Taliban security personnel inspect the site after Pakistani airstrikes hit the Secondary Rehabilitation Services Center in Kabul on March 17, 2026. (Photo by Wakil KOHSAR / AFP)
Taliban security personnel inspect the site after Pakistani airstrikes hit the Secondary Rehabilitation Services Center in Kabul on March 17, 2026. (Photo by Wakil KOHSAR / AFP)
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Pakistan Says Pausing Military Operations against Afghanistan Temporarily

Taliban security personnel inspect the site after Pakistani airstrikes hit the Secondary Rehabilitation Services Center in Kabul on March 17, 2026. (Photo by Wakil KOHSAR / AFP)
Taliban security personnel inspect the site after Pakistani airstrikes hit the Secondary Rehabilitation Services Center in Kabul on March 17, 2026. (Photo by Wakil KOHSAR / AFP)

Pakistan is pausing its military operations against Afghanistan temporarily, Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in a post on X on Wednesday.

Earlier, Afghanistan Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani on Wednesday promised retribution for this week's Pakistani airstrike that killed hundreds at a Kabul drugs rehabilitation center.
"We will take revenge," the Taliban government minister said at the mass burial of some of the victims in the capital, calling those behind Monday night's bombing "criminals".
"We are not weak and helpless. You will see the consequences of your crimes," he added.
The Taliban authorities have said that about 400 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in the strike, which was the deadliest attack yet in the recent upsurge in violence between the two neighbors.
Not all victims are being buried in Kabul, as some bodies have been sent for burial in their home provinces, interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told AFP earlier.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Wednesday that "hundreds" were killed and wounded, in the first independent confirmation of the heavy death toll.
Pakistan has denied Taliban government claims that the center was deliberately targeted and said it had carried out precision strikes on "military installations and terrorist support infrastructure".
The strike has renewed calls for an end to the conflict, which has seen strikes on both sides of the shared border. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harbouring extremists behind attacks on its territory. Kabul denies doing so.

World

Russia Condemns Killing of Iranian Security Chief Larijani

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Iran's then parliament Speaker Ali Larijani as they meet after a session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia, October 22, 2015. (Reuters)
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Iran's then parliament Speaker Ali Larijani as they meet after a session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia, October 22, 2015. (Reuters)
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Russia Condemns Killing of Iranian Security Chief Larijani

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Iran's then parliament Speaker Ali Larijani as they meet after a session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia, October 22, 2015. (Reuters)
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Iran's then parliament Speaker Ali Larijani as they meet after a session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia, October 22, 2015. (Reuters)

Russia on Wednesday condemned the killing of Iranian security chief Ali Larijani, after ally Tehran vowed retaliation for his death in an Israeli airstrike.

Larijani had met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in January, at a time when US navy ships were heading towards Iran ahead of the US-Israeli air campaign launched at the end of February, according to AFP.

"We firmly condemn actions aimed at harming the health and, even more, the killing of the leadership of sovereign and independent Iran. We condemn such actions," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a daily briefing.

Moscow is a close ally of Iran and has condemned the US and Israeli attacks, which Tehran has responded to with a barrage of missile and drone strikes on US allies across the Gulf.

Last year, the two countries, both heavily sanctioned by the West, signed a broad cooperation agreement, but it stopped short of a mutual defense pact.

The version of the document made public only vaguely mentioned that Moscow and Tehran agreed to help each other counter common "security threats" and would not provide "assistance to the aggressor" if one side was attacked.

Since the outbreak of the war, Russia has sent humanitarian aid, but otherwise declined to comment publicly on what support it has offered Iran, if any.

The Kremlin last week denied a Washington Post report that Russia had passed sensitive intelligence to Iran, including the locations of US warships and aircraft in the region.

Iran emerged as one of Russia's main allies during the war in Ukraine, supplying it at the start of the conflict with drones for Moscow to fire on Ukrainian cities.

World

Iran Executed Swedish Citizen, Says Sweden FM

File photo of the Iranian flag (Reuters)
File photo of the Iranian flag (Reuters)
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Iran Executed Swedish Citizen, Says Sweden FM

File photo of the Iranian flag (Reuters)
File photo of the Iranian flag (Reuters)

Sweden's foreign minister on Wednesday confirmed that Iran had executed a Swedish citizen, after Iranian authorities announced the first execution of a man convicted of spying since the start of its war against Israel and the United States.

"It is with dismay that I have received information that a Swedish citizen was executed in Iran earlier today," Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in a statement, AFP reported.

Since the man's arrest during Iran's 12-day war with Israel in June, Sweden has "repeatedly raised the case at various levels with Iranian representatives," she added.