Sports

In 10th Asia Cup Hockey Tournament in Bangladesh, Malaysia has beat Oman with 7-1 while South Korea beat China with 4-1 goals on Monday.Meanwhile, both India and Pakistan have managed to secure their place in the round-robin Super 4 stage of the tourna...

Pakistan's military says a roadside bomb has killed four members of the country's security forces and wounded three others in the northwestern Kurram tribal area.A statement said that the improvised explosive device went off on October 15 near Kharlach...

ISLAMABAD � An American-Canadian couple and their three children arrived in Canada after five years in Taliban captivity in Afghanistan.

The family flew Friday from Pakistan to Canada via Britain.

Acting on a tip from U.S. intelligence, Pakistani officials say their troops rescued U.S. national Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, on Wednesday, hours after their captors transported them in a car to the Pakistani side of the long, porous Afghan border.

Boyle provided a written statement to The Associated Press Friday saying, God has given me and my family unparalleled resilience and determination.

Rescue operation

The Pakistan military revealed details of the rescue operation Thursday.

A U.S. plane was standing by at the military airbase in Islamabad, waiting to fly the family to a U.S. military base in Germany for a medical checkup, but Pakistani security sources told VOA Boyle refused to board the flight fearing their scrutiny.

Instead, the family boarded Pakistan's state-run carrier and left for Britain.

Coleman and Boyle went missing while backpacking in Afghanistan in 2012. The Afghan Taliban later claimed responsibility for kidnapping them. U.S. officials maintain the couple was in captivity of the Haqqani terrorist organization linked to the Taliban.

The insurgent group, which released two videos of the hostages while they were in captivity, had been demanding the release of their prisoners in exchange for Boyle and his wife. While in captivity, the couple had three children, who were rescued with them.

One of the prisoners the militants wanted to be freed is Annas Haqqani, who is on death row in an Afghan prison. The detainee is the younger brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who heads the Haqqani network and also serves as a deputy to the leader of the Taliban.

A senior Taliban official when contacted by VOA claimed the Coleman and Boyle converted to Islam while in captivity.

The Taliban need not have to keep them hostage and thought they be freed to go anywhere they wanted to because their hardships as an extended family were increasing in captivity, the official said requesting anonymity.

Turning point for US, Pakistan?

U.S. and Pakistani officials have expressed hope the hostages' release could represent a turning point in traditionally mistrust-marred relations between the two countries, and it could lead to better cooperation between the uneasy allies in fighting Taliban and other Islamist extremists in Afghanistan.

Both sides, U.S. and Pakistan, they have agreed to remain engaged in the future as well for better cooperation and better understanding of each other's concerns and also how to deal with the challenges, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria said Friday.

Washington has long alleged Islamabad maintains ties to the Haqqanis and the Taliban, helping them expand and prolong the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistani officials deny the allegations and touted Wednesday's successful hostage rescue operation as another demonstration of its counterterrorism resolve and cooperation with the U.S.

We have been taking on the terrorists. And we have also said in the past as well that if we have the intelligence provided by the U.S., then we will be able to take action. So we have taken action based on the intelligence that was provided by the U.S. side, noted Zakaria while speaking to reporters in Islamabad.

President Donald Trump on Thursday praised the release of the family from captivity from the Haqqani network, a terrorist organization with ties to the Taliban. He also called the development a positive moment in U.S.-Pakistan relations.

The Pakistani government's cooperation is a sign that it is honoring America's wishes for it to do more to provide security in the region, he said in a statement.

We hope to see this type of cooperation and teamwork in helping secure the release of remaining hostages and in our future joint counterterrorism operations, Trump added

He later told reporters that he believes Pakistan is started to respect the United States again.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave reporters almost no information on the operation that led to the family's freedom, other than to say, it's a very good moment, and we intend to work with Pakistan in a collaborative way in the future to stop terrorism that includes kidnapping.

Other hostages

Meanwhile, an American, Kevin King, 60, and an Australian Timothy Weeks, 48, are being held hostage in Afghanistan. The two teachers, with the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, were kidnapped at gunpoint near the campus in August 2016.

In a video the Taliban released in June, the hostages begged Trump to negotiate their freedom with the Islamist insurgent group.

Source: Voice of America

The Pakistani Taliban says it has killed a local journalist in the country's volatile northwest.The extremist group said in a statement that its gunmen killed Haroon Khan on Thursday. Without providing any evidence, the Taliban accused him of secretly ...

Felicia Knaul woke up from a mastectomy several years ago. She still remembers the horror of the pain, pain so severe she felt she couldn't breathe. Yet because she lives in the U.S., she, like many other Americans, had access almost immediately to pai...

Pakistan has announced 7-member squad for Hong Kong World sixes tournament.According to National Selection Committee, Sohail Tanvir will lead the team while the other players include Sohail Khan, Jahid Ali, Muhammad Sami, Anwar Ali, Hammad Azam, Sahibz...

Pakistani soldiers have rescued a Canadian-American family of five that was being held hostage for nearly five years by a group that has ties to the Afghan Taliban.

U.S. citizen Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, were kidnapped while backpacking in Afghanistan in 2012. Coleman gave birth to the couple's three children while in captivity.

Pakistan's army said in an October 12 statement that the family was rescued during an operation in the northwestern Kurram tribal district near the Afghan border after the military received intelligence from U.S. officials.

It said U.S. intelligence agencies had been tracking the family in Afghanistan and that the captives had been moved across the border into Kurram on October 11.

"Yesterday, the United States government, working in conjunction with the government of Pakistan, secured the release of the Boyle-Coleman family from captivity in Pakistan," U.S. President Donald Trump said in a statement, calling the rescue operation a "positive moment" for U.S.-Pakistan ties.

The Afghan Taliban-aligned Haqqani network released videos of the couple during their captivity.

The latest video, which was released in December 2016, showed the couple with two young boys. In it, Coleman, who was pregnant when she was abducted, begged for an end to their "Kafkaesque nightmare."

The Haqqani network has been demanding the release of three of its prisoners in Afghanistan.

The release of the family from custody comes as relations between Washington and Islamabad are at low point.

The United States has accused Pakistan of not doing enough to counter Islamist militants who operate across its border with Afghanistan � an accusation rejected by Islamabad.

Pakistan's army said the success of the operation "underscores the importance of timely intelligence sharing and Pakistan's continued commitment toward fighting this menace through cooperation between two forces against a common enemy."

The Pakistani government's cooperation is a sign that it is honoring America's wishes for it to do more to provide security in the region, Trump said in his statement. We hope to see this type of cooperation and teamwork in helping secure the release of remaining hostages and in our future joint counterterrorism operations.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis praised Pakistan for successfully carrying out a potentially risky rescue mission, which family members said included a shootout during which Taliban captors were killed.

"This is a very positive moment and the Pakistan army performed well. We will hopefully see it being a harbinger for the future," Mattis told reporters on October 12.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said her government was "greatly relieved" the family had been released and was safe, and thanked the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan for their efforts.

The High Commissioner for Pakistan to Canada, Tariq Azim Khan, said the family was flown by helicopter to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad following the raid conducted by a Pakistani commando team.

He said all the members of the family were fit to travel but that it is still undecided whether they will fly to Canada or to the United States from the Pakistani capital.

In a video posted on the Toronto Star newspaper's website, Boyle's parents said he told them by phone he would see them within days. The couple offered thanks to the Pakistani soldiers who had "risked their lives" to rescue the family.

Meanwhile, reports quoted unidentified U.S. officials as saying the U.S. Army was ready to fly the family out of Pakistan but that the couple refused to immediately board the aircraft over Boyle's concerns he could face U.S. scrutiny for links to a former Guantanamo captive.

Boyle was once married to the sister of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and the daughter of a late senior Al-Qaeda financier. CNN suggested that he might fear prosecution in the United States.

Copyright (c) 2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.