KARACHI: A teenaged Pakistani girl committed suicide after her parents were arrested and held in an Indian jail for nearly six months, police officials in Karachi said. Mohammad Hussain, his wife Yasmeen and eight-year-old son Abdul Karim went to see a family in the city of Jodphur in March but were arrested two months later on visa forgery charges. “One of Hussain's six daughters he left at home, 17-year-old college student Saba, became so distressed at her parents' continued detention that she took her own life,” police official Sajjad Hassan said. "On Saturday, she was found unconscious in her house in the evening and was brought to a hospital where doctors found a heavy quantity of poison in her stomach," he added. The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said in a statement that the girl committed suicide out of desperation and also because the family had little resources to support themselves. "The girl committed suicide to protest against the increasingly desperate situation due to her parents' and brother's detention in India," the AHRC statement said. The group appealed to the Pakistani and Indian prime ministers to help secure the release of Saba's parents and many other Pakistanis whom the Indian authorities had arrested on "dubious charges". Currently at least 61 Pakistanis, including some children, are detained in Indian jails, according to an AHRC count. Hashim said four of Hussain's daughters were schoolgirls who were also distressed at what had happened to their parents and had quit school. "They are mentally disturbed and cry for their parents," Hassan said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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