LAHORE: When the coronavirus outbreak brought many businesses in Lahore to a halt, Nazia, a widow who makes a living as a seamstress, was left with no orders and source of income to feed her three children.
As she continued to return home empty-handed, suddenly a call came from local officials who said that a package with food staples was waiting for her.
“I received a call from my area’s union council vice chairman that a food package was waiting for me at the governor’s house. I went there and saw on the parcel that it was from Saudi Arabia,” Nazia told Arab News.
KSRelief workers unload packages with food aid for families in coronavirus-hit Punjab. (Photo courtesy: SPA)
“I thanked God for it. At this moment, when I have no work, this food ration allows me to my feed my family for the entire month,” she said, adding that it was a blessing.
The package came from King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief), which on April 23 launched a special Ramadan assistance project for Punjab and with the help of its governor’s office distributed $1 million worth of food parcels in the province.
The aid reached 154,000 people, Sardar Pawan Singh, spokesman for the Punjab governor, told Arab News.
“The governor distributed 21,500 food parcels to needy families, helping 154,000 people in Punjab in the wake of the pandemic. The total worth of the distributed food was Rs160 million,” he said.
Akbar Ali, a roadside carpenter in Lahore, was also one of those who received the help.
A boy carries a food package from KSRelief's food assistance program for Punjab province. (Photo courtesy: SPA)
“The disease has brought us to the verge of starvation. I’ve had no work for the past three months. This food gift was a big relief to me my family,” he said.
Punjab Governor Chaudhary Muhammad Sarwar expressed gratitude to KSRelief for supporting the people of Punjab “in this hour of need.”
“The Saudi government and royal family have always supported Pakistanis. In these difficult moments, their help alleviates the misery,” he said in a statement for Arab News on Monday.
The assistance came as Pakistan’s most populous province faced mass job losses amid business shutdowns enforced to contain the spread of coronavirus.
“We started this project from Punjab since it is the most populated province and severely affected by COVID-19,” Dr. Khalid Al-Othmani, director KSRelief Pakistan, told Arab News at the project’s inauguration ceremony in Islamabad.
The beneficiaries were selected with the help of Punjab authorities.
“Local administrations identified the families in need and provided lists. The food packages were delivered to doorsteps. There was no chance of cheating, because people know each other at the neighborhood level,” the Punjab governor’s spokesman said.
Each Ramadan package — weighing about 30 kilograms — contained rice, cooking oil, milk powder, besan, sugar, black tea, dates, and wheat.
Throughout the fasting month, the program has reached families in Lahore, Faisalabad, Jhang, Toba Tek Singh, Khanewal, Muzzafargarh, Rajanpur, Pakpattan, Rahim Yar Khan, and Bahawalnagar.
KSRelief has provided humanitarian and development assistance to millions of beneficiaries in more than 49 countries. Pakistan is the fifth-largest recipient of assistance from the Saudi-based international agency and has received more than $120 million in aid since 2005.
KARACHI: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday lauded the contribution of overseas Pakistanis as workers’ remittances surged to a record $31.2 billion during the first ten months of the current fiscal year, with Saudi Arabia emerging as the top source of inflows.
According to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), remittances rose by 30.9 percent during July-April FY25 compared to $23.9 billion received in the same period last year.
In April alone, Pakistan received $3.2 billion, showing a 13.1 percent year-on-year increase. The inflows were mainly sourced from Saudi Arabia ($725.4 million), United Arab Emirates ($657.6 million), United Kingdom ($535.3 million) and the United States ($302.4 million).
“Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed satisfaction over a 31 percent increase in remittances during the first 10 months of fiscal year 2025 compared to the previous year,” a statement issued by his office said.
“Remittances reaching a record level is a reflection of the confidence of overseas Pakistanis in government policies,” it quoted him as saying.
Remittances form a vital pillar of Pakistan’s external sector, helping stabilize the current account, fueling domestic consumption and easing the country’s reliance on external borrowing.
Earlier this year, in March, the SBP recorded an all-time monthly high of $4.1 billion in remittance inflows, driven by seasonal factors and improved formal channel usage.
Pakistan has focused on boosting exports and remittances in recent years as part of broader efforts to strengthen its external sector and address economic vulnerabilities.
The central bank has also revised its FY25 remittance projection upward from $36 billion to $38 billion, citing current trends.
ISLAMABAD: Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir arrived in Islamabad on Friday after a visit to New Delhi, as tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan continue to escalate.
Al-Jubeir’s visit follows India’s military strikes inside Pakistan in response to a gun attack in the disputed region of Kashmir that left 26 tourists dead, with New Delhi blaming Islamabad for the incident, though Pakistani authorities repeatedly denied any involvement.
With the two archrivals teetering on the edge of a full-scale war, the United States announced on Thursday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had discussed regional de-escalation with Saudi officials. The same day, Al-Jubeir also made a surprise stop in New Delhi for talks with Indian officials.
“Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar will receive Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today,” said an official statement prior to the Saudi official’s arrival in Islamabad.
State media later broadcast visuals of Al-Jubeir disembarking from his aircraft in Islamabad.
According to Pakistan’s Geo News, the Saudi minister is expected to meet with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir during his visit.
While the Pakistani government has not officially disclosed the purpose of Al-Jubeir’s visit, it is anticipated that discussions will focus on the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan, as well as other issues of mutual interest.
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan share close diplomatic and strategic relations.
The Kingdom has extended significant support to Pakistan during its prolonged economic challenges in recent years, including external financing and assistance with International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan programs.
Saudi Arabia has also contributed to global peacemaking efforts by hosting talks and mediating prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine.
India’s clash with Pakistan sees use of Chinese missiles, French jets, Israeli drones, and more
Claims on exactly what was hit in latest standoff and where have differed widely, with neither side releasing many specific details
Making ongoing conflict even more confusing, the Internet has been “flooded with disinformation, false claims and multimedia
Updated 09 May 2025
AP
BANGKOK: India’s missile and bomb strikes on targets in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir have spiked tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, with Pakistan’s leader calling the attacks an act of war.
Claims on exactly what was hit and where have differed widely, with neither India nor Pakistan releasing many specific details.
Making the ongoing conflict even more confusing, the Internet has been “flooded with disinformation, false claims, and manipulated photos and videos,” the Soufan Center think tank said in a research note Friday.
“This information warfare is compounded by both sides’ commitment to save face,” it said.
Still, some information can be gleaned from official statements and paired with what is known to gain greater insight into the clash:
Pakistan says it shot down 5 Indian planes involved in the attack
People look at a fuel tank of an aircraft in Wuyan, near Srinagar, on May 7, 2025. (AFP)
Hours after India’s attack early Wednesday, in retaliation for last month’s massacre of tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir, Pakistan’s military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif claimed that the Pakistan air force had shot down five Indian attack aircraft: three French-made Rafales, a Russian-made SU30MKI and a Russian-made MiG-29.
He said that Pakistan’s air force suffered no casualties, and that all of its aircraft returned safely to base.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif repeated the claim, saying that the Pakistan air force had the opportunity to shoot down 10 Indian planes, but exercised restraint and downed only the five that had fired on Pakistani targets.
He told Parliament that overall 80 Indian planes had been involved in the attack.
India, meantime, has not acknowledged any losses, though debris from three aircraft came down in at least three areas.
Did it happen that way?
India does have all three types of jets among its more-than 700 combat capable fighter aircraft, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance report.
All three aircraft are fighters with the capability of carrying bombs or missiles for ground attacks.
Pakistan and India have both said that their planes did not leave their home airspace, suggesting that if Pakistan’s account is accurate, rather than a dogfight in the skies over Kashmir, Pakistani pilots fired multiple air-to-air missiles over a long distance to take down Indian planes.
Presuming India fired back, even though Pakistan said none of its planes were hit, the aerial skirmish would have been quite the show. But there have been no eyewitness reports of it or video to emerge on social media.
What is known for sure is that Indian planes were in the air and attacked at least nine targets, and that debris from three has been found.
It’s also plausible that Pakistan used surface to air missiles to hit Indian planes — which the war in Ukraine has shown to be very effective and would not have meant risking any of its own planes.
Pakistan has a wide range of such missiles, primarily Chinese-made.
Test of Chinese tech?
People gather in front of the shattered glasses of a restaurant outside the Rawalpindi cricket stadium after an alleged drone was shot down in Rawalpindi on May 8, 2025. (AFP)
Pakistan’s air force includes American-made F-16s, the French Mirage, and the new Chinese-built J-10C, as well as the Chinese JF-17, which was developed jointly with Pakistan.
In addition to American air-to-air missiles, Pakistan also has several Chinese products in its arsenal, including the PL-12 and PL-15, both of which can be used to fire at targets beyond visual range.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told lawmakers it was the J-10C that shot down the Indian aircraft, raising the likelihood that Chinese-built missiles were also employed.
“It’s interesting that Pakistan is saying it is using Chinese jets that it has imported from China to shoot down Indian aircraft,” said Lisa Curtis, director of the Indo-Pacific security program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.
In 2019, during the rivals’ previous military confrontation, “it was a Pakistani F-16 provided by the United States that was used to shoot down an Indian aircraft,” Curtis said in a conference call. “It’s interesting to see that Pakistan is relying more on its Chinese equipment than it did six years ago.”
The news convinced traders with shares in AVIC Chengdu Aircraft, which builds both the J-10C and J-17, to post large gains Wednesday and Thursday on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
Meanwhile, the stock of Dassault Aviation, the maker of the Rafale jet, which is among those Pakistan claims to have shot down, dropped sharply on Wednesday on the Paris Stock Exchange, though had recovered by close on Thursday.
What else is known?
India hasn’t talked about what assets were involved in the attacks. The Indian Defense Ministry said that the strikes targeted at least nine sites “where terrorist attacks against India have been planned.”
Pakistan, meantime, has said 31 civilians were killed, including women and children, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the country’s Punjab province, and that buildings hit included two mosques.
India did show video of eight of the strikes at a briefing on Wednesday. four in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and four in Pakistan.
Both sides have talked about missile strikes, but it was clear from the video that bombs were also dropped on some targets, possibly from drones. In addition to claiming the five Indian aircraft shot down, Pakistan also said it downed an unspecified number of drones on Wednesday.
Indian officials said the strikes were precision attacks, and from the videos shown, it did appear that specific areas of installations were targeted with individual missiles or bombs, rather than widespread areas.
What happened next?
India sent multiple attack drones into Pakistan on Thursday, with Pakistan claiming to have shot down 29 of them.
The drones were identified as Israeli-made Harop, one of several in India’s inventory.
One drone damaged a military site near the city of Lahore and wounded four soldiers, and another hit the city of Rawalpindi, which is right next to the capital Islamabad., according to the Pakistani army.
India did not deny sending drones, but the Defense Ministry said its armed forces “targeted air defense radars and systems” in several places in Pakistan, including Lahore. It did not comment on the claims of 29 being shot down.
India similarly did not comment on Pakistani claims to have killed 50-60 soldiers in exchanges along the Line of Control, though it did say one of its soldiers was killed by shelling on Wednesday.
Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, meantime, denied Indian accusations that Pakistan had fired missiles toward the Indian city of Amritsar, saying in fact an Indian drone fell in the city.
ISLAMABAD: The foreign office on Friday accused the Indian state of encouraging “disinformation” by its media to create a pretext for further aggression toward Pakistan and “exploit misinformation for political and military ends.”
As hostilities rose this week between India and Pakistan and they engaged in the worst fighting in decades, a wave of online disinformation on both sides is risking further inflaming passions and escalating the conflict in an electronic fog of war.
On May 6, multiple Indian news channels uploaded a widely shared video from Gaza showing a series of massive explosions and people running helter-skelter, with captions claiming it was footage of Indian air strikes against Pakistani targets.
Even India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party shared a collage of nine videos on May 7, claiming they were of India’s strikes on Pakistan. Boom, an Indian fact-checking organization, found that the first clip was from Iran’s October 2024 strikes on Israel and the third was from Israel’s air strikes on Gaza from October 2023.
Indian media outlets have over the past 24 hours claimed that Delhi has damaged or destroyed Pakistan’s main port in Karachi, captured the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and militants had taken over the southwestern city of Quetta. India media has also said Pakistan attacked multiple locations in parts of Indian-administered Kashmir and mainland India, reports Islamabad has rejected as “reckless.”
“The conduct of Indian media last night [Thursday] was extremely irresponsible and jingoistic, and frankly, disinformation is one thing, but the conduct of Indian media yesterday was indeed farcical, encouraged by the Indian state,” the foreign office spokesman said in a weekly press briefing.
“Repeated pattern of leveling accusations against Pakistan without any credible investigation reflects a deliberate strategy to manufacture a pretext for aggression and to further destabilize the region. Such actions not only further endanger regional peace but also reveal a disturbing willingness to exploit misinformation for political and military ends.”
There has been misinformation on the Pakistani side too. After India said it had struck ‘terror camps’ at nine sites inside Pakistan, a years-old video resurfaced on social media that falsely claimed it depicted explosions at an Indian ammunition depot targeted by Pakistani forces. The footage has in fact appeared in news reports about a fire near an army garrison in the Pakistani city of Sialkot in March 2022.
Social media users also shared an old clip falsely claiming it showed wreckage of an Indian warplane shot down by Pakistani troops. The video showed a fighter jet that crashed in western India after its pilots reported a technical snag.
A division of the Pakistani Economy Ministry denied Friday that it had appealed to its international partners “for more loans after heavy losses inflected by enemy” in a now-deleted post on X. Officials said the account had been hacked.
Meanwhile, New Delhi ordered X to block over 8,000 accounts in India, subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment of the company’s local employees.
“The orders include demands to block access in India to accounts belonging to international news organizations and prominent X users,” X’s Global Government Affairs team said on its account, adding it was unable to publish the executive orders at this time due to “legal restrictions.”
“The Indian government has not specified which posts from an account have violated India’s local laws. For a significant number of accounts, we did not receive any evidence or justification to block the accounts.”
The platform said it disagreed with the Indian government’s demands, describing the blockade of accounts as “contrary to the fundamental right of free speech.”
“X is exploring all possible legal avenues available to the company,” it said. “We encourage all users who are impacted by these blocking orders to seek appropriate relief from the courts.”
QUETTA: More than 2,700 Pakistani pilgrims in the southwestern city of Quetta have completed training to undertake the annual pilgrimage that is expected in June, with officials voicing on Thursday their satisfaction over the arrangements made by Saudi authorities.
Nearly 89,000 Pakistani pilgrims are expected to travel to Saudi Arabia under the government scheme and another 23,620 Pakistanis will perform the pilgrimage through private tour operators. The total quota granted to Pakistan was 179,210, which could not be met.
Each pilgrim in Pakistan’s Balochistan province has attended two training sessions at Hajji Camp in Quetta, where they have also been facilitated with passports, visas and tickets for their travel to Saudi Arabia.
“Everything is running smoothly here because our instructors and the staff are fully cooperating with the pilgrims,” said Muhammad Jan, a 62-year-old resident of Balochistan’s Naseerabad district who will be performing Hajj under the government scheme for the first time.
Jan, who completed his two training sessions in February and April, was visiting Hajji Camp in Quetta to collect his travel documents.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people [at Hajj each year], so if there are some minor shortcomings, then I think [it’s not a big deal],” he told Arab News.
“But from what we have heard, their [Saudi government] management is very good, they are facilitating [pilgrims] very well.”
This year, only 2,779 pilgrims from 34 districts across Pakistan’s sparsely populated Balochistan province will travel to Saudi Arabia.
“We have thoroughly guided our Hajj pilgrims about traveling guidelines, Hajj rules set by the Saudi government and the Hajj rituals,” a senior official at the Hajji Camp, who was not authorized to speak to media, told Arab News.
“We are satisfied with the Hajj arrangements by the Saudi government and there is a colossal coordination between the Pakistan and Saudi governments regarding the Hajj pilgrimage.”
Abdul Hadi, who also came to collect his documents from the Pishin district, urged authorities to expedite the process as some pilgrims had to wait “for hours.”
“They should have set up all documents with numbers so the pilgrims could get their documents in sequence by standing in queues. Now we have to wait for our names, that is a time-consuming procedure,” the 65-year-old said.
“When [Pakistani] pilgrims go to Saudi Arabia, they must keep in view our country’s reputation and protect it. They must not do anything there that may disgrace our country.”
Faizullah Abid, a volunteer at Hajji Camp, said they had regularly been handing over passports, visas and tickets to pilgrims.
“If any pilgrim does not wish to go back home [before departure for Hajj], then they are being provided accommodation and food here, then the Ministry of Religious Affairs will transport them to airport in their vehicles,” he added.
Pakistan launched its Hajj flight operation on April 29 which will continue till May 31. Pilgrims will continue to leave for Madinah during the first 15 days of the operation and afterwards, they will land in Jeddah and travel directly to Makkah.
