Islamabad, Apr 6 : Troubled fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar is set to be included in a 15-man Pakistani squad for the upcoming one-day series against Australia after he passed a fitness test in Lahore.

Chief selector Abdul Qadir expressed satisfaction with Shoaib's fitness, and said team trainer David Dwyer and the Pakistan Cricket Board's medical officer, Dr Sohail Saleem, had also cleared him.

Islamabad, Apr. 6 : India remains priority number one for the military brass in Pakistan, as it has been for the past 61 years.

Therefore, the Obama administration has a huge challenge confronting it, and that is to convince Islamabad to shift its obsessive focus from India to defeating a fast-expanding Islamic insurgency that threatens to devour the country.

Islamabad, Apr 6 : Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said that Pakistan deserves America's trust, as it is "a frontline state fighting extremism and terrorism."

Gilani told the Tribune-Review that the country's critics do not understand the war's complexities or "the price we are paying."

"The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is such a difficult situation that even the United States and NATO forces are fighting... there for the last five and a half years, with what results?" Gilani asked.

Islamabad  - At least 22 people were killed and dozens more injured as an explosion ripped through a Shiite mosque Sunday in Pakistan's eastern province of Punjab, government officials said.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at the main entrance of the mosque in Chakwal district, some 90 kilometres south-west of capital Islamabad, when the security guards challenged him.

"At least 22 people are killed and more than 50 are injured, many of them critically," said provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah.

Islamabad  - A separatist group, which has been holding a United Nations official for the last two months in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province, said Saturday it had freed the captive on "humanitarian grounds."

UN authorities in the capital city Islamabad confirmed the release to the German Press Agency dpa saying John Solecki was "tired, otherwise well."

Islamabad - A pair of suicide bombings left 16 people, including nine paramilitary soldiers, dead across Pakistan Saturday.

At least eight members of Pakistan's security forces were killed and four others were injured in a suicide bombing at a paramilitary camp in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

The blast occurred in the upmarket residential area of F-7/3, where paramilitary troops from the Frontier Corps (FC) were deployed to guard several embassies, UN offices and diplomatic residences in the area.