Saad Rizvi

Pakistan’s Parliament is expected to consider a resolution on Tuesday about whether the French envoy should be expelled over the publication of controversial cartoons depicting Islam’s Prophet.

An outlawed Pakistani Islamist political group freed 11 policemen almost a day after taking them hostage in the eastern city of Lahore amid violent clashes with security forces, the country’s interior minister said on Monday.

Pakistan blocked access to all social media on Friday, after days of anti-French protests across the country by radical Islamists opposed to cartoons they consider blasphemous.

Pakistan’s interior minister on Wednesday recommended a ban on an Islamist political party whose supporters held violent rallies this week to condemn the arrest of their leader.

Pakistani security forces swinging batons and firing teargas moved before dawn on Wednesday to clear sit-ins by protesting Islamists in the garrison city of Rawalpindi and elsewhere after five people died in earlier clashes.