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KARACHI: Pakistan and Russia have been conducting a joint military exercise that focuses on drone warfare among other things, the Pakistani military said on Friday.

The development comes as militants in Pakistan have started using commercially acquired quadcopter drones to drop bombs on security forces in the country’s northwest, police say, in a potentially dangerous development in the volatile region.

It also follows a four-day conflict between Pakistan and India in May that saw the large-scale use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), fighter jets and artillery, leaving nearly 70 people dead on both sides.

Pakistan and Russia have been conducting the Druzhba-VIII exercise from Sept. 15 till Sept. 27, with senior military officials from Russia in attendance, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistani military’s media arm.

“The exercise was aimed at refining the drills, procedures and techniques involved in Counter Terrorism operations with focus on drone warfare, fighting in built-up areas and counter improvised explosive devices through joint training, besides harnessing the historic military to military relations among the friendly countries,” the ISPR said in a statement.

Pakistan and Russia, once Cold War rivals, have warmed up to each other in recent years through regular political, business, trade and defense interactions. In March, a Russian navy flotilla arrived in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi to conduct joint exercises with Pakistan Navy.

The latest exercise comes ahead of the Indian military’s plans to test drone and counter drone systems next month in a major exercise to toughen its air defenses, Reuters reported this week, citing a senior officer.

Since the four-day clash, both neighboring countries have ramped up drone development in what analysts describe as a drone arms race. India has also announced plans to build an indigenous air defense system, dubbed ‘Sudarshan Chakra’, by 2035 — an initiative officials have likened to Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’.

PARIS: A niece of a notorious militant propagandists on trial for joining the Daesh group and taking her children with her apologized to all victims of the militants as well as her family.
Speaking in court on Friday, Jennyfer Clain, a niece of Jean-Michel and Fabien Clain, who publicly claimed responsibility on behalf of Daesh for the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015, offered her “apologies” to all “direct and indirect victims” of the militants, “in France, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.”
During the worst attack on Paris since World War II, militant gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall and elsewhere.
The Clain brothers are presumed to have died during the military campaign launched by US-backed Kurdish groups to defeat IS. In 2022, they were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment without parole.
“I am not asking them to forgive me, it is unforgivable, but I offer them my deepest and most sincere apologies,” she said, referring to the victims.
Jennyfer Clain and two other French women went on trial in Paris last week, accused of traveling to the Middle East to join the Daesh group.
Jennyfer Clain went to the Middle East with four children, and her fifth baby was born in Raqqa, the Daesh group’s one time capital.
The two other women on trial are Jennyfer Clain’s sister-in-law, Mayalen Duhart, 42, and 67-year-old Christine Allain, the women’s mother-in-law.
Duhart brought her four children with her, and had a baby there, who died at seven months.
Weeping in court, Jennyfer Clain asked her five children, who have been placed in foster care since their return to France in 2019, for “forgiveness.”
“I am sorry for everything they have been through because of me,” she said. “I have failed in my role as a mother,” said the 34-year-old, who is also on trial for abandoning minors.
A representative of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office has requested a 13-year prison sentence for her.
Duhart also sobbed in court.
Released on parole, she said that a return to prison would be a “disaster” for her children, who have also been placed in foster care.
Prosecutors requested a 10-year prison sentence for Duhart.
“I am not a victim,” she said. “The victims are the others, those who were tortured and massacred by the organization I belonged to. I am responsible.”
Earlier this week the presiding judge had pointed out to the three women that they had not said anything about “the victims of the attacks.”
Allain said that she had been “touched” by her meeting in prison with Georges Salines, the father of Lola Salines, one of the victims killed at the Bataclan.
Prosecutors have requested a 15-year prison sentence for her.
The verdict is expected later Friday.