Portal:Pakistan/This week in history, 2007

General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (Urdu:محمد ضياء الحق), the president and military ruler of Pakistan was killed along with several of his top generals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Lewis Raphel in a mysterious aircraft crash near Bahawalpur (Punjab) on August 17, 1988, the circumstances of which remain unclear. His death with the American Ambassador gave rise to many conspiracy theories. (More...)

Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, said in an interview that Pakistan was the first between the neighbours to have successfully enriched uranium by 90 per cent in 1982, and that Pakistan had conducted a large number of cold tests and established that their nuclear weapon design could work.^{[1] [2]}

The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission carried out five underground nuclear tests at the Chagai test site at 3:16 p.m. (PST) on the afternoon of May 28, 1998. The yield of the tests was reported to be 40 kilotonnes. Following the tests, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif addressed the nation via Pakistan's government channel PTV and congratulated the entire nation.

Ojhri Camp Disaster: Ojhri Camp (Urdu: اوجھڑی کیمپ ), located in Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan was used as an ammunition depot for Afghan Mujahideen fighting against Soviet forces from Afghanistan. It exploded on April 10, 1988 resulting in thousands of rockets rained down over Islamabad and Rawalpindi killing more than 5000 people there.

President of Pakistan, Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari dismisses the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto by utilizing his powers under Article 58 2(b) of the Constitution of Pakistan, on charges of corruption, lawlessness and extra judicial killings and dissolves the National Assembly of Pakistan.

General Ayub Khan deposed Iskander Mirza in a bloodless coup d'état to become the second President of Pakistan, less than three weeks after Mirza had appointed him the enforcer of martial law. This was actually welcomed in Pakistan, since the nation had experienced a very unstable political climate since independence.

The Kashmir earthquake (also known as the South Asia earthquake or the Great Pakistan earthquake) of 2005, was a major earthquake, of which the epicentre was the Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The earthquake occurred at 08:50:38 Pakistan Standard Time (03:50:38 UTC) on 8 October 2005. It registered 7.6 on the richter scale making it a major earthquake similar in intensity to the 1935 Quetta earthquake, the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The Pakistani government's official death toll was 73,276, while officials say nearly 1,400 people died in Jammu and Kashmir and fourteen people in Afghanistan. Most of the affected people lived in mountainous regions with access impeded by landslides that blocked the roads, leaving an estimated 3.3 million homeless in Pakistan.

Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah died in Karachi. Through the 1940s, Jinnah suffered from tuberculosis; only his sister and a few others close to him were aware of his condition. In 1948, Jinnah's health began to falter, hindered further by the heavy workload that had fallen upon him following Pakistan's creation. Attempting to recuperate, he spent many months at his official retreat in Ziarat, but died on September 11, 1948 from a combination of tuberculosis and lung cancer. His funeral was followed by the construction of a massive mausoleum—Mazar-e-Quaid—in Karachi to honour him; official and military ceremonies are hosted there on special occasions.

Fatima Jinnah died in Karachi. Fatima Jinnah (Urdu: فاطمہ جناح) was the sister of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan and an active political figure in movement for independence from the British Raj. She is commonly known in Pakistan as Khatoon-e-Pakistan (Urdu: — "Lady of Pakistan") and Madar-e-Millat ("Mother of the Nation.") She was born in Karachi, Pakistan, then a part of British India.