Pakistani police fire tear gas at protesting students as anger spreads over alleged on-campus rape

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani police fired tear gas and charged at student protesters who ransacked a college building Thursday, as anger spread over an alleged on-campus rape,

Tensions have been high on college campuses since reports of the alleged rape in the eastern city of Lahore spread on social media, and protests have broken out in four cities.

Sexual violence against women is common in Pakistan, but it is underreported because of the stigma attached to it in the conservative country, and protests about the issue have been rare.

Thursday's violence started when hundreds of students demonstrated outside a campus in the city of Rawalpindi in Punjab province. They burned furniture and blocked a key road in the city, disrupting traffic, before ransacking a college building. Police responded by swinging batons and firing tear gas to disperse them, police official Mohammad Afzal said.

Police said they arrested 250 people, mostly students, on charges of disrupting the peace. News of the arrests panicked parents, who struggled to get their children released.

In Gujrat, also in Punjab province, a security guard died in clashes between student protesters and police on Wednesday. Police arrested a person in connection with the death.

They also arrested a man who is accused of spreading misinformation on social media about the alleged rape and inciting students to violence.

Earlier this week, more than two dozen college students were injured in clashes with police in Lahore after they rallied to demand justice for the alleged victim, who they said was raped on campus at the Punjab Group of Colleges.

The country's Federal Investigation Agency said it has registered cases against 36 people accused of spreading misinformation about the case on social media.

Mauz Ullah, a student at the college where the woman was allegedly raped, said they were protesting to seek justice for her.

He said he did not believe the college or police “as they kept changing their position" on the alleged assault. He said the college initially denied any such incident took place. “If no such incident had taken place, then why did they arrest a guard?"

Authorities, including the province's chief minister, said there was no assault, as did the woman’s parents.

But Punjab police on Thursday urged people to share any information about the alleged rape.

The protests appear to have begun spontaneously. Student unions have been banned in Pakistan since 1984.

On Thursday, Usman Ghani, the head of the youth wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami opposition party, demanded an end to the ban on student unions, saying they might have helped resolve the matter without violence.

He said cases of sexual abuse at educational institutions are common.

“But the main thing is how you respond to make sure that the attackers don't get away without getting arrested,” he said.

Hasna Cheema, from the rights group Aurat Foundation, said neither Pakistani police nor the media were trained to handle such sensitive matters.

“They turn things from bad to worse instead of solving them,” Cheema said.

The Sustainable Social Development Organization said last month that there were 7,010 rape cases reported in Pakistan in 2023, almost 95% of them in Punjab.

“However, due to social stigmas in Pakistan that discourage women from getting help, there is a high chance that due to underreporting the actual number of cases may be even higher,” it said.

This week’s protests come less than a month after a woman said she was gang-raped while on duty during a polio vaccination drive in southern Sindh province.

Police arrested three men. Her husband threw her out of the house after the reported assault, saying she had tarnished the family name.

Associated Press writer Asim Tanveer contributed to this story from Multan, Pakistan.

Smoke erupts from burning furniture and other material, set on fire by angry students protesting over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Police officers detain students following a students protest over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Police officers detain students following a students protest over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Students throw stones toward police during clashes as they protest over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Students throw stones toward police during clashes as they protest over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Students throw stones toward police during clashes as they protest over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

A plainclothes police officer detains a demonstrator during a students' protest over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Police fire tear gas to disperse students protesting over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Police fire tear gas to disperse students protesting over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Smoke erupts from burning furniture and other materials set on fire by angry students protesting over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Police officers detain students following a students protest over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Police officers detain a demonstrator during a students' protest over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai)

Police fire tear gas to disperse students protesting over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/W.K. Yousafzai).

Students burn bushes as they chant slogans over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, during a protest in Hyderabad, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Pervez Mash)

Students chant slogans over an alleged on-campus rape in Punjab, during a protest in Hyderabad, Pakistan, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Pervez Mash)

BRUSSELS (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday his country has intelligence information that 10,000 troops from North Korea are being prepared to join Russian forces fighting against his country, warning that a third nation wading into the hostilities would turn the conflict into a “world war.”

Zelenskyy did not go into further details about the claim that came a day after U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said in Seoul that Washington and its allies are alarmed by North Korea's military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine but couldn’t confirm Ukrainian claims that North Korean soldiers were sent to fight for Moscow.

“We know about 10,000 soldiers of North Korea that they are preparing to send (to) fight against us,” Zelenskyy said, calling any North Korean involvement "the first step to a world war.”

The Ukrainian leader’s comments raised the stakes for his Western allies as he met with European Union leaders and then NATO defense ministers to discuss his “ victory plan ” to end the country’s devastating war with Russia.

“If we start now and follow the victory plan, we can end this war no later than next year,” he told the EU leaders.

He told reporters the plan aims “to strengthen Ukraine" and pave the way for a diplomatic solution to end the conflict on Europe's eastern flank.

“This plan doesn’t depend on Russian will, only on the will of our partners,” he said before addressing leaders at an EU summit.

Zelenskyy was later shuttling across Brussels to meet with NATO defense ministers. The EU is a key supporter of Ukraine, a candidate member of the 27-nation bloc, as it fights Russia's invasion that began more than 2 1/2 years ago.

Zelenskyy outlined the five-point plan to Ukraine’s parliament on Wednesday without disclosing confidential elements that have been presented in private to key allies, including the United States.

Major points of the plan include an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO and permission to use Western-supplied longer-range missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia, steps that have been met with reluctance by Kyiv’s allies so far.

“If we get this sign that we will be in NATO, we will feel that we are not alone,” Zelenskyy said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, widely seen as having the warmest relations of any EU leader with Russian President Vladimir Putin, called Zelenskyy's plan “more than frightening” in a Facebook post and said he would urge major EU powers France and Germany to “begin negotiations with the Russians as soon as possible, in order to find a way out of this situation.”

The Institute for the Study of War in Washington said that Putin is seeking to draw out the war and he believes "that Russian forces can outlast Western support for Ukraine and collapse Ukrainian resistance by winning a war of attrition.”

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Thursday that Kyiv can rest “absolutely assured that 32 allies are united in making sure that collectively, we will do whatever is needed to make sure that Ukraine can prevail, that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin will not get his way.”

Rutte reiterated that Ukraine’s place is among NATO’s ranks, but he would not say when it might join. Zelenskyy insists that a membership invitation is central to his “victory plan” and would provide his country with the ultimate security guarantee to protect it from Russia.

“Ukraine will be a member of NATO in the future,” Rutte said. “The question is exactly about the ‘when.’ I cannot answer that now.”

However, Rutte said, Putin must understand that “we are in this, if necessary, for the long haul. And obviously we want to be in a place where Zelenskyy and Ukraine, from a position of strength, is able to start talks with Russia.”

Zelenskyy told EU leaders that his troops must keep battling Russian forces in Ukraine "while also bringing the war back into Russia so that Russians can feel what war is like and begin to hate Putin for it.”

Zelenskyy said he needs to "move some partners forward” on the issue. “And I think only with the unity in EU we can move and can move not only EU leaders, we can move other leaders.”

A draft copy of EU summit conclusions — a text that will likely be tweaked before publication at the end of Thursday's meeting — reaffirms the bloc's “unwavering commitment to providing continued political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes and as intensely as needed. Russia must not prevail.”

Thursday's talks in Brussels come as Ukrainian troops are struggling to hold off better-equipped Russian forces, especially in the eastern Donetsk region where they are gradually being pushed back. Kyiv is surviving with Western help, but Ukraine says it is coming too slowly.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda criticized slow Western decision-making over Ukraine and said it “would be a great mistake to think that our hesitance is the best way to de-escalation.”

At their summit in Washington in July, the 32 NATO members declared Ukraine on an “irreversible” path to membership.

But for now, NATO is in a holding pattern. Its biggest and most powerful member, the United States, is facing a presidential election. European allies expect little movement on Ukraine until a new president takes office in January.

Beyond that, the United States and European heavyweight Germany remain deeply concerned about being dragged into a wider war with nuclear-armed Russia, and they lead a group of countries that oppose allowing Ukraine to join NATO until the conflict ends.

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. Associated Press reporter Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and European Council President Charles Michel arrive to an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

European Union leaders pose for a group photo with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, front row sixth left, during an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and European Council President Charles Michel talk to journalists as they arrive to an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and European Council President Charles Michel arrive to an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Ukrainian servicemen of Khartia brigade fire D-30 Howitzer towards Russian positions in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

Ukrainian servicemen of Khartia brigade fire D-30 Howitzer towards Russian positions in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

In this photo provided by the Press Service Of The President Of Ukraine on Oct. 16, 2024, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to parliamentarians at Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Press Service Of The President Of Ukraine via AP)

FILE - In this image provided by the Office of the Ukrainian Presidency, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, is watched by Rich Hansen, the commander's representative for the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, while signing military ordnance in Scranton, Pa., Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (Office of the Ukrainian Presidency via AP, File)

Ukrainian president Zelenskyy heads to EU, NATO to seek backing for his 'victory plan'

FILE - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a joint press conference during the Crimea Platform summit in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

Ukrainian president Zelenskyy heads to EU, NATO to seek backing for his 'victory plan'