Dozens of women in Pakistan took part in female-only bike races in major cities on Sunday, in an event organised to challenge male dominance of public spaces in the country.

Chinese, Saudi and Turkish troops for the first time joined the Pakistan Day parade in the capital Islamabad on Thursday, in a sign of deepening ties.

Families and supporters of five missing Pakistani activists denounced what they called a campaign to accuse the men of blasphemy, a highly charged allegation that could endanger their lives were they to reappear.

The Qatar-Pakistan Joint Ministerial Committee held its fourth meeting in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Thursday.

At least 40 people died when a plane carrying 48 passengers crashed into a mountain in northern Pakistan on Wednesday and witnesses at the site of the flaming wreckage said there were unlikely to be any survivors.

Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan backed down from a threat to paralyse the capital on Wednesday, a move likely to ease tension that has spilled over into violence in the run-up to the planned protests.

Pakistani police Sunday arrested more than 100 supporters of opposition politician Imran Khan who entered Islamabad days before a planned protest shutdown of the capital, the interior minister said.

A young Pakistani woman died on Wednesday after she was tortured and set alight in the country's conservative northeast for refusing a marriage proposal from the son of a former colleague, relatives and police said.

A top Pakistani official has said for the first time publicly that the Afghan Taliban's leadership enjoys a safe haven inside his country, which Islamabad uses as a "lever" to pressure the group into talks with Kabul.

A Taliban suicide bomber struck a police base in central Kabul, killing at least nine people just days before a fresh round of international talks aimed at reviving dialogue with the Islamist group.

Pakistan announced this week that authorities have executed 332 criminals and militants since lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in 2014, marking the first time an official tally has been released.