I also confirm that I read the mentioned sentence in Dawn. The more I read this newspaper, the more I get the feeling it has been overtaken by indians. Really.
Dawn is the most credible newspaper in Pak. As soon as they realized that the authenticity of that statement is questionable, they removed it.
Dawn is far better than Talibani papers like Jang, which have Taliban sympathizers like Ansar Abbasi as their leading investigator journalasts.
But yes, Taliban sympathizers hate papers like Dawn.