Latest News

The attackers detonated their explosives outside the office of the assistant political agent at Yakaghund village in Mohmand Agency, 40 km north of Peshawar on Friday.

Hundreds of people, including members of an antiTaliban militia, were present outside the office and in the nearby market, witnesses said.

Political Agent Amjad Ali Khan, the region's top Government official, said that 65 people were killed and 112 others injured in the attack.
The first bomber was on a motorcycle while the second was driving an explosivesladen vehicle, Khan said.

The Mohmand chapter of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack, one of the worst terrorist assaults in the tribal belt.

Taliban spokesman Ikramullah Mohmand told reporters that the bombers had targeted the political administration and the "peace committee" or anti-Taliban militia from Ambar area because they had organised a jirga against the militants.

Source: The Pioneer By A Muhammad Taliban Suicide Bombers Kill 65 In Pak Tribal Belt

The Pentagon is channelling a growing volume of troops and resources into countering cyber warfare.

The US military has appointed its first senior general to direct cyber warfare - despite fears that the move marks another stage in the militarisation of cyberspace.

The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to conduct virtual combat across the world's computer networks. He was appointed on Friday afternoon in a low-key ceremony at Fort Meade, in Maryland.

The creation of America's most senior cyber warrior comes just days after the US air force disclosed that some 30,000 of its troops had been re-assigned from technical support "to the frontlines of cyber warfare".

The creation of Cyber Command is in response to increasing anxiety over the vulnerability of the US's military and other networks to a cyber attack.

James Miller, the deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, has hinted that the US might consider a conventional military response to certain kinds of online attack.

Although Alexander pledged during his confirmation hearings before the Senate committee on armed services last month that Cyber Command would not contribute to the militarisation of cyberspace, the committee's chairman, Senator Carl Levin expressed concern that both Pentagon doctrine, and the legal framework for online operations, had failed to keep pace with rapid advances in cyber warfare.

In particular Levin voiced concern that US cyber operations to combat online threats to the US, routed through neutral third countries, "could have broad and damaging consequences" to wider American interests.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk By Peter Beaumont US Appoints First Cyber Warfare General

The powerful blast occurred on a major Kabul thoroughfare that runs by the ruins of a one-time royal palace and government ministries. It wrecked nearly 20 vehicles, including five SUVs in the NATO convoy, and scattered debris and body parts across the wide boulevard. The body of woman in a burqa was smashed against the window of the bus. The attack — the deadliest for NATO troops in the capital since September — comes despite a ramped up effort by Afghan authorities to intercept would-be attackers and better secure a capital city that saw a spate of brazen attacks this winter.

In the last such attack in February, suicide bombers stormed two small downtown hotels and killed 16 people.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in a phone call from an undisclosed location that the bomber was a man from Kabul and his car was packed with 1,650 pounds (750 kilograms) of explosives. The target of the attack was the foreign convoy, he said. U.S. troops and Afghan police held a security cordon around wrecked vehicles at the blast site in the west of the city. Emergency workers zipped the dead into body bags and lifted the injured into ambulances.

"I saw one person laying on the ground with no head," said Mirza Mohammad, who was on his way to work when the blast happened up the road. Police officer Wahidullah, who goes by one name, said he saw the body of woman in a burqa smashed up against the window of the bus.

"Everywhere was dead bodies," Wahidullah said. At least 12 Afghan civilians died and 47 were wounded — most of them in the bus, the Interior Ministry said.

U.S. forces spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said five American service members were killed in the attack, and the Canadian government said one of its service members also died.

It was the deadliest attack for NATO in the capital since a September suicide bombing that killed six Italian soldiers. The attack comes as NATO readies a major offensive in the southern province of Kandahar, a major Taliban stronghold. In a reminder of the ongoing violence in that region, another NATO service member died Tuesday in a bomb attack in the south, according to a statement issued by the coalition.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen condemned the Kabul attack and said it would not deter NATO's efforts in Afghanistan.

"NATO remains committed to its mission to protect the Afghan people and to strengthen Afghanistan's ability to resist terrorism," Rasmussen said in Brussels.

Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt in Kabul and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.

Source: Associated Press Taliban suicide bomb hits NATO convoy, kills 18 Click On "Full Story" For More...

The van was travelling to a nearby police station when it was attacked

The bomb was planted on a bicycle and went off as the patrol vehicle was travelling through the town of Dera Ismail Khan, according to a senior police official.

He said three police officers and eight civilians - two of them children - died in the blast.
One of the policemen was a senior officer, the other two his guard and driver.

"It was a remote control bomb and was planted in a bicycle," a police spokesman said.

Other reports claimed the death toll was higher.
"We have 12 dead bodies in our emergency room," Qibla Khan, a doctor at the city's main hospital, said.

Thousands of people had fled to Dera Ismail Khan

Mr Khan said the victims included a couple and their six-year-old daughter. "They appeared to be pedestrians," he added.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, in which a further 15 people were reportedly hurt.

Thousands of people fled to Dera Ismail Khan in October to escape a large army offensive against the Pakistani Taliban's main stronghold in the South Waziristan tribal area.

A survivor is taken for treatment

Many insurgents also escaped ahead of the fighting and have struck back with scores of attacks in the north west of the country.

A campaign of bombings across Pakistan blamed on Taliban and al Qaeda-linked militants has killed more than 3,300 people since July 2007.

The attack took place during a soccer game Friday evening in the town of Tal Afar, located between the Syrian border and the volatile city of Mosul.

The first bomber waited until the end of the match and then detonated his car bomb amid a crowd of supporters and players near the field's entrance. In the ensuing panic, two others attackers activated their suicide belts inside the screaming crowd, local police officials said.

The sports field was located in a majority Shiite neighborhood in the ethnically Turkomen town that has been repeatedly targeted by suicide bombers over the years.

A hospital official confirmed the casualty figures. Many of the wounded were taken by ambulance to Dahuk, some 60 miles away because local hospitals were overburdened.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Source: The Associated Press Suicide car bomb kills 10 in north Iraq

Hours later, a series of small explosions terrified residents in a different Lahore neighbourhood and injured at least three persons.

The police said four low- intensity blasts apparently resulted from loose explosives, not packed bombs, scattered through the residential area. While the explosions sent the police and rescue workers racing through the area, there were no immediate reports of deaths or major damage.

" The twin suicide bombers attacked within a span of 15 to 20 seconds and they were on foot," said Tariq Saleem Dogar, the head of the police in Punjab province.

The dead include five armymen, the official news agency, Associated Press of Pakistan, said. The injured were immediately shifted to three hospitals nearby.

So far, no one has so far claimed responsibility for Friday's attack.

Source: Mail Today By Badar Alam Twin suicide blasts kill 45 near Lahore garrison zone

An A Suicide car bomb attack on an office of the Federal Investigation Agency ( FIA), Pakistan's main police probe agency, killed 13 people and injured about 90 more in Lahore's Model Town residential area on Monday.

The blast demolished the two- storey FIA office, where the police used to interrogate high- value suspects. On Monday, there were no suspects inside the building but more than 40 people were manning the place. The attack partially destroyed at least 15 nearby houses.

Three attackers, riding a car, approached the investigation agency's office at 8.15 am ( local time). But when the security guards stopped them at the gate, "two of the attackers ran away but the third exploded himself and the car", Rana Ayaz, the area's senior superintendent of police, said.

"The dead include one woman, a schoolgirl and at least eight security officials," medical and rescue officials said. The injured -- many of whom are women and schoolchildren -- were rushed to nearby hospitals. Most of them were discharged after first-aid. "Nearly 45 people are still being treated and the condition of at least three is not stable yet," a doctor at the Jinnah Hospital said.

The explosion was so powerful it shook almost the entire northern part of Lahore. People reported hearing its bang more than five km from the site of the blast. "With the huge bang, blocks and pieces of roof fell upon us and six of us were wounded. There was total chaos outside.

source: Mail Today By Badar Alam Pak Interrogation Centre Suicide Car Blast kills 13

The attacks appeared to be targeted at the Indian presence in the Afghan capital as one of the hotels attacked was rented by the Indian embassy for its staffers and those attached to India's developmental projects in Afghanistan.

Those killed included Indian embassy officials, army doctors and an Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) jawan. This is the third attack on Indian officials in Afghanistan in the past 20 months. The attacks on the embassy in July 2008 and October 2009 had killed diplomats and officials apart from several Afghan nationals.

"As per the preliminary information provided by the Afghan government officials, up to nine Indians, besides a few others from Afghanistan and third countries, have lost their lives," foreign minister S.M. Krishna said in a statement.

He added that arrangements were being made for their adequate and expeditious treatment, if necessary, by evacuating them to India. The bodies of those slain are expected to be brought back by a special plane. Praising the contribution of the Indians killed in Friday's ghastly attacks, PM Manmohan Singh said: "The Indians who have lost their lives were on a mission of goodwill and friendship, helping to construct a peaceful, democratic Afghanistan that our Afghan friends desire. I convey my heartfelt condolences to their families and near and dear ones, and assure them that we stand with them in this hour of grief, and will render all possible support to them."

The PM added: "I am deeply saddened and grieved at the loss of lives of Indian nationals in the bomb attack in Kabul, which has also claimed the lives of several innocent Afghan civilians. I condemn in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of violence and barbarism which strikes at the core of everything a civilised society holds dear." Assuring all assistance to the families of the deceased officials, Krishna said, "Though the irreplaceable loss of these families can never be recompensed, all necessary steps will be taken for the welfare of the dependents of the deceased officials."

Source: Mail Today Suicide Attack on Kabul Hotel Kills 9 Indians

More than 50 people were also injured in the blast in Bannu district in North West Frontier Province, which is plagued by attacks by Taliban rebels avenging military offensives aimed at crushing their northwestern strongholds.

"The villagers were watching the match between the two village teams when the bomber rashly drove his double-cabin pick-up vehicle into them and blew it up," district police chief Mohammad Ayub Khan told AFP. "At least 47 people have died and the toll is likely to rise." Another local police chief Habibullah Khan said 50 people were wounded in Shah Hasan Khan village, 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Lakki Marwat town and near the tribal district and Taliban stronghold South Waziristan.

Mushtaq Marwat, a member of a local anti-Taliban group, told the private Geo television station that the so-called "peace committee" was meeting at a nearby mosque when the bomber stuck the village field outside. "Suddenly there was a huge blast. We went out and saw bodies and injured people everywhere... ten houses and three shops were destroyed," he said, estimating that the death toll was going to rise significantly. Mohammad Ayub Khan said that women and children were pulled from the rubble of a nearby house that collapsed in the blast, and said that the remote area was struggling to cope with the scale of the attack.

Source: Economic Times Suicide bomber kills 47 at Pak volleyball game

A suicide bomber attacked a Shiite Muslim procession in Karachi on Monday.

The GEO television network, citing hospital sources, said at least 40 people had been killed and more than 100 had been injured in the attack, which struck the procession as it made its way along Muhammad Ali Jinnah Road on Monday afternoon.

The attack, the third against Shiites in three days, appeared to deeply unsettle the Pakistani government, which ordered the director general of the Rangers, a paramilitary force under the control of the Interior Ministry, to take control of Karachi.

A man yelling at the site of a suicide attack Monday against a Shiite procession in Karachi, Pakistan.

The interior minister, Rehman Malik, also asked Shiite clerics to postpone religious processions , especially in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, to avoid "providing soft targets to militants," according to the state-run news agency. Government leaders urged people not to take the law into their own hands.

Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, warned that "a deliberate attempt seems to be afoot by the extremists to turn the fight against militants into a sectarian clash and make the people fight against one another."

Police officials said that Sunni extremists, possibly with links to the Taliban, had been behind the attack. Sunni extremists believe Shiites are apostates and have in the past attacked the group, which makes up 20 percent of Pakistan's population.

Shopkeepers stood by a market set ablaze by protesters in Karachi after the blast.  

Two people were arrested in connection with the bombings, though no group claimed responsibility.

The bombing defied Pakistani security, which had deployed more forces in anticipation of an attack against Shiites during their annual observance of Ashura, which commemorates the death of the revered Shiite martyr Imam Hussein.

Karachi, Pakistan's commercial hub and main port of entry for goods shipped through the country to the United States military in Afghanistan, had largely been spared the violence that has swept the country since October, when Pakistani forces began an offensive against Taliban militants in the South Waziristan tribal area.

Click On This Image To Watch Video:-

In retaliation for that offensive, Taliban commanders have overseen a wave of attacks against large and interior cities, including the northwestern frontier hub of Peshawar, the military garrison city of Rawalpindi, and the Punjabi heartland.

Monday's blast, which occurred just after 4 p.m., sent a huge plume of smoke over the Shiite procession as it wound down one of the main thoroughfares of the city. A security camera caught the explosion, which left people shrieking and running for cover.

Dr. Sagheer Ahmed, the health minister of Sindh Province, where Karachi is located, said soon after the attack that 63 people had been wounded, some critically.

Source: www.nytimes.com Death Toll Climbs in Attack on Pakistani Shiites