Latest News (page 2)

The bombers forced their way into the university campus. While one suicide bomber blew himself up near the cafeteria in the girls' section, another blast occurred in the Shariah faculty in the boys' block.

Two female students were killed and about five injured in the girls' section and another four in the boys' block. Officials gave conflicting accounts of the blasts and casualties. But city police chief Tahir Alam said: "Both were suicide blasts."

According to initial information, two girl students have been killed," interior minister Rehman Malik said. Malik was booed and forced to return from the university with students shouting "shame, shame" while some even threw stones on his bulletproof car.

They blamed the minister for failure to ensure full security of the city and demanded his resignation.

"There was a big bang that damaged the building severely," university student Aleemullah said. Thirteen injured, 11 female students and two men, have been shifted to PIMS hospital where four are said to be in critical condition.

A suicide bomber killed seven commanders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and up to 42 other people on Sunday in an attack that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged had been plotted from neighbouring Pakistan.

The attack took place in the city of Pisheen near the border with Pakistan in restive SistanBaluchestan province, which hosts a substantial Sunni population, local news agencies said.

Iran's parliament speaker said the United States was behind the attack while the Guards accused Western powers of carrying out the assault, the deadliest against them since a bombing in February 2007 in the same province killed 13 people.

"Based on the latest information... between 30 to 35 people, including military officers, tribal leaders and local citizens, have been martyred in the attack," Mohammad Marziah, chief prosecutor in the SistanBaluchestan provincial capital Zahedan, was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.

Marziah said Abdolmalek Rigi, leader of the shadowy Jundallah (Soldiers of God) Sunni group, had claimed responsibility for the attack.

"So far no one has been arrested, but terrorist Malek Rigi has accepted the responsibility for this terrorist attack," Marziah said. Iran's state broadcaster said the attack occurred in front of a local gymnasium in Pisheen.
Fars news agency said the bomber struck when Guard officers were meeting local leaders of the Shiite and Sunni communities. Some local tribal chiefs were among the dead, media reports said.

The official IRNA news agency said the suicide bomber "wearing an explosives vest blew himself up inside the meeting."

"The goal of the terrorists is to disturb the security of the Sistan-Baluchestan province," Speaker Ali Larijani said.

"It shows they do not want to have economic progress in this region. But certainly the Guards will act with more force to establish security in

The police have raided the ashram of a Hindu right- wing outfit, Sanatan Sanstha, and detained at least two of its officebearers in connection with the blast.

The Sanstha has been linked with terrorist activities in the past as well.

On Sunday, the state government also set up a special investigation team to probe the Friday night blast. But the Sanstha has denied playing a role in the incident. Leaders of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) have also backed the outfit.

A bomb meant to be placed among Diwali revellers went off on the scooter on which it was being carried around 10 pm in Margao, 30 km from state capital Panaji, on Friday. One of the bombers, Melgonda Patil, was killed, while Yogesh Naik was critically injured.

The duo was scootering around Goa in the evening, placing bombs. They dropped off three bombs in the vicinity of Margao, but got stuck in a traffic jam at a Diwali venue -- with the fourth bomb on them.

" Even before they could plant the explosive, it blew up, possibly on their lap," said state home minister Ravi Naik.

The police defused the bombs that had already been placed. Together, the explosives were meant to cause maximum casualties among the Diwali crowd that had gathered to participate in effigy- burning competitions -- a local tradition.

Patil, the police said, was a fulltime ` pracharak' of the Sanstha who contributed to its mouthpiece Sanatan Prabhat as well. Naik used to deliver milk at the Sanstha's ashram in Ramnathi, 20 km from Panaji. Hospital sources said on Sunday that Naik had succumbed to his injures, but the police maintained that he was alive.

A day earlier, the police raided the Ramnathi ashram and detained ashram manager Virendra Marathe and Prithviraj Hazare and the editor of Sanatan Prabhat for questioning.

The police have also sent a team to Sangli, from where Patil hailed, to investigate the Sanstha's ashram there.

The special investigation team formed by the Goa Police is being assisted by the Maharashtra antiterrorism squad ( ATS). The ATS has been investigating Sangh Parivar terrorists behind last year's Malegaon blasts as well as the 2006 Nanded explosion in which two Bajrang Dal activists were accidentally killed while making bombs.

Patil and Naik's links with Sanatan Sanstha have led to the speculation that the organisation was planning a major strike on Diwali eve. This could have set off a nationwide reaction against Muslims, as any such attack would normally be blamed on Muslim fundamentalists.

Home minister Naik categorically blamed the attack on Hindutva terrorists linked to the Sanatan Sanstha. " The scooter in which the explosives were ferried belongs to activists from the Sanatan Sanstha.

It seems to be a clear attempt to create communal discord in the state," he said.

B UT THE Sanstha distanced itself from the blast. " Within half an hour of the blast taking place, a minister in Goa claimed that our organisation was involved. We find this very wrong," spokesperson Abhay Vartak said. " When no investigation has taken place, how can our organisation be blamed?" Vartak suggested Patil could have been a victim of the bomb blast, rather than the perpetrator.

Former CM and BJP leader Manohar Parikkar also jumped to the defence of the Sanstha, claiming there was nothing to prove its involvement. " The role of Sanatan Sanstha is not proved. Let their involvement be proved and I will make a statement," he said.

Parikkar also refused to accept the emergence of Hindutva terrorism, saying: " A real Hindu cannot be a terrorist." Residents at the Sanstha's Ramnathi ashram say Patil went to the blast site from the ashram. " Patil was a regular visitor to the ashram but used to live elsewhere. However, he shifted to the ashram eight days before the incident," he said. Source: Mail Today Whiff of Hindutva Terror In Goa, Accidental Blast On Eve Of Diwali Defeats Plot To Incite Riots

The strikes come just days after the attempt by terrorists to storm the Pakistan army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi in which nine attackers and 14 security personnel and civilian employees of the armed forces were killed.

On Thursday, terrorists first struck in Kohat, a garrison city to the southeast of Peshawar. A lone suicide- bomber hit the boundary wall of a police station there with his explosive- laden van, resulting in the death of 13 people, including three policemen.

The incident took place at 8 am and the blast, caused by 100 kg of explosives, was so huge that " it turned half of the building of the police station into rubble," said a local journalist, who arrived at the scene within 15 minutes of the explosion.

One- and- a- half hours later, Lahore -- the capital of the Punjab province and the second largest city in Pakistan -- came under triple attack by nine terrorists who, firing indiscriminately and lobbing handgrenades, barged into three separate facilities being used by security agencies.

One of these was the provincial headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency ( FIA), the federal police that deals with terrorism. The second was the police training academy at Manawan and the third the Elite Police Training School on Bedian Road on the outskirts of the city.

Source: Mail Today Pakistan Reels Under Terror Blitz

October 12: A suicide bomber targets a paramilitary convoy as it passes through a security checkpost in a bazaar in Alpuri town in Shangla, a district neighbouring the north-western Swat valley and the target of a recent anti-Taliban military offensive. Some 41 people, mainly civilians, are killed and 45 injured. The umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) movement claims responsibility.

October 10/11: A team of nine militants stage an audacious attack on army headquarters in Rawalpindi, the garrison town adjoining Islamabad, with 22 people killed in the day-long siege that also saw 39 hostages freed by troops. The dead included 11 troops, three hostages and eight attackers. The TTP movement claims responsibility.

October 9: A suicide bomber rams his explosives-laden car into a bus in a crowded market in the northwest city of Peshawar, killing 52 civilians and injuring more than 100. It is the sixth attack in four months in the city, near to the tribal frontier zone with Afghanistan, where the army has recently launched an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies.

October 5: Five UN World Food Programme workers are killed when a suicide bomber walks into their office in Islamabad and blows himself up. A man dressed in military uniform breached strict security measures and detonated explosives in the heavily fortified WFP office. Four Pakistani workers and one Iraqi are among the dead. The TTP claims responsibility for the attack.

An injured man was brought to a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Monday after a suicide bombing.

Militants on Monday launched their fourth assault in a week on strategic targets across Pakistan, this time with a suicide car bombing against a military vehicle in a crowded market in the northwest, killing 41 people and wounding dozens more.

The bombing took place in the Shangla District, an area within the Swat Valley but under separate administration. The Pakistani military had declared the valley cleared of militants after an offensive this summer and announced that the Taliban were a shattered force.

Since the Swat campaign and the death of the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in an American drone strike in August, the militants have been relatively quiet. But the attack on Monday showed they could still shake the country with serious terrorist attacks in a short period over a wide geographic spread.

Click Here To Watch Video:-

Taliban Attacks in Pakistan on the Rise: -Video
The fourth attack in a week show how the militants could still shake the country with serious terror attacks in a short period over a wide geographic spread.Source: NY Times

It was the latest in a series clearly intended to prove the Taliban's resilience, to exact revenge for government and American strikes, and to discourage the Pakistani military from expanding its campaign into South Waziristan, the heartland of the Taliban in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Air Force has been pounding areas of South Waziristan in the last day, a prelude to a possible ground campaign, military officials said. Hundreds are reported to have fled in recent days in expectation of an attack.

On Saturday, in one of their boldest gambits, 10 militants dressed in army fatigues and armed with automatic weapons, mines, grenades and suicide jackets breached the perimeter of the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in a raid that left 23 people dead and set off a 20-hour siege.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

Source: New York Times Car Bomb Kills at Least 41 in Restive Region of Pakistan

A man carries an injured woman after a suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan Friday, Oct. 9, 2009

The attack, which wounded more than 100 people in Peshawar, was Pakistan's deadliest in six months and was a reminder of the ability of insurgents to strike in major cities despite operations against them and the death of their leader in a U.S. missile strike.

The blast left a charred skeleton of a bus flipped on its side in the middle of the road, with the twisted remains of a motorbike nearby. Passers-by rushed to cover the bodies of victims whose clothes were burned off, while a man carried an injured woman. One man staggered from the scene, his face covered with blood.

People rush to the site of a suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan on Friday, Oct. 9, 2009

"I saw a blood-soaked leg landing close to me," said Noor Alam, who suffered wounds to his legs and face and was at a hospital overrun with casualties. "I understood for the first time in my life what doomsday would look like."

Peshawar Police Chief Liaqat Ali Khan said the attacker was in a car packed with a "huge" amount explosives and artillery rounds. There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing, the target of which was not immediately apparent. Militants typically attack government, military or Western targets, but blasts have taken place in public places before.

People help an injured person out of the bombing site in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, Oct. 9, 2009

Zafar Iqbal, a doctor at the main Peshawar hospital, said 49 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Seven children were among the dead.
"Death has to come one day, but we will keep chasing these terrorists, and this attack cannot deter our resolve," Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said as he visited the scene.

The United States is pushing Pakistan to take action against insurgents using its soil to fuel the insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan. The army has carried out some offensives in the northwest this year, killing many militants and earning it measured praise in the West, but the insurgents have responded with scores of suicide attacks.

The army has confirmed it is prepared to launch a major offensive in South Waziristan, a region along the Afghan border consider the fountainhead of suicide attacks and other militant activity in Pakistan. It has not given a date for the launch.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the attack meant the country now "had no other option but to carry out an operation in South Waziristan."

People rush to the site of a suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan on Friday, Oct. 9, 2009.

"We will have to proceed," he told a local television station. "All roads are leading to South Waziristan."

The bombing came just days after a Taliban suicide attacker evaded tight security to kill five people at the office of the U.N.'s World Food Program in the capital, Islamabad and two weeks after another explosion killed 11 in another part of Peshawar.
Malik said authorities had arrested a man alleged to have been the "handler" of the U.N. bomber. He gave no more details.

People help an injured person at a bombing site in Peshawar, Pakistan Friday, Oct. 9, 2009.

Also Friday, militants ambushed a tanker carrying fuel for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan at a gas station near Peshawar, torching it, said Fazal Rabi, a police official. No deaths or injuries were reported in the attack, which highlighted the vulnerability of the American-led mission in landlocked Afghanistan as Washington debates sending more troops.

Pakistani Taliban have often targeted U.S. and NATO supply convoys passing through northwest Pakistan for Afghanistan, though there have been less attacks reported recently. Most of the nonmilitary supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan are unloaded at Karachi sea port and are then trucked in through the northwest.

Pakistan's army has launched three operations in South Wazirstan since 2001 but each time has been forced to abandon the push amid fierce resistance. U.S. missile strikes and Pakistani mortar and jet bombings have hit targets there over the last year, but no ground operations have been launched.
One such U.S. attack in the region in August killed Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud. The group has since named a new leader, Hakimullah Mehsud. He has threatened suicide attacks and said his men were preparing to repel any push into South Waziristan.

Associated Press writers Munir Ahmad and Asif Shahzad contributed to this report from Islamabad.s

Suicide bomber detonates car carrying explosives near mission's outer wall

The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack. The Afghan foreign ministry hinted at Pakistan's involvement as well, but Islamabad denied the charge. The blast appeared similar in pattern to the one in July 2008, which American intelligence officials said Pakistan's spy agency -- the ISI -- had helped plan. India had also blamed the ISI for the 2008 attack, but refrained from pointing fingers on Thursday.

The latest bombing took place a day after India pledged to continue to "invest and endure" in Afghanistan. The casualty included 15 civilians and two Afghan policemen. Most of the wounded were also civilians, said the Afghan interior ministry, which is located across the road from the blast site. The bombing occurred near the outer perimeter of the heavily-fortified embassy at about 8.30 am local time (9.30 am IST). The suicide bomber drove up in a car but was stopped by two Afghan policemen. He appeared to be moving away, eyewitnesses said, but then the car blew up -- damaging a wall and destroying a watch tower and leaving a trail of death and destruction.

Jayant Prasad, India's ambassador in Kabul, said the blast caused "extensive damage to the chancery", blowing off some of its doors and windows. The explosion also damaged a line of shops between the embassy and the interior ministry, shattering glass and rattling buildings more than a mile away. A huge brown plume of smoke was visible as ambulances raced to the scene and carried away the wounded.

A 21-year-old Afghan man, who gave his name as Najibullah, said he had just opened his shop when the explosion took place, knocking him unconscious. When he awoke, he said, he couldn't see anything because of dust and debris. "Dust was everywhere. People were shouting," Najibullah said. "You couldn't see their faces because there was so much dust." Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao said in New Delhi the attack was directed against India. "The suicide bomber came up to the outside perimeter wall of the embassy in a car loaded with explosives, obviously with the aim of targeting the embassy," she said.

She said she had spoken to ambassador Prasad, who had assured her the embassy officers, staff and personnel were safe. "Three ITBP personnel who were guarding the perimeter wall of the embassy have been slightly injured because of shrapnel from the blast. But there has been no loss of life," she added. Two of the injured personnel were identified as hawaldar Ravinder Singh and constable Gunwant. Rao, who is expected to visit Kabul on Friday, did not say who she believed was responsible for the attack. But an Afghan foreign ministry statement said Thursday's attack "was planned and implemented from outside of Afghan borders" by the same groups responsible for the July 2008 bombing.

The ministry statement made no mention of Pakistan.However, the Afghan government had blamed the ISI for the 2008 embassy bombing as well as for involvement in a string of attacks in the country. US officials suspected the 2008 embassy bombing and other high profile attacks were carried out by followers of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a longtime Afghan militant leader whose forces are battling US forces in eastern Afghanistan from sanctuaries in the border area of Pakistan.

Source: Mail Today PAK STAMP ON KABUL STRIKE: 17 killed as Taliban target Indian embassy in Kabul

The explosion took place just after midday about 1.5 km from the US embassy on the busy airport road, destroying at least one vehicle of the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF).

" Six Italian soldiers were killed and another three wounded," the Italian defence ministry announced.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack -- one of the worst on the more than one lakh NATO and US- led troops serving in Afghanistan.

Armoured vehicles showing the Italian flag and marked with the ISAF logo were damaged, scattering twisted metal across the blood- stained road, where stunned civilians staggered through the wreckage hunting for relatives.

" I heard a huge blast and then saw thick black smoke," said shopkeeper Fawad. " I couldn't see anything. When the smoke lifted slightly, I saw a man on the tarmac without a head." Italian defence minister Ignazio La Russa said, 10 Italian paratroopers were travelling in two armoured vehicles when the suicide bomber struck, apparently in a white Toyota vehicle. " Sadly, I must confirm the loss of six lives from the parachute regiment," he said.

Source: Mail TodayTaliban suicide blast in Kabul leaves 16 dead

Here is a timeline of the deadliest bomb attacks since 2007:

Feb. 3, 2007 - A truck bomb kills 135 people and wounds 305 at a market in the Sadriya quarter of central Baghdad.

March 6 - Two suicide bombers strike in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 105 pilgrims. Insurgents launch a total of 12 attacks against Shi'ite pilgrims. In all, 137 pilgrims are killed and 310 are wounded.

March 27 - A truck bomb explodes in Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border and Mosul, killing 152 people.

April 18 - Multiple car bombings kill 191 people around Baghdad. One car bomb near a market in the central Sadriya neighbourhood kills 140 people and wounds 150.

April 28 - A suicide car bomber kills 60 people and wounds 170 at a checkpoint in Kerbala.

May 13 - A suicide truck bombing in northern town of Makhmour kills 50, with 70 people wounded.

June 19- A car bomb near the Khilani Shi'ite mosque in central Baghdad kills 87 people.

July 7 - A truck packed with explosives covered with hay blows up in a crowded market in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato, killing 150 people and wounding 250.

July 16 - Eighty-five people are killed by a suicide truck bomb in the city of Kirkuk. At least 180 are wounded.

Aug. 14 - At least three suicide bombers driving fuel tankers kill and wound at least 796 people in Yazidi residential compounds in the villages of Kahtaniya and al-Jazeera in northern Iraq near the Syrian border. Yazidis are members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect who live in northern Iraq and Syria.

Feb. 1, 2008 - Female bombers kill 99 people in attacks blamed on al Qaeda at two popular Baghdad pet markets, the city's worst attacks in six months.

Feb. 24 - A suicide bomber targeting pilgrims heading to one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest rites in southern Kerbala kills 63 people and wounds scores in Iskandariya.

March 6 - Two bombs explode in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite Karrada district, killing 68 people. Another 120 were wounded.

April 15 - A car bomb kills 40 people and wounds 80 outside a provincial government headquarters in Baquba, local capital of Diyala province. Another car bomb, believed to be driven by a suicide attacker, explodes outside a popular restaurant in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, killing 13.

June 17 - A truck bomb blasts the al-Hurriya neighbourhood of northwestern Baghdad, killing 63 people and wounding 75. The U.S. military said the attack was carried out by a "special groups cell".

Dec. 11 - A suicide bomber detonates explosives inside a Kurdish restaurant north of Kirkuk. At least 50 people are killed and 109 wounded in the blast.

June 20, 2009 - A suicide bomber detonates a truck filled with explosives as crowds of worshippers leave the Shi'ite al-Rasul mosque in Taza, near Kirkuk. At least 73 people were killed and more than 250 wounded.

June 24 - A bomb kills 72 people at a busy market in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City. At least 127 people are wounded.

Aug. 19 - At least six blasts strike near government ministries and other targets in Baghdad killing 95 people and wounding 536.