More chaos as Kashmiris boycott India polls.

More chaos as Kashmiris boycott India polls.

SRINAGAR | The Nation | 07 May 2014 : :  A bomb blast near a polling booth in Kashmir injured a policeman today, amid further stone-throwing protests and a widespread boycott of India's general election in the mainly Muslim region.

Separatists have called on voters to shun the election in India's northernmost state of Jammu and Kashmir, holding staggered voting in its six parliamentary seats to allow 700,000 army troops and police to mount a mobile security operation.

That has failed to prevent a string of killings of village elders, blamed by police on militants seeking to intimidate voters. In the most serious incident, three insurgents and one army officer were killed in a clash on April 27.

The bomb exploded outside a polling station at a village in the Baramulla constituency, one of two voting today in northern Kashmir, injuring a police reservist, police said.

There were numerous reports of protesters throwing stones at police and election officials in the valley. A bomb was also thrown at a police station the Baramulla district, but no one was injured.

Only a quarter of voters have turned out in Jammu and Kashmir so far in the five-week election, in a show of passive resistance to rule from New Delhi and concern over a likely victory by Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Kashmir has been a source of strife since British India was divided into independent India and Pakistan in 1947, with many Kashmiris, and Pakistan, saying the region should have been part of Muslim Pakistan, not Hindu-majority India.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947, two of them over Kashmir. India says Pakistan supports the separatist militants. Pakistan denies this, saying it only offers moral support to the Kashmiri people.( Courtesy : The Nation )

Graveyard bomb kills 14 women and children in Afghan east.

Graveyard bomb kills 14 women and children in Afghan east.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrives for Eid al-Fitr
 prayer that marks the end of the Muslim holy month
of Ramadan in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, August
, 8, 2013. — Photo by AP

KABUL | 09 Aug 2013 ::  A bomb planted in an Afghan graveyard killed 14 women and children on Thursday, many of them present at the graveside of a family member during the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, officials said.

The bomb exploded in a rural district of eastern Nangarhar province, said the provincial governor's spokesman, Ahmad Zia Abdulzai.

Nangarhar and its capital, Jalalabad, have been racked by a series of bombings and suicide attacks over the last week.

It is common in Afghanistan on the first day of Eid for people to pay their respects at the graves of loved ones. The victims were mainly from one family, Abdulzai said.

Three women and one child were wounded, he added.

Three Afghan bodyguards for the Helmand province police chief, Mohammad Hakim Angaar, were killed on Wednesday in a suicide bombing, the provincial governor's spokesman, Omar Zwak, said.

In June, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the former Helmand police chief's convoy, wounding three.

President Karzai calls on Taliban to stop war

In a speech for the start of a Muslim holiday, the Afghan president has urged the Taliban to lay down their arms, join the political process and stop killing innocent civilians.

Hamid Karzai spoke Thursday after prayers for the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He thanked the Afghan security forces for their sacrifices in the war against the insurgency.

He says too many Afghans have lost their lives to roadside bombs during this year's Ramadan and that the violence should end.(Courtesy:Dawn)Read More>>>