Five killed in Pakistan market bombing.

Five killed in Pakistan market bombing.

QUETTA |Pakistan | 10 Oct 2013 ::  A bomb exploded outside a police station in a crowded market in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least six people, police said. 

The blast in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, also wounded at least 30, said police official Mohammed Mohsin.In a telephone call to an Associated Press reporter, a spokesman for a small separatist group called the United Baluch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the bombing. Mureed Baluch said the attack targeted the police station in retaliation for what he said was authorities’ restricting aid to areas of Baluchistan hit on Sept. 24 by a massive, 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

The earthquake killed at least 376 people. Aid efforts have been hampered by repeated attacks by militants against the Pakistan military as it carries out relief operations.

Baluchistan is home to separatists who have waged a decades-long insurgency against the government.

Also Thursday, a bomb exploded in a busy market in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, killing one person, said police official Raj Tahir. The bomb, which was planted in a restaurant in the market, also wounded 11 people, he said.

No one claimed responsibility for that attack, but suspicion will likely fall on the Pakistani Taliban and their allies.

Islamic militants have carried out scores of attacks throughout Pakistan, but Lahore has been relatively peaceful in recent years.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, five members of a tribal police force were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded next to their vehicle on the outskirts of the city, said a police official, Mir Hassan Khan.

The officers were returning from protecting workers who were administering polio vaccinations, and Khan said he suspected they were attacked in retaliation for their anti-polio efforts.

Pakistan is one of three countries where polio is still endemic, and the government has carried out an intensive effort to eradicate the disease. But the vaccinators and those who are supposed to protect them have repeatedly come under attack.

Many militants have accused the polio campaign of being a cover for intelligence gathering efforts and say the vaccines are actually a western plot to sterilize Muslims.(Courtesy:The Washington Post)

Iraq bombing kills eight: officials.

Iraq bombing kills eight: officials.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008,
 when the country was just emerging from a brutal
sectarian conflict. (Reuters)

09 Oct 2013 :: A roadside bomb exploded near a truck carrying workers in Iraq on Wednesday, killing eight people, a police officer and a hospital employee said.

The blast south of Baghdad also wounded seven, they said.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal sectarian conflict.

This year's surge in violence has raised fears of a relapse into the kind of intense Sunni-Shiite bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people.

Diplomats and analysts say the Shiite-led government's failure to address the grievances of the Sunni Arab minority - which complains of political exclusion and abuses by security forces - has driven the rise in unrest.

With the latest violence, more than 200 people have been killed so far this month, and over 4,900 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.(Courtesy:The Indian Express)

Violence claims 33 lives in Iraq.

Violence claims 33 lives in Iraq.

KIRKUK | Iraq |26 Sept 2013 :: Militants attacked local government and police buildings in northern Iraq with suicide bombings and mortar fire on Wednesday, sparking clashes that killed 14 people, among 33 deaths nationwide, officials said.

The assault came in Hawijah, a town in ethnically mixed Kirkuk province near which security forces stormed an anti-government protest camp in April, triggering Iraq's deadliest day this year.

One suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near a police station, while a second blew up another near a local administrative building.

Militants then hit both buildings and a local council office with mortar fire, and gunmen clashed with the army.

Seven civilians, three soldiers and four militants were killed and 22 people wounded, army Staff Major General Mohammed Khalaf al-Dulaimi said.

Troops were combing the area for another nine assailants who were believed to have escaped, Dulaimi added.

The Hawijah assault came a day after militants attacked two police stations and a local official's house in two towns northwest of Baghdad, killing seven police and the official's brother.

In the capital, six members of a single family were shot dead on Wednesday, officials said.

A man, his wife, their three children aged between three and six, and another woman were killed in the Shaab area of east Baghdad, officials said, while at least one person was killed and nine wounded by a bomb near a cafe in the capital.

North of Baghdad, a bomb exploded near Balad, killing five people and wounding three, while gunmen killed two farmers in the Muqdadiyah area and a soldier in Taji.

And a bomb killed three people and wounded 25 in Mosul, while one person was also shot dead in the northern city.(Courtesy:Dawn)

Iraqi mosque bombing during prayers kills 30.

Iraqi mosque bombing during prayers kills 30.

A boy inspects the site of a double bomb attack on a Shia mosque
 in Kasra neighbourhood in northern Baghdad on Thursday. A day
 later, an attack on another mosque during prayers killed at least
28 people, in Iraq's deadliest bout of violence in half a decade.
(Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press)

CBC News | 14 Sep 2013 :: A bomb hidden inside an air conditioner exploded Friday at a Sunni mosque north of Baghdad, the deadliest in a series of attacks in Iraq that killed 33 people, officials said.

The deadliest of Friday's attacks took place when a bomb exploded inside a Sunni mosque that was full of worshippers in the village of Umm al-Adham on the outskirts of Baqouba, a former militant stronghold 60 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, police officials said.

Police said the blast killed 30 people and wounded at least 45. Two security officials said the bomb was hidden inside a window air conditioner.

Iraq is weathering its deadliest bout of violence in half a decade, raising fears the country is returning to the widespread killing that pushed it to the brink of civil war following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

In the northern city of Mosul, police said a roadside bomb killed two soldiers and wounded two others. Also, authorities said gunmen shot and killed Khalaf Hameed, a local municipal official in Shora district, just south of Mosul.

Officials in nearby hospitals confirmed the casualty figures for all the attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The months-long surge of bloodshed is taking place against the backdrop of rising tensions between Iraq's Sunni and Shia Muslims. The tensions are being inflamed in part by the sectarian divisions reflected in the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Members of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority have been protesting against the Shia-led government since December, angered over what they see as second-class treatment of their sect and what they see as unfair application of tough anti-terrorism measures. Attacks surged after a deadly crackdown on a Sunni protest camp by security forces in April.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attacks.(Courtesy:CBC News)

6 killed as bombs hit Egyptian security HQ in Rafah.

6 killed as bombs hit Egyptian security HQ in Rafah.e

17 wounded when suicide attacks destroy two-story military building near Gaza border

Egyptian army soldiers stand guard on the border with
 Egypt in Rafah. (photo credit: Hatem Moussa/APFile)

EL-ARISH | Egypt | AP | 11 Sep 2013 ::  A pair of suicide bombers rammed their explosives-laden cars into military targets in Egypt’s volatile Sinai on Wednesday, killing at least six soldiers and wounding 17 people, security officials and a military spokesman said.

One of the two bombings in the town of Rafah brought down a two-story building housing the local branch of military intelligence, while the other struck an army checkpoint.The near-simultaneous attacks nudged the violence in the strategic Sinai Peninsula closer to a full-blown insurgency, compounding Egypt’s woes at a time when the country is struggling to regain political stability and economic viability more than two years since longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak was toppled in a popular uprising.

The attacks also came less than a week after a suicide car bombing targeted the convoy of Egypt’s interior minister, who is in charge of the police, shortly after he left his home in an eastern Cairo district. Mohammed Ibrahim, the minister, escaped unharmed, but the blast caused extensive damage in the area. An al-Qaida-inspired group based in Sinai claimed responsibility for that bombing.

Wednesday’s attack on the intelligence building in Rafah collapsed the entire structure and buried an unspecified number of troops under the rubble, two security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The second attack targeted an armored personnel carrier deployed as part of an army checkpoint not far from the intelligence headquarters, the officials added. The officials said the remains of the two suicide bombers have been recovered.(Courtesy:Times of Israel)

Bomb wounds 11 at Pakistan girls school.

Bomb wounds 11 at Pakistan girls school.

School attack: A bomb wounded 11 people,
mostly children, when it exploded outside a
 Pakistani girls' school, a doctor said. Photo:
AFP

AFP | 06 Sep 2013 :: A bomb has gone off outside a Pakistani girls' school, wounding 11 people, mostly children, a doctor says.

The bomb exploded at the end of the school day on Thursday as pupils walked into a street lined with fabric shops in the north-western town of Bannu, which has been a flashpoint for Islamist militancy.

Doctor Omar Zeb said that 11 people had been brought to the local hospital – seven primary schoolgirls and four other people who had been in the street.

Police official Azad Khan said at least four girls, two boys and a man had been wounded. Three of them are seriously hurt.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Islamist militants often attack girls' schools, usually when the buildings are empty in the evening or during the holidays.

Last October the Taliban shot schoolgirl activist Malala Yousafzai in the head in the

north-western Swat valley.

She has largely recovered and now lives in England, where she is enrolled at a private school and has become a global icon for children campaigning for the right to an education.

In a separate incident, unidentified gunmen on a motorbike fired at a NATO supply truck on Thursday in the north-western city of Peshawar and wounded two people, police said.

The attack took place near Karkhano market on the edge of Peshawar and close to the Khyber tribal district where Islamist militants are active.

"Two people were wounded in firing on a NATO truck which was carrying military vehicles from Afghanistan to the Pakistani port city of Karachi," local police official Daud Khan said.

The Khyber district straddles the NATO supply line used by US-led troops to evacuate military equipment ahead of their 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Pakistani troops have been fighting for years against homegrown insurgents in the tribal belt, which Washington considers the main hub of Taliban and al-Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.(Courtesy:The Age)

Two bombs explode near IDF patrol on Gaza border.

Two bombs explode near IDF patrol on Gaza border.

No injuries or damage reported in blast near Nahal Oz; incident second of its kind in the past week

An IDF armored vehicle watches over the Karni border
crossing with Gaza (photo credit: Kobi Gideon/Flash90)

Times of Israel | 02 Sep 2013 :: Two explosive charges detonated near an IDF patrol operating adjacent to the Gaza border Monday morning, causing no injuries or damage.

During routine activity along the border, the IDF squad encountered the two roadside bombs near Kibbutz Nahal Oz and the nearby now-defunct Karni Crossing, outside the northern Gaza Strip, according to Israeli media reports. The IDF would not confirm the exact location of the explosions.

According to Israel Radio, IDF troops scanned the areas near the blast for additional explosives and cleared the area to prevent future ambushes.

A similar incident took place Friday, when an IED exploded near an IDFpatrol traveling along the Gaza border fence. No soldiers were injured in Friday’s incident.

Aside from isolated rocket fire attributed to rogue Islamist groups, the border between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has largely been calm since the ceasefire that ended last November’s Operation Pillar of Defense.

Earlier in August the IDF launched an airstrike on Gaza in response to rockets fired into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. The air force targeted concealed rocket launchers in the strike and direct hits were confirmed, according to the IDF Spokesperson.(Courtesy: The Times of Israel)

Car bomb kills 10, wounds 62 in Syrian capital.

Car bomb kills 10, wounds 62 in Syrian capital.

Syria situation: In this image taken on July 22, 2013
 from video obtained from the Shaam News Network, which
 has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP
 reporting, columns of smoke billowing as a result of
 heavy bombing, in the countryside outside of Aleppo.

Syria | AP |26 Jul 2013 :: A powerful car bomb exploded in a suburb of the Syrian capital Thursday, killing 10 people and wounding dozens of others, Syria’s state-run news agency said.

The explosion in Jaramana, just few kilometers southeast of Damascus, came as the United Nations’ top official said more than 100,000 people have been killed in the ongoing civil war gripping Syria.

The state news agency SANA reported that the explosion caused heavy damage to nearby buildings and destroyed many cars. It said 62 people were wounded.

Jaramana, a neighbourhood that overwhelmingly supports the government of President Bashar Assad, has been targeted by a series of explosions before. The Britain—based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-government activist organization, said the blast killed seven and wounded more than 30. It said the blast caused heavy material damage and started a fire.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.

More than 100,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict started in March 2011, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday, calling for a political solution to end the conflict. So far, however, the violence in Syria has defied all international attempts for a political solution.(Courtesy:The Hindu)