A bomb ripped through a crowded karaoke cafe in central Indonesia, killing four people and injuring three others, police said yesterday.
The blast -- the latest in a series to hit the world's most populous Muslim nation -- occurred Saturday night in the town of Palopo in South Sulawesi province, Major Wisnu Wirdata said.
Sulawesi island was wracked by violence between its Muslim and Christian populations between 1999 and 2000, but police declined to speculate on whether the blast was linked to religious militants.
Four people -- including a waitress in the cafe -- were killed instantly, said Lieutenant Aziz, who uses a single name. Three others were being treated in a hospital. One was in a critical condition, but was expected to survive, hospital workers said.
The blast was caused by a low-explosive bomb planted on the second floor of the cafe, about 1,800km northeast of Jakarta, officers said.
All the dead and injured were Muslims, Aziz said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Fighting between Muslims and Christians in 1999 and 2000 left more than 1,000 dead in Central Sulawesi province. The violence did not spread to South Sulawesi, however.
On Oct. 12, 2002, suspected militants belonging to the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah militant group blew up two nightclubs on Bali island, killing 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.
Several of the 29 people so far convicted in the Bali blasts cited revenge for the deaths of Muslims on Sulawesi, and the nearby Maluku islands, as a motive for the attacks.
Jemaah Islamiyah has also been linked to a December 2002 blast at a McDonald's restaurant in Makassar, also on Sulawesi island, that killed three.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
‘NO WORKABLE SOLUTION’: An official said Pakistan engaged in the spirit of peace, but Kabul continued its ‘unabated support to terrorists opposed to Pakistan’ Pakistan yesterday said that negotiations for a lasting truce with Afghanistan had “failed to bring about a workable solution,” warning that it would take steps to protect its people. Pakistan and Afghanistan have been holding negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey, aimed at securing peace after the South Asian neighbors’ deadliest border clashes in years. The violence, which killed more than 70 people and wounded hundreds, erupted following explosions in Kabul on Oct. 9 that the Taliban authorities blamed on Pakistan. “Regrettably, the Afghan side gave no assurances, kept deviating from the core issue and resorted to blame game, deflection and ruses,” Pakistani Minister of
UNCERTAIN TOLLS: Images on social media showed small protests that escalated, with reports of police shooting live rounds as polling stations were targeted Tanzania yesterday was on lockdown with a communications blackout, a day after elections turned into violent chaos with unconfirmed reports of many dead. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan had sought to solidify her position and silence criticism within her party in the virtually uncontested polls, with the main challengers either jailed or disqualified. In the run-up, rights groups condemned a “wave of terror” in the east African nation, which has seen a string of high-profile abductions that ramped up in the final days. A heavy security presence on Wednesday failed to deter hundreds protesting in economic hub Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, some
RSS