An explosion blew the door off a Muslim school in a southern Dutch town and shattered windows across the street yesterday, Dutch television reported. There were no reports of injuries.
Pictures showed the burnt-out entrance of the school which was empty at the time of the attack at around 3:30am. Police suspected it was related to the murder last week of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a suspected Islamic radical, the report said.
Van Gogh's killing sparked a series of attacks over the weekend, including two attempts to burn down mosques. Although mainstream Muslim groups condemned the killing, it has caused an outpouring of anger.
Vandals threw red paint on Saturday night on an Amsterdam center that aids immigrants, many of them Muslim. The Emcemo center is located several blocks from the spot where Van Gogh was killed, and its director, Abdou Menebhi, told local TV station AT5 that the vandals were racists.
In the town of Huizen, police arrested two men they say were caught preparing to ignite a fire at the An-Nasr mosque on Friday night, national news service NOS reported. A mosque in the city of Breda sustained minor fire damage in another reported arson attempt.
Earlier last week, a small fire was set at a mosque in Utrecht, police said, and a pig's head was left in a plastic bag outside a mosque in Amsterdam.
NOS reported on Sunday that pamphlets with the image of a pig and a slur against Muslims were circulating in Rotterdam.
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
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