Indian police have detained four men for questioning about bombings that killed 20 people at a temple and train station in Hinduism's holiest city, a top state official said yesterday.
Two of them resembled the sketches of two suspects issued earlier by police, said Alok Sinha, a top Home Ministry official in Uttar Pradesh state. The other two, also picked up in the state on Friday night, were their acquaintances, he said.
Local residents alerted police after spotting the men in Hardoi, a town in Uttar Pradesh state nearly 335km southeast of New Delhi, Sinha told reporters.
All the four are from neighboring Bihar state, Sinha said.
Meanwhile, about 150 Hindu and Muslim residents marched yesterday through the streets of Varanasi, a city famed for its shrines on the banks of the Ganges River, shouting slogans against terrorism and urging Pakistan to foster friendship with India.
"Pakistan, end terrorism from Kashmir to Kashi [Varanasi]," they chanted at the march organized by the Human Welfare Association, a non-governmental organization that is involved in educating 1,700 poor children in Varanasi.
"The purpose of the rally is to preserve amity between Hindus and Muslims," said Rajni Kant, director of the association.
Naushaba, a Muslim counselor who uses one name, said she participated in the march to promote peace in the city.
On Friday, a senior police official said a Kashmiri militant killed by officers in northern India hours after Tuesday's bombings was suspected of masterminding the attack on a temple and train station in Varanasi.
The dead man -- identified only as Salim -- ran the operations of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Kashmiri militant group, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Varanasi is located, said Yashpal Singh, the state's top officer.
A previously unknown Kashmiri group took credit for the bombings. But Singh said there were "strong indications" the attack was the work of Lashkar, the best-known militant group fighting to wrest predominantly Muslim Kashmir from largely Hindu India.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the