Four children and their parents were killed in a hand-grenade blast in Pakistan’s restive northwest yesterday, a day after 12 children were killed by a bomb hidden in a soccer ball.
Violence has increased in the region as Taliban fighters have extended their reach. Western allies, needing Pakistan’s help to defeat al-Qaeda and stabilize neighboring Afghanistan, fear the country is in danger of sliding into chaos.
The grenade exploded in a car carrying a couple and their eight children near Datta Kheil, a district in the North Waziristan tribal region, near the Afghan border.
“The parents and four of their children died instantly and their bodies were brought to hospital,” Mirbad Khan, a hospital official in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, said. “Four other children were wounded.”
Authorities did not know if the parents were carrying the grenade or it was planted in the car.
North Waziristan is one of the major sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistani border areas with Afghanistan.
On Saturday, 12 children were killed in Lower Dir when they were playing with a soccer ball and it exploded.
The children, five of them girls, found the ball as they were returning from school. Seven victims belonged to the same family.
Dir is part of the Malakand division of Northwest Frontier Province, where Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari this month sanctioned the imposition of Islamic law under a controversial deal aimed at ending conflict with Taliban militants in Swat valley.
But just days after Zardari’s move, fighters in Swat intruded into neighboring parts of Malakand, closer to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
Western governments have criticized Pakistan for cutting deals, saying it would encourage militants.
Pakistani officials say they are trying to use political means to reduce the violence, but signs are emerging that the government is preparing to unleash the military.
Meanwhile Taliban militants in the Buner district shaved the heads and moustaches of four Pakistani men as punishment for listening to music, one of the men said yesterday.
Buner has been subject to US concern after hundreds of Taliban fighters advanced into the area from the Swat Valley.
Although Taliban and local officials said the fighters retreated from Buner by Saturday, local members of the movement remain. Residents said many fighters were still present in the hilly outskirts of the district.
In one incident late on Saturday, Taliban shaved the heads and moustaches of four men for listening to music, a young man from Buner said by telephone, requesting not to be identified.
“I was with three other friends in my car, listening to music when armed Taliban stopped us and, after smashing cassettes and the cassette player, they shaved half our heads and moustaches,” he said.
“The Taliban also beat us and asked us not to listen to music ever again,” the man said.
Local police said they had no information about the incident.
The victim said neither he nor his friends lodged a complaint with police, as this would have been “useless.”
“It might have annoyed the Taliban further and I fear for my life,” the man said.
Residents in Mingora, the main town in Swat, said Taliban posters had been put up in streets and markets ordering women not to go shopping. The posters appeared after the controversial agreement on Islamic law.
“We will take action against women who go out shopping in the markets and any shopkeeper seen dealing with women shoppers will be dealt with severely,” read the poster from the Swat branch of Tehreek-e-Taliban.
“The peace agreement does not mean that obscenity should be re-born,” it said.
The Taliban consider it “obscene” for women to leave home.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person