A suicide car-bomber killed at least 25 people in northwest Pakistan yesterday in an explosion on a road that brought down nearby shops, police and witnesses said.
Militants have struck with bombs numerous times since intensifying their war against the government in 2007 but the Islamists have suffered setbacks this year raising government hope that the security forces might be getting the upper hand.
The bomb went off on a main road near the city of Kohat, 150km southwest of Islamabad, and brought down some shops beside the road, police and witnesses said.
“A restaurant and many shops have collapsed. It’s chaos here. There’s huge devastation,” said Ibn-e-Ali, a former judge and resident of the area.
“My house is 1km away, but the blast was so huge it felt as if it was next door,” he said.
Mehtab-ul-Hasan, top administrator of the region where the blast took place, said 25 to 30 people had been killed.
“Twenty bodies are lying beside me,” Hasan said by telephone.
Kohat is a garrison town, close to the lawless ethnic Pashtun tribal belt on the Afghan border.
The area where the attack took place is mostly inhabited by minority Shiite Muslims and there has been sectarian violence in the region in the past.
The Taliban militants are from the majority Sunni community and attacks on Shiites are part of their strategy to fight the government.
Pakistani forces have made gains against the militants in an offensive in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad.
Militant attacks have tapered off in recent weeks after the death of the Pakistani Taliban chief in a missile fired by a US drone aircraft on Aug. 5, but security officials say fighters loyal to al-Qaeda and the Taliban are still a serious threat.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RSS