Seven killed in Assam bomb blast By Subir Bhaumik BBC News, Calcutta

Seven people have been killed in a bomb explosion in India’s north-eastern state

The blast comes as India prepares for its general election

of Assam.

The bomb, concealed in a car, exploded outside a busy restaurant close to the local headquarters of Indian railways in Guwahati.

Two other attacks in Assam – in the towns of Dhekiajuli and Mankachar – have left 10 people hurt.

Police told the BBC the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa) was responsible for the explosions.

‘Raising Day’

Assam police chief GM Srivastava told the BBC two people were killed at the scene in Guwahati’s Maligaon district and five more died of their wounds in hospital.

Many vehicles were destroyed by the explosion.

Many bystanders helped the injured although angry mobs also pelted police and public transport with stones after the explosion.

Correspondents said blood and body parts were strewn over the entrance to the restaurant.

In a second attack, a bomb exploded in a market in the town of Dhekiajuli. Eight people were hurt, two seriously.

In the third, two people were wounded by a grenade in Mankachar in the western district of Dhubri.

Last week more than 10 people were injured when a bomb exploded not far from where India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was to address a rally.

Mr Srivastava said: “[The Ulfa] set off bombs before their “Raising Day” every year and this year is no different. We have information of some Ulfa strike squads entering Assam in the past 15 days and we are trying to pin them down.”

The Ulfa was raised, or founded, on 7 April 1979 to fight for Assam’s independence.

Intelligence officials say Ulfa is also flexing its muscles before the forthcoming Indian parliamentary elections.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to visit Assam on Tuesday to campaign for his Congress party.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said: “The Ulfa is killing the innocent people of Assam. They will be punished by our people.”

He said Ulfa was trying to disrupt the elections.

The organisation has been relatively quiet in recent months after being suspected of carrying out massive serial explosions in October last year, in which 87 people died.

Pakistan bomber targets Islamabad protectors

Karachi News.Net
Saturday 4th April, 2009

A lone suicide bomber in Pakistan has targeted the residential camp of a group of paramilitary forces.

The forces, which were put in place to guard the capital, Islamabad, were attacked in an area of the city which houses foreign missions and the homes of Pakistani officials.

The suicide bomber attacked after dark, when the soldiers were preparing to eat.

He entered one of the canvas tents that serve as soldiers barracks and detonated his explosives.

Officials had earlier received intelligence about a general threat against the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, but were unable to pinpoint the potential incident.

The bombing is latest in a series of attacks against security forces in recent weeks.

More than 20 people, including nine paramilitary troopers, were killed in two sucide bombings in Pakistan Saturday, officials said.

At least six members of Pakistan’s paramilitary, the Frontier Corps (FC), were killed and four others injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a check post in Islamabad when the soldiers were having dinner, Senior Superintendent of Police Tahir Alam said.

The blast occurred in the upmarket residential area of F-7/3 near the Jinnah Supermarket, nearly four kilometres from President Asif Zardari’s office.

Deputy Inspector General Bin Yamin told reporters at the blast site that at least six security personnel were killed and 11 were injured.

TV channels said the blast was followed by loud gun shots and there was an exchange of fire between security forces and militants. One report said some attackers had taken shelter in one of the houses of the F7 neighbourhood, one of Islamabad’s upscale areas.

A TV report said at least eight attackers were holed up in the area.

However, Alam denied any exchange of fire, saying the security men fired in the air to scare away any other attackers. He said no militant was holed up.

Alam told a TV channel that body parts of the suicide bomber were found at the site.

Alam said one attacker was arrested. ‘We have one suspect in our custody. His interrogation is on,’ he said.

Separately, another suicide bombing Saturday on the outskirts of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan tribal district bordering Afghanistan, killed at least 17 people, including five children.

Over 40 people, including six Frontier Corps paramilitary soldiers, were also injured in the attack which targeted security officials at a check post in the town, the Online news agency repoted. One soldier died later in the hospital.

Security forces took retaliatory measures and have cordoned off the entire area. The Miranshah Bazaar was also closed, the report said.

President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the terrorist attacks and vowed that his government would root out terrorism.

‘Such acts cannot deter the government’s determination to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,’ he said.

Violence in Pakistan has surged in recent months with a wave of attacks blamed on Islamist militants.

The latest attacks come five days after the March 30 terror assault on the Manawan police academy on Lahore’s outskirts when heavily armed militants held over 400 trainees hostage for over eight hours before Pakistani security forces recaptured the complex.

At least 18 people, including two civilians, eight policemen and eight militants, were killed and 95 injured in the terror attack owned up by Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Mehsud vowed in a telephone interview with reporters early this week to carry out an attack in Islamabad, as well as in the US, in retaliation for American missile strikes by Predator drone aircraft in the Pashtun ethnic belt of western Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

Last month, eight people, including policemen, were killed and several were injured when terrorists ambushed Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore.

Suicide blast kills 50 at mosque in Khyber

Friday, 27 Mar, 2009 | 05:28 PM PST |

Source: DAWN

Tribesmen gather as they take part in rescue work at the site of a suicide blast near Jamrud in the Khyber agency tribal region, about 30 km from the Afghan border, March 27, 2009. — Reuters

Media Gallery:

Tragedy in Jamrud as suicide bomber strikes

LANDI KOTAL: A suicide bomber killed at least 50 people when he blew himself up in a crowded mosque near Pakistan’s Jamrud town, about 30 km from the Afghan border, on Friday, government officials said.

The bomber set off his explosives as an imam, or prayer leader, began the service.

Eyewitnesses believe the casualty figures are being under-reported and that at least 70 people have been killed, first by the explosion, and secondly by the collapsing of the mosque’s ceiling.

‘The moment the imam said Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest), the blast went off,’ said Tauseer Khan, 70, from a hospital bed in nearby Peshawar.

‘It was huge. I still can’t hear properly,’ said Khan, who had wounds to his hands and face. His son and grandson were also wounded.

Rahat Gul, a spokesman for the Khyber administration, said 50 people were killed and 75 wounded.

Between 250 and 300 people were in the mosque, said Tariq Hayat Khan, the region’s top administrator.

‘It was a suicide attack. The bomber was standing in the mosque. It’s a two-storey building and it has collapsed,’ Khan said.

Worshippers searched through piles of bricks, pulling out bodies and carrying them to ambulances in sheets and on rope beds, television pictures showed.

Police caps, prayer caps, prayer beads and mobiles telephones were later lined up on a wall outside the mosque.

Dawn’s Khyber Agency correspondent Ibrahim Shinwari explained that the Friday prayer congregation at this mosque is quite large as it is frequented by Frontier Corps personnel and members of the Khasadar force who are stationed at the adjacent check post. Moreover, those who travel to and from Torkham for work stop at this mosque to offer prayers. There are also many tribal households within a two-kilometre area from where people come to offer prayers.

TTP militants had warned of a blast of this nature, Shinwari said, adding that a shoot-out between militants and security forces at the nearby checkpost one month ago left one militant dead and two injured, and they were thus seeking revenge. Following that encounter, a TTP spokesman in Khyber Agency had said that there would be consequences if Nato supplies are not suspended and if FC personnel are not disbanded.

‘ENEMIES OF ISLAM’

Police initially said a bomb blew up at a police post next to the mosque, which is by the main road leading to the Khyber Pass and the Afghan border beyond.

‘It’s surprising, those who claim that they are doing jihad (holy war) and then carry out suicide attacks inside mosques during Friday prayers,’ Khan told a private television channel.

‘They are infidels. They are enemies of Pakistan. They are enemies of Islam,’ he said.

Chronology of blasts in Pakistan

Pak police officers carry an injured person after a bomb explosion at an hotel in Islamabad. Photo Courtesy: AP.

Chronology of blasts in Pakistan in 2008

Sat-Sep 20, 2008

Islamabad / Press Trust of India

Major attacks that rocked Pakistan since January 2008:

January 10: Twenty people killed in suicide bomb attack outside Lahore High Court.

January 14: Bomb kills 10 people at a market in Karachi.

February 9: Suicide bomber kills 25 people at an opposition election rally in the northwestern town of Charsadda.

February 11: Nine killed in suicide bombing at an election meeting of an independent candidate in North Waziristan.

February 16: Suicide car bomber strikes a rally of Pakistan People’s Party in the northwestern town of Parachinar, killing 37.

February 22: Roadside bomb hits wedding party in Swat, killing at least 14.

February 25: Suicide bomber kills army surgeon Lieutenant General Mushtaq Baig and seven others in Rawalpindi.

February 29: Forty-four killed in a suicide blast in Mingora in northwest Swat valley during the funeral of three policemen killed by a roadside bomb earlier in the day.

March 2: Suicide bomber kills 43 at tribal elders convention in the northwestern district of Darra Adam Khel.

March 4: Two suicide bombers attack Pakistan Naval War College in Lahore, killing five people.

March 10: Suicide truck bombings target Federal Investigation Agency building in Lahore; 26 killed.

March 15: Bomb blast at a restaurant in Islamabad kills a woman and wounds 10 others, including four FBI men.

July 2: Suicide car bomb outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad kills eight.

July 6: Fifteen killed in suicide attack on policemen during a rally to mark the anniversary of Lal Masjid raid.

August 12: Roadside bomb attack targets Pakistan Air Force bus in Peshawar, killing 13.

August 19: Twenty-three killed in suicide attack on a hospital in northwestern Dera Ismail Khan town.

August 21: At least 78 killed in twin suicide attacks outside Pakistan’s main ordnance factory in Wah.

August 28: Nine persons, mostly policemen, killed in roadside bombing in North West Frontier Province.

September 6: Thirty people were killed and 70 injured in suicide bombing near a police check post in Peshawar.

CHRONOLOGY-At least 350 dead in three months of Pakistan blasts

Thu Oct 18, 2007
Oct 19 – A suspected suicide bomber killed at least 123 people on Friday in an attack on former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto as she was driven through Karachi to greet supporters on her return from eight years in exile.

Here is a chronology showing the worst suicide bombings and attacks in recent months:

— JULY: More than 140 people are killed in about 13 suicide attacks after the siege and storming by security forces of Islamabad’s of Red Mosque. The worse attacks include:

* July 14: Suicide car-bomber kills 24 paramilitary soldiers and wounds 29 in North Waziristan; two security officials are wounded in another blast in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

* July 15: Sixteen people, most of them paramilitary soldiers, are killed in suicide-bomb ambush on patrol in Swat valley in NWFP. Separately, suicide bomber targets police recruiting centre in Dera Ismail Khan in NWFP, killing 29.

* July 17: Suicide bomber kills 16 people outside court in Islamabad where country’s suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, was due to speak. Separately, suicide bomber kills four, including three soldiers, in North Waziristan.

* July 19: Three suicide attacks kill at least 52 people. At least 30 are killed in southern town of Hub. In northwest city of Hangu a car bomber kills seven people. And at least 15 worshippers are killed at a mosque at army training centre in northwest Kohat.

* July 27: Suicide bomb attack in restaurant near Islamabad’s Red Mosque kills 13 people, most of them policemen.

— AUGUST: At least 13 killed in three suicide attacks:

* Aug. 20: Three paramilitary soldiers are killed and eight wounded when bomber rams checkpost in northwestern town of Thal.

* Aug. 24: Suicide bomber kills five soldiers and wounds 30 in attack on convoy in Waziristan. Hours later another suicide bomber kills another soldier in region.

* Aug. 26: Four policemen are killed and two wounded in suicide bomb attack in Swat valley.

— SEPTEMBER: At least 61 people killed in four suicide attacks.

* Sept. 1: Suicide bomber kills three paramilitary soldiers and two civilians in northwest Bajaur.

* Sept 4: Two suicide bombers kill 25 and wound 70 in Rawalpindi.

* Sept. 11: Suicide bomber kills 16 people in northwest Dera Ismail Khan.

* Sept 13: At least 15 soldiers killed in suicide bombing in an army canteen near Islamabad.

— OCTOBER:

* Oct 3: Landmine blast kills 14 bus passengers in North Waziristan.

* 19: At least 123 people killed by a suspected suicide bomb attack on former Benazir Bhutto as she is driven through Karachi after eight years in exile. The attack is one of the deadliest in Pakistan’s history.

Source: Reuters

Bomb blast in Tibetan area of China

China has stepped up security in Tibetan areas during the unrest anniversaries [GALLO/GETTY] A bomb has exploded inside a police station in a mainly Tibetan area of China’s Sichuan province, China’s state media has reported. A group of assailants reportedly threw the bomb at the unoccupied building shortly before midnight on Monday night. The incident came amid politically-sensitive anniversaries with Tibetans marking 50 years since a failed uprising against Chinese rule over Tibet and the first anniversary of last year’s violence in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas. The blast in Sichuan’s Batang county shattered windows in the building but no injuries were reported. Police have said they are investigating the incident. Bantang county is just a short distance from the border with Tibet. The county is part of Ganzi prefecture, an area known for its strong Tibetan identity which has been at the centre of dissent against Chinese rule for years. The region saw some of the most violent protests during last year’s unrest.

Bomb Blast Kills Afghan Lawmaker

By VOA News 19 March 2009

Wrapped body parts of lawmaker Dad Mohammad Khan and others killed in Helmand province on 19 Mar 2009

A roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan has killed a prominent lawmaker who was openly critical of the Taliban.

The attack Thursday killed Dad Mohammad Khan and four other men in southern Helmand province, the heart of the Taliban’s growing insurgency.

Khan was a member of parliament, former intelligence chief and a longtime critic of the Taliban.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing and praised Khan as a leader who worked to bring peace to the region.

Khan fled Afghanistan during the Taliban rule and returned after the extremist government was ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001.

He is the 10th member of parliament to be killed since democratic elections in 2005.

Elsewhere, international and Afghan forces say they killed two suspected insurgents and captured four others in a raid on an al-Qaida cell in the country’s eastern Nangarhar province. But the district’s chief is condemning the raid.

Bati Kot district chief Khaibar Momand said those targeted were actually civilians. He told the Associated Press that three of those detained are the district’s development director and his sons.

Separately, NATO led forces said they captured 18 suspected insurgents in eastern Logar province, including a suspected insurgent leader.

Alipurduar bomb blast kills one, injures 12

Alipurduar bomb blast kills one, injures 12

Press Trust of India / Jalpaiguri (wb) March 18, 2009, 13:32 IST

At least one person was killed and 12 others injured when a bomb rigged to a cycle exploded at Alipurduar town in north Bengal today.

The cycle-bomb exploded at a super market complex at Chowpathy in a busy area of the town, IG, north Bengal, K L Tamta told PTI.

He said the bomb was a very powerful one. However, its exact nature was being ascertained.

Asked if it could be the handiwork of the ULFA, he said, “Why should ULFA insurgents come here?”

He said two years ago there was a similar cycle-bomb explosion at Barobisa in the Alipurduar sub-division.

Ananth Kumar, Superintendent of Police, Jalpaiguri, said some people escaped with minor injuries. The injured have been admitted to a Alipurduar sub-divisional hospital.

Tamta said the area had been cordoned off and a bomb squad has been sent to the area.

The deceased has been identified as Sujit Das, 27.

Extremists of the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation and ULFA are active in the area.

Pakistan: Deadly suicide bomb strikes northeastern garrison town

Source: AKI / DAWN

Rawalpindi, 17 March (AKI/DAWN) – A suicide bomber hit a crowded bus-stop in the northeastern Pakistani city of Rawalpindi late on Monday, killing at least 11 people and injuring more than 25 others. No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
A woman and a child were among those killed and political workers, pedestrians and passengers were injured. Three of the injured were in critical condition. Body parts were reportedly strewn across the scene, making identification of the victims difficult.
According to witnesses, a man exploded himself after getting out of a vehicle parked near a crowed wagon and several other vehicles at around 9:15 pm local time.
The blast damaged at least eight vehicles, several shops, a restaurant and nearby buildings.
Malik Iftikhar, who was injured in the blast, told Pakistani daily Dawn that he was sitting in a restaurant when the explosion took place. Chaos and panic ensued, he said. He fell on the ground and the restaurant was filled with smoke. The area was littered with human flesh and glass shards.
Rawalpindi regional police officer Nasir Khan Durrani said the blast had not left any crater. “It was an act of terrorism, apparently a suicide attack. The motive was to spread panic,” he said.
Durrani said the entire country faced a terrorist threat. According to bomb disposal experts, seven to 10 kilogrammes of explosives had been used in the attack.
The bombing was the first terrorist attack targeting the general public in Rawalpindi since 2002.
The attack came after a day of high political drama, in which Pakistan, in which, under alleged pressure from the United States, president Asif Ali Zardari reinstated sacked former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and promised to allow Pakistan’s opposition leader Nawaz Sharif to return to elected office.
Security sources said the bomber might have originally planned to sabotage protests by lawyers aimed at restoring Chaudhry and other top judges sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf. After failing to do so, the bomber may have decided to target a crowded area instead, the sources said.

Suicide blast kills 30 at Pakistan Shiite funeral

Source: AFP
54 minutes ago
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — A suicide bomber attacked a funeral procession for an assassinated local Shiite Muslim leader in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing 30 people and putting furious mobs on the rampage.
The explosion took place near a Shiite mosque in Dera Ismail Khan, a town on the edge of Pakistan’s restive tribal areas with a history of sectarian violence, which has been on the rise in the Sunni-majority country.
“Thirty people have died and 65 are injured,” Saadullah Khan, a police official in the town, told AFP by telephone.
Hospital and police officials earlier put the death toll at 20, with dozens of others wounded. Police said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.
Soldiers were ordered to deploy and a curfew enforced after intense volleys of gunfire from panicked mourners at the funeral for the late Sher Zaman degenerated into angry riots.
The attack came two weeks after 35 people died in a suspected suicide bombing against Shiite worshippers in the Punjab town of Dera Ghazi Khan on February 5 in one of the country’s deadliest sectarian attacks.
Around 90 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan so far this year and more than 1,600 since government forces besieged militants holed up in a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.
Much of the violence has been concentrated in northwest Pakistan, where the army has been bogged down fighting Taliban hardliners and Al-Qaeda extremists, who fled there after the 2001 US-led invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan.
In Dera Ismail Khan, mobs pumped bullets into the air, pelted stones at cars, ransacked shops, torched buses and set up road blocks with burning tyres in the dusty, low-rise town, residents told AFP by telephone from the town.
“A curfew has been imposed in the city,” district administration chief Syed Mohsin Shah told AFP.
“The military has been called in to support police for restoration of law and order,” he said.
Zaman, the local Shiite activist who was being buried on Friday, was shot dead by unknown gunmen riding on the back of a motorbike in a busy Dera Ismail Khan market on Thursday, a local police official said.
He had been a prominent member of the town’s Shiite community and organised community gatherings, police said.
Previously, an explosion ripped through a Sunni Muslim mosque on February 3, killing one person and wounding 18 others in Dera Ismail KHan.
Shiites account for about 20 percent of Pakistan’s 160-million-strong population.
The fellow Muslims usually coexist peacefully but sectarian violence has killed more than 4,000 people across Pakistan since the late 1980s.

Blast in Meerut, at least 4 killed; several injured

Source: IBNLIVE

BLAST IN MEERUT: The nature of the blast in not known yet.

Details are awaited.

New Delhi: At least five people (3 women and 2 children) are reported to have been killed in a blast in Uttar Pradesh town of Meerut, 72 km from Delhi.

Sources say the blast took place in a scrap-dealer’s shop in Meerut’s crowded Fatehpur locality. At least 10 people are reported to have been injured.

However, news agency Press Trust of India reports the blast took place in in army waste materials dump. There has been no confirmation of that report.

The blast is reported to have occured at around 1600 hrs IST and its nature is not known yet.

Police have been rushed to the spot and there’s heavy deployment in the city.

According to sources, dynamite sticks triggered the blast, when a ragpicker tried to remove the metal of the bomb found in garbage. Some ragpickers reportedly brought the garbage from Meerut Cantt. area.

The blast could be accidental and not the handiwork of any terror organization. It could be a grenade or bomb left by the Army in their garbage, which was picked up by the ragpickers. The security personnel including bomb squad and forensic experts have rushed to the spot. The injured have been admitted to the hospitals. Casualties may go up, as some of the injured are in a critical condition. Further details are awaited.