Iraqi bomb attacks kill at least 39
Car and roadside bombs exploded in cities and towns across Iraq today, killing at least 39 people and wounding 188, police and hospital sources said, the latest in a spate of violence ahead of next week's Arab League summit in Baghdad.
The summit is seen as the country's debut on the regional stage following the withdrawal of US troops in December and Iraq's government is anxious to show it can reinforce security to host its neighbours.
The deadliest attack occurred in the southern holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, where twin explosions killed at least 13 people and wounded 48, the sources said.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, a car bomb exploded near a police headquarters, killing seven and wounding 30.
In central Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed three people and wounded 21.
A car bomb targeting a police patrol in Mahmudiya in the south killed three people and wounded 12, while a car bomb blast near a convoy carrying the governor of Anbar province killed one of his security men and wounded eight other people.
Blasts also occurred in Baiji, Samarra, Tuz Khurmato, Daquq and Dhuluiya, all north of Baghdad, and Hilla and Latifiya in the south.
Although violence in Iraq has declined since the height of sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007, bombings and shootings still occur on a daily basis nine years after the 2003 US-led invasion.
Yesterday evening, bombers struck five times in the northern Diyala province, killing at least three people and wounding more than 30, police said.
The Arab League summit is due to be held in Baghdad from March 27th-29th.
Dozens killed as terror blasts hit Iraqi cities
Female Palestinian prisoner Hana Shalabi, who has been on a hunger strike since February 16, has been hospitalized.
“Hana Shalabi was transferred this evening to Israel's Meir hospital after her state of health deteriorated,” Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqaa said on Monday.
An independent doctor from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel who examined Shalabi said her life was at risk. The doctor described a weakening of her muscles, weight loss of 14 kilograms, and a very weak pulse.
She has been on a hunger strike since her arrest in the northern West Bank on February 16. She was originally ordered to be detained without trial for six months.
Although Shalabi was among more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in October 2011 in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, she was later re-arrested and sent back to prison.
At least 36 militants have been killed in two separate military operations carried out by government forces in tribal regions of northwestern Pakistan, Press TV reports.
Pakistani war planes bombarded militant hideouts in Orkazai Agency on Sunday, killing 16 militants and wounding many others.
Security forces also pounded militant positions in different areas of Kurram Agency, killing 20 militants and injuring 18 others.
The operation was carried out after the militants ambushed a security checkpoint in the tribal region.
Meanwhile, unknown militants blew up a primary school in Mardan district of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday as government troops were engaged in battles with militants in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
Suspected pro-Taliban attackers managed to escape the scene.
There were no reports of casualties since the school was empty at the time of the attack, local officials said.
Over the past several years, the militants have destroyed hundreds of schools, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, previously known as North-West Frontier Province
An Afghan parliamentary investigation team says the massacre of at least 16 civilians by American soldiers in Kandahar province was planned in retaliation for an earlier attack on US forces.
The head of the Afghan parliamentary investigation, Sayed Ishaq Gillani, said the locals suspect that the slaughter of the Afghan civilians was carried out in revenge for an attack which destroyed an American tank last week.
Earlier on Monday, the Afghan tribal leaders of Kandahar province also said that the carnage was in retaliation against the bomb attack on the US tank in the Zangabad region in Panjwaii district in the province of Kandahar.
Following the blast, the American forces summoned local Afghans and tribal leaders of the region and vowed a bloody revenge on their children and wives, the Kandahar tribal leaders added.
The new findings came in the wake of an earlier report by the team, which suggested that the American troopers also raped two female victims of the massacre before killing them.
The investigation mission also implicated up to 20 US soldiers in the carnage. “We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time, and the 16 civilians, most of them children and women, have been killed by the two groups,” investigator Hamizai Lali said.
Sergeant Robert Bales, one of the soldiers accused of involvement in the massacre of Afghan civilians, was flown from a temporary military prison in Kuwait to a maximum security cell in Fort Leavenworth in the US state of Kansas. The transfer of the US soldier outraged the Afghan people, who demanded the public trial of the perpetrators of the heinous act in their country.
Earlier on Friday, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai criticized the United States for not cooperating with the Afghan fact-finding team and said the killing of the civilians by foreign forces in Afghanistan “has been going on for too long.”
On March 11, a group of US soldiers went from house to house in Kandahar’s Panjwaii district and gunned down Afghan civilians inside their homes, killing at least 16 people, mostly women and children, and injuring several others.
Syria blames foreign-backed Takfiri terrorists for explosions
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/232541.html
Syria's Foreign Ministry has blamed foreign-backed “Takfiri terrorists” for the recent bombings in the country which killed and injured scores of people.
On Saturday, a bomb planted in a car went off outside the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Headquarters and another explosion hit a security police building in Damascus, killing 27 people and injuring 97.
On Sunday, two people were killed and 30 others were injured in a car bomb attack in the northwestern Syrian city of Aleppo.
"The falling of dozens of innocent Syrians is a result of the terrorism that is backed by external parties, which had overtly announced their financing and arming to the extremist groups,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Monday in a letter sent to the UN Security Council (UNSC), Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the UN human rights council.
The letter added that “the Takfiri terrorists and those who back them and overtly supply them with funds and weapons are continuing their terrorist acts in implementation of conspiratorial plan targeting Syria, its people and institutions.”
The Foreign Ministry described the attacks as the “violation of human rights principles and the international humanitarian law and are absolutely unjustified.”
The latest incidents occurred as the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, is set to send a team to Damascus to discuss a new international monitoring mission. The Syrian government said on Friday that it will cooperate with Annan to end the year-long unrest in the country.
Pakistan says drones must go for US ties to be renewed
A Pakistani parliamentary commission has demanded an end to American drone strikes on the country’s territory as a condition for renewing Pakistani relations with the US.
No comments:
Post a Comment