13 terrorists killed in NWA bombing 12 surrender

MIRANSHAH: The fighter aircraft of PAF continued pounding suspected positions of militants in the Mir Ali subdivision of North Waziristan on Wednesday, killing 13 terrorists.

Military authorities said the aircraft had struck five sanctuaries of militants in Mir Ali, where the militants were still hiding, despite the fact that local residents had already vacated their houses and villages.

Also, the Inter-Services (ISPR) said in a statement that 12 terrorists surrendered to the security forces in North Waziristan Agency on Wednesday.It didn’t disclose identity of the militants surrendered to the security forces. Also, it was not clear whether those surrendered belonged to the North Waziristan Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadur group or the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Meanwhile, North Waziristan remained under curfew for the second consecutive day on Wednesday. Though majority of the residents had fled the tribal region, there was no traffic on roads and all shops and markets remained closed due to curfew in North Waziristan.Official sources said security had been tightened on checkpoints and observation posts set up on hilltops in the tribal region.

Eight Bangladesh Islamists to hang for 2001 bombing

DHAKA: A Bangladeshi court sentenced eight Islamists to death on Monday for a 2001 bomb attack that killed 10 people during new year celebrations in the capital Dhaka.

"The attack was carried out to destabilise the country and create panic," Judge Ruhul Amin said as he delivered the verdict in a crowded court in Dhaka´s old city. The head of the outlawed Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami (HuJI) outfit, Mufti Abdul Hannan, was among the eight who were ordered hanged for targeting the celebrations in Dhaka´s main park which they deemed unIslamic.

The judge also sentenced six others to life in prison for setting off two bombs as thousands of revellers were celebrating the first day of Bengali New Year on April 14, 2001."It´s a heinous attack and unprecedented in our history," prosecutor Abdullah Abu told reporters after the verdicts were announced.

"We´re happy with the eight death sentenced, but not satisfied with the sentencing of six people who were given life terms. We´ll appeal against the life sentences."

The HuJI chief, better known as Mufti Hannan, is already on death row having been convicted in 2008 for trying to assassinate the British high commissioner four years earlier in a grenade attack.

A lawyer for the defendants, Faruque Ahmed, told AFP that he planned to appeal the verdicts which he said were politically motivated and designed to "make people happy in certain quarters". Mufti Hannan, who fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan´s civil war, is also accused of having been behind a plot to assassinate the current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina when she was leader of the opposition in 2004.

Bombing at northeast Nigeria football pitch kills at least 40: police

KANO: A bombing at a football pitch in Nigeria's restive northeast killed at least 40 people on Sunday in an area previously attacked by Boko Haram, a police officer and a nurse said.

The blast hit the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, one of three in the northeast which has been under a state of emergency for more than a year as Nigeria's military has tried to crush Boko Haram's five-year extremist uprising.

"There has been a bomb explosion at a football field this evening and so far more than 40 people have been killed," said the officer in Mubi who requested anonymity.

The policeman's account was confirmed by a nurse at the Mubi General Hospital, who also requested anonymity, as the health worker was not authorised to discuss the attack with the media.

Adamawa has been hit by far fewer Boko Haram attacks than other parts of the northeast, but the town was the site of a gruesome October 2012 massacre at a post-secondary technical college.

Scores of students were killed in their dorms, including many whose throats were slit.

Mubi is just a few kilometres from Nigeria's border with Cameroon and near the area where two Italian priests and a Canadian nun were seized by suspected Boko Haram gunmen in April.

The three were released earlier on Sunday and flown out on board a military aircraft from the town of Maroua, heading for the Cameroon's capital.

The policeman in Mubi said the bomb exploded at roughly 6:30 pm (1730 GMT) at the pitch in Mubi's Kabang area and targeted fans who were trying to leave the field after watching a local club match.

It was not immediately clear if players were among the casualties, but the officer and the nurse said it appeared most of the victims were fans.

Muhammad Hassan, a Mubi resident who was at the match, said the blast appeared to come from within the crowd of people who were walking across the pitch and heading home after the final whistle.

"Women and children were caught up in the blast," he said. Boko Haram has carried out scores of attacks on targets it says are a product of Western influence, including sports venues and schools teaching a secular curriculum.

The group has killed thousands during its battle against the government since 2009, but the conflict has received unprecedented global attention over the last six weeks following the group’s mass kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls.

The girls were seized on April 14 from Chibok in Borno state, which shares a border with Adamawa.

Nigeria's response to the kidnapping has been fiercely criticised as inept and the crisis has piled intense pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan's government to do more to end the uprising.

10 killed in northeast of Baghdad twin bombing; officials

BAQUBA: Twin bombings at a market in a town northeast of Baghdad killed at least 10 people and wounded 20 others on Tuesday, security and medical officials said.

The 10:00 am (0700 GMT) blasts in Saadiyah came a day after a suicide bomb in the nearby town of Khanaqin killed 30 people, with Iraq due to hold its first parliamentary elections since 2010 on Wednesday.

Saadiyah lies in eastern Iraq, along a tract of disputed territory that the country´s autonomous Kurdish region wants to incorporate despite Baghdad´s objections. Militants frequently capitalise on poor communication between Kurdish and Arab security forces in the disputed areas to launch attacks.

Iraq is embroiled in its worst protracted period of bloodshed in years, with nearly 3,000 people killed already this year.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who hails from Iraq´s Shiite Arab majority and is accused by critics of monopolising power and targeting minority groups, is seeking a third term in Wednesday´s election.

Shiite rally bombing sparks reprisals in Iraq

AP Smoke rises above campaign posters after a series of bombs that exploded on April 25, 2014 at a campaign rally for a Shiite group in Baghdad.

A multiple bomb attack that killed at least 33 people at a campaign rally for a militant Shiite group likely unleashed a series of apparent sectarian attacks in Iraq, signalling the start of a new wave of Sunni-Shiite bloodletting ahead of elections next week, security officials said on Saturday.

An al-Qaeda breakaway group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack on the Baghdad rally, which drew about 10,000 backers of Asaib Ahl al-Haq.

It said on a militant website that the bombings were to avenge what it called the killing of Sunnis and their forced removal from their homes by Shiite militias. The authenticity of the claim could not be independently verified.

A senior Asaib Ahl al-Haq official said the 33 dead included 10 group members who had fought in the Syrian civil war. Its members fight with forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, a member of a Shiite sect. The Islamic State fights with Sunni rebels trying to oust Assad.

Such bomb attacks are not uncommon in Iraq, but targeting a gathering by a militant Shiite group had been expected to spark retaliation.

Several hours after the Baghdad bombing on Friday, a senior Sunni politician in the mostly Shiite southern city of Basra was shot dead in what appeared to be a revenge attack. On Saturday, police found nine bodies, some bullet-riddled, in several Sunni and Shiite districts of the Iraqi capital, security officials said. The bodies could not be immediately identified.

Other bodies have been found in similar attacks reminiscent of the worst days of Iraq’s sectarian violence between 2006 and 2008. Then, Baghdad woke up almost daily to news of bodies found shot, decapitated or drilled.

Also on Saturday, gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on a group of civilians in the mixed al-Amil neighbourhood of western Baghdad, killing two people and wounding three. The security officials said the shooting took place in one of al-Amil’s Sunni sections.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures from the attacks.

Last year, the death toll in Iraq climbed to its highest levels since the violence between 2006 and 2008. The United Nations says 8,868 people were killed in 2013, and more than 1,400 people were killed in the first two months of this year alone.

Friday’s rally was held under heavy security, with hundreds of the group’s militiamen and veterans of the Syria war in charge. The 10 Syria war veterans killed were among scores of militiamen in green military fatigues patrolling the rally, said the Asaib Ahl al-Haq official. He and officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to speak to journalists

The rally was held to introduce Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s candidates in Wednesday’s election, but a speech given by the group’s leader, Sheik Qais al-Khazali, carried heavy sectarian undertones with ominous threats. It included several references to the civil war in Syria and the conflict in the mainly Sunni province of Anbar west of Baghdad, where government forces are fighting Sunni militants in control of parts of two cities there, including the provincial capital, Ramadi.

“They fight Iraq’s enemies there on the land of Syria,” al-Khazali said, alluding to his fighters in Syria.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq started off as a Shiite militia nearly a decade ago. It was blamed for several attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, including a spectacular kidnapping of U.S. soldiers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala in 2007. More recently, it has assumed a growing political role just as the country was experiencing the resurgence of Sunni-Shiite violence.

13 killed in Miranshah bombing, rocket attacks

MIRANSHAH: At least 13 persons were killed in remote control bomb and rocket attacks on two vehicles on Friday morning, Geo news reported.

Sources said that the first incident occurred in Tehsil Dattakhel of Miranshah, when a remote control bomb planted by the roadside targeted a vehicle that killed three persons and two sustained injuries.

Meanwhile in another incident, a rocket fired on a vehicle at Shawal killed 10 persons. Those killed could not be identified yet.

Iraq suicide bombing death toll rises to 50

HILLA: A suicide bombing at a crowded checkpoint south of the Iraqi capital killed 50 people and wounded more than 150, police and a doctor said Monday, raising the toll from the day before.
The bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle during rush hour on Sunday, the first day of the working week in Iraq, at a checkpoint at the northern entrance to the city of Hilla.
Among the dead were five policemen and two state television employees. The blast also left 153 others wounded, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
An interior ministry statement said the bomber had used an explosives-rigged tanker truck in the attack.
Provincial police chief Major General Abbas Abouzaid was moved to police headquarters in Baghdad in the aftermath of the bombing, and was replaced by Major General Riyadh al-Khaikani, a police spokesman said.