The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: suicide bomber
Suicide Bomber Kills At Least 70 At Pakistan Hospital

Suicide Bomber Kills At Least 70 At Pakistan Hospital

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber in Pakistan killed at least 70 people and wounded more than a hundred on Monday in an attack on mourners gathered at a hospital in Quetta, according to officials in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

The bomber struck as a crowd of mostly lawyers and journalists crammed into the emergency department to accompany the body of a prominent lawyer who had been shot and killed in the city earlier in the day, Faridullah, a reporter who was among the wounded, told Reuters.

Abdul Rehman Miankhel, a senior official at the government-run Civil Hospital, where the explosion occurred, told reporters that at least 70 people had been killed, with more than 112 wounded, as the casualty toll spiked from initial estimates.

“There are many wounded, so the death toll could rise,” said Rehmat Saleh Baloch, the provincial health minister.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a faction of the Islamist militant Pakistani Taliban group, claimed responsibility for the attack in an email.

It was not immediately clear if the group had carried out the bombing, as it is believed to have claimed responsibility for attacks in the past that it was not involved in.

“The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaat-ur-Ahrar (TTP-JA) takes responsibility for this attack, and pledges to continue carrying out such attacks,” said spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan in the statement.

Only last week, Jamaat was added to the United States’ list of global terrorists, triggering sanctions.

Television footage showed scenes of chaos at the hospital in Quetta, with panicked people fleeing through debris as smoke filled the hospital corridors.

Bodies lay strewn across a hospital courtyard shortly after the blast and pools of blood collected as emergency rescuers rushed to identify survivors.

PRIME MINISTER VISITS

The motive behind the attack was unclear, but several lawyers have been targeted during a recent spate of killings in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan which has a history of militant and separatist violence.

The latest victim, Bilal Anwar Kasi, was shot and killed while on his way to the city’s main court complex, senior police official Nadeem Shah told Reuters. He was the president of Baluchistan Bar Association.

The subsequent suicide attack appeared to target his mourners, Anwar ul Haq Kakar, a spokesman for the Baluchistan government, said.

“It seems it was a pre-planned attack,” he said.

Ali Zafar, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan, told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore:

“We (lawyers) have been targeted because we always raise our voice for people’s rights and for democracy…Lawyers will not just protest this attack but also prepare a long-term plan of action.”

Police cordoned off the hospital following the blast, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army Chief General Raheel Sharif paying visits to the wounded on Monday evening.

In January, a suicide bomber killed 15 people outside a polio eradication centre in an attack claimed by both the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, another Islamist militant group that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State in the Middle East.

Monday’s attack was the worst in Pakistan since an Easter Day bombing ripped through a Lahore park, killing at least 72 people. Jamaat-ur-Ahrar also claimed responsibility for that atrocity.

Quetta has long been regarded as a base for the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership has regularly held meetings there in the past.

In May, Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed by a U.S. drone strike while traveling to Quetta from the Pakistan-Iran border.

 

Additional reporting by Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Islamabad; Writing by Asad Hashim; Editing by Paul Tait, Simon Cameron-Moore and Mike Collett-White

Photo: First responders and volunteers transport an injured man away from the scene of a bomb blast outside a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan August 8, 2016. REUTERS/Naseer Ahmed

Boko Haram Blamed As 13 Die In Nigeria College Shooting, Blast

Boko Haram Blamed As 13 Die In Nigeria College Shooting, Blast

Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) — At least 13 people were killed and 34 injured on Wednesday as a gun battle broke out between police and suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers in Nigeria’s second city of Kano, police said.

Kano State police commissioner Adelere Shinaba said the gunmen, whom he described as “insurgents”, ran into the Federal College of Education after exchanging fire with police outside the grounds.

“They were obviously suicide bombers. One of our officers shot at one of the gunmen and the explosives on him went off, killing him on the spot,” he told AFP.

“Another gunman was also killed. Thirteen people were killed by the gunmen and 34 others have been taken to hospital with injuries.”

Most of the victims at the northern teacher training college were in a lecture hall, where the two gunmen ran and opened fire on students.

One student who was having lunch nearby and asked not to be identified, said he saw the gunmen, who were dressed in black, and heard them shouting for all female students to lie face down.

“They were saying (in pidgin English), ‘No be you say Boko Haram no they exist’ (Is it not you who say Boko Haram doesn’t exist?),” he added.

As shooting started, police opened fire and one of the gunman’s explosives detonated. The other was shot dead.

The blast shattered glass and brought down the ceiling in the room, while pools of blood and the remains of the bomber could be seen, an AFP reporter at the scene said.

Police recovered explosives and two Kalashnikov assault weapons, Shinaba said.

Educational establishments in Kano — the commercial capital of the north and a center of Islamic scholarship dating back centuries — have been hit several times in recent months.

On July 30, a female suicide bomber killed six people after detonating her explosives at a noticeboard on the campus of the Kano Polytechnic College while students were crowded around it.

The attack was the fourth by a female bomber in the city in a week and prompted the authorities to cancel celebrations marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

On July 27, another female bomber blew herself up outside a university in Kano after police prevented her from getting inside the campus.

A previous bombing on June 23 killed at least eight when it went off in the grounds of the city’s School of Hygiene.

The bombings were linked to Boko Haram, the Islamist insurgent group opposed to so-called “Western education” that has been waging a deadly five-year insurgency in Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north.

The latest incident came a day after the Emir of Kano, Nigeria’s second-highest Muslim leader, gave his first interview since his appointment in June and called for action against militancy.

Muhammad Sanusi II, who as Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said more investment was needed in the conflict-ridden north to prevent radicalization.

“As long as people are gainfully employed, they’re not likely to jump onto the bandwagon of insurgency,” he told BBC television.

Nigeria’s military are under pressure to crush the insurgency after Boko Haram seized territory in the far northeast in recent weeks, declaring one captured town part of an Islamic caliphate.

AFP Photo

Interested in more world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter.

Two Americans Killed In Kabul Suicide Bombing

Two Americans Killed In Kabul Suicide Bombing

Washington (AFP) — Two Americans were among those killed in a Taliban suicide bombing Tuesday that targeted a NATO convoy in Kabul near the U.S. embassy, a defense official told AFP.

The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not specify if the American victims were soldiers or civilians.

The NATO-led coalition had earlier issued a statement saying three personnel died in the attack, and the Polish army said one of its soldiers was killed.

The attack came during morning rush-hour traffic near the heavily-guarded U.S. embassy on a road used by NATO convoys every day.

The bombing also wounded at least 13 civilians.

In the United States and in other NATO states, the war in Afghanistan has become overshadowed by events in the Middle East, where Washington is now carrying out air attacks on Islamic State jihadists in Iraq.

The NATO-led force now has 41,000 troops in Afghanistan, with about 29,000 Americans and 300 soldiers from Poland.

All NATO combat forces will withdraw by December after 13 years of fighting the Taliban, with a follow-on mission of about 12,000 troops likely to stay on into 2015 on training and support duties.

AFP Photo/Wakil Kobsar

Interested in more world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter.

Suicide Bomber Strikes Nigeria World Cup Screening, Killing 14

Suicide Bomber Strikes Nigeria World Cup Screening, Killing 14

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG — A suicide bomber driving a three-wheeler taxi detonated a blast at an open-air World Cup viewing venue in northern Nigeria on Tuesday night, killing 14 people, according to police.

Police Assistant Superintendent Nathan Cheghan told the Associated Presst that 26 others were wounded in the attack in the town of Damaturu. There were fears the number of dead could rise, with many seriously injured victims reported.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in the Yobe state capital as people watched Brazil play Mexico, but suspicions fell on the Islamist militia Boko Haram or a similar Islamist splinter group.

The police commissioner for Yobe state, Sanusi Ruf’ai, said the attack happened at about 8:15 p.m. local time, shortly after the soccer match began.

The bomb blast follows several similar attacks in northern Nigeria in recent months. Just over two weeks ago, 14 people were killed in a bomb attack on a bar in the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, where people were watching soccer. In May, three people were killed at a soccer viewing venue in Jos, the capital of Plateau state. In April, two people died when gunmen opened fire on a soccer-viewing venue in Yobe state.

In soccer-mad Nigeria, young men often crowd into bars, video halls and mass open-air soccer-screening venues to watch games live on large screens. For many who lack cable TV at home, it is the only way to see World Cup games and other major soccer matches live.

But Nigerian authorities have warned that venues screening soccer matches could be targeted by extremists who see the game as un-Islamic.

Authorities in Adamawa and Plateau states and the Federal Capital Territory recently banned screenings of World Cup matches in public venues because of the risk of attacks. Police in other areas have warned owners of such venues to take extra security precautions.

Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states have been under a state of emergency for more than a year as the Nigerian government grapples with an insurgency that has killed thousands of people in recent years, shut down schools and caused thousands of farmers to desert their land and villagers to evacuate their homes.

Boko Haram kidnapped more than 300 girls from Chibok village in April, and the ensuing campaign for their release, under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, focused global attention on the militant group.

Boko Haram’s attacks have increasingly targeted civilians. In an attack on a boarding school in Yobe state in February, dozens of school boys were shot in their beds, burned alive or had their throats cut. Hundreds of schoolteachers have been killed in northern Nigeria since last year. Markets and bus stations have been hit as well.

The group, fighting for an Islamic state across Nigeria, opposes Western education and culture, which it sees as the products of corrupt infidels. The insurgency has deepened divisions between the mainly Muslim north and mainly Christian south in Africa’s most populous nation, which has about 170 million people.

Soccer-viewing venues make easy targets for terror groups in Africa. During the World Cup in 2010, more than 70 people died in an attack by the Somali terror group al-Shabab in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. The U.S. Embassy in Kampala recently issued a warning to avoid crowded soccer-viewing venues in Uganda because of the risk of attack.

In an attack by gunmen Sunday in the Kenyan town of Mpeketoni, people watching a World Cup match at a local venue were among the victims. About 60 people died in attacks Sunday and Monday on Mpeketoni and nearby villages, not far from the tourist area of Lamu on the northeastern Kenyan coast.

Both Kenya and Somalia have faced attacks by Al Shabab because of their military presence in Somalia, although Kenyan authorities blamed local political networks for the attacks earlier this week.

AFP Photo/Samir Bol