KABUL - Twin suicide attacks resulted in the deaths of two Indian road construction workers and their driver on Saturday, while Afghan and NATO forces killed 24 militants in an operation in southern Afghanistan, officials said. The attacks against the workers took place in Khasrod district Saturday morning, when two men with explosives strapped to their bodies jumped in front of a road construction convoy, provincial Governor Ghulom Dastagir Azaad said.
One Indian engineer and his Afghan driver were killed at the scene, Azaad said. A diplomat from the Indian embassy in Kabul confirmed that a second Indian worker succumbed to his injuries en route to hospital.
Five other Indian workers and a police escort were wounded in the attacks, the officials said, while Azaad said that a third attacker, who was also wounded in the blasts, was arrested by Afghan police.
Azaad said that police arrested three people in connection with the attack and that the wounded Indian nationals were transported to Iran for further treatment. The three arrested men told police interrogators that the two bombers were Punjabis (Pakistanis) and they were brought by one of the arrested men from the Pakistani border on Friday to the area.
The two bombers, who spoke neither Dari nor Pashtu (the Afghan national languages) except for Punjabi, stayed in the arrested mens house on Friday night, he said.
Five personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which provides security to India-assisted projects in Afghanistan, had been injured and arrangements were being made to airlift them to Kabul, Sharma added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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DHALAE, Yemen: Anti-riot police wounded three south Yemen demonstrators when they opened fire Saturday to disperse thousands of protesters in the latest incident in the restive south, a southern activist said. The shooting in the southern city of Dhalae comes amid almost daily violence across swathes of south Yemen, where southerners' have staged a fortnight of protests which often turned violent, to demand equal treatment by northern-dominated government.
The activist, Abdo al-Muatari, who heads a group of retired army officers, vowed the protests would continue and accused the government of embedding its agents among demonstrators to provoke and find justification to crack down on protesters.
More northern Yemeni troops were deployed to streets in Dhalae and other southern cities because of the "illegal" demonstrations, said a security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media. More than 283 demonstrators have been detained in the past two weeks. Of them, 122 have been charged with inciting riots and harming public property, the official said. During the same period, some 22 police officers and personnel have been injured, 75 shops demolished and looted, while several police vehicles were set ablaze by rioters. The number of Yemeni civilians injured in the clashes is estimated as 33, according to independent local press reports.
Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujur on Thursday accused rioters as conspiring against the Yemeni people and said they aim to break up the country. "Some envious elements inside and outside (Yemen) are rallying the people, inciting hatred and resentment," Mujur said. "They target Yemen unity and they work on forming illegal entities as a cover to carry out their plots."
Dhalae, 135 miles south of the capital of San'a, is a stronghold of southern Yemenis who complain of injustice at the hands of the government. They demand job opportunities, more powers to the local government, and that their men be allowed to re-enlist in the Yemen army. The violence underlines tensions between northern and southern Yemen, 14 years after a civil war. Northerners dominate the government and economy in this impoverished country, and many protesters are former members of the defeated southern army. After the civil war, many southern soldiers fled to the mountainous hinterlands and Saudi Arabia, returning only when Yemen's government issued an amnesty and promised to readmit them to the army — a promise southerners say has not been kept.
Political analyst Mansour Hayam believes that as long as the government fails to work on meeting the southerners' demands, voices calling for separation from the north will increase. "What is happening now is a ... regime shutting ears and eyes on persistent crisis in the south," Hayam said, predicting more violence in the coming days. "If the regime doesn't resolve the crisis politically and peacefully, the small groups will turn to bombs ready to explode," he said.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, is home to heavily armed tribes that barely acknowledge the central government's authority. There is also a persistent al-Qaida movement that has attacked and killed foreigners on several occasions.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under:
#1
At one time in the early 1970's, there were five different "governments" in what is today's Yemen. They were all battling each other to determine both the kind of government and who would govern. The Royalists were overwhelmed, and played little role in the government after about 1980. One other faction was also marginalized. The other three factions signed a peace treaty in the 1990's. The northern faction gained power and has pretty well ignored the treaty provisions that called for those in the south to have equal opportunity to be a part of the government, to hold such good jobs as part of the police or other government functions. Don't expect things to change very much, since politics in this area has been pretty much that way for longer than I can imagine.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2008 13:38 Comments ||
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#2
Mr. Wife turned down an opportunity to transfer to Yemen just after unification. I was even happier about that than the several times he'd turned down the opportunity to transfer to Saudi Arabia.
Three bodies of security personnel, who were reported lost during a military operation earlier this year in South Waziristan, were found on Saturday. We have recovered three bodies of jawans who were lost early this year, a military source in Wana told Daily Times on condition of anonymity. Two FC and one army soldiers bodies were recovered, he added. Security forces launched a massive operation in the Mehsud areas earlier this year, after the government blamed Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007. Ladah is the stronghold of the Mehsud tribe and local Taliban who have made several unsuccessful attempts to capture Ladah Fort. Frontier Corps and army jawans are stationed at the fort to protect the area from militants. The security forces recovered the body of a missing soldier from Ladah mountains last month.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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(IANS) A top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant was among two militants killed in two shootouts in Jammu and Kashmir Saturday. Police said troops of 55 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and the state police mounted a search operation in Chakura village of south Kashmirs Pulwama district, 40 km from here, in the afternoon on specific information about the presence of two guerrillas. As the security forces were busy searching the village, militants opened fire at them. A fierce encounter ensued in an open area in the village which ended late Saturday afternoon with the killing of a top militant of LeT identified as Shabir Ahmed Bhat. He was a category A militant, a police spokesman here said. Searches in the village are still continuing.
Troops of 47 RR and police gunned down a militant of Harkatul Mujaheedin (HuM) in Kandi village of north Kashmirs Kupwara district, 110 km from here in the afternoon. Firing exchanges are still continuing, the spokesman said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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Deja vu all over again.
BAGHDAD, Iraq Coalition forces detained an Iraqi citizen suspected of being an Iranian-trained intelligence operative, along with three other Iraqi criminals Sunday during operations near Balad.
The targeted individual allegedly collected intelligence on Coalition forces and airbases and delivered it to Iranian intelligence agents. Intelligence led ground forces to the target area where they captured the wanted individual and the other suspected criminals without incident.
Coalition forces will continue to seek out and bring to justice suspected criminals such as this individual who ignore the rule of law and threaten the security of Iraq, said Cmdr. Scott Rye, MNF-I spokesman.
#3
Intelligence led ground forces to the target area where they captured the wanted individual
Annoyed neighbors? Annoyed former comrades? Children wanting to protect their candy-laden American friends from bad guys? Laptops and cell phones? Iraqi Police or IA or some of our guys noticed something amiss as they wandered down the street? The details don't matter, because all are happening and together leading to wonderful result. Congratulations, y'all!
#4
Indeed, tw. More and more of these vermin are being ratted out by their neighbors who finally feel secure enough to do so. By some amazing coincidence, making citizens feel secure was part of Petraeus' plan. Go figure!
#5
See also TOPIX > US MILITARY IN IRAQ:SOMETHING HAS GOT TO GIVE. The strains on the US military.
IMO OSAMA BIN LADEN + ISLAMISTS are making their move already - to save their weakening Jihad, they need to both empower + expand NUCLEAR IRAN + acquire NUKE-WMDS TECH, etc. TRANSFERS ASAP AMAP NLT 2010 or 2012 [sooner the better for Jihad], vv BLACK MARKETS + espec Cold War caches from RUSSIA-CHINA + CENASIA. SCHEMAS TO DESTABILIZE RUSSIA-CHINA + CENASIA [Asia] ALSO SERVE TO INDUCE DUBYA-US TO ATTACK IRAN AND BRING ABOUT OSAMA'S PERSONAL IRAN-CENTRIC ISLAMIST APOCALYPSE, + gener GEOPOL CHAOS.
Osama is getting the USA to follow and attack him + Radical Islam in order to preclude the destabilization and splintering of Asia unto [NUCLEAR]Islamism = NUCLEAR MILITANT TERROR. OSAMA + MOUD ARE NOW ON STRATEGIC DEFENSIVE [active-defense] AGZ ISRAEL-WEST IN ONE, AND OFFENSE IN THE EAST.
HOW WILL THE USA RESPOND, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY HOW WILL THE US RESPOND TO A RUSSO-CHINESE, etc. MIL RESPONSE AGZ OSAMA=RADICAL ISLAMISM???
WILL LEFT-SACRED "MACKINDER'S WORLD ISLAND OF EURASIA" WEAR THE ISLAMIST BURQUA???
BAGHDAD: Confessions from Shiite militiamen led yesterday to the discovery of 15 more bodies dumped in mass graves south of Baghdad, officials said the second such find this week. Women shrouded in black and holding family photos rushed to the muddy field in Mahmoudiya in hopes of finding missing loved ones who have disappeared.
The grisly discovery came two days after the Iraqi troops found the remains of 30 people believed to have been killed more than a year ago buried in three abandoned houses elsewhere in the area. Mass graves have been turning up with increasing frequency as American and Iraqi military operations have cleared former militant strongholds, allowing troops to step up patrols in previous no-go zones. But the others have all been in mainly Sunni areas in Anbar province to the west and Diyala to the north of the capital. Those areas had been dominated by al-Qaida in Iraq until the group's brutal tactics helped turn Sunni tribal leaders against it. The US military said the mass graves unearthed in Mahmoudiya were the first found in the area south of Baghdad, long known as the triangle of death before a recent decline in violence.
The remains were found after recently detained militia leaders confessed to killing dozens of Sunnis as well as Shiite rivals and burying the bodies in the abandoned houses and adjacent fields, according to Iraqi army and city officials. The find offered new evidence of the atrocities carried out by Shiite death squads that were known for their trademark kidnappings and execution-style killings until they were reined in by an Aug. 29 cease-fire by anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the feared Mahdi Army militia. Bullet-riddled bodies continue to turn up on the streets of Baghdad and other cities, but the numbers are now in the single digits instead of the dozens. An ongoing violent standoff between al-Sadr's fighters and US-backed Iraqi troops has raised concerns the truce could be at risk.
Thirteen of the bodies found yesterday had been dumped in one grave about 500 yards away from the local office of al-Sadr's movement, while two others were buried together in a nearby area, city spokesman Ather Kamil said. But an Iraqi army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said Shiites also were caught up in the violence but most of the victims were believed to be Sunnis.
Neighbors said it was common knowledge that the Mahdi Army used the three abandoned houses as detention centers but nobody asked details about what was happening inside. "The Iraqi forces found many decomposed bodies in this house and I think that these dead bodies have been here for a long time and cannot be identified," said resident Shihab al-Azawi.
Authorities said they have so far been able to identify only two sets of remains that were found Thursday, a 22-year-old Sunni woman whose clothing was recognized by a nurse at the hospital and a 31-year-old Sunni municipality worker who still had his ID. Their families have fled the area. In the vast majority of missing person cases in Iraq, families are left guessing forever about what happened because Iraqi officials usually lack such forensics aids as DNA and dental records. The insurgents also typically removed the IDs after killing their victims.
But desperate women and children wailed and waved photos, hoping for any sign of their missing loved ones, as they surrounded the Iraqi troops who exhumed the bodies yesterday. US soldiers provided cover and helicopters buzzed overhead. Other Iraqi soldiers continued to comb the palm tree-lined desert area, apparently looking for more bodies. Laman Kamil, a 35-year-old Shiite homemaker, said her brother, Ali, disappeared about six months ago while he was on his way to the market.
After we heard the news about this mass grave we rushed to the site and I recognized my brother by his blue tracksuit and a broken finger on one of his hands," she said, weeping. It was unclear if other bodies had been identified by relatives yesterday.
Mahmoudiya, a predominantly Shiite city of some 600,000 people, sits in an area about 20 miles south of Baghdad that has a volatile mix of extremists from both sides of the sectarian divide. Sunnis comprise about 20 percent of its population, but many families have moved to escape the sectarian cleansing campaign, and their houses often were torched and belongings scattered.
The Shiite fighters were angry over fierce attacks by Sunni insurgents in an area long known as the triangle of death, leading to a fierce cycle of retaliatory sectarian violence. The attacks ebbed last year with al-Sadr's cease-fire, a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq and an influx of American troops.
The lull in violence and the clearing of former insurgent strongholds has led to the increasing discovery of mass graves. An Associated Press tally shows that at least 662 bodies have been unearthed in mass graves since May 29, 2007 ;about half of them this year. However, all but the 45 found this week were in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and al-Qaeda strongholds in Diyala and Anbar provinces. -- AP
Posted by: Steve ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
So are the hundreds found in mass graves included in the 60,000 killed according to the Lancet study? Or was it 600,000? Could be, since the survey probably counted "missing" as killed. But that would not be scientifically correct, would it?
Oh, and if Sadr stopped the killing, is he then not responsible for those deaths he permitted?
I find myself reading 'news' more critically, since coming to the 'Burg.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/13/2008 7:16 Comments ||
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#2
Confessions led to these discoveries. It doesn't say who was doing the interrogating but I don't think it was the US. I doubt if the confessions would meet US trial admissability tests for having been obtained without coersion and with advise of counsel, but the bodies are compelling proof that the confessions were true.
The U.S. military says coalition forces killed at least 13 militants early Saturday in fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City. The military says U.S. and Iraqi forces battled fighters who attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, rifles and roadside bombs. The joint forces say they used a missile from a drone aircraft and tank fire against the militants. Iraqi police say seven civilians were killed in the fighting. Military officials say there were no casualties among the U.S. or Iraqi soldiers.
Despite Saturday's battles, authorities eased a blockade on Sadr City, a stronghold of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, where coalition forces have been fighting militants for the last two weeks. Also, a curfew imposed in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf has been lifted one day after Riyadh al-Nouri, Sadr's senior aide, was gunned down near his home.
Tensions between Sadr's militia and U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces erupted into violence when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shi'ite militias in the southern city of Basra last month.
Elsewhere, Iraqi soldiers uncovered at least four more bodies buried in a field south of Baghdad. Authorities have so far uncovered about 40 bodies from a mass grave in the area. The bodies are believed to have been buried for more than a year.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military says an American soldier was killed Saturday in a roadside bombing near Baghdad, raising this week's U.S. death toll to at least 13.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Mahdi Army
#1
If the good guys only wacked 13 bad guyz, I find it difficult to believe 200 innocnets were killed and thousands injured per The Times article posted earlier. However, I find the Iraqi Police corpse count credible, although they might be family members of the criminal insurgents.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/13/2008 7:09 Comments ||
Top||
#2
have they ever thought that the US may not be the ones causing the civilian casualties since the militants seem too just fire wildly when they " fight"
THE toll from fierce fighting in Baghdads Sadr City has risen to at least 200 dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to doctors in the besieged suburb.
US and Iraqi troops killed at least 13 gunmen in heavy fighting there yesterday against the Mahdi Army loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The reports from Sadr City hospitals suggest far higher casualty figures than previously reported, although they cannot be independently verified. Dr Qassem Mudalal, the director of the Imam Ali hospital, said: There are 230 killed, I can confirm, in the hospitals of Sadr City. Ive been living in the hospital for two weeks. I cant leave because of the siege and its too dangerous to be on the streets because of snipers and bombs. He said most had died from shrapnel wounds. Other doctors claimed only a minority of the dead appeared to be militants.
The Iraqi government yesterday briefly lifted a blockade of the suburb, and allowed about 20 lorries loaded with food, blankets and medical supplies to enter the area. An American convoy was struck by at least 10 roadside bombs while moving in to support Iraqi soldiers setting up a checkpoint in the west of the city, the US military reported.
There was no sign of a cessation of hostilities between al-Sadr and Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister. Children, women and old men have been injured and killed and there are no ambulances, said Um Ali, a housewife, by telephone from her home in Sadr City. The hospitals have no first-aid supplies and there are so few doctors.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Mahdi Army
#1
So 13 bad guyz killed and at least 187 innocents, according to the unnamed sources. Since all the innocents are hiding in their houses, the US must be bombing random dwellings for sport? Is that what The Times is suggesting?
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/13/2008 6:53 Comments ||
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#2
Sounds like some investigation of Dr. Muldalal is in order, to see if his claim of 230 victimes, mostly of shrapnel wounds, is correct. If not, why is he saying it (propaganda, or just self-importance) If so, then somebody besides the US is using a lot of heavy weapons: Is the IA employing mortars and its T-72s in this campaign? They would certainly be less accurate than US fire, and substantial collateral damage would be expected. And "only a minority appeared to be militants" still leaves the collateral damage at an acceptable level ('minority' could be 110 of the 230 as militants, and 'appeared' could mean a number of the other 120 were just not obviously recognizable as militants.)
#3
We have seen far too many of those "muslim doctors" spreading propaganda. Remeber the Palestinian boys hit in the heart? (Ie by snipers and on purpose?). The tens of thousands civilans piling in the Iraki hospitals during OIF?
#4
I think it is because arab doctors know that an arab who tells the truth is at risk to die of spontaneous combustion...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/13/2008 13:53 Comments ||
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#5
It's possible. Reports I got last week say the IA was somewhat lax in its fire discipline.
Then again, considering it was their first solo effort, in an environment (congested slum, militia embedded among civilians, etc.) that makes it real easy to have these kind of casualties, it's understandable. Too bad The Times doesn't.
#7
from interviewing the officially-prepped/designated-"victims" denizens of Sadr City...
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/13/2008 21:26 Comments ||
Top||
#8
An American convoy was struck by at least 10 roadside bombs while moving in to support Iraqi soldiers setting up a checkpoint in the west of the city, the US military reported.
Am I reading that right? One convoy getting struck by at least 10 roadside bombs. Assuming this was NOT that big a convoy, this might be good news. The mighty-Mahdi is now down to burying Black Cats and M80s as roadside bombs, tee-hee!
Posted by: BA ||
04/13/2008 21:48 Comments ||
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Palestinian Authority terrorists launched a rocket attack on the western Negev city Sderot Saturday night after a rocket and mortar fire-filled Sabbath in southern Israel. One rocket slammed into the center of Sderot, sending a woman into emotional shock. The location of the second rocket was not immediately identified. No other injuries have been reported at this time.
Terrorists fired two rockets and seven mortar shells at Gaza Belt communities over the course of the Sabbath. Four of the mortar shells exploded in and around Kibbutz Nahal Oz, damaging a warehouse and several power lines. Three other shells and two Kassam rockets landed in open areas. No one was hurt in any of the attacks.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
Wonder if Carter will do a photo-op with a Kassam firing crew?
#3
This is the outcome of Olmert's liberal insane policies of appeasement and negotiations with people that are determined to destroy Israel. The rest of us, esp in the US need to take note. One of the basic responsibilities of government is to protect its citizens. Olmert and his government are not. Suicide on the installment plan. Every Kassam rocket allowed to fall on Sderot legitimizes the terrorists.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/13/2008 14:29 Comments ||
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#4
"to fling feces and other garbage back at the Gaza strip"
How would anybody notice, sinse?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/13/2008 14:47 Comments ||
Top||
#5
In ancient times, Invaders would use catapults to throw dead bodies at the defenders, animal or human, to cause disease and break morale.
Seems that israellis should make a modern version and throw dead Pigs, and pig guts into The Gaza and west bank for each Kassam incoming.
There's got to be at least one slaughterhouse in Israel to provide waste, it doesn't even have to be swine, just as long as it's widely advertised as swine, who's going to check rotten guts to find out.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/13/2008 15:31 Comments ||
Top||
#6
For some reason, the Israeli government doesn't seem too bothered by these rocket attacks. Not like the time our bottle rockets landed on the neighbor's cedar shingled garage!
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iranian officials on Sunday ruled out an attack as the cause of an explosion that killed 11 people in the southern city of Shiraz, saying it was an accident that was likely caused by leftover ammunition. Sounds resonable. After all, a mosque without a munitions storage area is un-islamic.
The explosion ripped through a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers late Saturday as a cleric delivered his weekly speech against extremist Wahabi beliefs and the outlawed Baha'i faith, the semiofficial Fars news agency said.
Authorities said besides the 11 killed, 191 people were wounded, some of them critically, the state IRNA news agency reported.
On Sunday, the deputy interior minister in charge of security, Abbas Mohtaj, said the "explosion was due to an accident which is under investigation." "It was not because of bombing," Mohtaj said, but did not elaborate.
The police chief of the southern Fars Province, Gen. Ali Moayyedi, said he "rejects" the possibility of an intentional bombing and "any sort of insurgency" in the blast. Moayyedi, in comments carried by state IRNA news agency, said the initial investigation found remnants of ammunition from a military exhibition that was held recently at the mosque.
Earlier, the Fars agency quoted a local police official as saying a homemade bomb had caused the explosion and indicated the attack could been religiously motivated. But the agency backed off those speculations on Sunday.
A witness to the blast, Mostafa Nazari, told The Associated Press that some 1,000 worshippers had gathered at the mosque grounds to hear a cleric speak. He said it was fortunate the blast happened at a part of the building far from the podium, around which most of the audience had crowded. Shiraz, some 440 miles south of Tehran and the capital of Fars province, is a major draw for foreign tourists who come to see the ruins of nearby Persepolis, the capital of ancient Persia.
#1
"Iranian officials on Sunday ruled out an attack as the cause of an explosion that killed 11 people in the southern city of Shiraz, saying it was an accident that was likely caused by leftover ammunition."
Did some most of us call it yesterday, or what?
Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're wrong.... ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/13/2008 14:39 Comments ||
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#4
Leftover ammunition
You couldn't make this up...
Wait...
Try to imagine yourself 20 years ago, and someone telling you a similar story. You'd think that the conveyor is either feverish, mad, or simply pulling your leg.
Something somewhere happened some time ago, a squished fucking butterfly or such, and we all were transported into an alternate universe.
A bomb exploded in a mosque in the southern Iranian city Shiraz on Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 100, Iranian media reported.
Ambulances rushed to the scene of the blast in a crowded district of the city, state television said. "At least nine people were killed and 105 injured in the blast," the semi-official Fars news agency quoting a local hospital official as saying. The death toll was expected to rise because some of the wounded were in critical condition, the official said. State television urged people in Shiraz to donate blood for the wounded and said that all nurses in the city had been called to report for work.
The official IRNA news agency said the bomb exploded during an address by a cleric in the Shohada mosque in Shiraz. Fars said that on Saturday nights the cleric usually gave speeches on the Baha'i faith, an offshoot of Islam considered heretical by the country's Shi'ite Muslim establishment. Its members claim they face discrimination and persecution in Iran. Iran says that all Iranians, regardless of creed, enjoy the same rights.
Additional: Saeedeh Ghorbani, 20, who was wounded in the blast, said around 800 people were in the mosque when the bomb, believed to have been a homemade device, went off. "After we heard an explosion, there was smoke everywhere," she said. The blast happened as a cleric was giving an address to children affiliated with the Rahpoyan-e Vesal Association, which "holds meetings every Saturday regarding misguided groups, including Wahabis and Bahais", Fars reported.
Wahabi is a fundamentalist strain of Sunni Islam, practiced mainly in Saudi Arabia, notably by the ruling Saudi royal family. It considers Shias who dominate Iran to be heretics. The Bahai faith, viewed as heretical by the Iranian religious authorities, has been banned since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Bombings have been rare in Iran in recent years, although a number of people have been killed in ethnic and religious insurgencies. Sunni militants claimed responsibility in February last year for a car bomb that exploded beside a bus carrying members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, killing 11 and wounding more than 30. Ethnic Arab Sunni militants were also blamed for a series of bombings in the south-western oil city of Ahvaz, near the border with Iraq, in 2005 and 2006. Nine people died in the 2006 attacks.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
KABUL - Twin suicide attacks resulted in the deaths of two Indian road construction workers and their driver on Saturday, while Afghan and NATO forces killed 24 militants in an operation in southern Afghanistan, officials said. The attacks against the workers took place in Khasrod district Saturday morning, when two men with explosives strapped to their bodies jumped in front of a road construction convoy, provincial Governor Ghulom Dastagir Azaad said.
(IANS) A top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant was among two militants killed in two shootouts in Jammu and Kashmir Saturday. Police said troops of 55 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and the state police mounted a search operation in Chakura village of south Kashmirs Pulwama district, 40 km from here, in the afternoon on specific information about the presence of two guerrillas. As the security forces were busy searching the village, militants opened fire at them. A fierce encounter ensued in an open area in the village which ended late Saturday afternoon with the killing of a top militant of LeT identified as Shabir Ahmed Bhat. He was a category A militant, a police spokesman here said. Searches in the village are still continuing.
The U.S. military says coalition forces killed at least 13 militants early Saturday in fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City. The military says U.S. and Iraqi forces battled fighters who attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, rifles and roadside bombs. The joint forces say they used a missile from a drone aircraft and tank fire against the militants. Iraqi police say seven civilians were killed in the fighting. Military officials say there were no casualties among the U.S. or Iraqi soldiers.
THE toll from fierce fighting in Baghdads Sadr City has risen to at least 200 dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to doctors in the besieged suburb. 
A bomb exploded in a mosque in the southern Iranian city Shiraz on Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding more than 100, Iranian media reported.
