A suicide bomber ran into a crowd of mourners at the funeral yesterday of a slain Shiite Muslim leader in northwest Pakistan, killing 30 people and triggering a rampage by enraged mobs.
Witnesses told of horrifying scenes after the explosion rocked Dera Ismail Khan, which has a history of sectarian violence in the Sunni-majority nation.
Gulzar Hussain, 26, said he had been walking in the funeral procession for the late Sher Zaman, a local cleric shot dead a day earlier, when a man rushed into the center of the crowd.
Suddenly there was a deafening explosion.
“All I could see after the blast were body parts lying in a pool of blood,” he said by telephone from his hospital bed.
Saadullah Khan, a local police official, said that 30 people had died and 65 were injured.
Pakistan has suffered a series of attacks by Islamist militants which have fanned international fears for the stability of this nuclear-armed nation.
However, although there was no immediate claim for the blast, witnesses were swift to blame sectarian extremists this time.
It came two weeks after 35 people died in a suspected suicide bomb attack against Shiite worshippers in the Punjab town of Dera Ghazi Khan, in what was one of Pakistan's deadliest sectarian attacks.
“The government must stop the genocide of Shiites in Dera Ismail Khan. They are killing us, attacking our houses and do not spare even our funerals,” Hussain said from hospital.
Authorities ordered troops into Dera Ismail Khan and imposed a curfew after volleys of gunfire from panicked mourners degenerated into angry riots.
Mobs pumped bullets into the air, pelted stones at cars, ransacked shops, torched buses and set up roadblocks with burning tires in the dusty, low-rise town, residents told Agence France-Presse by telephone from the scene.
“A curfew has been imposed in the city,” district administration chief Syed Mohsin Shah said. “The military has been called in to support police for restoration of law and order.”
Zaman, the Shiite cleric who was being buried, was shot dead on Thursday in a busy market by unidentified gunmen riding on the back of a motorbike, police said.
Separately, Washington on Thursday expressed its concern to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that a deal allowing Shariah law in the volatile Swat Valley amounted to a possible capitulation to Taliban militants.
US envoy Richard Holbrooke told CNN in an interview on Thursday afternoon that he had spoken with Zardari by phone just hours earlier and expressed his “concern.”
“I am concerned, and I know Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton is, and the president is, that this deal, which is portrayed in the press as a truce, does not turn into a surrender,” Holbrooke said.
“President Zardari has assured us it is not the case,” he said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS