A suicide bomber blew himself up at a gathering of minority Shiite Muslims in Pakistan yesterday, killing 22 people a day after a deadly suicide attack in the capital, police said.
The attack in the central city of Chakwal came a day after a pilotless US drone aircraft killed 13 people including militants in the northwest and a suicide bomber killed eight soldiers in Islamabad.
About 2,000 people had gathered at a Shiite religious center in Chakwal, south of Islamabad, for a ceremony when the bomber struck.
“There was a break in the ceremony and some people were going out and others were coming in when all of a sudden a young man tried to run into the crowd,” a witness said. “When guards tried to stop him at the gate he blew himself up.”
Regional police chief Nasir Khan Durrani said 22 people had been killed and 35 wounded. Durrani said the death toll would have been much higher if the bomber had managed to force his way into the crowd.
Outside the religious center, blood was splattered over the gate and walls while shoes and other possessions were strewn on the ground. Three mangled motorcycles lay outside the gate.
In related news, Pakistani and Afghan officials prepared yesterday to send home the bodies of 46 Afghans found crammed into a truck container believed to have been bound for Iran, officials said.
The container, carrying around 110 people, was found about 20km south of Quetta, capital of oil and gas rich Baluchistan Province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, police said.
“The death toll is 46,” police official Ghulam Dastagir told reporters from the southwestern province after the bodies were found on Saturday. “[Another] 45 people were unconscious and have been admitted to hospital.”
The investigation into the matter had been handed over to Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which deals with immigration matters.
“We are investigating the matter and have contacted the Afghan consulate in Quetta, who have visited the hospital,” FIA Director Shahab Azeem told reporters.
“According to initial investigations the survivors have told us that they boarded the container at Chaman border and had to come to Quetta for onward journey to Iran,” Azeem said.
The official said a case had been registered against an Afghan national, Gul Agha, who according to survivors charged 30,000 rupees (US$375) each to take them to Iran.
Afghanistan’s counsel general in Quetta, Mohammad Daud Mohsini, said Afghan President Hamid Karzai had ordered authorities to send a special plane to fly the victims home.
Karzai’s office in Kabul said that the president was saddened by the deaths and warned against illegal migration.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS