An explosion blew the door off a Muslim school in a southern Dutch town and shattered windows across the street yesterday, Dutch television reported. There were no reports of injuries.
Pictures showed the burnt-out entrance of the school which was empty at the time of the attack at around 3:30am. Police suspected it was related to the murder last week of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a suspected Islamic radical, the report said.
Van Gogh's killing sparked a series of attacks over the weekend, including two attempts to burn down mosques. Although mainstream Muslim groups condemned the killing, it has caused an outpouring of anger.
Vandals threw red paint on Saturday night on an Amsterdam center that aids immigrants, many of them Muslim. The Emcemo center is located several blocks from the spot where Van Gogh was killed, and its director, Abdou Menebhi, told local TV station AT5 that the vandals were racists.
In the town of Huizen, police arrested two men they say were caught preparing to ignite a fire at the An-Nasr mosque on Friday night, national news service NOS reported. A mosque in the city of Breda sustained minor fire damage in another reported arson attempt.
Earlier last week, a small fire was set at a mosque in Utrecht, police said, and a pig's head was left in a plastic bag outside a mosque in Amsterdam.
NOS reported on Sunday that pamphlets with the image of a pig and a slur against Muslims were circulating in Rotterdam.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but