An explosion ripped through a restaurant and two munitions shops in a bazaar in a tribal town in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 12 people and injuring more than 30, officials said.
It was not clear what caused the blast, but a preliminary report said a bomb went off in the restaurant, said Sajid Salim, a local government official. The injured were evacuated to a nearby hospital.
The explosion occurred around midday in Jandola, a town on the border of rugged South Waziristan, said Mir Abbas, a government administrator in the area. The restaurant, munitions shops and several other buildings were heavily damaged.
Intelligence officials said the blast killed at least 12 people, but a resident said many more people could have died in the explosion that happened at 8am, and came amid a spate of violence in the lawless region.
South Waziristan is part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt that stretches through rugged mountains and deserts along he border with Afghanistan.
Many al-Qaeda members fled to the region from Afghanistan after US-led forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, and were given shelter by militant sympathizers from conservative Pashtun tribes that inhabit both sides of the border.
Beheaded bodies
Also yesterday, the beheaded bodies of two members of a paramilitary force were found near, Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, said a member of the force, the South Waziristan Scouts.
The two men went missing on Tuesday when they and two colleagues went into Wana town in civilian clothes. The whereabouts of the other two men were not known, said the member of the force, who declined to be identified.
In neighboring North Waziristan, violence erupted on Tuesday when Islamic militants clashed with a bandit gang and 15 people were killed.
The militants strung up the bodies of five of the dead bandits and displayed the head of one on a pole.
At the weekend, authorities said an al-Qaeda commander, Abu Hamza Rabia, and four others were killed when bomb-making material stored at their hideout in North Waziristan detonated accidentally last week.
Villagers in the area said the blast was caused by a missile fired from an unidentified aircraft, possibly a US drone.
Unidentified gunmen on Monday kidnapped a journalist who had reported that Rabia was killed by a US missile and took photographs of what villagers said were fragments of the weapon.
The journalist, Hayatullah Khan, who worked for various publications including the Nation English-language newspaper, has not been seen since. Authorities say they are looking for him.
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
RSS