Negative Blogs

Clashes between police and alleged militants left six more people dead Friday in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus, even as stunned residents laid flowers in a square where a suicide car bombing killed 17 people and wounded more than 140 only a day ago.

Thursday’s bombing near the central market of Vladikavkaz, the capital of the North Ossetia republic, was the most serious attack in Russia since the March subway bombings in Moscow that killed 40 people.

Russia’s ethnically diverse North Caucasus region has been gripped by violence stemming from two separatist wars in Chechnya and fueled by poverty, rampant official corruption and alleged extrajudicial killings, kidnappings and torture by law enforcement officials.

In the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, the Interior Ministry said police on Friday killed four suspected militants who opened fire after a raid on a home in the village of Makhargi. The agency also said police were also trying to negotiate with three militants blockaded in a house in Derbent, near the border with Azerbaijan.

A Dagestani policeman and a prison warden were also shot to death in separate attacks, ministry officials said Friday.

The Vladikavkaz market was cordoned off Friday and investigators combed the site for clues about the bombing. Flags flew at half-staff throughout the city.

A North Ossetia health official said 107 of the wounded were in local hospitals and 11 severely injured victims had been flown to Moscow, according to state news agency ITAR-Tass.

Thursday’s blast was so powerful that glass in nearby buildings shattered. The area was cleaned of blood and shreds of clothing but twisted wrecks of several cars still littered the street.

A few blocks away, weeping relatives and neighbors mourned two bombing victims: 54-year-old Yaselin Mamedova and 18-month-old Elnur Ashinov. Their bodies were being prepared for burial later in the day in line with Muslim practice.

There has been no public claim of responsibility for Thursday’s attack, but suspicion fell on Islamic militants who launch frequent small attacks in neighboring North Caucasus republics, including Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Those three provinces have a Muslim majority, but North Ossetia is predominantly Orthodox Christian with a sizable Muslim minority.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with Russia’s top Muslim cleric after the blast and said Russia’s 20 million Muslims should play a key role in eradicating Islamic extremism in the nation.

“The crimes like the one that was committed in the North Caucasus today are aimed at sowing enmity between our citizens. We mustn’t allow this,” Putin said at the Thursday meeting.

By SERGEY PONOMAREV

A car bomb exploded in the Russian republic of North Ossetia on Thursday, killing at least 16 people — including an 18-month-old baby — and wounding up to 112 others, government and local health officials said.

The vehicle blew up near a market in the city of Vladikavkaz, the republic’s leader, Taimuraz Mamsurov, told Interfax.

“Information that I possess indicates that the explosion in Vladikavkaz was organized by a suicide bomber, who drove a Volga 3102 car to near the entrance to the market,” Mamsurov said.

Investigators said the explosive device contained the equivalent of 40 kilograms of TNT.

The Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office told CNN that 77 people were injured in the bombing.

However, local health authorities in North Ossetia told CNN that the number of injured is 112, 99 of whom were hospitalized.

At least nine of them, including one child, were said to be in critical condition.
The car bomb — inside a vehicle parked at the entrance to the central market in downtown Vladikavkaz, with a suicide bomber sitting inside it — detonated at 11:20 a.m. (3:20 a.m. ET), according to the Investigative Committee, which qualified the bombing as a “terrorist act.”

The committee also said the bomb was stuffed with various pieces of metal to increase the human damage. A natural gas canister, stored in the car’s trunk, also detonated, the committee said.

The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry is sending special medical planes to Vladikavkaz to airlift heavily injured patients to Moscow’s leading trauma clinics.

Friday was declared a day of national mourning in North Ossetia, according to a local government decree. Flags on all regional buildings will fly at half-staff and all entertainment programs on local TV will be cancelled as well as concerts and theater performances.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking on national TV, pledged that all organizers of the deadly bombing will be identified and punished — or killed.

“We will do all we can to catch these monsters and animals … who have committed a terror attack, a barbaric terror attack, against ordinary people. We will do all we can to find and punish them in accordance with the laws of our country, and we will destroy them if they offer resistance or in other circumstances,” Medvedev said.

Meanwhile, the owner of the car used in the bomb attack has been identified and arrested, a local police official told the Interfax news agency. The detainee claims that he sold it to an unknown buyer on Wednesday, the policeman said.
The Russian government announced each family of those killed with receive 1 million rubles in compensation (more than $32,000).

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned the bombing, saying, “The crimes like the one that was committed in the North Caucausus today are aimed at sowing enmity between our citizens. We have no right to allow this.”

North Ossetia and the rest of the Caucasus region have been plagued with violence and political instability.

The market has seen other terrorist attacks in the past.

In November 2008, a suicide bomber blew up a bus at a nearby bus station, killing 12 people and wounding more than 40. An explosion killed more than 50 people and wounded 300 in March 1999.

By the CNN

In this image made from television, the wreckage of a car destroyed in a suicide car attack is seen near the entrance to a market in Vladikavkaz, North Caucasus, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010. A suicide car bomber hit the central market of Vladikavkaz on Thursday, killing dozens and wounding more than 100 people in one of the worst terror attacks in the volatile region in years, officials said.

The target of the drone attack was the Haqqani network, a Pakistani militant group based near the Afghanistan border that has been blamed for attacks on NATO troops.

A suspected US drone attack in Pakistan’s tribal region on Wednesday killed at least six people. The target of the strike was the Haqqani network, a Pakistani militant group blamed for attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports.

The strike, which targeted at least one house in North Waziristan, was the sixth drone attack in the area this week. The missile hit a house in the village of Dande Darpa Khel just outside North Waziristan’s main town of Miran Shah, according to the AP.

The house was owned by Maulvi Azizullah, a member of the Haqqani network, a militant group based in North Waziristan that U.S. military officials have called the most dangerous threat to NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani network is closely allied with the Taliban and is led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a well-known fighter during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Haqqani received support from the U.S. and Pakistan during the Soviet war but has since turned against the Americans.

Drone strikes appear to be the only available way for the US to go after the Haqqani network, reports the AP. US officials have long urged the Pakistani government to crack down on the group, but Islamabad has refused, possibly due to its desire to preserve their historical ties with a group that can influence events in Pakistan.

The Institute for the Study of War traces those ties back to the days of the 1980s jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, when Islamist militant groups like the Haqqani network allowed Pakistan to exercise influence in its chaotic and war-torn neighbor. The Institute says that Pakistan’s top military official, General Ashfaq Kayani, has referred to the group as a “strategic asset” for Islamabad.

Pakistan may grow more concerned with the strategic use of militant groups as the US-led NATO war in Afghanistan draws to a close, says the AP, which reports that “analysts believe the government views them as an important ally once foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan.”

The news website Indian Express says that ten militants were killed and several others were injured in the attack and the Times of India reports that two houses were destroyed in the strike, but neither report has been confirmed.

In August, the US State department released its annual global terrorism report for 2009, singling out groups like the Haqqani network and other Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan as “the foremost security threat to the US homeland.”

As the Monitor has previously reported, those fears were underlined in June when a Pakistan-born Connecticut man, Faisal Shahzad, pled guilty to attempting to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square. Shahzad had traveled to Pakistan to receive training from Al Qaeda there, and called his attempted attack an act of “war.”

By CSmonitor.

In this Jan. 31, 2010 file photo, a U.S. Predator drone flies over the moon above Kandahar Air Field, southern Afghanistan.

Eleven policemen and four schoolchildren were among the 19 people killed in a suicide bomb attack on a police station in Lakki Marwat, a district of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa bordering Punjab. According to the police, 600 kg of explosive material were used in the blast which brought down the police station and damaged several buildings in the vicinity including a hospital, a mosque and a school.

The death toll is expected to rise as many of the 40 injured are battling for life. The suicide bomber rammed the explosive-laden vehicle into the rear wall of the police station early in the morning.

The schoolchildren were killed as their van was parked nearby.

As many of the buildings in the vicinity bore the brunt of the huge explosion, police cordoned off the area while efforts were on to pull out people buried in the rubble. After the explosion, police rounded up 10 persons suspected to be linked to terrorist groups.

Area police said this was the handiwork of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has claimed responsibility for last week’s suicide attacks on Shias in Lahore and Quetta. Talking to reporters, a senior police officer said: “The TTP is all out to hurt us. They are targeting everyone. We have lost personnel from the level of constable to Assistant Inspector General. The frontier police is writing its history with blood.”

On Sunday, The Daily Times had reported that terrorists had resurfaced in the suburbs of Peshawar — the capital of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa — and were imposing their writ by declaring a ban on shaving beards. After holding a barber captive for a fortnight, they released him last week with the diktat that barbers would be killed if they shaved beards.

By Thehindu.

People gather at the site of suicide bombing at a police station in Lakki Marwat, Pakistan on Monday.

How many cease-fires can you announce and break before everyone stops paying attention?

Spaniards inured to cease-fire announcements by the violent Basque separatist group ETA were mulling whether the latest one holds anything different or will fail like the others to end Europe’s last major armed militancy.

The government on Monday swiftly ruled out holding negotiations on a Basque homeland and rejected Sunday’s truce as a desperate gambit by an extremist group staggering after the arrests of its leaders.

Spain claimed the cease-fire was just another gambit by ETA in order to buy time, regroup and rearm. And a major newspaper, El Mundo, ran a cartoon Monday of a hooded ETA gunman in a traditional Basque beret offering an olive branch — albeit one that stuck out of a gun barrel.

Since launching its campaign for an independent Basque homeland in the late 1960s and killing more than 825 people in the process, ETA has announced 11 cease-fires, the last of them in 2006, which it called permanent.

Promising peace talks with the government ensued but quickly went nowhere, and nine months later ETA reverted to violence with a massive car bomb that killed two Ecuadorean immigrants in a parking garage at Madrid’s Barajas Airport.

This time, inside, not outside, forces appear to have prompted three masked ETA members to declare a cease-fire Sunday in front of a ETA sign with a snake slithering around an ax. While ETA historically has called the shots, the pressure for a new halt to violence seems to have come from the group’s own political supporters.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said Monday that when ETA shocked Spain by abruptly ending the 2006 cease-fire, “many people in the Basque nationalist movement woke up and said, ‘With this ETA we are not going to get anywhere.’”

Those divisions have been growing as ETA’s banned political wing, Batasuna, apparently came to the conclusion that bombs and bullets were doing nothing to achieve the goal of Basque independence.

ETA’s last deadly attack was a July 2009 car bomb that killed two policemen on the island of Mallorca. But Spain has no tolerance for terrorism now after Islamic militants killed 191 people in a 2004 train bombing in Madrid.

By Daniel Woolls

In this video grab provided by the Basque militant separatist group ETA to the newspaper website Gara.net on Sunday, Sept. 5, 2010, three masked ETA members declare a cease-fire in their efforts to establish an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.

At least 42 people have died in a suicide attack during a Shiite Muslim rally in Pakistan’s south-western city of Quetta in the second major strike by militants within 48 hours.

The attack has raised fears that the Pakistan Taliban is trying to capitalise on devastating floods that have plunged the country into crisis.

Police said the bomber was among a 450-strong crowd when he detonated the bomb in the main square of the city, triggering chaotic scenes as members of the crowd fired rifles and set vehicles ablaze in protest at the attack.

Shiite leader Allama Abbas Kumaili appealed to participants to remain peaceful. “We understand these are attempts to bring Sunni and Shiite sects against each other,” he said.

The rally was being held to mark Al-Quds day, an international event opposing Israel’s control of Jerusalem and showing solidarity with Palestinian Muslims.

The attack in Quetta is the second this week on Pakistan’s minority Shiite population. A triple suicide attack on Wednesday night killed 35 people at a Shiite ceremony in the eastern city of Lahore.

The bombings were later claimed by the Pakistan Taliban in revenge for the killing of a Sunni leader last year.

Militants have used sectarian strikes as part of their campaign to destabilise the government and sow fear among minorities.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military and political analyst, said a lull in attacks during the worst of the flooding crisis had given way to a new campaign.

“They are capitalising on the fact that the government and the military are busy dealing with the floods,” he said. “They see this as an opportunity to take the war into the cities far from their territories in the northwest.”

Earlier, at least one man was killed and four were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque of the Ahmadi sect in Mardan, in the north-west of the country.

By Telegraph.co.uk

Injured people lie down on road after an explosion during a Shiite procession in Quetta Photo: AP

Three Americans were killed in Afghanistan Saturday, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said.

Two of the U.S. service members died in a bombing in southern Afghanistan. The third death followed an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. No other details were immediately available.

The casualties came as the top American diplomat and top U.S. general in Afghanistan reassured the troubled nation of U.S. support.

“Now looking ahead, we’re all focused together on the upcoming parliamentary elections and the key test will be the satisfaction of the Afghan people with the progress that’s going to come from their hard work as they approach the elections — their incredible reputation for perseverance and their indomitable spirit,” said Amb. Karl Eikenberry, speaking to Afghan journalists with Gen. David Petraeus.

Meanwhile, Afghan and coalition soldiers fought off assaults on two military bases that left more than 20 insurgents dead, ISAF said.

The fighting occurred in Khost province, a volatile region on Afghanistan’s rugged border with Pakistan.

Insurgents clad in U.S. military uniforms and wielding rocket-propelled grenades and small arms “simultaneously launched attacks” against Forward Operating Base Salerno and Forward Operation Base Chapman, ISAF said.

Chapman is the same base where a suicide bomber killed seven CIA officers on December 30.

Troops killed about 15 insurgents at Salerno and six at Chapman. Five insurgent fighters were captured and were in ISAF custody.

A Haqqani network operative who helps carry out bombings and two other insurgents died in an airstrike while fleeing Salerno in a vehicle. Two insurgents who got into Salerno were killed by soldiers. The Haqqani network is a militant group with ties to al Qaeda.

“We are tightening our grip on the insurgents and as a result they are attempting anything and everything as a last ditch effort,” said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, ISAF spokesman. “The insurgents gave their best effort and came up short.”

Afghan police and ISAF members seized a car bomb and a vehicle carrying ammunition. Forces also seized suicide vests, rifles and unexploded munitions.

Four ISAF soldiers were injured, and three have returned to duty. The fourth was set to return to duty soon. No base facilities were damaged.

Also Saturday, an Afghan civilian was killed by a suicide attacker in southeastern Paktika province, ISAF said. Seven people also were wounded when the insurgent detonated a suicide vest.

By the CNN

EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT- An Afghan National Army soldier stands near the body of a suicide attacker near a NATO base in Khost province of Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010. Insurgents launched pre-dawn attacks Saturday on a major NATO base in eastern Afghanistan and a nearby camp where seven CIA employees were killed last year in a suicide bombing. NATO said there were no coalition casualties and the attacks were repelled. It said 13 insurgents were killed, four of whom were wearing suicide vests, and five captured. (AP Photo/Nishanuddin Khan)

In a move that is antagonizing North Korea and irking China, South Korea commenced a major naval exercise in the Yellow Sea Thursday, the largest since 46 South Korean sailors died in March in the sinking of a warship.

The five-day exercise involves some 4,500 personnel and all four branches of the military, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

Seoul, which oversaw an international investigation into the March sinking of the Cheonan, claims a North Korean submarine sank the corvette and is demanding an apology. A multinational investigation also found North Korea responsible. Pyongyang has vehemently denied the accusation.

Prior to the Cheonan’s sinking, the South Korean navy had largely discounted the threat of submarines in the Yellow Sea, due to the shallow waters in the area.

North Korea said via state media that it would undertake “strong physical retaliation” and warned fishermen to stay clear of the Northern Limit Line, the disputed maritime border between the Koreas.

The drills amount to an “undisguised military intrusion,” Pyongyang has said.

“The army and people of the DPRK are closely watching every move of [South Korean President] Lee Myung-bak’s group of traitors. And if the puppet warmongers dare ignite a war, they will mercilessly destroy the provokers and their stronghold by mobilizing most powerful war tactics and offensive means beyond imagination,” the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said, according to North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA.

“Raising issue with the legitimate, defensive exercise is a provocation in itself,” South Korean Rear Adm. Kim Kyung-sik retorted Wednesday, speaking to local reporters.

Meanwhile, China, which has refused to condemn North Korea over the alleged torpedo attack and which remains Pyongyang’s closest strategic ally, is reportedly carrying out air defense drills on its Yellow Sea coast across from the Korean peninsula.

Given North Korea’s decrepit military, experts say the chances of a naval attack on well-prepared South Korean forces are small.

“The North Koreans have to rely on asymmetric capabilities,” said Dan Pinkston, who heads the international Crisis Group’s Seoul offices. “In a straight-up fight they are not that capable.”

Deadly North Korean strikes in past years — a commando raid on the South Korean presidential mansion in 1968; terrorist bombings in 1983 and 1987; and naval clashes in 1999 and 2002 — all used the element of surprise, an element that would be difficult to spring on the large, alert force South Korea is fielding for the maneuvers.

If North Korea retaliates, it will likely be with a weapons test rather than a direct confrontation, said one expert.

“They do not do eye-for-eye, tit-for-tat responses,” said Choi Jin-wook of the Korea Institute of National Unification. “Shooting a missile or testing a weapon or some kind of diplomatic action are possible, but I don’t think there will be a military reaction.”

The exercise does not include any U.S. assets, leading some commentators to wonder whether Washington is wary of angering Beijing in the Yellow Sea.

South Korean and U.S. forces conducted exercises together in the Sea of Japan last month. Those exercises included an anti-sub infiltration component — intended to thwart a submarine attack on a ship.

If the joint exercises continue, such a move could be part of a gradual build-up of American pressure on China.

“The U.S. is slowly containing China in other places, and they could exercise in the East Sea in the future,” said the Korea Institute of National Unification’s Choi. “I think the U.S. is very deliberately pressuring China.”

The warship sinking has heightened tensions between the two neighbors who fought a war from 1950 to 1953. The war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, meaning the two nations are still technically at war. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea.

By the CNN

A South Korean destroyer drops depth charges during anti-submarine drills on Thursday.

A suicide bomber wearing an explosives-laden jacket killed at least three people, including a key security official, in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar Wednesday.

Among the dead was Sifwat Ghayour, commander of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary, said Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a provincial government official. Ghayour had just left his office and his car was stopped at a traffic light when the attack occurred.

The Frontier Constabulary is spearheading the fight against Islamic militants in the northwestern frontier province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is supported by the United States.

In southern Pakistan, the death toll rose Wednesday to 57 in widespread violence that broke out after the killing of a provincial lawmaker. The number of wounded has also gone up — to 110, said Rafiq Gul, deputy superintendent of Karachi police.

Syed Raza Haider, a leader of the MQM party, was shot Monday evening at a mosque in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi. Haider was attending the funeral of a relative, Gul said. The gunman also killed the politician’s bodyguard.

Haider’s death triggered political and ethnic violence in the city, as mobs set fire to vehicles and gunfire erupted. Gul said 48 vehicles, eight shops and several gas stations were set ablaze in the mayhem. The MQM is part of the ruling coalition backing President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party.

By the CNN

A suicide bomber wearing an explosives-laden jacket killed at least three people, including a key security official, in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar Wednesday.

A car that exploded outside a police station in Londonderry contained 200lbs of homemade explosives, police have said.

Dissident republicans are being blamed for the attack.

No-one was injured in the attack which happened at 0320 BST but several businesses were badly damaged in the blast.

Police said the bomb was loaded into a hijacked taxi and the driver ordered at gunpoint to drive to the station.

Divisional Commander Steve Martin said it was fortunate no-one was killed because the device went off more than 20 minutes before a warning said it would.

He said two men hijacked a taxi in the Bogside. The driver was taken to Glenfada Park where the bomb was loaded into the car.

The driver was then ordered at gunpoint to drive to Strand Road police station and warned he would be shot if he did not.

Supt Martin said they had been warned the device would go off in 45 minutes, however only 23 minutes had passed when the car exploded.

He also revealed that a policeman risked his own life when he walked past the bomb twice to bring to safety staff at a nearby fast food shop.

The first and deputy first ministers have condemned the attack.

Peter Robinson said he was thankful there was no loss of life.

“Using a taxi driver to deliver the device shows the cowardice of those behind the attack and my sympathies are with him and all those targeted,” he said.

Martin McGuinness said those who planned the attack were an “embarrassment” to the people of Derry.

“It’s about trying to undermine the peace process, about trying to undermine Sinn Fein’s peace strategy,” he said.

“If they think they will destroy the political institutions the people of Ireland voted for, if they think they’re going to destroy the working relationship I have with Peter Robinson, if they think they will undermine the peace process they are living in cloud cuckoo land.”

SDLP Mayor of Derry Colum Eastwood blamed dissident republicans for the attack.

“Police didn’t even have time to evacuate a nursing home or apartments right beside the police station.

“We are very lucky today not to be talking about fatalities. It’s an attack not just on the police but the entire community.”

‘Panic’
Lotfi Jalloul, whose kebab shop was destroyed in the blast, had been cleaning up for the night when he saw the car arrive at the police station.

“I thought he was a taxi driver picking up a passenger but about 15 minutes later, we were evacuated by the police,” he said.

“There was a lot of panic. I left the money in the till and didn’t even get the chance to pull down the shutters - thank God we got out of there, I can’t believe we’re still alive.”

He said he had been told his business had been destroyed by the explosion but had not yet been able to see what damage was caused because the area remains cordoned off.

Conor Kelly, who lives in an apartment block near the police station, said it had been a terrifying experience.

“I was still awake and reading when I heard an enormous noise like thunder and saw debris flying past my window,” he said.

“There were no alarms or attempts to evacuate the building.”

He said the front of a fast food outlet had been “ripped to shreds” and other buildings had windows blown out.

In May, a mortar bomb was fired at the same police station. It struck a wall but failed to explode.

The attack comes just weeks after Derry was picked to be UK City of Culture in 2013.

SDLP MP Mark Durkan said the bombing was “a cowardly, dangerous and vulgar act”.

“Those responsible for this incident have achieved nothing and this campaign of violence will achieve nothing,” he said.

By BBC

Forensic scientists examined the taxi destroyed by the bomb.