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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

Although Pakistan’s floodwaters are beginning to recede after the country’s month-long drenching, the heads of several U.N. agencies say aid still is in urgent need across the country. 

The heavy rains that were so common during the past month are occurring less frequently now in Islamabad, a sign that the monsoon season might be drawing to a close.

But U.N. officials say the end to the nightmare for an estimated 17.6 million people across Pakistan who are suffering because of flooding is nowhere in sight.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy for assistance to Pakistan, Jean-Maurice Ripert, spoke to reporters in Islamabad. He said that weeks into the disaster, Mr. Ban’s earlier assessment that the flooding was a “slow-motion tsunami” still is accurate.

“Indeed, four weeks after the onset of this disaster, we see the wave of this tsunami still rolling through Pakistan — destroying houses [and] lands, claiming lives on its way.  And it has yet to reach the ocean,” said Ripert.

Ripert said Pakistan has received assistance and pledges of more than $1 billion.  But he said that is far from enough.

Speaking alongside the U.N. special envoy, the executive directors of the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Food Program appealed for more aid after touring flood-affected areas.

UNICEF’s Anthony Lake said he believes that no one could have foreseen the enormity of the challenge to deliver humanitarian aid, especially after already providing two million people with clean water and immunizing hundreds of thousands of children.

“If you had told me, say six weeks ago, I would have said that we would have already been on top of the situation.  But in fact, we are not.” said Lake.

Lake said that six million more women and children still need clean water and sanitation.

The World Food Program’s Josette Sheeran said her agency needs $90 million more to double the three million people who have received a month’s supply of food.

She also said they do not have enough helicopters to reach everyone in need.

“We still find many of the roads and bridges damaged and destroyed,” said Sheeran. “And so it is not necessarily making the operations easy in the areas where there is some receding or [making] planting possible.”

The receding waters have allowed some people to return to their homes.

But as flooding reaches more areas in the south, U.N. officials say their agencies, along with international donors, need to adapt their strategies to help.

By VOAnews

Pakistani displaced by flooding reach for food aid given by volunteers along main road near Marli, Sindh province, southern Pakistan, 31 Aug 2010

As flood waters rose in Pakistan’s Sindh province submerging more towns, the country’s authorities have evacuated over 150,000 people, worsening the national catastrophe.

A government spokesman said on Saturday that residents of the town of Shahdadkot are fleeing to higher ground as waters from the freshly swollen Indus river overflowed its banks, submerging dozens of more towns in the south, the Times of India reported.

Pakistani authorities are meanwhile struggling to shore up an embankment holding back a growing tide on the edge of the town.

As the latest surge approached, Jamil Soomro, a spokesman for the provincial government, said that it had, within the past 24 hours, evacuated more than 150,000 people from the interior parts of Sindh.

According to officials, the floodwaters nationwide are expected to recede in the coming days as the last river torrents empty into the Arabian Sea.

Already, 600,000 people are in various relief camps that were set up in Sindh province during this past month’s flooding.

Meanwhile, doctors say that requests in the country’s camps have been mounting for more medicine and updated equipment to treat the victims.

“In the camp the necessary things we need are medicine and equipment. If we have updated equipment, then we can treat the patients well,” said Gulzar Hussain, a doctor struggling to run a field hospital at a government technical college in Nowshera, 27 miles east of Peshawar in the country’s northwest.

By Presstv

Pakistan flood survivors sit on high ground as they wait for rescue at the flooded area in Tando Hafiz Shah on August 21.

UN warns numbers of people affected exceed those in Indian Ocean tsunami and Kashmir and Haiti quakes put together.

Bad weather is preventing the relief effort from reaching hundreds of thousands of the millions of people affected by heavy flooding in Pakistan.

The north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is particularly inaccessible, the United Nations said today, with up to 600,000 people marooned and rain stopping helicopters flying to some areas that are unreachable from the ground.

The devastation continued as the UN said the number of people suffering in the floods in Pakistan exceeded the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

While the death toll in the three earlier tragedies was much higher than the 1,500 people killed so far in the floods, the UN estimates that some 13.8 million people have been affected – at least 2 million more people than in the other disasters put together.

It made the comparison to emphasis the scale of the crisis, which the Pakistani prime minister said today was the worst in the country’s history.

“The number of people affected by the floods is greater than the other three disasters combined,” said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Giuliano said a person is considered affected by the floods if he or she will need some form of assistance to recover, either short-term humanitarian aid or longer-term reconstruction help.

“The magnitude of the tragedy is so immense that it is hard to assess,” he added.

His statement came as the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, said the floods were a bigger crisis than the both the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, which killed nearly 80,000 people, and the army’s operation against the Taliban in the Swat valley last spring, which drove more than 2 million people from their homes.

Rescue workers have been unable to reach up to 600,000 people marooned in the Swat valley owing to bad weather, Giuliano said, adding that many residents there were still trying to recover from last year’s fight with the Taliban.

“All these people are in very serious need of assistance, and we are highly concerned about their situation,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have also had to flee rising floodwaters in recent days in the central and southern provinces of Punjab and Sindh as heavy rains continued.

One affected resident, Manzoor Ahmed, said that although he had managed to escape the floods that submerged villages and destroyed homes in Sindh, the subsequent lack of government help meant dying might have been preferable.

“It would have been better if we had died in the floods as our current miserable life is much more painful,” said Ahmed, who fled with his family from the town of Shikarpur.

“It is very painful to see our people living without food and shelter.”

Thousands of people in the neighbouring districts of Shikarpur and Sukkur camped out on roads, bridges, railway tracks any dry ground they could find, often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and perhaps a plastic sheet to keep off the rain.

“We were able to escape the floodwaters, but hunger may kill us,” said Hora Mai, 40, sitting on a rain-soaked road in Sukkur along with hundreds of other people.

By Adam Gabbatt

Survivors pick their way through wrecked streets in Nowshera, in north-west Pakistan. Photograph: Mohammad Sajjad/AP

More heavy rain in Pakistan is frustrating efforts to help about 12 million people affected by severe flooding in much of the country.

Helicopter missions in the north-west have been grounded and a red alert has been issued for the south.

One dam in Sindh province has been breached and engineers are warning that the huge Tarbela and Mangla dams are close to their maximum levels.

The worst floods in the region for 80 years have killed at least 1,600 people

Pakistan’s meteorological office has warned that at least two more days of rain are expected in Sindh, where authorities have declared an “imminent” and “extreme” flood threat.

Further downpours are also forecast in the badly-hit north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

“Things are getting worse. It’s raining again. That’s hampering our relief work,” said UN World Food Programme spokesman Amjad Jamal.

Many helicopter aid flights in the north-west have been grounded by the bad weather.

The helicopters are essential in the region’s rugged terrain because the floods damaged or destroyed most of the bridges, cutting off many survivors from relief.

“The situation is bad, particularly in the Swat valley, and we have advised people in low-lying areas to vacate their homes as river water levels are rising,” said Adnan Ahmed, an official with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s government.

Aid appeal
The deluge has brought the water levels behind the Tarbela and Mangla dams - two of the world’s largest - dangerously close to their maximum, engineers warned.

A dam in northern Sindh’s Kashmore district has already been breached, inundating large parts of the surrounding area with floodwater and forcing thousands of residents to take shelter on rooftops or in trees.

One man told the BBC said his entire village had been destroyed and all its livestock washed away.

The floods, brought on by seasonal monsoon rains, began in the north-west, but have now inundated a stretch of Pakistan about 1,000 km (600 miles) long, primarily along the Indus river and its tributaries.

With the flood surge heading south, authorities have evacuated more than half a million people living near the Indus river as hundreds of villages have been inundated by floodwaters.

The BBC’s Orla Guerin with Pakistan’s military on a rescue operation in Sindh
Officials say 650,000 homes have so far been destroyed across the country, 1.4m acres (557,000 hectares) of agricultural land have been flooded and 10,000 cows have died.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s appeal for international aid has been answered, with many countries offering assistance.

The US has diverted helicopters and troops from Afghanistan to deliver aid while Nato has said it will co-ordinate supplies from member countries and partners.

A Nato spokeswoman said it was providing food, mosquito nets, tents, generators and medicines.

The UK’s first aid flight arrived in Rawalpindi late on Saturday, with 500 tents to join the 2,000 already distributed.

The head of Britain’s development mission in Pakistan, George Turkington, told the BBC that Britain had a team of engineers in the north-western city of Peshawar “to look at establishing an emergency bridge-building programme so we can contribute to opening up new access routes”.

He said the priorities were water, sanitation equipment, food and shelter.

The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool said much more is needed, with the renewed rains submerging new areas every day.

Meanwhile, President Asif Ali Zardari has rejected criticism that he should return from an extended foreign trip.

In a BBC interview, Mr Zardari said the cabinet was directing relief efforts, and he was being kept up to date about the situation.

“I’m the one who’s given all the powers from the presidency to the parliament. The parliament is in session - the Senate is in session. It’s the prime minister’s responsibility, and he’s fulfilling his responsibility.”

He said he had secured promises of assistance from the countries he had visited - the UAE, France and the UK.

By BBC

More heavy rain is forecast for areas already devastated by flooding

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.

THE death toll in Pakistan’s worst flooding in recent history rose to more than 1300 people yesterday, as the United States rushed out helicopters, boats, bridges, water units and other supplies as part of an initial $US10 million ($11.1 million) aid pledge.

Monsoon rains, flash floods and landslides in the country’s northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province have been blamed for the loss of lives and the tens of thousands of others who have been left homeless.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is the worst hit province as over 567 houses were razed down to ground by flash floods, 90 highways were damaged, 58 big thoroughfares were closed for traffic; while, 104 people are still unaccounted for, Geo TV reported.

Up to one million people were affected, according to the United Nations, with thousands of homes and vast swathes of farmland destroyed in a region of Pakistan reeling from years of extremist bloodshed.
The military has deployed 30,000 troops who have helped rescue more than 20,700 people but rescue workers are struggling to save more than 27,000 people still trapped by the water.

Hundreds of survivors sought shelter in schools in Peshawar, the main city in northwest Pakistan, and in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, after escaping the floods with children on their backs.
In neighboring Afghanistan, flash floods killed at least 65 people and affected more than 1000 families, officials said.

Pakistani television footage and photographs taken from helicopters showed people clinging to the walls and rooftops of damaged houses as water rushed through villages.

Pakistan’s weather bureau said an “unprecedented” 12 inches of rain had fallen in 36 hours in the northwest but forecast that only scattered showers would fall during coming days.
 
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said yesterday that the United States was standing with Pakistan.

 ”Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have lost loved ones or have been displaced from their homes — and we are taking action to help,” she said in a statement.

“Our embassy in Islamabad is coordinating closely with Pakistani authorities to support rescue and relief efforts.

“And we will work closely with the Government of Pakistan to ensure aid reaches those people who need it most. I have seen first-hand the strength and resilience of the Pakistani people and I know they will come through this tragedy with determination and compassion.”

By News

One of the thousands of flood victims whose homes and lives have been destroyed by the disaster / Getty Images

The Afghan Taliban says it has captured dozens of Pakistani soldiers after attacking their checkpoint in a cross-border raid.

Pakistani security sources confirm some troops are missing.

The Taliban says it is holding up to 40 Pakistani troops after its raid in the Mohmand tribal area on Monday.

Afghan officials said eight soldiers had been handed over to the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, but Pakistan’s army said it had no knowledge of this.

Checkpoint ‘over-run’
The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan says that while attacks by the Taliban on border check posts are relatively routine, it is unusual for Pakistani soldiers to be held by the militants in Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesman told the BBC that it was in fact holding Pakistani troops on both sides of the border after Monday’s attack.

It said 30 soldiers were being held in Afghanistan and 10 in Pakistan.

The Taliban says it captured the soldiers after over-running the checkpoint.

Local officials in the Mohmand area confirmed to the BBC that about 40 soldiers were unaccounted for.

Pakistani security sources said on Monday an undisclosed number of troops were missing.

An Afghan army commander in Jalalabad told the BBC that 10 Pakistani soldiers had been handed over to the Pakistani consulate, although the Pakistani army said it was not aware of this.

‘Baseless propaganda’
Meanwhile, the Afghan Taliban have dismissed the findings of a report which says Pakistan’s intelligence service had a direct role in supporting the insurgents.

In an e-mail sent to the BBC, the Taliban said the report was “baseless propaganda”.

The report, compiled by a London School of Economics scholar, said Pakistani intelligence provided funding, training and sanctuaries to the Taliban on a much greater scale than previously thought.

“The Islamic Emirate considers this report of the London School of Economics as merely baseless propaganda,” the letter said.

The Taliban have also denied reports that their fighters hanged a seven-year-old boy last week on charges of spying in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

“After a full investigation by the Islamic Emirate leadership, it became clear that no event of execution had taken place,” a Taliban statement said.

The Taliban criticised journalists for misreporting the event.

By BBC

The Pakistani army is often atttacked by the Taliban on border areas.

Police in Pakistan say Taliban attackers carried out Friday’s bloody attack on two mosques in Lahore belonging to the Ahmadi religious minority.

Police said Saturday that the attackers were Pakistani Taliban fighters who trained in the North Waziristan tribal region.

Gunmen armed with grenades and suicide vests stormed the two mosques shortly after the start of Friday prayers in the northeastern city of Lahore.  At least 93 people were killed.

Police captured two of the attackers, while at least two others died at the scene.

The Pakistani Taliban has also been linked to an attempted car bombing earlier this month in New York City.  The United States says Faisal Shahzad, a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan who was arrested for the failed attack, trained with and was supported by Taliban militants.

Also, a major U.S. newspaper said Saturday that the U.S. military is reviewing the possibility of staging a unilateral strike in Pakistan if a successful attack on U.S. soil is ever traced to the South Asian country.

The Washington Post says the U.S. would only consider launching an attack in Pakistan in extreme circumstances.  The CIA has been using drones (unmanned aircraft) to bomb al-Qaida and Taliban hideouts in Pakistan.

The newspaper quoted top military officials as saying the United States has been considering new options for military action against militants in Pakistan since the bombing attempt in New York’s Times Square, which could have caused a large number of casualties.

According to the Post, U.S. military forces currently have been given the authority to launch unilateral strikes in Pakistan only if they involve three top targets: al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, or Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Pakistani police official arrange hand grenades recovered from militants who stormed the Garhi Shahu mosque on Friday, in Lahore, Pakistan, 29 May 2010

The near-simultaneous assaults on two mosques in Lahore targeted the Ahmadis, a beleaguered minority group. At least 125 people were injured in the raids.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan — Militants in the eastern city of Lahore lay siege on two mosques belonging to a minority Islamic sect Friday, killing at least 52 people in a pair of highly coordinated attacks that exposed the vulnerability of groups considered outside the mainstream of Pakistani society.

The sect targeted, the Ahmadis, is one of the country’s most beleaguered minority groups. Numbering about 4 million, Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims but believe their late 19th century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet of God, a belief condemned by many Pakistani Muslims who regard Muhammad as Islam’s final prophet. The group has been heavily discriminated against in Pakistan and is legally barred from calling themselves Muslims.

The attacks in Lahore occurred in the afternoon during Friday prayers, when legions of Ahmadis fill two of the sect’s mosques in the neighborhoods of Model Town and Garhi Shahu. In both cases, militants were able to easily get inside the mosques, where they sprayed gunfire and threw grenades at terrified worshippers. Many of the dead were shot in the head. At least 125 people were injured in the attacks, authorities said.

An Ahmadi elder from the Model Town mosque said the mosque had been getting threatening phone calls for some time, and had reported the threats to Lahore police. “We asked the government and police several times to enhance our security, but we didn’t get anything,” the elder said, speaking on the condition that his name not be given because he feared retribution.

Witnesses said four militants attacked the Model Town mosque at about 1:40 p.m. One of the assailants killed a security guard at a front gate and then ran into the mosque while another attacker shot through a window at the back of the building to get inside. Hundreds of worshippers inside scurried for cover as the militants fired indiscriminately.

An Ahmadi who would only give his first name, Shahzad, said he and other followers hid on an upper floor while gunfire rang out in the building’s main hall. “They were throwing grenades and firing everywhere,” Shahzad said. “Our leader told us to stay calm and asked us to pray quietly. I was very afraid and very sure that the terrorists would come upstairs and kill us.”

Shahzad said when he looked down onto the main floor, he saw several worshippers lying in pools of blood, many of them with gunshot wounds to their heads. Nearby, a militant clutching a Kalashnikov rifle lay gravely injured, gasping for breath.

Authorities say one of the attackers in Model Town was killed and that another was subdued by worshippers. The whereabouts of the other two assailants was unknown. The death toll at the Model Town mosque stood at 19 as of Friday afternoon. At least 50 people were injured.

After the attack, Ahmadi worshippers formed a human chain around the compound to prevent media and outsiders from getting inside. Worshippers were angered by what they said was a delayed response from police once the attack began. Though a police station is near the mosque, the Ahmadi elder said police arrived about 50 minutes after worshippers called for help.

At about the same time the Model Town mosque was attacked, between seven to 10 gunmen were storming into an Ahmadi mosque in the Garhi Shahu neighborhood. About 1,000 worshippers were inside at the time of the attack. As in the Model Town attack, gunmen at the Garhi Shahu mosque fired wildly at worshippers and threw grenades inside the building. Authorities said 33 people were killed and 75 injured in that attack.

By Alex Rodriguez

A policeman approaches a firefight at an Ahmadi mosque in Lahore's Garhi Shahu neighborhood. (Mani Rana, Reuters / May 28, 2010)