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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Kompasu also halted much of the metropolitan area’s subway service, toppled trees and caused widespread power outages, the agency said. Airlines canceled or diverted domestic and international flights.

According to Yonhap: A flying roof tile killed an 80-year-old man in Seosan, South Chungcheong province. A broken tree branch fatally struck a 37-year-old man in Bundang, on the southern outskirts of Seoul. And an electrical engineer was electrocuted while trying to restore electricity in Mokpo, 255 miles (410 kilometers) south of Seoul.

Kompasu also unleashed torrential rain and strong winds on North Korea Thursday, according to the state-run KCNA news agency. The typhoon was expected to further devastate crops in secretive North Korea, which has been gripped by food shortages.
As of late afternoon Thursday, Kompasu was carrying maximum winds of 55 miles per hour and had moved away from both Koreas.

By the CNN

People walk past booths damaged by Typhoon Kompasu in Seoul, South Korea, on Thursday.

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

Both pilots were employees of the Khartoum-based Badr Airlines, the agency said without giving further details. The airliner provides cargo and passenger air services for various international aid programs.

The civil war that broke out in the western region of Darfur in early 2003 has claimed the lives of more than 300,000, according to United Nations estimates, and forced 2.7 million people from their homes. Sudan puts the number of dead at 10,000.

Abductions of foreigners, including aid workers and peacekeepers, have been on the rise in the war-torn region in the past months. In most cases, foreign nationals are being abducted for ransom.

In the most recent similar incident, a Mi-8 helicopter of the Russian aviation company UTAir was seized by an armed tribal group in late July. The helicopter, with a crew of four Russians, later returned to its base in Nyala.

Darfur Independence Front/Darfur Independence Army (DIF/DIA) militants

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)