Suicide attackers storm court in Pakistan
Blasts and gunfight kills at least 11 people, including a judge in the capital Islamabad.
At least 11 people, including a judge, have been killed in a suicide attack on a court in the centre of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, police said.
At least 30 people were also injured, and two lawyers and a police officer were among the dead following the attack on Monday, police told Al Jazeera.
Police said two suicide bombers wearing explosive vests rushed into the court complex, threw hand grenades, started shooting, and then blew themselves up, Islamabad Police Chief Sikander Hayat told the Associated Press news agency.
“It was certainly an act of terrorism,” Hayat said in televised comments to reporters.
Police told Al Jazeera it did not appear to be a targeted attack, as the judge was not involved in any anti-terrorism court cases, and the attackers had been firing indiscriminately.
Car bomb provider killed in Yabroud,
Syria March 03, 2014 12:33 AM By Rakan al-Fakih The Daily Star
The center for filling gas is seen closed in Bir Hasan, Sunday, March 2, 2014. (The Daily Star/Hasan Shaaban)
BEIRUT: A man wanted for helping orchestrate a car bomb plot involving a female terrorism suspect has been killed in Yabroud, a province of Syria where Hezbollah is fighting alongside the regime, a security source told The Daily Star.
Though his body has not yet been returned, funeral prayers were carried out in Arsal for the man, identified as Hussein Mohammad Ammoun, the source said.
Ammoun was wanted for allegedly providing an explosives-laden car that was stopped by Lebanese Military Intelligence last month on the Arsal-Labweh road in the Bekaa Valley last month.
The car was being driven by Joumana Hmeid, who was formally charged by Military Prosecutor Saqr Saqr for involvement with Al-Qaeda-linked groups.
Ammoun was buried in Yabroud, a province straddling the Lebanese-Syrian border and the site of battles between rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad’s regime, including Hezbollah.
Violence in Iraq Killed 703 in February, U.N. Reports
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD — Violence across Iraq in February killed 703 people, a death toll higher than the same period a year before as the country faces a rising wave of militant attacks rivaling the sectarian bloodshed that followed the American-led invasion in 2003, the United Nations said Saturday.
The figures issued by the United Nations’ mission to Iraq is close to January’s death toll of 733, showing that a surge of violence that began 10 months ago with a government crackdown on a Sunni protest camp is not receding. Meanwhile, attacks on Saturday killed at least five people and wounded 14, the authorities said.
Attacks in February killed 564 civilians and 139 security force members, the United Nations said. The violence wounded 1,381, the vast majority civilians, it said. In February 2013, attacks killed 418 civilians and wounded 704.
The capital, Baghdad, was the worst affected with 239 people killed, according to the United Nations. Two predominantly Sunni provinces — central Salahuddin with 121 killed and northern Nineveh with 94 killed — followed.
The United Nations mission chief, Nickolay Mladenov, appealed to Iraqis to stop the violence.
However, Gai, the former Governor of South Sudan’s Unity state, said that it was not possible to compare the number of civilians killed in rebel-controlled areas to the “numbers killed in Juba” at the start of the conflict.
S. Sudan rebels admit to killing civilians following human rights report
March 2, 2014 (ADDIS ABABA) – Following a report by Human Rights Watch, which accused both rebel and government armed forces in the South Sudanese conflict of committing serious abuses during recent fighting, anti-government forces have admitted that civilians have been killed in the areas under their control.
- Seyoum Mesfin (L), chairperson of IGAD meditors, and Taban Deng Gai SPLM In Opposition chief negotiator attend the resumption of South Sudan talks in Addis Ababa Feb 11, 2014 (Photo Reuters/Tiksa Negeri)
Taban Deng Gai, the rebel’s chief negotiator at the peace talks in Ethiopia, told Sudan Tribune that the SPLM-in-Opposition “are not denying innocent persons lost life in Malakal, Bentiu or Bor,” the state capitals of Upper Nile, Unity and Jonglei respectively.
He said that if any of individuals from the SPLM/A-in-Opposition were implicated in war crimes then they “shall face the law”.
However, Gai, the former Governor of South Sudan’s Unity state, said that it was not possible to compare the number of civilians killed in rebel-controlled areas to the “numbers killed in Juba” at the start of the conflict.
On December 15 fighting broke out between members of the Presidential Guard in the capital following weeks of tension within the ruling SPLM.
In the days that followed soldiers members of the army and security services targeted people from the Nuer ethnic group, the tribe of Riek Machar the former Vice President, who the government accuses of attempting to overthrow President Salva Kiir.
Officials: 2 Tribesmen, Colonel Killed in Yemen
A government official says gunmen have ambushed a colonel in the security forces in central Yemen, killing him and wounding his guard.
The official said the colonel was traveling by vehicle Sunday on the outskirts of the city of Radaa, south of Sanaa.
Meanwhile, armed tribesmen clashed with security forces on the southern edge of Sanaa, leaving two gunmen dead and three soldiers wounded, another official said. The official said the clashes erupted when the force attempted to prevent the tribesmen from entering Sanaa with guns, in line with a government policy to limit weapons in the capital. The official called the tribesmen’s attempt to enter Sanaa a “provocation.”
Yemen army plane makes emergency landing, crew abducted
MARCH 2, 2014
A boy sells pictures of Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, the eldest son of Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh at the historic site of Bab al-Yemen, in Sanaa February 10, 2014. — Reuters picADEN, March 2 — Anti-government tribesmen kidnapped the six crew members of a Yemeni military plane today after it made an emergency landing in an eastern desert for technical reasons, military and local sources said.
The aircraft, a Russian-made Antonov-26 twin-engine turboprob, was carrying supplies from Sanaa to Masila oilfields in the east when a technical glitch forced it to land in Hadramawt province, said General Khaled al-Kothairi, who heads a military unit tasked with protecting oil companies.
The pilot, co-pilot, and four soldiers who were on board the aircraft, are safe, he said.
But another military official said that as soon as the jet landed, armed tribesmen captured the crew and a local government official confirmed they were abducted.
“Contacts are underway with the gunmen to secure the release of the crew and allow the army to repair the aircraft and return it to Sanaa,” the military official said.
A day after Taliban ceasefire: jets bomb Taliban hideout; five killed
- March 03, 2014
PESHAWAR: Warplanes bombed the hideout of a militant leader, killing five insurgents, the military said on Sunday, only a day after the Pakistani Taliban declared a one-month ceasefire to pursue stalled peace talks with the government.
The target of the attack, Mullah Tamanchey, directed a deadly assault against a convoy carrying a polio vaccination team and security forces on Saturday in which 12 people were killed, the military said. “The government is not going to tolerate any act of terror and any act will be replied to,” said a Pakistani security official who asked not to be identified. Hours after the attack on the convoy, the Taliban had said they would observe a one-month ceasefire to try to revive peace talks that failed last month.
It also called on other militant groups to observe the ceasefire. A government negotiator told Reuters they were open to restarting peace talks as long as the Taliban and its affiliates honoured the ceasefire. Tahir Ashrafi, head of the country’s largest alliance of clerics, said that the Taliban should release kidnap victims, safeguard polio workers and produce the bodies of slain paramilitary forces to demonstrate their sincerity.
