*** More proof of the failure of Jihadi nutjobs: you have killed more in 2 weeks than NATO has done in two MONTHs. Oh yes, Rasullullah would be so proud! I'm SURE this is what he (SallAllahu alayhi wa sallam) had in mind. Amazing the audacity to think you can get away with this level of killing - something that holds true for all parties to conflict. MS ***
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100917/world/as_pakistan
PARACHINAR, Pakistan - A Pakistani police official says fighting between two tribes near the border with Afghanistan has killed 102 people over the last two weeks.
Jalil Khan says 48 people died Friday in the dispute over access to water in the Kurram region.
There have been frequent bouts of deadly tribal and sectarian fighting in the region over the last few years.
Khan says one tribe consists of minority Shia Muslims while the other is Sunni.
Kurram and other parts of the border region are also home to Sunni Islamist militants and al-Qaida.
Some reports from the remote region have said the militants may have a role in the conflict.
Showing posts with label Muslims killed in Pakistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslims killed in Pakistan. Show all posts
Friday, September 17, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
PAKISTANI TALIBAN THREATEN ATTACKS IN U.S. & EUROPE.
*** If another attack against innocent people happens - the area where these guys operate is gonna be turned into glass. And, in WHICH universe could you justify the killing of children? Anyone who supports these animals should be similarly targetted for removal from the earth (the very punishment according to Shariah). MS ***
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's Taliban threatened on Friday to launch attacks in the United States and Europe "very soon."
The warning came after a renewal of militant violence in Pakistan this week that is piling pressure on a U.S.-backed government overwhelmed by the flood crisis.
"We will launch attacks in America and Europe very soon," Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior Pakistani Taliban leader and mentor of suicide bombers, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
A suicide bomber struck at a rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 54 people in the second major attack this week.
The attack on the Shi'ite rally expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people came as the United States said the devastating floods are likely to hold up army offensives against Taliban insurgents.
"Unfortunately the flooding in Pakistan is probably going to delay any operations by the Pakistani army in North Waziristan for some period of time," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Afghanistan where he is visiting U.S. troops.
Senior police official Hamid Shakeel told Reuters that at least 54 people were killed and about 160 wounded in Quetta.
Dozens of dead and wounded lay in pools of blood after the blast that also engulfed vehicles in flames.
Hours later, the al Qaeda-linked Taliban took responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for killings of radical Sunni clerics by Shi'ites, further challenging the unpopular civilian government. "We take pride in taking responsibility for the Quetta attack," Mehsud told Reuters.
Earlier in the day, the Taliban also claimed responsibility for bombings on Wednesday at a Shi'ite procession in the eastern city of Lahore in which at least 33 people died. These blasts were the first major attack since flood waters tore through the country. The Taliban and their allies often target religious minorities in a campaign to destabilize the government.
The Taliban said the U.S. decision to put it on its list of terrorist organizations was a sign of being scared.
Aside from its battles against homegrown Taliban, Pakistan is under intense American pressure to tackle Afghan Taliban fighters who cross the border into Pakistan's lawless tribal areas to attack U.S.-led NATO troops.
The United States has stepped up missile strikes by pilotless drone aircraft against militant targets in Pakistan's Pashtun tribal lands since the start of 2010. On Friday, U.S. drones fired missiles at two targets in North Waziristan tribal region, killing seven militants, including two foreigners, intelligence officials said.
Pakistan has said the army would decide when to carry out a full-fledged assault in North Waziristan, where Washington says anti-American militants enjoy safe havens, at the time it considers appropriate.
In another attack in the northwest, a suicide bomber killed one person outside a mosque of the Ahmadi sect, who consider themselves Muslims but whom Pakistan declares non-Muslims.
Attention has focused on the Pakistani Taliban again after U.S. prosecutors this week charged its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a plot that killed seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December.
Islamist charities, some of them linked to militant groups, have at the same time joined in the relief effort for the millions affected by the worst floods in the nation's history.
U.S. officials are concerned that the involvement of hardline groups in flood relief will undermine the fight against militancy in Pakistan as well Afghanistan.
ECONOMIC CRISIS
Anger is spreading over the government's sluggish response to the floods, raising the possibility of social unrest.
Pakistan is also facing economic catastrophe, with the floods causing damage the government has estimated at $43 billion, almost a quarter of the south Asian nation's 2009 GDP.
Some relief has come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It will give Pakistan $450 million in emergency flood aid and disburse funds in September to help the economy cope with the devastation.
Talks in Washington with a delegation led by Pakistan's Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on the terms of an $11 billion IMF loan program left him satisfied with the country's commitment to reforms, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.
Under the 2008 IMF loan program, Islamabad promised to implement tax and energy sector reforms and give full autonomy to the State Bank of Pakistan.
(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud, Haji Mujtaba, Zeeshan Haider and Augustine Anthony: Writing by Michael Georgy; editing by David Stamp)
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's Taliban threatened on Friday to launch attacks in the United States and Europe "very soon."
The warning came after a renewal of militant violence in Pakistan this week that is piling pressure on a U.S.-backed government overwhelmed by the flood crisis.
"We will launch attacks in America and Europe very soon," Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior Pakistani Taliban leader and mentor of suicide bombers, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
A suicide bomber struck at a rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 54 people in the second major attack this week.
The attack on the Shi'ite rally expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people came as the United States said the devastating floods are likely to hold up army offensives against Taliban insurgents.
"Unfortunately the flooding in Pakistan is probably going to delay any operations by the Pakistani army in North Waziristan for some period of time," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Afghanistan where he is visiting U.S. troops.
Senior police official Hamid Shakeel told Reuters that at least 54 people were killed and about 160 wounded in Quetta.
Dozens of dead and wounded lay in pools of blood after the blast that also engulfed vehicles in flames.
Hours later, the al Qaeda-linked Taliban took responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for killings of radical Sunni clerics by Shi'ites, further challenging the unpopular civilian government. "We take pride in taking responsibility for the Quetta attack," Mehsud told Reuters.
Earlier in the day, the Taliban also claimed responsibility for bombings on Wednesday at a Shi'ite procession in the eastern city of Lahore in which at least 33 people died. These blasts were the first major attack since flood waters tore through the country. The Taliban and their allies often target religious minorities in a campaign to destabilize the government.
The Taliban said the U.S. decision to put it on its list of terrorist organizations was a sign of being scared.
Aside from its battles against homegrown Taliban, Pakistan is under intense American pressure to tackle Afghan Taliban fighters who cross the border into Pakistan's lawless tribal areas to attack U.S.-led NATO troops.
The United States has stepped up missile strikes by pilotless drone aircraft against militant targets in Pakistan's Pashtun tribal lands since the start of 2010. On Friday, U.S. drones fired missiles at two targets in North Waziristan tribal region, killing seven militants, including two foreigners, intelligence officials said.
Pakistan has said the army would decide when to carry out a full-fledged assault in North Waziristan, where Washington says anti-American militants enjoy safe havens, at the time it considers appropriate.
In another attack in the northwest, a suicide bomber killed one person outside a mosque of the Ahmadi sect, who consider themselves Muslims but whom Pakistan declares non-Muslims.
Attention has focused on the Pakistani Taliban again after U.S. prosecutors this week charged its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a plot that killed seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December.
Islamist charities, some of them linked to militant groups, have at the same time joined in the relief effort for the millions affected by the worst floods in the nation's history.
U.S. officials are concerned that the involvement of hardline groups in flood relief will undermine the fight against militancy in Pakistan as well Afghanistan.
ECONOMIC CRISIS
Anger is spreading over the government's sluggish response to the floods, raising the possibility of social unrest.
Pakistan is also facing economic catastrophe, with the floods causing damage the government has estimated at $43 billion, almost a quarter of the south Asian nation's 2009 GDP.
Some relief has come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It will give Pakistan $450 million in emergency flood aid and disburse funds in September to help the economy cope with the devastation.
Talks in Washington with a delegation led by Pakistan's Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on the terms of an $11 billion IMF loan program left him satisfied with the country's commitment to reforms, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.
Under the 2008 IMF loan program, Islamabad promised to implement tax and energy sector reforms and give full autonomy to the State Bank of Pakistan.
(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud, Haji Mujtaba, Zeeshan Haider and Augustine Anthony: Writing by Michael Georgy; editing by David Stamp)
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
BLASTS KILL 25 WOUND OVER 170 IN PAKISTAN
*** Now what is more important, helping people from the results of floods or killing Shia's? What a twisted, twisted sense of priorities. I have only ONE question for these animals: WHAT plan do you have for the economy, for urban planning once this magical Islam-land fantasy state you have set up is created?
WHAT success have you brought the Ummah, ANYWHERE you have been active??? I am officially declaring Pakistan a failed state. MS ***
LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Three bombs exploded at a Shi'ite procession in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding over 170, piling pressure on a government already overwhelmed by floods.
Police said two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd, after a lull in violence during the floods, the type of attack that Pakistani Taliban militants have claimed in the past.
Sajjad Bhutta, a senior Lahore official, told Reuters the death toll had climbed to 20, with at least 170 wounded. Rescue services said 25 were killed.
Separately, the U.S. Justice Department said prosecutors had charged the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, for the plot that killed seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December.
Mehsud, believed to be in the tribal areas of Pakistan, was accused of conspiracy to kill Americans overseas and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, the Justice Department said. The charges confirm Pakistan's Taliban insurgents have extended their reach overseas.
Soon after the Lahore blasts, a mob set fire to a police station. People also beat policemen, witnesses said.
Pro-Taliban Sunni militants frequently attack Shi'ites as part of a campaign to destabilize the U.S.-backed government.
The renewed violence came as millions of Pakistanis continued to struggle for food and water more than a month after the worst floods in the country's history, deepening concerns over the stability of the country.
The floods have ravaged Pakistan's economy, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said, with massive job losses and soaring inflation expected to hurt a nation whose stability is vital to the U.S. war against militants in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"The floods have inflicted damage to the economy which may, by some estimates, reach $43 billion, while affecting 30 percent of all agricultural land," Gilani said briefing the cabinet.
Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with cotton the main cash crop. The sector is a major source of employment.
Facing the prospect of long-term economic pain, Pakistan hopes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will soften the terms of an $11 billion loan. Pakistani and IMF officials are meeting in Washington to work out the impact of the floods.
"This economic loss will translate into massive job losses affecting incomes of thousands of families, which may have serious social implications," said Gilani, whose government was heavily criticized for its slow response to the catastrophe.
Pakistan's military has taken charge of relief efforts, but Islamist charities, some linked to militant groups, have also stepped in, raising concerns they may exploit public anger.
BLACKLIST
The United States on Wednesday formally added Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, to its blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations subject to travel and economic sanctions.
The TTP is the main Pakistani militant alliance which operates from Pakistan's northwest. It is suspected of being behind most bomb and suicide attacks across Pakistan.
Before the floods struck a vast swath of the country, the army said it had scored major gains against the Taliban. In renewed air strikes in the northwest, Pakistani forces killed up to 62 militants, their family members and other civilians with no ties to the fighters, officials said on Wednesday.
Washington has repeatedly urged Pakistan to go after militant sanctuaries in the northwest saying these have helped boost the Afghan insurgency, now at its deadliest. Pakistan says it is doing all it can to fight the militants.
Testing ties further, Pakistan's army said on Wednesday it scrapped talks with U.S. military officials after a military delegation sent to Washington had to go through "unwarranted" airport security checks.
British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said it could take Pakistan years to recover from the floods with threats from water-borne disease and opportunistic militants. "The danger always is that you get groups who have an ulterior motive who provide aid to try to curry favor," he said after visiting an aid camp.
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Augustine Anthony in Islamabad and Chris Allbritton and Rebecca Conway in Pabbi, Svetlana Kovalyova in Milan and Andrew Quinn and Jeremy Pelofsky,in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; editing by Noah Barkin)
WHAT success have you brought the Ummah, ANYWHERE you have been active??? I am officially declaring Pakistan a failed state. MS ***
LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Three bombs exploded at a Shi'ite procession in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding over 170, piling pressure on a government already overwhelmed by floods.
Police said two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd, after a lull in violence during the floods, the type of attack that Pakistani Taliban militants have claimed in the past.
Sajjad Bhutta, a senior Lahore official, told Reuters the death toll had climbed to 20, with at least 170 wounded. Rescue services said 25 were killed.
Separately, the U.S. Justice Department said prosecutors had charged the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, for the plot that killed seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December.
Mehsud, believed to be in the tribal areas of Pakistan, was accused of conspiracy to kill Americans overseas and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, the Justice Department said. The charges confirm Pakistan's Taliban insurgents have extended their reach overseas.
Soon after the Lahore blasts, a mob set fire to a police station. People also beat policemen, witnesses said.
Pro-Taliban Sunni militants frequently attack Shi'ites as part of a campaign to destabilize the U.S.-backed government.
The renewed violence came as millions of Pakistanis continued to struggle for food and water more than a month after the worst floods in the country's history, deepening concerns over the stability of the country.
The floods have ravaged Pakistan's economy, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said, with massive job losses and soaring inflation expected to hurt a nation whose stability is vital to the U.S. war against militants in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"The floods have inflicted damage to the economy which may, by some estimates, reach $43 billion, while affecting 30 percent of all agricultural land," Gilani said briefing the cabinet.
Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with cotton the main cash crop. The sector is a major source of employment.
Facing the prospect of long-term economic pain, Pakistan hopes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will soften the terms of an $11 billion loan. Pakistani and IMF officials are meeting in Washington to work out the impact of the floods.
"This economic loss will translate into massive job losses affecting incomes of thousands of families, which may have serious social implications," said Gilani, whose government was heavily criticized for its slow response to the catastrophe.
Pakistan's military has taken charge of relief efforts, but Islamist charities, some linked to militant groups, have also stepped in, raising concerns they may exploit public anger.
BLACKLIST
The United States on Wednesday formally added Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, to its blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations subject to travel and economic sanctions.
The TTP is the main Pakistani militant alliance which operates from Pakistan's northwest. It is suspected of being behind most bomb and suicide attacks across Pakistan.
Before the floods struck a vast swath of the country, the army said it had scored major gains against the Taliban. In renewed air strikes in the northwest, Pakistani forces killed up to 62 militants, their family members and other civilians with no ties to the fighters, officials said on Wednesday.
Washington has repeatedly urged Pakistan to go after militant sanctuaries in the northwest saying these have helped boost the Afghan insurgency, now at its deadliest. Pakistan says it is doing all it can to fight the militants.
Testing ties further, Pakistan's army said on Wednesday it scrapped talks with U.S. military officials after a military delegation sent to Washington had to go through "unwarranted" airport security checks.
British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said it could take Pakistan years to recover from the floods with threats from water-borne disease and opportunistic militants. "The danger always is that you get groups who have an ulterior motive who provide aid to try to curry favor," he said after visiting an aid camp.
(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Augustine Anthony in Islamabad and Chris Allbritton and Rebecca Conway in Pabbi, Svetlana Kovalyova in Milan and Andrew Quinn and Jeremy Pelofsky,in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; editing by Noah Barkin)
Friday, January 1, 2010
MORE MUSLIMS KILLED BY PAKISTANI TALIBAN
FROM: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100101/n_top_news/cnews_us_pakistan
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up in an SUV at a volleyball game in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing 75 people in a village that opposes al Qaeda-linked Taliban insurgents, police said.
The bomber struck as young men played volleyball in front of a crowd of spectators, including elderly residents and children, near the town of Lakki Marwat, officials said.
The bloodshed will put President Asif Ali Zardari's efforts to fight the Taliban under greater scrutiny, pressure he does not need at a time when corruption cases against his allies could be revived.
"It's just a disaster. I can see flesh, bodies and wounded all around," Fazl-e-Akbar, a witness, told Reuters by telephone. "It's dark. Vehicles' headlights are being used to search for victims."
Local police chief Ayub Khan said the bomber blew himself up in his sport utility vehicle in the middle of the field. A second vehicle was believed to have fled the scene.
"We have removed all bodies and wounded from the rubble and now the total death toll is 75, while 42 wounded were wounded," he told Reuters by telephone.
It was one of the bloodiest bombings in U.S. ally Pakistan since the October 2007 attack that killed at least 139 people when former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Zardari's wife, returned home from self-imposed exile.
An attack on a sporting event is highly unusual, but could be part of the militants' strategy of bombing crowded areas such as markets to inflict mass casualties and spread fear and chaos.
VILLAGE MILITIA
Police said the village had formed an armed anti-Taliban militia, a phenomenon that started in Pakistan last year.
Despite major military offensives against their strongholds, the Taliban have killed hundreds of people in bombings.
Britain's Foreign Office described the attack as horrific and said it underlined the urgent need to fight extremism.
"It is a threat that the international community must help Pakistan to tackle, in the interests both of Pakistan's people and of wider stability," it said in a statement.
In a sign of growing security fears, the United Nations will withdraw some of its staff from Pakistan because of safety concerns, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Thursday.
"We have got to be on the offensive and launch precise strikes on (militant) training centres and hideouts. They're losing the battle. Nobody in our society supports them," North West Frontier Province's information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, told Reuters.
Violence has intensified since July 2007 when the army cleared militants from a radical mosque in Islamabad.
MILITARY CALLS SHOTS
Zardari's options are limited. Security policies are set by Pakistan's all-powerful military, which nurtured militants in the 1980s to fight Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan.
Washington wants Pakistan to root out militants who cross into Afghanistan to attack U.S.- and NATO-led troops. But doing so would require strategic sacrifices. Pakistan sees them as leverage against arch-enemy India in Afghanistan.
Washington, frustrated by what it says are inadequate efforts to wipe out the militants, has stepped up pilotless U.S. drone aircraft attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan.
While the strikes killed high-profile figures, they have also generated anti-American anger, making it difficult for Zardari to accommodate his U.S. supporters. (MS: But no anti-Taliban sentiment when Muslims are killed by them?)
The latest attack came on a day of strikes in the southern city of Karachi, the country's biggest and its commercial capital, to denounce violence gripping the nuclear-armed nation.
The strikes were called by religious and political leaders after a suicide bomber killed 43 people at a religious procession on Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility and threatened more violence.
"They are hired assassins. They are enemies of Pakistan. They are enemies of Islam," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters on a trip to Karachi to show support for residents.
Security forces carried out patrols. But residents were taking no chances.
"We are already losing business and can't take the risk of going out today and opening our shops," said Saleem Ahmed, who sells electronics at one of the city's markets.
(Additional reporting by Faisal Aziz in Karachi and Alamgir Bitani in Peshawar; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
*** Tell me about the Khilafa now, of Shariah O Noble Muslim warriors - how it was accomplished over piles of dead Muslims. MS ***
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up in an SUV at a volleyball game in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing 75 people in a village that opposes al Qaeda-linked Taliban insurgents, police said.
The bomber struck as young men played volleyball in front of a crowd of spectators, including elderly residents and children, near the town of Lakki Marwat, officials said.
The bloodshed will put President Asif Ali Zardari's efforts to fight the Taliban under greater scrutiny, pressure he does not need at a time when corruption cases against his allies could be revived.
"It's just a disaster. I can see flesh, bodies and wounded all around," Fazl-e-Akbar, a witness, told Reuters by telephone. "It's dark. Vehicles' headlights are being used to search for victims."
Local police chief Ayub Khan said the bomber blew himself up in his sport utility vehicle in the middle of the field. A second vehicle was believed to have fled the scene.
"We have removed all bodies and wounded from the rubble and now the total death toll is 75, while 42 wounded were wounded," he told Reuters by telephone.
It was one of the bloodiest bombings in U.S. ally Pakistan since the October 2007 attack that killed at least 139 people when former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Zardari's wife, returned home from self-imposed exile.
An attack on a sporting event is highly unusual, but could be part of the militants' strategy of bombing crowded areas such as markets to inflict mass casualties and spread fear and chaos.
VILLAGE MILITIA
Police said the village had formed an armed anti-Taliban militia, a phenomenon that started in Pakistan last year.
Despite major military offensives against their strongholds, the Taliban have killed hundreds of people in bombings.
Britain's Foreign Office described the attack as horrific and said it underlined the urgent need to fight extremism.
"It is a threat that the international community must help Pakistan to tackle, in the interests both of Pakistan's people and of wider stability," it said in a statement.
In a sign of growing security fears, the United Nations will withdraw some of its staff from Pakistan because of safety concerns, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Thursday.
"We have got to be on the offensive and launch precise strikes on (militant) training centres and hideouts. They're losing the battle. Nobody in our society supports them," North West Frontier Province's information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, told Reuters.
Violence has intensified since July 2007 when the army cleared militants from a radical mosque in Islamabad.
MILITARY CALLS SHOTS
Zardari's options are limited. Security policies are set by Pakistan's all-powerful military, which nurtured militants in the 1980s to fight Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan.
Washington wants Pakistan to root out militants who cross into Afghanistan to attack U.S.- and NATO-led troops. But doing so would require strategic sacrifices. Pakistan sees them as leverage against arch-enemy India in Afghanistan.
Washington, frustrated by what it says are inadequate efforts to wipe out the militants, has stepped up pilotless U.S. drone aircraft attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan.
While the strikes killed high-profile figures, they have also generated anti-American anger, making it difficult for Zardari to accommodate his U.S. supporters. (MS: But no anti-Taliban sentiment when Muslims are killed by them?)
The latest attack came on a day of strikes in the southern city of Karachi, the country's biggest and its commercial capital, to denounce violence gripping the nuclear-armed nation.
The strikes were called by religious and political leaders after a suicide bomber killed 43 people at a religious procession on Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility and threatened more violence.
"They are hired assassins. They are enemies of Pakistan. They are enemies of Islam," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters on a trip to Karachi to show support for residents.
Security forces carried out patrols. But residents were taking no chances.
"We are already losing business and can't take the risk of going out today and opening our shops," said Saleem Ahmed, who sells electronics at one of the city's markets.
(Additional reporting by Faisal Aziz in Karachi and Alamgir Bitani in Peshawar; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
*** Tell me about the Khilafa now, of Shariah O Noble Muslim warriors - how it was accomplished over piles of dead Muslims. MS ***
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
KILLING MORE MUSLIMS IN PAKISTAN - DECLARING THE CALIPHATE WITH DETONATIONS?!
FROM: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/091230/world/international_us_pakistan_violence
KARACHI (Reuters) - Pakistan's Taliban on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 43 people in the commercial capital Karachi, and threatened more attacks on the U.S. ally.
"My group claims responsibility for the Karachi attack and we will carry out more such attacks, within 10 days," said Asmatullah Shaheen, one of the commanders of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, who spoke by telephone to a Reuters reporter in Peshawar.
The prospect of more violence comes at a tricky time for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who already faces political heat because corruption charges against some of his aides may be revived.
And Zardari has yet to formulate a more effective strategy against the Pakistani Taliban, despite relentless pressure from Washington, which wants his government to root out militants who cross over to attack U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan and then return to their Pakistan strongholds.
The scale of his troubles were clear on Monday, when a suicide bomber defied heavy security around a Shi'ite procession in Karachi, killing 43 people and triggering riots.
In a sign of mounting frustrations, Karachi religious and political leaders called for a strike for Friday to condemn that attack, one of the worst in the city since 2007.
HUNDREDS KILLED
The bloodshed illustrated how the Taliban, whose strongholds are in the tribal, lawless northwest, have extended their reach to major cities in their drive to topple the government.
More than a dozen factions based in different parts of northwest Pakistan formed the TTP, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, a loose umbrella group, in late 2007.
Taliban bombings have killed hundreds of people since October, despite a major army offensive against them, and attacks by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft.
Shaheen heads one of the group in the TTP. The government has put a 10 million rupees ($120,000) price on his head.
The Taliban have infuriated many Pakistanis with public hangings and whippings of those who disobey their hardline brand of Islam.
But Zardari's ties with Washington are also deeply unpopular. The Karachi bomb suggested growing violence has raised suspicions of Pakistan's government.
"The organized way that all this is being done clearly shows that the terrorists are being sponsored either by the government itself or some other state that wants to destabilize Pakistan," said Noman Ahmed, who works for a Karachi clearing agency.
Pakistan's all-powerful military sets security policy. So the key gauge of public confidence may be how the army's performance is viewed. In the 1980s, it nurtured militants who fought Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan. Then the Taliban emerged in the 1990's after a civil war tore apart Afghanistan.
Now Pakistan's army faces brazen homegrown militants. If it does what Washington wants it to -- wipe out militants who operate in Afghanistan -- it may lose what is sees as vital leverage in Afghanistan when U.S. troops pull out.
"I don't buy that foreign hands are involved (in the Karachi attack). They're domestic elements. They're those who were nurtured, trained and protected in late 1990s," said Sajid Ali Naqvi, head of the influential Shi'ites' Islami Tehrik movement.
The bombing was one of the bloodiest in Karachi since an October 2007 attack on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on her return to the country that killed at least 139 people.
A murky network of Pakistani militants complicates the government's counter-insurgency efforts.
"The fact that they (Taliban) have accepted responsibility doesn't really mean they would have done it," said Mehmood Shah, former security chief in Pakistan's tribal areas.
"There are so many groups which are independent, yet when the Taliban come to know of such incidents, they take responsibility in order to take credit."
(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider, Augustine Anthony and Alamgir Bitani; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Alex Richardson)
*** Wonderful, just wonderful O Holiest Warriors of Allah. What would the Prophet Muhammad (SallAllahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) think about these tactics that have seen more Muslims die by Muslim hands in the name of Islam MUCH MORE than any drone strike or military assault could ever accomplish. MS ***
KARACHI (Reuters) - Pakistan's Taliban on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 43 people in the commercial capital Karachi, and threatened more attacks on the U.S. ally.
"My group claims responsibility for the Karachi attack and we will carry out more such attacks, within 10 days," said Asmatullah Shaheen, one of the commanders of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, who spoke by telephone to a Reuters reporter in Peshawar.
The prospect of more violence comes at a tricky time for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who already faces political heat because corruption charges against some of his aides may be revived.
And Zardari has yet to formulate a more effective strategy against the Pakistani Taliban, despite relentless pressure from Washington, which wants his government to root out militants who cross over to attack U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan and then return to their Pakistan strongholds.
The scale of his troubles were clear on Monday, when a suicide bomber defied heavy security around a Shi'ite procession in Karachi, killing 43 people and triggering riots.
In a sign of mounting frustrations, Karachi religious and political leaders called for a strike for Friday to condemn that attack, one of the worst in the city since 2007.
HUNDREDS KILLED
The bloodshed illustrated how the Taliban, whose strongholds are in the tribal, lawless northwest, have extended their reach to major cities in their drive to topple the government.
More than a dozen factions based in different parts of northwest Pakistan formed the TTP, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, a loose umbrella group, in late 2007.
Taliban bombings have killed hundreds of people since October, despite a major army offensive against them, and attacks by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft.
Shaheen heads one of the group in the TTP. The government has put a 10 million rupees ($120,000) price on his head.
The Taliban have infuriated many Pakistanis with public hangings and whippings of those who disobey their hardline brand of Islam.
But Zardari's ties with Washington are also deeply unpopular. The Karachi bomb suggested growing violence has raised suspicions of Pakistan's government.
"The organized way that all this is being done clearly shows that the terrorists are being sponsored either by the government itself or some other state that wants to destabilize Pakistan," said Noman Ahmed, who works for a Karachi clearing agency.
Pakistan's all-powerful military sets security policy. So the key gauge of public confidence may be how the army's performance is viewed. In the 1980s, it nurtured militants who fought Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan. Then the Taliban emerged in the 1990's after a civil war tore apart Afghanistan.
Now Pakistan's army faces brazen homegrown militants. If it does what Washington wants it to -- wipe out militants who operate in Afghanistan -- it may lose what is sees as vital leverage in Afghanistan when U.S. troops pull out.
"I don't buy that foreign hands are involved (in the Karachi attack). They're domestic elements. They're those who were nurtured, trained and protected in late 1990s," said Sajid Ali Naqvi, head of the influential Shi'ites' Islami Tehrik movement.
The bombing was one of the bloodiest in Karachi since an October 2007 attack on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on her return to the country that killed at least 139 people.
A murky network of Pakistani militants complicates the government's counter-insurgency efforts.
"The fact that they (Taliban) have accepted responsibility doesn't really mean they would have done it," said Mehmood Shah, former security chief in Pakistan's tribal areas.
"There are so many groups which are independent, yet when the Taliban come to know of such incidents, they take responsibility in order to take credit."
(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider, Augustine Anthony and Alamgir Bitani; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Alex Richardson)
*** Wonderful, just wonderful O Holiest Warriors of Allah. What would the Prophet Muhammad (SallAllahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) think about these tactics that have seen more Muslims die by Muslim hands in the name of Islam MUCH MORE than any drone strike or military assault could ever accomplish. MS ***
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