Archive for month: October, 2014

A bomb explosion in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta has claimed the lives of three people and injured over a dozen.

An assailant attacked a rally held by supporters of the Pakistani religious and political party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), in Quetta, the capital city of violence-ravaged Balochistan Province, on Thursday.

According to reports, the leader of the party, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, was the target of the bomb attack. However, he managed to escape the deadly incident.

“I was in a bulletproof car and that’s why I survived…. My car was badly damaged, almost destroyed. The windscreen of my car was completely cracked, we received a big shock but me and friends inside the car are safe and alive,” said Rehman, who chairs the biggest religious party in the Pakistani parliament.

Earlier in the day, unidentified armed men opened fire on Shia Muslims on the outskirts of Quetta just days before the Shia holy month of Muharram.

“At least nine Hazara Shiites were sitting in a minibus after buying vegetables when two gunmen opened fire on them with automatic weapons, killing eight of them and wounding another one,” said the senior local police official, Imran Qureshi.

No group has claimed responsibility for either of the deadly attacks.

Thousands of Pakistanis have lost their lives in bombings and other militant attacks since 2001, when Pakistan entered an alliance with the United States in the so-called war on terror.

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Doubts have risen about Israel living up to the pledges it made under a ceasefire deal that brought an end to its recent onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.

Under the ceasefire agreement, the Israeli regime pledged to allow activities for the reconstruction of Gaza, which was heavily damaged during Tel Aviv’s 50-day war on the coastal sliver.

However, latest reports cast doubt on Israel keeping its pledges.

With the cold days of winter approaching, more than 100,000 Gaza residents are still homeless. According to reports, Israel has only delivered some 400 tons of cement in a single shipment to the besieged enclave.

This comes as international donors have pledged USD 5.4 billion toward the rebuilding of Gaza.

The truce also stipulates the removal of the Israeli blockade as well as the provision of a guarantee that Palestinian demands be met. However, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas said earlier this week that Gaza was “running out of patience” with Israel over the blockade of the Palestinian territory.

“The international community must intervene to commit Israel to lifting the siege and begin rebuilding Gaza,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on Tuesday.

The Israeli regime started a war on the impoverished Gaza Strip on July 8, which killed over 2,100 and injured 11,000 others. The Israeli war ended on August 26 with a truce that took effect after negotiations in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo.

A new round of talks between Palestinians and Israelis are expected to be held within a week.

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Turkey says it will allow 200 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters from Iraq to cross its border into Syria’s restive border town of Kobani to assist in the battle against ISIL.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that the regional administration in northern Iraq and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian Kurdish group, finally reached an agreement “according to information yesterday that 200 Peshmerga would be going” to Kobani.

The Turkish president also commented on a move by the United States to air drop weapons meant for the Kurdish fighters in the town, warning that some of the arms ended up in the hands of the ISIL Takfiri terrorists.

Meanwhile, Peshmerga spokesman, Halgurd Hikmat, said preparations to send the Iraqi Kurds to Kobani are underway, but the transport would not take place on Thursday.

The Peshmerga forces are due to be equipped with heavier weapons than those being used by local Kurdish fighters in Kobani.

Turkey had earlier announced its plan for the Kurdish forces from Iraq to cross into Syria for combat in Kobani.

The flashpoint town and its surroundings have been under attack since mid-September, with the ISIL militants capturing dozens of nearby Kurdish villages.

There are an estimated 2,000 Kurdish fighters operating in the battle for Kobani.

The ISIL advance in the region has forced thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee into Turkey, which is a stone’s throw from the strategic town.

Turkey continues to block any delivery of military, medical or humanitarian assistance to Kobani, where the ISIL terrorists are feared to be aiming at massive bloodletting.

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Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has called on the opposition to take part in national reconciliation talks ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

“Dialogue is the only way to solve the problems about power sharing,” said Bashir in an address to the Sudanese congress on Thursday.

Bashir called on opposition groups from different regions of the country, including the violence-stricken Darfur, to come to the negotiation table and “respond to the nation’s call and to participate in the dialogue in order to achieve consensus.”

Bashir stated that the Sudanese people are tired of years of violence and economic hardship following the secession of South Sudan in 2011.

“We faced the division from South Sudan, which had a negative impact on our economy and (caused) a shortage of resources,” said the North African country’s president in reference to the 2011 peace deal which extricated the oil-rich South Sudan from Khartoum’s rule and put an end to 22 years of deadly civil strife.

Bashir’s recent comments come one day after the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) re-nominated Sudan’s incumbent president for another term in office. The Sudanese presidential election is due next April.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) says the number of people diagnosed with Ebola is likely to soar to 10,000 in West Africa.

The UN’s public health body said on Wednesday that more than 9,930 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which are the three countries worst hit by the epidemic, have contracted the disease.

Ebola has so far claimed nearly 4,880 lives.

The WHO figures come as experts have warned that the rate of infection could face a major increase by early December.

The organization said after an emergency meeting on the deadly virus that the situation in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone “remains of great concern,” describing the epidemic as “a public health emergency of international concern.”

Keiji Fukuda, the WHO deputy chief, said 600 international experts have been sent to the West African region in recent weeks. He also touched upon major efforts to “break the chain of transmission” via establishing special Ebola wards.

“But it has been terrifically difficult to get enough health workers — both domestic health workers as well as international health workers — and this continues to be one of the major challenges,” Fukuda stated.

A total of 244 health workers out of 443 cases have succumbed to the disease across the affected countries.

Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces or sweat. It can be also spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses. There is currently no known cure for Ebola.

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