11 Apr 2011 08:41
Source: reuters // Reuters
ISLAMABAD, April 11 (Reuters) - The head of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is visiting his counterpart at the CIA, the agency said on Monday, in an attempt to patch up an alliance considered crucial to winning the war against al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.
Lieutenant-general Ahmad Shuja Pasha's visit comes at a time when U.S.-Pakistan joint intelligence operations have been disrupted over a series of disputes, particularly the case of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who shot dead two Pakistanis in the eastern city of Lahore in January.[ID:nL3E7F908B.
Pakistan held Davis despite U.S. insistence that he enjoyed diplomatic immunity. He was released last month after the families of the dead men were paid compensation, a custom in Pakistan and sanctioned in Islam.
The ISI offered no details on Pasha's trip which also comes days after the Pakistani government extended his tenure for the second time to ensure continuity.
Pasha is generally seen as getting on well with his U.S. counterparts, but he has faced personal embarrassment after families of the victims of the Mumbai 2008 attacks named him and other ISI operatives in three lawsuits filed before a federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
The suits allege that the ISI officers were involved with Lashkar e Taiba (LeT), an anti-India militant group, in planning and orchestrating the Mumbai attacks in which U.S citizens were among the victims.
Pakistan's government has said it will "strongly contest" the litigation. (Created by Chris Allbritton; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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Policemen remove explosives from a suicide bomber as he lies severely injured at the site of the attack in Dera Ghazi Khan on Sunday. PHOTO: REUTERS
DERA GHAZI KHAN:
At least 44 people have been killed and 120 wounded in a double suicide bomb attack at a shrine in this central Punjab district on Sunday.
The bombers struck outside the shrine of the 13th century Sufi saint Ahmed Sultan, popularly known as Sakhi Sarwar.
Thousands of devotees had gathered for the annual urs celebrations at the shrine, sited some 40 kilometres away from Dera Ghazi Khan city, when the attacks took place.
“We have recovered 44 bodies so far,” said local police officer Zahid Hussain Shah, adding that more than 100 were wounded. “Both were suicide attackers, they came on foot and blew themselves up when police on duty stopped them.”
Many of those wounded in the attacks were in a serious condition, he said.
“It was around 5pm. Devotees were performing devotional dance at the main entrance to the shrine when a teenager detonated the explosives strapped to his body,” an eyewitness told the Daily Express. “Around 15 minutes later another suicide bomber struck at the staircase of the shrine,” he said. “Bodies were scattered all over and the injured people were crying for help,” added another witness.
Regional Police Officer (RPO) Ahmed Mubarak confirmed that two suicide bombers tried to enter the shrine but failed and blew themselves up.
Police officer Shah claimed that they have arrested a third suspected suicide bomber, identified as Fida Hussain, a 15- to 16-year-old Afghan refugee from the tribal belt.
According to eyewitnesses, after the bombings, devotees were running in panic. The bomber ran into an elderly woman devotee and a hand grenade dropped from his hand. The woman raised alarm and some policeman standing nearby opened fire on him.
Police said the bomber was injured and could not detonate his suicide vest. Later, police arrested him and defused his suicide jacket.
Police also recovered the severed head of one of the numbers and also found a school card nearby. The card identifies the bomber as Abdullah, son of Noorullah, resident of Mirali in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The injured were ferried to different hospitals in Dera Ghazi Khan and Multan where a state of emergency was declared.
Dera Ghazi Khan’s commissioner confirmed the casualties saying that the death toll could rise as some of the injured are in a critical condition.
A police official, requesting anonymity, said the shrine had received threats from unidentified militants.
Shrines of Sufi saints, who follow the mystical dimension of Islam, have increasingly been the target of bloody attacks by militants in the country.
No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but extremists, including the Taliban, are vehemently opposed to the Sufi strand of Islam and consider their shrines to be idolatrous.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani condemned the blasts, saying that “such cowardly acts of terror clearly demonstrate that the culprits involved neither have any faith nor any belief in human values”.
“Such violent acts only seem to be conspiracy to divide the society and create fear,” said a statement issued by the prime minister’s office.
He directed the law-enforcement agencies to investigate the incident and apprehend the terrorists.
With additional input from wires
Published in The Express Tribune, April 4th, 2011.
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03 Apr 2011 16:16
Source: reuters // Reuters
(Updates death toll, adds detail)
By Asim Tanveer
MULTAN, Pakistan, April 3 (Reuters) - Two Taliban suicide bombers caused carnage on Sunday at a Sufi shrine in eastern Pakistan, killing at least 41 people and wounding scores in the latest bloody attack on minority religious groups.
"These were suicide bombings and we arrested an attacker who could not completely detonate the explosives on his body. He was wounded," Zahid Ali, a police officer in Dera Ghazi Khan city where the blasts took place, told Reuters by telephone.
Police said some 65 people were wounded. They said the attackers struck during an annual ceremony for the Sufi saint to whom the shrine is dedicated.
"I was just a few yards away from the place where the blast happened," said witness Faisal Iqbal.
"People started running outside the shrine. Women and children were crying and screaming. It was like hell."
Taliban militants, who follow an austere interpretation of Sunni Islam, condemn other interpretations of Islam as heretical and have launched repeated attacks on the country's Shi'ite, Sufi and Christian minorities. They claimed responsibility for Sunday's suicide bombings.
"Our men carried out these attacks and we will carry out more in retaliation for government operations against our people in the northwest," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Last October, a bomb blast at a Sufi shrine in another eastern city, Pak Pattan, killed six people. In July, 42 people were killed in a bomb attack in Pakistan's most important Sufi shrine, in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province.
Many analysts say the attacks are motivated by more than religious hatred, and that militant groups hope by inflaming sectarian tensions they can further destabilise Pakistan and weaken the government's tenuous grip on the country. (Additional reporting by Kamran Haider and Mubasher Bokhari, writing by Andrew Marshall, editing by Daniel Magnowski)
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Sakhi Sarwar Shrine: 30 killed, 100 injured in three blasts
Sakhi Sarwar Shrine: 30 killed, 100 injured in three blasts At least thirty people were killed and hundred were injured in three blasts at Sakhi Sarwar Shrine.
According to sources, the first blast was occurred near the main gate of the shrine and the second was occurred near the shrine in Dera Ghazi Khan on Sunday.
Rescue operation has started. The injured and dead bodies were being shifted to Multan and nearby hospitals.
Police have arrested two suspects outside the shrine.
On the other hand, young doctors have ended the strike in Multan and Dera Ghazi Khan due to the blast. The Yong Doctors Association president has urged the doctors to join their duties immediately.
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Intelligence warning: Hizb ut-Tahrir planned ‘Arab spring’ in Pakistan
By Irfan Ghauri / Zia Khan
Published: July 25, 2011
Classified report says the radical group sought to recruit ‘like-minded’ military officers to its cause. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE
ISLAMABAD:
Several weeks before the military detained a group of senior officers for alleged links with the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir earlier this year, the country’s intelligence agencies warned that the banned organisation was planning an Egypt-style uprising in Pakistan by seeking support from ‘like-minded’ elements within the armed forces.
In a correspondence among the Punjab police, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the government in April this year, made available to The Express Tribune, there was a clear warning of the outfit attempting a ‘deep infiltration’ of the military and academia.
Wary of its burgeoning network and in what appeared to be an early warning of the group’s growing influence, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) of the police called for taking ‘appropriate’ steps to control the group that calls for establishing a caliphate in Pakistan by overthrowing the government.
“All were forewarned about what was coming,” an official told The Express Tribune on Sunday about the letter.
Officials said the arrest of Brigadier Ali Khan and four hitherto unknown majors in May came after months of such correspondence between various law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, hinting at ‘suspicious’ activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir activists and their possible collaboration with military personnel, particularly in Punjab.
The brigadier and majors are still in the military’s custody and might face a court martial for ‘inciting fellow officers for a mutiny’.
The crucial letter urged law-enforcement officials to take ‘preventive or pre-emptive measures’ to avert any untoward incident and make efforts to “identify and apprehend the miscreants before they succeed in their nefarious designs.”
According to the document, Hizb ut-Tahrir was working on a plan to seek an uprising in Pakistan similar to ones in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year. “They wanted an Arab spring in Pakistan,” said an official familiar with the letter.
Hizb ut-Tahrir had regularly been distributing pamphlets and leaflets in middle and upper-middle class residential areas of large cities. This activity gained momentum after the successful uprising in Tunisia.
In its pamphlets, Hizb ut-Tahrir specifically addressed the armed forces, urging military personnel and the general public, especially the youth, to make a concerted effort to get rid of the government, citing the example of Tunisia.
The pamphlets also sought to utilise the public’s anti-American sentiments, inciting them against what it called the ‘pro-American’ generals who they said had engaged a ‘Muslim’ army in a war with their fellow brothers in the tribal areas at the behest of the United States.
Intelligence agencies warned that Hizbut Tahrir was trying to mobilise public opinion in favour of establishing a caliphate in Pakistan by overthrowing the government. As a first step towards their proposed revolution, they want to have an Arab-style uprising which would have the support of the armed forces.
If the organisation could not get generals to support its plans at the institutional level, it would seek officers who were supportive of its ideology to carry out its mission in an individual capacity.
After the arrest of serving army officers for their alleged links with Hizb ut-Tahrir, the government also detained some office bearers of the banned group.
Hizb ut-Tahrir has launched a campaign for their release, with posters seen on walls in different parts of Islamabad, condemning the arrests.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 25th, 2011.
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