عظَّمَ الله اُجُورَنا بِمُصابِنا بِالحُسَيْنِ عَلَيْهِ السَّلامُ وَجَعَلَنا وَإِيّاكُمْ مِنَ الطَّالِبِينَ بِثَأْرِهِ مَعَ وَلِيِّهِ الإمام المَهْدِيِّ مِنْ آلِ مُحَمَّدٍ عَلَيْهِمْ، السَّلامُ .
يستحب الإكثار هذه الليله من قول:
اللّهُمَّ العَنْ أَوَّلَ ظالِمٍ ظَلَمَ حَقَّ مُحَمَّدٍ وَآلِ مُحَمَّدٍ وَآخِرَ تابِعٍ لَهُ عَلى ذلِكَ، اللّهُمَّ العَنْ العِصابَةَ الَّتِي جاهَدَتِ الحُسَيْنَ وَشايَعَتْ وَبايَعَتْ وَتابَعَتْ عَلى قَتْلِهِ اللّهُمَّ العَنْهُمْ جَميعاً .
لآ تنسوني من دُعآئِگم
Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:17:20 GMT
Separate bomb attacks have killed at least 33 Shia mourners and wounded 101 others across Iraq, police sources say.
"A car bomb was parked near a Shia pilgrims' procession inside the Nile area, and it killed 16 people, mostly women and children, and wounded 45 others," a police source told Reuters on Monday.
A second attack in the city involving two roadside bombs also left six people dead and 18 more wounded.
At least eleven people were also killed and another 38 wounded by a roadside bomb in the capital Baghdad.
The blasts occurred as Shia Muslims were marking the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (PBUH), the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
Scores of Iraqi civilians, army and police personnel have been targeted in bombing attacks across the country over the past few months.
The attacks are widely believed to have been carried out by foreign-linked elements in an effort to undermine public trust in Iraqi security forces ahead of the withdrawal of US forces.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has blamed foreign countries for inciting trouble in Iraq, saying that certain governments are “spending money and making efforts” to destabilize the country.
The US and Saudi Arabia are the two countries that have most often been cited by Iraqi political and community leaders as the states sponsoring terrorism in Iraq.
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ارتفاع حصيلة مفخخة الحلة الى 16 قتيلاً و30 جريحا
05/12/2011 05:01 م
Four killed in Afghan Mazar-i-Sharif bomb blast -- police
06 Dec 2011 07:56
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Four people were killed, including one Afghan soldier, when a bomb exploded in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Tuesday, a district police official said.
The bomb, which was carried on a bicycle, exploded near a mosque. Also on Tuesday, a suicide bomber attacked a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in central Kabul.
(Writing by Daniel Magnowski)
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Kabul attack kills up to 20, death toll seen rising
06 Dec 2011 08:05
KABUL, Dec 6 (Reuters) - A suicide attack on a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Kabul on Tuesday killed up to 20 people and injured five, a senior police official said, adding that the death toll was expected to rise.
Hundreds of people had gathered at the shrine to celebrate the festival of Ashura, which marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Hussein in the battle of Karbala in Iraq in the year 680. (Reporting by Mirwais Harooni, writing by Jan Harvey)
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Violence feared at Ahle Sunnat rally on Muharram 10
Shia leaders have condemned a plan by a Deobandi group to stage a rally starting at Lal Masjid in Islamabad on Muharram 10 as a provocation to sectarian violence and a threat to law and order.
The Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat (ASJ) issued a press release on Monday urging all Ahle Sunnat supporters to join the ‘Maddah Sahaba’ (Fans of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) Companions) rally starting at Lal Masjid and ending at the National Press Club.
Shia leaders described the ASJ as a “sectarian terrorist outfit” and urged the government to prevent the rally as it could result in violence.
“It is an open secret that the ASJ is just the Sipah-i-Sahaba under a new name and the government turns a blind eye to their activities,” said Maulana Muhammad Asghar Askari, deputy secretary general of the Majlis Wahdatul Muslimeen.
The Sipah-i-Sahaba, which has claimed responsibility for many acts of violence against Shias in the past, is proscribed as a terrorist outfit
Askari said that the ASJ rally was meant to fan anti-Shia sentiment.
“Last year they organised a similar rally where they shouted slogans declaring Shias to be non-Muslims. The federal and provincial governments are supposed to control such groups.”
He said that the Shia community in Islamabad was “very concerned”. He said the timing of the rally showed that its only purpose was to anger Shias.
Nusrat Shahani, the coordination secretary for Jamiatul Muntazir in Lahore, said that a rally by the “terrorist organisation” would fan sectarian hatred. “What are the law enforcement agencies doing? This terrorist group is holding a rally on the very day that the segment of society it targets holds most dear,” he said.
He added that the government appeared to have forgotten that Lal Masjid had become a “terrorist base” not long ago, and the violence and recriminations that followed the security operation to clear the mosque. “Now they are letting it become a base for sectarian violence,” he said.
Shahani said that many mourning processions were planned for the day and there could be clashes between the ASJ supporters and Shias. “It is not a religious issue but a matter of law and order. Sunnis have never taken out s separate processions on Muharram 10. They participate in Shia processions to show solidarity,” he said.
ASJ Secretary General Maulana Munir Ahmed Muavia said that the Farooq-i-Azam Scouts, which he described as “a wing of ASJ security”, would guard the rally, which would start after Zuhr prayers. “We will definitely not change the time or route of the rally,” he said. “The government better not try to stop us. They should also provide us security, otherwise it will be proof that the government only provides security for one community,” he said.
ASJ Media Coordinator Obaidullah Usman said that last year, the Jamaat had rescheduled its rally from Muharram 10 to Muharram 12 on the government’s request, but it would not do so this year. “We don’t want to sabotage Shia rallies. The martyrs of Karbala belong to all Muslims and everyone has a right to pay homage to them,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 6th, 2011.
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Kabul blast kills 48, more than 100 injured -- police official
06 Dec 2011 09:42
KABUL, Dec 6 (Reuters) - At least 48 people, including women and children, were killed in Tuesday's suicide attack on a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the centre of the Afghan capital Kabul, chief of the city's criminal investigation department Mohammad Zahir said.
"48 civilians (were) killed and more than 100 wounded including women and children. It's not clear yet who carried out the attack. Nobody has claimed responsibility," he said, adding that the death toll may rise. (Reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Writing by Daniel Magnowski)
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Afghanistan: Kabul shrine attacks 'kills 48'
Twin blasts at Afghan shrines on the Shiite holy day of Ashura left at least 48 people dead in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Tuesday, according to police and witnesses.
A massive blast at the entrance to a shrine in central Kabul where Shiite Muslims had gathered to mark Ashura left at least 30 people dead including children, an AFP photographer saw.
"A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the Abu-Ul Fazil shrine," Kabul police said in a statement.
A security official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that it was believed the bomber arrived with a group of Shiite pilgrims from Logar province, south of Kabul.
Separately, four people were killed in Mazar-i-Sharif when another blast struck a shrine in the northern city. It was not immediately clear whether Shiites were targeted in that attack.
"It was an explosion not a suicide bombing. It was some explosives hidden in a bicycle," said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, adding that four other people had also been injured.
Shiites were banned from marking Ashura in public under the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan until 2001. This year, there are more Ashura monuments around the city than usual including black shrines and flags.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of the blasts from the Taliban or other insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan.
The attacks came shortly after a major conference on Afghanistan's future, held in the German city of Bonn, 10 years after talks there which put in place an interim government after US-led troops ousted the Taliban.
However, Pakistan and the Taliban - both seen as pivotal to any end to the bloody strife in Afghanistan - decided to stay away from the talks, undermining already modest hopes for real progress.
The 10-day Ashura ceremonies, which began on November 27 but peak on Tuesday, mark the slaughter of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, near Karbala by armies of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD.
Tradition holds that the revered imam was decapitated and his body mutilated. His death was a formative event in Shiite Islam.
Sectarian violence periodically flares between Shiites, who beat and whip themselves in religious fervour during Ashura, and Sunnis, who oppose the public display of grief.
On Monday, at least 28 people were killed and 78 wounded in a wave of bomb attacks in central Iraq against Shiite pilgrims making their way to Karbala.
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Afghan Shi'ite shrine blast kills 48
06 Dec 2011 10:26
(Adds detail throughout)
By Mirwais Harooni
KABUL, Dec 6 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber attacked a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Kabul on Tuesday killing at least 48 people in unprecedented sectarian violence a day after Afghanistan's Western allies pledged long-term support once their troops leave.
Doctors and police struggled to count the dead from one of the bloodiest attacks in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.
Bodies and blood were scattered across a street after the blast in the heart of old Kabul where a crowd of hundreds had gatheredfor the festival of Ashura. More than 100 were injured.
It was a potent reminder of Afghanistan's troubles the day after its Western allies gathered at an international conference to pledge long-term support, even after their combat troops leave at the end of 2014.
"This is the first time on such an important religious day in Afghanistan that terrorism of that horrible nature is taking place," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told journalists in Germany, where the conference on Afghanistan's future was held.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, and Taliban spokesmen could not be reached for comment.
"Forty-eight civilians were killed and more than 100 wounded, including women and children. It's not clear yet who carried out the attack. Nobody has claimed responsibility," said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's criminal investigation department.
Afghanistan has a history of tension and violence between Sunnis and the Shi'ite minority. But since the fall of the Taliban the country had been spared the large scale sectarian attacks that have troubled neighbouring Pakistan.
The noon bomb in a riverside shrine appears to set a grim new precedent.
"Afghanistan has been at war for 30 years and terrible things have happened, but one of the things that Afghans have been spared generally has been what appears to be this kind of very targeted sectarian attack," said Kate Clark, from the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
"We don't know who planted the bomb yet and it is dangerous to jump to conclusions but if it was Taliban, it marks something really serious, and dangerous, and very troubling."
"THEY KILLED MY SON"
Outside a hospital in central Kabul, mourners cried near a pile of bloodied clothes and shoes.
A woman in a dark headscarf clutching a bloodstained sports shoe said her son, in his early 20s, had died in the attack. "They killed my son ... this is his shoe," said wailed.
Shortly after the Kabul blast, a bicycle bomb exploded near the main mosque in northern Mazar-i-Sharif city, killing four and injuring 17 others. The city's streets were filled with people celebrating Ashura, but it was not immediately clear if that attack was targetting Shi'ite worshippers.
A motorbike bomb in southern Kandahar city also injured three civilians, but it had not been placed near any mosques or shrines, and appeared unrelated to the Kabul attacks.
The Shi'ite Muslim festival of Ashura marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Hussein in the battle of Karbala in Iraq in the year 680.
Ashura is the biggest event in the Shi'ite Muslim calendar, when large processions are vulnerable to militant attacks, including suicide bombings. Pakistan has deployed tens of thousands of paramilitary soldiers and police during Ashura.
Blood has spilled between Pakistan's majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite militants for decades.
Sectarian strife has intensified since Sunni militants deepened ties with al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban insurgents after Pakistan joined the U.S.-led campaign against militancy after the Sept. 11 attacks. (Additional reporting by Omar Sobhani, Daniel Magnowski and Jan Harvey, writing by Emma Graham-Harrison, Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
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KABUL: Twin blasts at Afghan shrines on the Shia holy day of Ashura killed at least 58 people on Tuesday with one massive suicide attack in Kabul ripping through a crowd of worshippers including children.
The blast in Kabul and another in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif came a day after an international meeting in Germany meant to further efforts to end the Afghan war, 10 years after US-led forces drove the Taliban from power.
At least 54 people including children were killed in the huge explosion at the entrance to a riverside shrine in central Kabul, where hundreds of Shia Muslims had gathered to mark Ashura, an official said.
“Fifty-four are dead and 150 others are injured,” health ministry spokesman Ghulam Sakhi Kargar Noorughli said.
A young girl, dressed in a green shalwar kameez that was smeared in blood, stood shrieking as she was surrounded by the crumpled, piled-up bodies of children.
“I was there watching people mourning (for Ashura) when there was suddenly a huge explosion,” witness Ahmad Fawad said.
“Some people around me fell down injured. I wasn’t hurt, so I got up and started running. It was horrible,” he said.
Men and women at the scene sobbed as they surveyed the carnage, and screamed slogans denouncing al Qaeda and the Taliban.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either blast. Sectarian violence has been rare in Afghanistan but when the Sunni Taliban ruled in the 1990s, minority Shias from the Hazara group suffered brutal persecution.
Shias were banned from marking Ashura in public under the Taliban. Sectarian violence has not been common in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001.
“A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the Abu-Ul Fazil shrine,” Kabul police said in a statement.
A security official speaking on condition of anonymity said it was believed the bomber had arrived with a group of Shia pilgrims from Logar province, south of Kabul.
Separately, four people were killed in Mazar-i-Sharif when another blast struck a shrine in the northern city as crowds gathered for Ashura. It was not immediately clear whether Shias were the target.
Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, said that the blast was caused by a bicycle bomb, adding that four other people had also been injured.
And police said that five people were wounded by a motorcycle bomb in the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s heartland. But the police said the attack was unconnected to Ashura.
On Monday, at least 28 people were killed and 78 wounded in a wave of bomb attacks in central Iraq against Shia pilgrims making their way to Karbala.
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Kabul shrine bomber was Pakistani, affiliated with LeJ: Afghan official
KABUL: An Afghan official claimed Wednesday that the bomberwho attacked a shrine in Kabul was a Pakistani, affiliated with the sectarian militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).
Afghans were Wednesday burying 59 people killed in unprecedented bombings against Shia Muslims as officials blamed Pakistani militants, accusing them of trying to whip up Iraq-style sectarian violence.
Investigators are poring over who was behind the coordinated attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul and northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif that the Taliban, the main faction leading a 10-year insurgency, have denied carrying out.
The LeJ has not previously claimed responsibility for any attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Experts suggest that if Lashkar-e-Jhangvi or indeed any other Pakistani militants orchestrated the attacks, then elements in the Afghan Taliban may have played some part, possibly in facilitating the strikes.
Tuesday’s blast on the holiest day in the Shia calendar marked the first major attack on a key religious day in Afghanistan.
The twin blasts have prompted fears of a slide into sectarian violence in Afghanistan.
Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security intelligence agency, confirmed that an investigation into the tragedy was now under way.
Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry, said the attack was the work of “the Taliban and their associates”, adding no-one else carried out such suicide attacks in Afghanistan.
An Afghan security official speaking on condition of anonymity said the bomber was from the Kurram agency in Pakistan’s border region and was connected to Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP).
The Afghan source added the attack aimed to “inflame sectarian violence in Afghanistan” but did not provide any evidence to back up his claims.
The official added: “This is not the work of the Taliban or if there is any Taliban involvement, it is very minimal.”
A Western security official speaking anonymously also suggested Pakistani involvement though stressed it was not clear whether this was “institutional”.
“We’re particularly looking at TTP (Tehreek-i-Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban) although at the moment we don’t have any proof,” he said. The source added he believed the attack “aimed to weaken Afghan society”.
A Pakistani security official speaking anonymously said Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was closely associated with the Pakistani Taliban.
But he added: “This group is on the run and doesn’t have the capacity to carry out attacks inside Afghanistan, particularly in Kabul.”
Pakistani security analyst Hasan Askari emphasised that there was no clear evidence at this stage of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi involvement.
“Lashkar people have ideological affinity with other militant groups operating in Afghanistan including Taliban and they support each other but they (Lashkar) have to establish that their strength is increasing,” he said.
Some analysts have raised fears of more sectarian violence in Afghanistan following the attacks but Shia leaders have urged calm in the aftermath.
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Tuesday attacks on Afghan Shi'ites killed 80 - Karzai
11 Dec 2011 07:41
(Adds context, background)
KABUL, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Some 80 people died in Tuesday's bomb attacks on Shi'ite Muslim ceremonies in Afghanistan, far higher than the previously reported number, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday.
"The numbers I got this morning, it is 80 people who died," he said, speaking at a government event in the capital.
It was not clear whether he was referring only to the bombing at a shrine in Kabul, which police said on Tuesday had killed 55, or including two other incidents in different cities.
The original toll given for all three incidents -- in Kabul, northern Mazar-i-Sharif, and southern Kandahar -- was 59 people.
Tuesday was one of the deadliest days for civilians since the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001.
Over 80 people were killed in a suicide attack in southern Kandahar province in early 2008, the same year that 58 people died in a suicide car bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
But the attacks last week are the first tainted with sectarianism, and have raised fears among some that more violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims is to come.
Such attacks are common in Pakistan and Iraq, but despite Afghanistan's decades of war and ethnic tensions, the country has not suffered large-scale attacks on the minority Shi'ites since the fall of the Taliban.
On Saturday, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan said he did not think a sectarian conflict was likely to break out
Karzai said after the attacks that Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility, and that he would raise the matter with the Pakistan government. (Reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Writing by Daniel Magnowski, editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Sanjeev Miglani)
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