Lahore triple blasts leave 18 dead, 157 injured

LAHORE: Eighteen people were killed and at least 157 others injured, some of them critically, in three blasts that ripped through a procession on the occasion of Yaum-e-Ali in Lahore on Wednesday.

DCO Lahore confirmed 18 people’s death while at least 157 , including women and children were shifted to hospitals. Twenty-five to 30 of the injured are said to be in serious condition.

A police constable was also killed in the blasts, CCPO Lahore said.

A banned organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al-Almi claimed responsibility of the deadly blasts.

The first blast that occurred in the middle of the procession at Karbala Gaame Shah was followed within minutes by two high intensity suicide blasts at Bhaati Chowk, police sources confirmed.

Commissioner Lahore said that the second and third blasts were suicidal and that a head of one of the suicide bombers has been recovered.

Relief and rescue efforts kick started after blasts and dozens of injured, including women and children were shifted to different medical facilities including Meo Hospital.

Later, the participants of the procession and enraged people pelted police vehicles with stones and damaged public property. A TV footage showed a motor cycle and furniture burning with rising flames.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani strongly condemned the blasts and ordered the concerned authorities to carry out investigation.

Two bombs hit Shiite march in Lahore

LAHORE: Police say two time bombs have exploded during a Shiite religious procession in Lahore. At least 20 people were wounded in the blasts and a subsequent stampede.

The explosions took place in two separate sites amid a traditional mourning procession.

Senior police officer Zulfiqar Hameed said the blasts came from low-intensity time bombs.

Footage of the first explosion shown on a news television showed a small blast erupting amid a crowd of people on the street followed by a large plume of smoke.—AP

Pakistan jets target militant hide-outs, 60 killed

PESHAWAR: Pakistan army jets and helicopters targeted militant hide-outs near the Afghan border, killing 60 people identified as insurgents or their family members, including children, security officials and a witness said Wednesday.

The deadliest strikes hit an area where army fire had killed 60 civilians earlier this year.

Accounts of civilian casualties in army airstrikes make it harder for the military to win the support of local tribesman in the border region, something crucial to flushing out Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who have found sanctuary there.

The attacks occurred Tuesday and Wednesday in different parts of the region.

There was no independent confirmation of the casualty figures because the area is too dangerous for outsiders to visit.

The raids Tuesday took place in several villages in Teerah Valley in the Khyber region and killed 45 people, the officials said. One official said some vehicles rigged with explosives had also been destroyed. He could not say how many.

He described the dead as insurgents, but said it was possible that people living with them could also have been killed. Separately, an intelligence officer said some women and children had been killed in the attacks.

Jihad Gul, who lives near one of the villages, said he had seen the bodies of at least 20 women and children.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said reports of civilian casualties were unconfirmed.

The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

An air attack Wednesday in the adjoining district of Orakzai killed 15 suspected militants and wounded 10 others, according to local government official Jamil Khan and a brief army statement.

In April, the Teerah Valley was hit by army airstrikes that killed about 60 civilians. The army, which initially described the victims as insurgents, ended up paying compensation to the victims’ families and its chief issued a rare public apology.

Pakistan’s army has been fighting militants in different parts of the northwest for more than two years.

Militants who fled major operations in the South Waziristan and Orakzai tribal regions are believed to have set up new bases in Khyber, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of the main city in the region, Peshawar. – AP

Obama readies bold Mideast peace bid

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama steps into Middle East peace efforts on Wednesday in a bold bid to re-launch direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations amid skepticism over his chances of success.

Fresh violence blamed on the Islamist movement Hamas and continued deadlock over Israeli settlements threatened to curtail the latest efforts by Obama, who made Middle East peace a priority early in his presidency.

Israeli forces sealed off parts of the West Bank, Palestinian authorities arrested dozens of suspects, and furious settlers vowed to flout a moratorium on settlement construction after Hamas militants gunned down four Israelis near a Jewish settlement.

Obama, who is hoping to succeed where so many of his predecessors have failed, made his first presidential call to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and appointed a Middle East envoy, veteran peacemaker George Mitchell, two days after his inauguration.

The attack in the Palestininan West Bank, strongly condemned by Abbas and the White House, was a clear and bloody message from Hamas, a staunch opponent of the talks.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to keep the talks on track after a 20-month hiatus while stressing Israel’s security demands.

“I will set clearly the security needs that are required precisely to address these kind of terror,” Netanyahu said. “We will not let the blood of Israeli civilians go unpunished.”

And the host of the talks, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, offered fresh security assurances to the Israelis.

“It is one of the reasons why the prime minister is here today, to engage in direct negotiations with those Palestinians who themselves have rejected a path of violence in favor of a path of peace,” she said as she met with Netanyahu late Tuesday.

“We pledge to do all we can always to protect and defend the state of Israel and to provide security to the Israeli people.”

Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said Israel was “committed to peace” and the attack would not prevent the talks from going ahead.

Obama is hosting separate meetings not only with Abbas and Netanyahu, but also with key regional powerbrokers King Abdullah II of Jordan and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the White House before dining with the four leaders and diplomatic Quartet representative Tony Blair.

The meetings are designed to help launch direct talks between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders at the State Department on Thursday.

The Quartet of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia launched a roadmap for peace in 2003 that calls for a Palestinian state existing alongside a secure Israel.

Top level talks in search of the elusive peace deal broke off in 2008 when Israel invaded the Palestinian Gaza Strip to halt militant rocket fire on its south.

And there are few illusions that the new direct talks, after months of US-sponsored indirect negotiations, will overcome lingering divisions anytime soon, even as Obama expends precious political capital ahead of congressional elections that may batter his Democratic Party this November.

Huge issues – many unresolved since Israel’s founding in 1948 – remain on the table, including the status of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital, and the fate of Palestinian refugees chased from their lands.

Continued Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories are seen as a major hurdle to the peace process, with a 10-month Israeli freeze due to expire on September 26.

Yet Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell said the president’s one-year timeframe to seal a deal was “realistic” despite the scale of the task.

“We believe these negotiations can be completed within one year,” Mitchell said. “We will engage with perseverance and patience to try to bring them to a successful conclusion.”

But Abbas has threatened to walk out of talks if settlement construction resumes, and Netanyahu has vowed not to extend the moratorium. The attack near the Kiryat Arba settlement underscored the massive importance of the issue.

Netanyahu, a hawk who only last year recognized the internationally-backed principle of a two-state solution, said on Sunday he hoped to reach “a peace based on recognition, security, stability and economic prosperity between the two peoples that will endure for us and our children.”

Abbas, meanwhile, has urged “Israel not to miss this historic opportunity for peace,” saying “if there is only a one percent chance of achieving peace we will strive for it.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres insisted Netanyahu was “aware of the greatness of his mission” during his US visit and was “well prepared to meet the chance.”

But Peres said any future Palestinian state must be demilitarized. – AFP

Lukewarm reaction to NY imam on Middle East tour

DUBAI: A heated US debate over a planned Islamic centre near New York’s World Trade Center site is seen by Middle East media, scholars and citizens as more of a domestic American issue rather than an attack on their faith.

Kuwait-born Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim cleric leading the project to establish the centre, has been in Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the past two weeks but met with a more subdued reaction than the US media.

“Muslims this time are not part of this, they didn’t call for it, they didn’t defend it and didn’t bother with the whole issue,” Saudi columnist, Abdulrahman al-Rashid, wrote in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Alawsat.

The US row is perceived as much less of an affront to Islam than Switzerland’s vote to ban minarets and France’s moves to forbid the full face veil, observers say.

Asked whether the American people were becoming more intolerant, the Imam Abdul Rauf played down American prejudice.

“If they are informed properly about what the actual facts of the situation are, they will always make the right decision,” he said.

Abdul Rauf’s project, now named Park51, has been dubbed by its critics the “Ground Zero mosque” because of its proximity to the World Trade Centre site where nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Families of victims of Sept. 11 and conservative politicians have mounted an emotional campaign to block the planned centre, saying its location was a provocation.

US President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg support the right of Muslims to build the centre.

An American Muslim cleric who delivers a weekly sermon at an Abu Dhabi mosque said the row was more about US domestic politics with the Nov. 2 congressional vote looming.

“It’s really a local issue,” the cleric, Jihad Hashim Brown, said. “It has to do with the current congressional election. As soon as the elections are finished it will blow over.”

Recent French moves to ban Muslim women from wearing the niqab or burqa in public triggered more af a media outcry in the Middle East.

“The niqab ban was a state-endorsed one and so seemed to Muslims like an act of oppression,” said public relations consultant Riham el Houshi, 22, an Egyptian living in Qatar, adding that she thought building the planned centre was insensitive.

Qatari Ghanim al-Naimi said the right to build mosques anywhere in the world should be guaranteed: “Religion had nothing to do with (Sept. 11).” – Reuters

Jerusalem to remain 'undivided capital of Israel'

WASHINGTON: Jerusalem should remain the “undivided capital of Israel,” an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, clarifying Israel's position after published comments from defense minister Ehud Barak suggested division was a possiblity.

“The position of the prime minister is that Jerusalem is one of the core issues that are on the table at the talks,” the aide said.

“Our position is that Jerusalem will remain the undivided capital of Israel.” – AFP

Rape probe against WikiLeaks founder reopened

STOCKHOLM: A senior Swedish prosecutor is reopening a rape investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the latest twist to a case in which prosecutors of different ranks have overruled each other.

The Australian has denied the allegations and suggested they are part of a smear campaign by opponents of WikiLeaks — an online whistle-blower that has angered Washington by publishing thousands of leaked documents about US military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The case was dismissed last week by Eva Finne, chief prosecutor in Stockholm, who overruled a lower-ranked prosecutor and said there was no reason to suspect that Assange had raped a Swedish woman who had reported him to police.

The woman’s lawyer appealed the decision and on Wednesday Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny decided to reopen the case.

Ny also said that another complaint against Assange should be investigated on suspicion of ‘‘sexual coercion and sexual molestation.’’ That overruled a previous decision to only investigate the case as ‘‘molestation,’’ which is not a sex offense under Swedish law.

Assange is seeking legal protection for WikiLeaks in Sweden, one of the countries where the group says it has servers. The Swedish Migration Board has confirmed that Assange has applied for a work and residence permit in the Scandinavian country. —AP