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Tens of thousands joined a march in Dhaka on Thursday in honour of 20 people killed in a grenade attack on an opposition rally by suspected Islamic militants a week ago, officials said. About 30Â 000 opposition activists, barefoot and holding black flags, took part in the silent march held under tight security.
A grenade exploded at a crowded market in the north-eastern Assam state of India on Thursday, injuring seven people hours after two bomb blasts elsewhere in the state left four dead and 39 others wounded, police said. Suspected militants from the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom hurled the grenade at the market.
On a national tour ahead of the floor-crossing window for councillors, Inkatha Freedom Party national chairperson Ziba Jiyane is stressing its ”centre-right” position and its standpoint on family values. He also criticised the appointment of women with wealthy husbands in jobs above breadwinners.
At least 74 people were killed and 376 wounded in a mortar attack at a mosque and shooting on demonstrators loyal to rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the southern city of Kufa, the Iraqi Health Ministry said. Officials were unable to distinguish between those who died in the double mortar bombing and the shooting.
Six Armenian air crew members accused of helping to plot to oust Equatorial Guinea’s long-time leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema told a court in Malabo on Thursday that they had nothing to do with the alleged plot. They said they were until recently unaware on what charges they were being held.
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A 31-year-old American man was in a Berlin jail cell on Thursday after allegedly running up 000 in bills at luxury hotels in the German capital by claiming he was a visiting dignitary or bank executive. The man reportedly told police when as they clamped handcuffs on him: ”Oh well, it was good while it lasted.”
A teenage Nigerian transvestite and seller of love potions who lived undetected for seven years among the married women of his conservative Islamic community has been caught and now faces jail. Abubakar Hamza said this week that he disguised himself as a girl and ran away from his home in a farming village of Ajingi aged only 12.
The gates of Najaf’s Imam Ali Shrine were forced open on Thursday by a sea of weeping and chanting Shi’ite Muslims, ending a siege of the shrine that had lasted for days and weeks of fighting with United States forces. Yet as the camp of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr went into talks, the military stand-off appeared far from over.
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The working group for the black economic empowerment charter on information and communications technology (ICT) has released its fourth and last working draft, six months ahead of its planned implementation. The charter proposes that all ICT companies in the country should be 45% to 50% charter-compliant by February 2006.