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/ 28 December 2007
The body of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was taken to her family village for burial on Friday, a day after her assassination plunged the nuclear-armed country into one of the worst crises in its 60-year history. Her killing after an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi triggered a wave of violence.
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/ 27 December 2007
World leaders voiced outrage at the assassination on Thursday of Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and expressed fears for the fate of the nuclear-armed state. United States President George Bush condemned the killing as a ”cowardly act”.
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/ 27 December 2007
Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Thursday as she left an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, putting January 8 polls in doubt and sparking anger in her native Sindh province. State media and her party confirmed Bhutto’s death from a gun and bomb attack. ”She has been martyred,” said party official Rehman Malik.
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/ 27 December 2007
Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, slain in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi on December 27, knew very well the risks she ran when she decided to wage a public campaign for the restoration of democracy. Hours after she returned home in October after eight years of self-imposed exile, a suicide bomber killed nearly 150 people in an attack targeting her motorcade.
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/ 25 December 2007
A suicide truck bomb killed at least 20 people and wounded 80 in the northern Iraqi city of Baiji on Tuesday, the United States military and police said, in one of the deadliest attacks in Iraq in two weeks. A Reuters photographer on the scene said the attack targeted a security checkpoint on a road leading to a residential compound.
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/ 23 December 2007
Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said on Sunday some religious schools were turning children into killers. Speaking to about 25 000 supporters near her ancestral home in the southern town of Larkana, she also renewed accusations the government had done nothing to stop militant violence.
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/ 20 December 2007
Hundreds of subscribers to jihadist websites are posting questions for al-Qaeda’s leadership at the invitation of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy. ”Individuals, agencies and all information media outlets” have been told they can question Egyptian-born Zawahiri.
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/ 20 December 2007
A suicide bomber wearing a belt packed with explosives struck a recruiting station for neighbourhood patrols in Iraq’s restive Diyala province, killing 12 volunteers and wounding 10 on Thursday. Iraqi police said United States forces may have also been among the casualties in the strike that took place in the town of Kanaan.
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/ 18 December 2007
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a visit overshadowed by a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq, called on Iraqi leaders on Tuesday to urgently implement a national reconciliation roadmap. Turkish troops crossed overnight into the Iraqi Kurdish province of Dahuk, about 200km from the city of Kirkuk, where Rice’s plane first touched down.
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/ 18 December 2007
A suicide bomber killed 14 people when he detonated a vest rigged with explosives in a Shi’ite Muslim village north of Baghdad on Tuesday. Suicide bombers, gunmen and car bombs also killed 14 other people across the country. The violence coincided with a visit by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
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/ 14 December 2007
Two convicted terrorists who had been freed in an amnesty carried out this week’s suicide bombings at United Nations and government buildings that killed 37 people, an Algerian security official said. One of the bombers was a 64-year-old man in the advanced stages of cancer, while the other was a 32-year-old from a poor suburb.
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/ 8 December 2007
A series of six black-and-white prints on display in an unassuming corner of the New York Public Library have sparked controversy on the airwaves and blogosphere quite out of keeping with the dark, marble-lined corridor in which they are hung. The prints show the mugshots of main members of the Bush administration.
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/ 7 December 2007
A female suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 15 people in a town north-east of Baghdad on Friday. Police said the attack targeted members of the 1920s Revolutionary Brigades, a Sunni Islamist insurgency group which has recently begun working alongside security forces against al-Qaeda.
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/ 7 December 2007
The CIA destroyed video evidence of the coercive interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives held under its secret rendition programme in order to shield agents from prosecution, it was revealed on Thursday. The decision to destroy two videotapes documenting the use of waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah and another high-value al-Qaeda detainee was made in November 2005.
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/ 6 December 2007
Al-Qaeda Sunni Arab militants remain a dangerous foe in Iraq despite a decline in violence, the commander of United States forces said on Thursday, a day after the deadliest bombing in Baghdad since September. ”We have to be careful not to get feeling too successful,” General David Petraeus told reporters.
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/ 4 December 2007
A suicide bomber rammed a car into a convoy of Nato forces close to the airport in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, wounding 10 Afghan civilians, a police official said. A spokesperson for the Taliban said the militant Islamic group carried out the attack to ”welcome” United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates.
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/ 1 December 2007
The man who devised the Bush administration’s Iraq troop surge has urged the United States to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos. In a series of scenarios drawn up for Pakistan, Frederick Kagan has called for the White House to consider various options for an unstable Pakistan.
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/ 28 November 2007
Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it had arrested 208 people for involvement in several cells that planned an ”imminent attack” on an oil installation, and attacks on clerics and security forces. State television said one of the cells was planning to smuggle in missiles.
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/ 26 November 2007
Pakistan’s ex-premier Nawaz Sharif plotted tactics with key aides on Monday as he sought to capitalise on his hero’s welcome home from exile to spur opposition to President Pervez Musharraf. Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in a coup in 1999, was due to file his nomination papers for general elections, despite warning his party may end up boycotting the January 8 vote.
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/ 26 November 2007
In the James Bond novels and films, it fell to technical expert Q to invent the gizmos and cunningly concealed weapons that helped the British spy cheat death and save the world. From a biometric keyboard to blast-proof curtains, the inventions on display in the real world this month came from five technology firms in the final round of the Global Security Challenge.
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/ 23 November 2007
The 53-nation Commonwealth suspended Pakistan’s membership on Thursday, after President Pervez Musharraf failed to meet a deadline to lift emergency rule and resign as army chief. The Commonwealth had given Musharraf until Thursday to lift the state of emergency he imposed on November 3.
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/ 22 November 2007
A suicide car bomber blasted a police checkpoint outside the courthouse in Ramadi on Wednesday, killing up to six people and wounding as many as 22 in the first such attack in months in the former Sunni insurgent stronghold.
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/ 22 November 2007
Pakistan’s Supreme Court, stacked with judges friendly to President Pervez Musharraf, on Thursday threw out a final challenge to his re-election and paved the way for him to quit as army chief. The long-awaited ruling comes as Musharraf faces the prospect of Pakistan’s second suspension from the Commonwealth.
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/ 21 November 2007
Israeli authorities plan to issue a new anti-hijack identification system to incoming aircraft which they say is foolproof, but some experts are not convinced it will plug all the security holes on the horizon. Israel will require pilots who fly to its airports to use the Security Code System.
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/ 19 November 2007
A propaganda video shot inside a radical Maldives mosque and posted on the Internet has raised fears that al-Qaeda is gaining a foothold in the Indian Ocean tourist paradise. The video was recorded at the Dhar-al-Khuir mosque on the remote Himandhoo island in the hours before it was raided on October 6.
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/ 19 November 2007
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday rubber-stamped President Pervez Musharraf’s contested re-election victory in October, after he purged the court of hostile judges. ”Five petitions have been dismissed. One is pending and it will be heard on Thursday,” said the Attorney General Malik Qayyum.
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/ 15 November 2007
The Algerian army is ”on the road to victory” over the Maghreb branch of the al-Qaeda network, responsible for suicide attacks in the North African country, according to a French anti-terrorism expert. The Maghreb branch has introduced suicide bomb attacks that have targeted government and army positions in Algeria.
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/ 12 November 2007
Nigeria’s secret police have arrested several people suspected of having links to the al-Qaeda network in three of the country’s predominantly Muslim states, a spokesperson said on Monday. ”Our operatives arrested the suspects in Kano, Kaduna and Yobe states,” State Security Service spokesperson Ado Muazu said.
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/ 11 November 2007
Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said on Sunday a general election will be held by January 9 — but under a state of emergency he imposed eight days ago. Musharraf, under pressure to put Pakistan back on a path to democracy, said the National Assembly and provincial assemblies will be dissolved in coming days.
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/ 11 November 2007
Draft Moroccan legislation has earmarked nearly 30% of the state’s 2008 budget for security, underscoring anti-terrorism concerns after spring suicide attacks, a government source said on Saturday. The state is expected to pour about 45-billion dirhams (,8-billion) into security, a 29% boost from 2007.
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/ 10 November 2007
Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto described Pakistan on Saturday as a pressure cooker about to explode, as President Pervez Musharraf’s government tightened screws on media by ordering out three British journalists. Having invoked emergency powers a week ago, Musharraf has sacked most of the country’s judges and ordered police to round up most of the opposition leadership.
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/ 10 November 2007
Ethiopian troops shelled suspected Islamist hideouts on Friday in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where some of the worst clashes in months have left at least 43 dead in two days, many of them civilians. The escalating violence came as the Ethiopian army tried to flush out pockets of insurgents in southern districts of the Somali capital.