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/ 24 February 2008
A suicide bomber detonated a vest packed with metal ball bearings in a refreshment tent full of Iraqi pilgrims heading to a Shi’ite festival on Sunday, killing 40 people and wounding 60, police said. The United States military said it was trying to confirm reports that 60 people had been killed and 100 wounded.
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/ 24 February 2008
”It’s me,” the man said. ”I’m the real Pasquale Condello.” I Cacciatori, the Hunters — the Carabinieri’s specialist man-trackers entrusted with the last stage of the operation to net ”The Supremo” — had left nothing to chance. They were convinced the 57-year-old mobster lived in one of 12 flats on the outskirts of Reggio Calabria.
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/ 20 February 2008
The party of assassinated former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto began stitching together a coalition on Wednesday that could spell the end for President Pervez Musharraf, after winning the most seats in a general election. The United States welcomed the vote as ”a step toward the full restoration of democracy”.
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/ 18 February 2008
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Kenya on Monday to push talks to end the post-election crisis but can expect a lukewarm welcome from the government, bristling at Western pressure for a quick deal. Rice, who was sent by President George Bush, is the highest-ranking US official to visit the country since a December 27 vote triggered ethnic clashes.
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/ 17 February 2008
A suicide bomber killed more than 80 people at a picnic spot in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Sunday in the most deadly attack since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, the government said. The attack will add urgency to a debate about how the United States and Afghanistan’s other allies can help stem militant violence and promote stability.
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/ 17 February 2008
United States President George Bush on Sunday met Tanzania’s leader to discuss Africa’s political crises before signing a nearly -million grant to help stimulate economic growth. On the second stop of a five-nation trip where he has received a warm welcome, Bush will spend the day discussing projects to fight HIV/Aids and malaria.
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/ 16 February 2008
Two-thirds of the Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan can be persuaded to abandon violence, according to a British aid worker expelled from the country for opening talks with some of those allied to the militant group. Michael Semple said he was confident that most Taliban-linked insurgents could be absorbed into Afghanistan’s reconciliation process.
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/ 12 February 2008
Pakistani security forces wounded and captured a prominent Taliban commander on Monday near the border area with Afghanistan. Mullah Mansour Dadullah took over as commander of Taliban forces in the southern Afghan province of Helmand after his brother, Mullah Dadullah, was killed by British forces in May.
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/ 11 February 2008
The Pentagon on Monday sought murder and conspiracy charges against the alleged planner of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and five others and will ask they be executed if convicted. Mohammed, a Pakistani national better known as KSM, has said he planned every aspect of the September 11 attacks.
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/ 11 February 2008
United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in Baghdad on Monday he was in favour of a short pause in troop drawdowns from Iraq after about 30Â 000 soldiers have been sent home by July. Gates said the security situation in Baghdad remained ”fragile”, a comment echoed on the streets of the capital, which was rocked by two car bombings.
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/ 9 February 2008
To chants of ”Democracy is the best revenge”, tens of thousands of Benazir Bhutto’s followers rallied in southern Pakistan on Saturday as her party relaunched an election campaign derailed by her assassination. About 2Â 000 police and hundreds of private armed security guards from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party secured the venue.
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/ 8 February 2008
German authorities have learnt that al-Qaeda is preparing to carry out attacks in Germany, a senior official said in an interview with Die Welt newspaper on Friday. The Secretary of State in the Interior Ministry, August Hanning, said al-Qaeda leaders based in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan have ”decided to carry out attacks in Germany”.
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/ 8 February 2008
John McCain effectively secured the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday when his main rival, Mitt Romney, near to tears, dropped out of the race. Only one person now stands between McCain and the United States presidency: the Democratic choice for the November election.
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/ 7 February 2008
Pakistani police have arrested two more suspects in connection with the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the interior minister said on Thursday. Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack on December 27 as she was coming out of an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi.
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/ 7 February 2008
Tens of thousands of people beat their chests in anguish at Benazir Bhutto’s tomb on Thursday as they marked the end of 40 days of mourning for the slain opposition leader. The solemn Muslim ceremonies at the family mausoleum in southern Pakistan marked the start of campaigning by her Pakistan People’s Party for elections on February 18.
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/ 7 February 2008
American forces in Baghdad on Wednesday warned of a ”disturbing trend in the use and exploitation of children by al-Qaeda in Iraq”, after discovering videos showing young boys being trained in kidnapping and assassination. In one of the videos about 20 boys are seen bristling with pistols, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
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/ 6 February 2008
Any move by Britain to impose visa requirements on South Africans will have a serious effect on business and travel links between the two countries, the Democratic Alliance (DA) warned. British legislators were now examining evidence that might lead to such a visa requirement, the DA’s Tony Leon said.
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/ 4 February 2008
A suicide bomber attacked a Pakistani military bus taking medical corps staff to work in the city of Rawalpindi on Monday killing at least five people and wounding 25. Violence has intensified in Pakistan in recent months with the army battling militants in the northw-est and suicide bomb attacks in towns and cities.
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/ 2 February 2008
Remote-controlled explosives were strapped to two women with Down’s syndrome and detonated in coordinated attacks on two Friday-morning markets in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 73 people and wounding nearly 150. The first targeted shoppers at a pet market in the al-Ghazl area, killing 46 people and injuring 100.
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/ 2 February 2008
Kenya’s government and opposition struck an agreement on Friday to take immediate steps to try to end tribal bloodshed in a five-week-old political stand-off in which about 850 people have been killed. Meanwhile, 27 people have been killed in fresh violence in western Kenya, police said on Saturday.
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/ 1 February 2008
A female suicide bomber killed 45 people when she blew herself up at a popular pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, police said, in the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in six months. Another 82 were wounded in the blast at the crowded Ghazil market, one of Baghdad’s most popular gathering places, which has been bombed at least three times in the past year.
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/ 1 February 2008
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the Israeli embassy in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott early on Friday, police said. The attackers exchanged fire with guards at the embassy. A nearby bar in the centre of Nouakchott was also hit before the assailants fled.
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/ 30 January 2008
Al-Qaeda’s North Africa wing said it was behind a blast at a police station in Algeria which authorities said killed two people. Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb said a suicide bomber drove a truck packed explosives that detonated at the police station in a town east of Algiers on Tuesday.
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/ 29 January 2008
A car-bomb attack on a police station killed two people and wounded 23 in a town east of Algiers on Tuesday, the second such bombing in the Opec member in a month. Some residents said the blast in Thenia appeared to be a suicide attack, the tactic used in a twin bombing in the capital on December 11.
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/ 28 January 2008
Heavily armed militants took about 300 children hostage at a school in Pakistan on Monday but freed them after tense negotiations with tribal elders, the Interior Ministry said. Rebels armed with rocket launchers holed up at the school in the North West Frontier Province after a failed attempt to abduct a local official.
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/ 28 January 2008
Gunmen took hostage up to 250 Pakistani schoolchildren in the north-western town of Bannu on Monday after taking refuge in the school following a clash with police, officials said. Violence has spread across Pakistan in recent months, seeping out of remote tribal regions that are sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants and into cities and towns.
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/ 25 January 2008
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared ”final war” on al-Qaeda on Friday after dozens of people including a police chief were killed in bomb attacks blamed on the jihadists in Mosul city. Iraqi forces were moving towards Mosul, 370km north of Baghdad, for a major assault that would become a ”decisive battle”, Maliki told a gathering in the central shrine city of Karbala.
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/ 25 January 2008
Up to 30 pro-Taliban militants and two soldiers were killed in clashes in a tribal region in north-western Pakistan on Friday, the military said. The clashes broke out in Darra Adam Kheil tribal region near the city of Peshawar a day after militants seized four trucks carrying ammunition and other supplies for paramilitary forces.
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/ 24 January 2008
The police chief of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was killed in a suicide bomb attack on Thursday as he toured the scene of a blast a day earlier in which at least 20 people died. Rescuers were still digging through the rubble of Wednesday’s explosion when an attacker in a police uniform blew himself up.
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/ 21 January 2008
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pledged on Monday to hold free elections as he began a four-country European trip aimed at winning international support. Musharraf’s popularity has slumped over recent months in Pakistan, which has been racked by militant attacks, and faces a parliamentary election on February 18.
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/ 21 January 2008
The United States military said on Sunday there had been a dramatic drop in the number of Iranian weapons being used in Iraq but no let-up in Tehran’s training and financing of Iraqi militias. Washington has accused Tehran of supplying Shi’ite militias in Iraq with sophisticated weapons, including armour-piercing bombs.
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/ 19 January 2008
So the king is dead, the game over. Bobby Fischer — perhaps the greatest player in the history of chess, certainly the most charismatic and controversial — has died of kidney failure in his adoptive home, Iceland. But Fischer the chess genius died more than 30 years ago.