Pakistani tribesmen on Monday buried the last of the 43 people killed in a suicide bomb attack at a meeting of tribal elders discussing how to tackle al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
Robert Mugabe’s iron grip on his ruling Zanu-PF party is being broken ahead of this month’s presidential election as senior party figures throw their weight behind an unprecedented challenge to Zimbabwe’s president from his former finance minister, Simba Makoni.
At least 30 people were killed and up to 40 injured when a suicide bomber attacked a traditional tribal meeting in north-western Pakistan on Sunday, officials said. Pakistan is in the middle of a wave of violence blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants based in tribal lands on the Afghan border and there have been three suicide attacks in as many days.
Israel killed 52 Palestinians on Saturday in its deadliest and deepest incursion into the Gaza Strip since pulling out in 2005, stoking fears of a broader conflict that could derail renewed United States-backed peace talks. At least 29 of the dead were civilians, among them women and children, said Palestinian doctors who were working round the clock.
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/ 29 February 2008
A suicide bomber killed at least 40 people at a funeral of a policeman in the Swat district of Pakistan, days after the Pakistan army said it had begun to bring the mountainous region under control. Another suicide bomber rammed his car into a vehicle carrying paramilitary forces in the north-western tribal region, killing one civilian and wounding 17 others.
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/ 29 February 2008
The job that Prince Harry was doing in Afghanistan was essentially a ”carrot” to stop him leaving the army after he was refused permission to fight in Iraq with the soldiers he had led throughout his army career. After his men left for Basra without him, he retrained for a job he had not before done.
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/ 29 February 2008
Army commanders were making frantic arrangements on Thursday night to bring Prince Harry back from Afghanistan after an American website disclosed that he had been serving with other British troops fighting the Taliban. The prince, who is 10 weeks into a 14-week tour, was believed to still be in the country on Thursday night among British soldiers in the southern Helmand province.
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/ 27 February 2008
Britain on Tuesday said that the Kenyan army is now ”by far the best option” to stop a sectarian bloodbath as peace talks in Nairobi between the government and opposition were suspended. Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan suspended talks between the government and the opposition negotiating teams after it became clear they were going nowhere.
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/ 25 February 2008
An Iraqi militant group posted a video on the internet on Monday that appeared to show the 2004 killing of 12 Nepalese men who worked for a contracting firm in Iraq. In the video, a militant beheaded one of the men with a knife. The rest were shot in the back lying face down in a sandy lot.
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/ 25 February 2008
Foreigners wander freely among the handsome stone and baked-brick houses of Sanaa’s Old City, but elsewhere in Yemen al-Qaeda attacks have damaged a fledgling tourism industry already hurt by tribal kidnappings. The government, which hopes tourism earnings can help offset flagging oil revenues, is struggling to shore up security by providing armed police escorts for travel to certain areas.
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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
Three elderly Darfuri men hack away at a pile of logs, struggling to build a new home in Kondobe more than a week after they fled their village to escape attacks and looting. They had hoped to return after the fighting subsided. But they can still hear shooting and could no longer suffer the cramped arrangements.
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/ 17 February 2008
Leaders of Pakistan’s opposition parties have been making frantic last-minute efforts to convince fearful voters to turn out in crucial parliamentary elections on Monday that may plunge the 164 million-strong nation into chaos. As the last day of official campaigning in the most troubled contest for decades drew to a close on Saturday, no one was confident of a victory.
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/ 16 February 2008
A bomb exploded on a street near the security ministry in central Mexico City on Friday, killing one person and wounding two. No group claimed responsibility for the blast and there was no warning. The government is locked in a battle with drug gangs and has yet to catch left-wing rebels who planted small bombs at oil installations last year.
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/ 16 February 2008
Just before dawn on one of Kosovo’s last mornings as a Serbian province, young military cadets are being put through their paces on a concrete drill field. The 38 young men and women in matching tracksuits represent Kosovo’s hopes for the future, at least for its Albanian majority. As dense clouds of jackdaws swoop and wheel above them, they run in perfect formation, chanting their determination to defend the new nation.
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/ 15 February 2008
A state of emergency declared in Chad will do little to calm nerves among residents in the capital, Ndjamena, many of whom complain soldiers are already taking advantage of a security crackdown to loot homes. President Idriss Déby Itno declared a state of emergency across the former French colony late on Thursday.
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/ 12 February 2008
Israeli leaders vowed on Monday to step up their war against Hamas and predicted the Islamists’ grip on the Gaza Strip would end within months. Two days after a rocket wounded an Israeli child in a country grown used to barrages that do little damage, Defence Minister Ehud Barak pledged to step up the military campaign.
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/ 11 February 2008
Chadian rebels fled south on Sunday pursued by government forces, the military said, as the United Nations refugee agency warned that recent fighting in the country had put aid agencies in danger. Although a calm returned to the capital Ndjamena a week after a bloody assault on the city which left more than 160 people dead, the rebel forces said they were heading south.
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/ 10 February 2008
Rebel soldiers shot East Timor President and Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta in the stomach at his home in Dili on Monday, while Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao escaped injury in another attack, officials said. Ramos-Horta was in a stable condition following the assassination attempt.
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/ 10 February 2008
Chad’s rebels said on Saturday they controlled the centre of the landlocked country and would hold their position in an effort to lure government troops from the capital into an open battle in the desert. A spokesperson for the rebels said they occupied the towns of Mongo and Bitkine in rugged central Chad, about 500km from the capital.
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/ 9 February 2008
Burma’s military government will hold a referendum on a new constitution in May this year followed by multiparty elections in 2010, the first in two decades, state television announced on Saturday. ”We have achieved success in economic, social and other sectors and in restoring peace and stability,” the junta announced.
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/ 9 February 2008
Turkish lawmakers were set to lift a ban on Islamic headscarves at universities on Saturday, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the move as a threat to secularism. In separate votes, an overwhelming majority of lawmakers approved two constitutional amendments that would together lift the on-campus ban.
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/ 7 February 2008
Human rights issues concerning refugees, immigrants and exiles needed urgent discussion and action at all three levels of government, experts said on Thursday during a panel discussion at the University of the Witwatersrand. The discussion dealt with the Central Methodist Church raid in Johannesburg as well as the country’s immigration policy.
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/ 6 February 2008
A court in Niger on Wednesday freed journalist Ibrahim Manzo on bail after he had been detained for more than four months without trial for alleged links with Tuareg rebels, his lawyer said. Manzo was jailed for ”criminal association”, accused of having connections with the Tuareg rebel Movement of Niger People for Justice.
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/ 4 February 2008
Thousands of civilians fled Chad’s capital Ndjamena on Monday after rebel forces pulled back from a two-day assault, but the rebels said they would attack again to try to topple President Idriss Déby Itno, whose government said it had beaten off more than 2Â 000 insurgents.
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/ 4 February 2008
At least one person has been killed in a suicide bomb attack in southern Israel on Monday — the first inside the country for a year. Firefighters told radio stations that at least one person had died in the blast, which happened in the commercial district of the southern town of Dimona.
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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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/ 3 February 2008
Kenyan opposition chief Raila Odinga on Sunday called for the deployment of foreign peacekeepers to stem the country’s escalating violence, saying security forces were not impartial in crackdowns. Kenyan police have admitted to killing dozens of arsonists, looters and people who have attacked them during violent demonstrations.
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/ 2 February 2008
Fighting broke out between Chadian rebels and government forces just north of the capital on Saturday, both sides said, as France prepared to evacuate its nationals in the face of the rebel advance. ”Fighting between government forces and rebels has started at about 20km north of Ndjamena,” a military source said.
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/ 1 February 2008
Chadian rebels said on Friday that their forces had taken up positions around the capital, Ndjamena, and they called on President Idriss Déby Itno to negotiate a power-sharing deal or face an offensive on the city. Residents in the dusty capital on the banks of the Chari River said the atmosphere was tense.
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/ 31 January 2008
A suicide bomber targeted an Afghan army bus in the centre of Kabul on Thursday, causing numerous casualties, officials said. One civilian was killed and four people were wounded, including an army officer, they said. A purported Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said one of the militant group’s suicide bombers was responsible for the blast.
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/ 30 January 2008
Rising flood waters devastating crops, livestock and infrastructure across half the coutry and menacing more than 73 000 Malawians are going to get worse, government officials said on Wednesday. ”It’s getting worse in Malawi because it is raining every day,” said Lilian Ng’oma, a senior official in the Disaster Management Ministry.