Five years after Morocco’s deadliest suicide bombings killed 45 people in Casablanca, the North African kingdom remains engaged in a relentless chase for Islamist terrorists. Thousands of people have been detained, including dozens who have been abducted illegally by the secret service and taken to detention centres.
Pakistan’s political turmoil and violence have claimed a high-profile cultural victim — a centuries-old kite-flying festival that draws thousands of visitors. The Basant festival brings a springtime buzz to eastern Pakistan and its regional capital, Lahore, and officials usually relax a ban on the pastime.
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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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/ 9 September 2007
Al-Qaeda’s north Africa wing said it was behind two suicide attacks that killed at least 57 people in Algeria in the past two days, according to a statement posted on the internet on Saturday. It said the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb was behind Saturday’s suicide truck bombing at a coast guard barracks east of Algiers and an attack in the town of Batna less than 48 hours earlier.