Pakistan A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday

LAHORE, Pakistan A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday, killing at least 39 people in this eastern city and wounding nearly 100, police said. It was the fourth major attack in Pakistan this week, indicating Islamist militants are stepping up violence after a period of relative calm.About ten of those killed were soldiers, said Lahore police chief Parvaiz Rathore.

The bombers, who were on foot, struck RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighborhood where several security agencies have facilities. Security forces swarmed the area as thick black smoke rose into the sky and bystanders rushed the injured into ambulances. Video being shot with a mobile phone just after the first explosion showed a large burst of orange flame suddenly erupting in the street, according to GEO TV, which broadcast a short clip of the footage shot by Tabraiz Bukhari.”Oh my God! Oh my God! Who are these beasts? Oh my God!” Bukhari can be heard shouting after the blast in a mixture of English and Urdu.Senior police official Tariq Saleem Dogar said 39 people were killed, and another 95 were hurt. Some of the wounded were missing limbs, lying in pools of blood after the enormous explosions, eyewitness Afzal Awan said.

“I saw smoke rising everywhere,” Awan told reporters. “A lot of people were crying.”No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida.The militants are believed to have been behind scores of attacks in U.S.-allied Pakistan over the last several years, including a series of strikes that began in October and lasted around three months, killing some 600 people in apparent retaliation for an army offensive along the Afghan border.In more recent months, the attacks were smaller, fewer and confined to remote regions near Afghanistan.But on Monday, a suicide car bomber struck a building in Lahore where police interrogated high-value suspects – including militants – killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.Also this week, suspected militants attacked the offices of World Vision, a U.S.-based Christian aid group, in the northwest district of Mansehra, killing six Pakistani employees, while a bombing at a small, makeshift movie theater in the main northwest city of Peshawar killed four people.The attacks show that the loose network of insurgents angry with Islamabad for its alliance with the U.S. retain the ability to strike throughout Pakistan despite pressure from army offensives and American missile strikes against militant targets.

The violence also comes amid signs of a Pakistani crackdown on Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida operatives using its soil. Among the militants known to have been arrested is the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.The Pakistani Taliban, meanwhile, are believed to have lost their top commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a U.S. missile strike in January. The group has denied Mehsud is dead but has failed to prove he’s still alive.

Militant attacks in Pakistan frequently target security forces, though civilian targets have not escaped.During the bloody wave of attacks that began in October – coinciding with the army’s ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal area – Lahore was hit several times.In mid-October, three groups of gunmen attacked three security facilities in the eastern city, a rampage that left 28 dead. Twin suicide bombings at a market there in December killed around 50 people.(AP)

Jahmaal James pleaded guilty on Friday to having gone to Pakistan to obtain paramilitary training for the benefit of the so-called Toronto 18

Jahmaal James pleaded guilty on Friday to having gone to Pakistan to obtain paramilitary training for the benefit of the so-called Toronto 18 and was to be set free after being sentenced to time served.The now 26-year-old admitted in a Brampton court that he was part of a terrorist group that intended to cause violent jihad.After entering his plea of guilt, the Scarborough man, who has been in pre-trial custody since June 2006, was sentenced by Justice Bruce Durno to seven years and credited with time served.

As part of a joint submission, the judge imposed a three-year probation period, a lifetime weapons prohibition and ordered James to provide a DNA sample. James, who converted from Christianity to Islam, chose not to address the near-empty court. Defence lawyer Donald McLeod later told reporters that his client is looking forward to getting on with his life.”This was a very hard, arduous and difficult time for him but I think now he can look forward to sort of doing things differently,” said McLeod.

He explained his client’s attraction to the group as a “blunder, a misstep in his 20s,” and described James as a “smart young man who has a lot going for him.”According to an agreed statement of fact, James travelled from Toronto to Lahore on Nov. 5, 2005, to obtain paramilitary training at a camp in Waziristan. Crown prosecutor Jason Wakely told the court that James planned to use that training to benefit the Toronto group. James believed that once he arrived overseas, Aabid Khan, a British resident known as “Mr. Fix-It,” would help him gain admission to one of the training camps in Pakistan. While there, James made several attempts to meet up with Khan, also known as Abu Omar, but became seriously ill.”This disrupted his plan,” Wakely told the judge. “The Crown does not allege that James actually received paramilitary training.”

When James returned to Toronto, on March 22, 2006, he became disgruntled with the reckless manner in which the Toronto group was being led and eventually pulled away because he feared the authorities were onto them. Defence lawyer McLeod told the court that there was also an “ideological shift” in his client, which explains why James distanced himself from those with extremist views. Outside court, McLeod said that after James returned from Pakistan he delved deeper into Islam and gained a deeper understanding of it.

“He still embraces the religion,” McLeod said of his client. “But he realizes he may have aligned himself with a portion that was not really to his liking and that’s what he disengaged from.”James was among 18 people charged with terrorism offences in the summer of 2006. Six have pleaded guilty, two have been found guilty and seven had their charges stayed. Three men still face trial. Khan, meanwhile, is serving a 12-year sentence in Britain after being found guilty in August 2008 of terror-related offences.

According to testimony heard during his London trial, Khan travelled often, including to Toronto, where he met with like-minded extremists he had met online and incited them to fight. He intended to rent an apartment for recruits on their way to Pakistan’s paramilitary training camps and talked about a “worldwide battle.”

Pakistan ISLAMABAD suicide bombing death toll rises to 8

Shiite Muslim

ISLAMABAD The death toll from a suicide bombing at a Shiite Muslim gathering in the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir increased to eight Monday, police said, as minority Shiites marked the key holy day of Ashura.Another 80 people were wounded in Sunday night’s bombing in Muzaffarabad – a rare sectarian attack in an area police say has little history of militant violence. The dead included three police, said police official Yasin Baig, adding that another 10 police were among the wounded.The suicide bomber set off explosives he was carrying as police searched him outside a ceremony commemorating the seventh century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson during the Islamic holy month of Muharram.Security has been tightened across Pakistan during Muharram, and particularly for Monday’s Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram, a month of mourning that is often marred by bombings and fighting between Pakistan’s Sunni Muslim majority and its Shiite minority.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, which has been repeatedly hit by suicide bombings in the past months, thousands of police were guarding processions, and troops were on standby, local police chief Liaqat Ali Khan said.

“Our security level is red alert,” Khan said, adding that the recent wave of attacks required police to be extra vigilant.

More than 500 people have been killed in attacks across Pakistan since October. Insurgents are suspected of avenging a U.S.-supported Pakistani army offensive against the Taliban in a northwest tribal region along the Afghan border.Maj. Aurangzeb Khan said paramilitary forces were deployed and were carrying out helicopter patrols in the southern port city of Karachi, where a blast that authorities attributed to a buildup of gas in a sewage pipe wounded about 30 people on Sunday.

“Our men will remain with all the processions till their culmination,” Khan said.To the east in Lahore, all entry and exit points to processions were blocked to traffic and anyone joining a procession had to pass through scanners, said police official Chaudhry Shafiq.

“There is always a threat, especially in the ongoing terror attacks,” Shafiq said.After Sunday night’s bombing in Kashmir’s Muzaffarabad, Baig, the police official there, said Shiite mourners at the commemoration ceremony took to the streets to protest the bombing, with some firing shots in the air. Baig said authorities restored order within about an hour.

He said it was the first time a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite gathering in the region.Muslim militants have fought for decades to free Kashmir, which is split between India and Pakistan and claimed by both, from New Delhi’s rule. But while Muzaffarabad has served as a base for anti-India insurgents to train and launch attacks, the capital – and most of the Pakistani side – has largely been spared any violence, with militants focusing on the Indian-controlled portion.

The bombing highlights the growing extremism of militants in Pakistani Kashmir. Many of the region’s armed groups were started with support from Islamabad. But some of them have turned against their former patrons and joined forces with the Taliban because the government has reduced its support under U.S. pressure.

The partnership is a dangerous development for Pakistan as it could enable the Taliban to carry out attacks more easily outside its sanctuary in the country’s tribal areas in the northwest. More than 500 people have been killed in retaliatory attacks since the military launched a major anti-Taliban offensive in mid-October in the militant stronghold of South Waziristan near the Afghan border.

Pakistani court has ordered the noses and ears of two men cut off

LAHORE, Pakistan  A Pakistani court has ordered the noses and ears of two men cut off after they did the same thing to a young woman whose family spurned one of the men’s marriage proposal, a prosecutor said Tuesday.The anti-terrorism court in the eastern city of Lahore said it was applying Islamic law by ordering the punishment.Lahore prosecutor Chaudhry Ali Ahmed said one of the accused, Sher Mohammad, was a cousin of the 19-year-old woman and wanted to marry her. Her parents refused his proposal.

Sher Mohammad and a friend, Amanat Mohammad, were accused of kidnapping the woman and cutting off her ears and nose in late September in the Raiwind area of Lahore.
The court on Monday also sentenced each man to 50 years in prison and told them to pay fines and compensation to the woman amounting to several thousand dollars, the prosecutor said.

Pakistan’s legal system has Islamic elements that sometimes lead to orders for harsh punishments, but the sentences are often overturned and rarely carried out. Serious crimes are often referred to anti-terrorism courts in Pakistan because they move faster.

Violence against women, especially attacks by spurned lovers, also occurs frequently in this impoverished South Asian nation.The men have seven days to appeal the ruling, Ahmed said.