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.”

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.

A bomb exploded near an intelligence office Pakistan intel kills 12 people

bomb exploded near an intelligence

MULTAN, Pakistan A bomb exploded near an intelligence office in central Pakistan on Tuesday, authorities said, damaging the building and killing at least 12 people amid a surge of extremist violence that has prompted the U.S. to offer additional aid in the country’s battle against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The bombing in Multan signaled a relentless determination on the part of the militants, who – despite being pressured by a major army offensive in one of their Afghan border havens – have sustained a retaliatory campaign since October that has killed more than 400 people. On Monday, bombings elsewhere in the country killed 59 people.

TV footage from Multan showed several severely damaged buildings in the neighborhood, some with their facades ripped off. Ambulances wailed as security forces flooded the zone, where a Federal Investigation Agency office was also located.

The apparent target of the blast was a building housing an office of Pakistan’s most powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Authorities still had not determined how the attack was carried out.

Rizwan Naseer, the official in charge of the area’s government-run emergency service, told a Pakistani news channel that the attack killed 12 people and wounded 30 people. It was not immediately clear how many were intelligence agents.

The attack came as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Washington was ready to work more closely with Pakistan as soon as Islamabad expressed willingness.

“The more they get attacked internally … the more open they may be to additional help from us. But we are prepared to expand that relationship at any pace they are prepared to accept,” he said.

Early Tuesday, suspected U.S. missiles struck a car carrying three people in the Taliban-riddled North Waziristan tribal region, two intelligence officials said. The region neighbors South Waziristan, the focus of the latest Pakistani army offensive, and is believed to be where many of the Taliban have fled to avoid the military onslaught. The identities of the three were not immediately clear.

All the intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Most of the militant attacks in recent weeks have been directed at security forces, though several have targeted crowded public spaces such as markets, apparently to create public anger and increase pressure on the government to call a halt to the South Waziristan offensive.

The Taliban generally claim responsibility for attacks on security officers, but not those that kill civilians, though they – or affiliated extremist groups – are suspected in all the strikes.

Late Monday, twin blasts and a resulting fire ripped through the Moon Market, a center in the eastern city of Lahore that is popular with women and sells clothing, shoes and cosmetics. Lahore police chief Pervaiz Lathore said Tuesday that the death toll in the blasts had reached 49, with more than 100 people wounded.

Authorities initially said both bombs at the market were believed to be remote-controlled, but they later said a suicide bomber was suspected to have detonated at least one of them.

Earlier Monday, a suicide bomber killed 10 people outside a courthouse in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Lahore is Pakistan’s second-largest city. It has been hit several times by militants over the past year, including an attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team and several strikes against security installations.

By attacking Lahore and Multan, militants are bringing their war to the heart of Pakistan. Both are cities in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, and one far from the northwest regions where al-Qaida and the Taliban have more easily proliferated.

Peshawar has been a more frequent target. The northwestern city lies on the main road into the lawless tribal belt. Of all the attacks since the start of October, the deadliest occurred in Peshawar, where at least 112 people were killed in a bombing at another market.

The rise in militant attacks comes amid growing political turbulence, especially regarding the future of President Asif Ali Zardari, a pro-U.S. leader hugely unpopular here.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court continued examining the legality of an amnesty protecting him and 8,000 other officials from graft prosecution. The amnesty expired last month, and judges must rule on whether to reopen corruption cases against them.

Although Zardari has immunity from prosecution as president, some experts say the court could now take up cases challenging his eligibility to run for office.