Mexican soldier said that a U.S. citizen attacked an army convoy and was killed when troops shot him in self-defense outside the resort city of Acapulco

ACAPULCO, Mexico  A Mexican soldier said that a U.S. citizen attacked an army convoy and was killed when troops shot him in self-defense outside the resort city of Acapulco, a police official said. The man’s father said Monday that he found it hard to believe.An army lieutenant told police that Joseph Proctor opened fire on a military convoy with an AR-15 rifle, forcing the soldiers to shoot back, said Domingo Olea, a police investigator in the western state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located.

Olea provided no further details on Proctor, who was found dead in his car early Sunday.A Defense Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said the army was investigating the lieutenant’s claim. The official said Proctor might have been a passenger in the car, although nobody else was found with him at the scene.Proctor’s father, William Proctor, said he did not know of his son being involved in any illegal activity and did not believe he would have owned a gun or attacked soldiers.”I doubt that. Joseph had a temper but he didn’t use guns,” Proctor said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in Auburn, New York.

William Proctor said Joseph, 32, had lived off and on in Mexico for at least six years. He said his son had been in the process of divorcing his wife in Georgia and lived with a girlfriend and their young son in Mexico. He said he had little contact with his son and was unsure what Joseph did in Mexico but that he had worked in landscaping in the U.S.He said Joseph had sometimes complained about being pulled over by Mexican security forces looking for bribes.”He would get mad when the police pulled him over looking for payoffs,” Proctor said.Olea said the Mexican girlfriend, Liliana Gil Vargas, identified Proctor’s body. She gave Mexican authorities identification papers that listed Proctor as a resident of Georgia.

In brief comments to Mexican reporters, Gil said she last saw Proctor on Saturday night when he went out to run an errand at a convenience store in Barra de Coyuca, a community outside of Acapulco.Gil said the couple had been living in the central state of Puebla, near Mexico City, but had moved to Barra de Coyuca four months ago.Joseph Proctor’s mother, Donna Proctor, declined to speak to the AP when reached by telephone at her home in Hicksville, N.Y.

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said consular officials in Acapulco had been in contact with Proctor’s family and were providing assistance to repatriate his body. The spokeswoman declined to be named, in line with Embassy policy.Soldiers frequently come under attack from drug-trafficking gangs in the Acapulco area and there have been cases across Mexico of innocent bystanders dying in the crossfire between soldiers and drug gangs, or of soldiers opening fire on civilians who failed to stop at checkpoints.The military has faced mounting allegations of human-rights abuses since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers in 2006 to fight drug traffickers in their strongholds.

In November 2009, American Lizbeth Marin was shot to death in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. Mexican newspapers reported that Marin was hit by a stray bullet fired by a soldier participating in a raid.More recently, two Mexican university students were killed in March in the crossfire of a shootout between gunmen and soldiers outside the gates of their campus in the northern city of Monterrey.(AP)

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.

34 people killed at baghdad by bomb exploded

exploded at a school

BAGHDAD  A bomb exploded at a school in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City, killing five people, including four students, Iraqi officials said.The bombing took place at about 1 p.m. in an area where large attacks have been infrequent because it is encircled by U.S. and Iraqi security forces and has its own neighborhood security.The blast also wounded at least 34 people, said an Iraqi police official. A Ministry of Interior official confirmed the casualties.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

There are an estimated 2.5 million Shiites living in Sadr City, a stronghold of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.Violence has decreased dramatically in Iraq, though insurgents continue to target civilians and security forces. The U.S. military has expressed concern of a possible rise in violence ahead of next year’s national elections.

Also Monday, gunmen stormed a checkpoint north of Baghdad, killing five members of a Sunni anti-al-Qaida group, according to a police official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason. The U.S. military confirmed the attack.