Blasts destroy NATO tankers, shops in Pakistan

AFP, Peshawar

Suspected Taliban militants planted bombs in northwest Pakistan that destroyed two tankers supplying fuel to NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
The incident took place in restive Khyber, one of seven semi-autonomous tribal regions in northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.
"A convoy of seven tankers was on its way to Afghanistan when one of the tankers blew up and caught fire, killing a fruit vendor and burning at least 50 shops in a nearby market," local government official Rehan Gul Khattak said.
He said another tanker exploded near Landi Kotal, the main town in Khyber, after militants planted another bomb. A cleaner accompanying the second truck sustained burn wounds, he added.
Another official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the blasts.
Militants have carried out a series of strikes against supplies for US and NATO-led foreign forces fighting against a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
The bulk of supplies and equipment required by the foreign troops across the border are shipped through northwest Pakistan's tribal region of Khyber.
US officials say northwest Pakistan has become a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan and have regrouped to launch attacks on foreign troops across the border.

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Afghan bomb kills 11, including children

AFP, Kandahar

A Taliban bomb attack killed 11 civilians, including children and toddlers, going to a shrine in Afghanistan on Friday, police said following a surge of attacks ahead of key elections.
The explosives ripped through a civilian pick-up vehicle taking a group of men, women and children to visit a centuries-old tomb in Spin Boldak district in Kandahar province, just a few kilometres (miles) from the Pakistani border.
"Three women, three men and five children were killed," General Saifullah Hakim, a senior border police official, told AFP.
"All of them were civilians. They were going to a shrine when their vehicle was hit by a newly planted bomb," he added. Police said three women were wounded and evacuated to hospital.
"Today at around 9:00 am, a mini-van struck a roadside bomb in the Wanaki area of Spin Boldak," General Abdul Raziq, border police chief for Zabul and Kandahar provinces, told AFP, confirming the death toll.
"Three (of the dead) children were between one and two years old. The other two were aged around five," he said. There was no claim of responsibility, but police blamed the attack on "enemies of the country"-a term used to refer to the Taliban, Islamist hardliners leading an insurgency against the US-backed Afghan government. Officers, quoting witness reports from the remote desert area, said the force of the blast ripped many of victims to pieces and that the death toll was calculated after pieces of flesh were collected from the site. Roadside bombs are the deadliest weapon used by insurgents fighting against Afghan and Western forces, but also routinely kill and maim civilians.
Raziq speculated that border police may have been the intended target of Friday's blast because there was a border police post on the same road.
Afghanistan's nearly eight-year insurgency is at its deadliest, forcing the United States to dispatch an extra 21,000 soldiers in a bid to stabilise the country ahead of presidential and provincial council elections on August 20.

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Pakistan court acquits former PM Sharif of hijacking

AFP, Islamabad

Pakistan's supreme court Friday overturned convictions against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif for plane hijacking and terrorism, two months after reversing a ban on the opposition leader's holding office.
Sharif was convicted of "hijacking" a commercial jet carrying Pervez Musharraf after denying the aircraft landing rights on October 12, 1999 as Pakistan was convulsed by a coup that swept Musharraf to power.
The plane eventually landed and Musharraf, who was then army chief of staff, seized control of the nuclear armed nation.
"Looking at the case from any angle -- the charge of hijacking, attempt to hijack or terrorism does not stand established against the petitioner," the Supreme Court ruled on a petition filed by Sharif.
The five-judge court headed by Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani heard the petition in June, but initially reserved judgement.
"The conviction and sentence of the appellant are set aside and he is acquitted," said the order, written in English.
The "petitioner had neither used force nor ordered its use and undisputedly no deceitful means were used."
The opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N party headed by Sharif, who has become the most popular politician in the country, welcomed the judgement.
"A judgement given by a kangaroo court nine years ago has been nullified by an independent and sovereign apex court in the light of the constitution, law and evidence on record," PML-N spokesman Siddique-ul-Farooq told AFP.
He said the party would now endeavour to bring former "dictator Pervez Musharraf to book and hold him accountable."
Friday's order came almost two months after the Supreme Court overturned a ban on Sharif holding office, allowing the popular leader to contest elections in the politically turbulent nation. A court decision in February to disqualify Sharif and his politician brother Shahbaz Sharif sparked massive protests that plunged the nuclear-armed country into turmoil and unnerved its Western allies last March.
Under Western pressure, the government agreed on March 16 to reinstate the popular chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was sacked by Musharraf and whose promised reinstatement the government had stalled.
Nawaz Sharif was first elected prime minister in 1990 but was sacked three years later on corruption charges. He returned to power in 1997, but in 1999 was ousted in a coup by Musharraf, who brought criminal charges against him for hijacking, terrorism and attempted murder.
Convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on charges he said were politically motivated, Sharif retreated into exile in December 2000, returning to Pakistan in November 2007 with Musharraf's agreement.

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Police arrest Indian militant leader

BSS, Dhaka

Detective policemen arrested a wanted Indian militant leader, believed to be linked to Harkatul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) and Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba and India's Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF).
"We arrested Mufty Obaidullah after one and half months of manhunt in line with statements of earlier arrested Indian underworld operative Dawdood merchant," Dhaka's police commissioner AKM Shahidul Hoque told a press conference here on Friday.
He added that according to the initial interrogation Afghan resistance veteran Obaidullah said, he was hiding in Bangladesh since 1995 as a madrasah teacher to evade arrests by Indian security forces and in the past 14 years he served in four madrasahs with the last one being in western Madaripur.
Haque said, police launched a manhunt for four other absconding Indian nationals, in line with initial statements of Obailullah, a graduate of India's Deoband Madrasah.
The police commissioner said, they were yet to find the links between Dawdood Ibrahim's underworld network and the extreme right wing militant outfits despite their apparent dissimilarities in terms of ideology or objectives.
But, a police official familiar with the process earlier said, Obaidullah was an operative of ARCF, which had claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack on the American Centre in Kolkata in 2002.

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10 Minister will be changed today in Bangladesh

10 Minister will be changed at 6 p.m. This will be chance for Tofayel, Nasim and other old politician to enter in Ministry. This will be good for Bangladesh.

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