The alleged connection to militants in Pakistan will likely step up the pressure on Islamabad, after a recent coordinated assault by insurgents on diplomatic and government areas in Kabul and elsewhere put the spotlight on the South Asian nation.
“It could have caused large-scale bloodshed,” National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri told a news conference.
“Three Pakistani terrorists and two of their Afghan collaborators who placed the explosives under bags of potatoes in a truck were caught.”
The 10 tons of explosives were stuffed into 400 bags and hidden under piles of potatoes in the back of a Pakistan-registered truck on Kabul’s outskirts, said Tahiri.
The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, said there was “no question” that the Haqqani network, which Washington believes is based in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, mounted last weekend’s 18- hour roc ket and gunfire operation in Kabul.
Crocker called on Pakistan to crack down on the Haqqanis and said the response to that demand would influence future ties between the strategic allies.
Relations have been heavily strained by a series of events, including the unilateral US special forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in May of last year.
Pakistan has denied accusations that its military spy agency sees the Haqqanis as a counterweight to the growing influence of rival India in Afghanistan.
Tahiri said the five men confessed to receiving training from Noor Afzal and Mohammad Omar, who he identified as key commanders of the Pakistani Taliban and Pakistan intelligence.
Video footage released by NDS to media showed the detained men, including the alleged Pakistanis, talking about where they came from while sitting against a blank white wall.
A Pakistani intelligence official declined comment on the accusations, while Afghan officials were not immediately available to give additional information.
While the Pakistani Taliban cooperate with the Afghan Taliban, they are sworn enemies of the US-backed Islamabad government and have mounted suicide bombings against Pakistani intelligence officials and security forces.
It’s still not clear whether the confessions will create a new crisis in relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Cross border ties went into a freeze last year after Kabul accused Pakistani agents of playing a role in the September assassination by insurgents of the head of the country’s High Peace Council.
Afghanistan has long been suspicious of Pakistani intentions, accusing Islamabad of backing insurgent groups to further its interests.
Pakistan’s government denies supporting or giving sanctuary to insurgents on its territory and has said it would do what it can to advance the Afghan reconciliation process.
Afghan officials say privately that Pakistan has not delivered on its promises, despite upbeat official assessments of cooperation from both sides in recent months.
The Taliban in March said they were suspending peace talks with the United States and a plan to open an office in the Gulf state of Qatar to smooth negotiations, accusing Washington of double-dealing over confidence-building measures including the release of insurgents from a US military prison in Cuba.
“Taliban says they have done the attack,” Ariana TV reported. The Taliban say attacks taking place in Paktia and Logar provinces as well. Isaf confirmed multiple attacks across Kabul, potentially 7 locations saying ANSF & Isaf responding as needed. “No reports of casulaties,” Isaf said. Two suicide attackers blew themselves up near Jalalabad airport, provincial spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulazai said.
BANDA ACEH: An 8.7 magnitude earthquake struck off Indonesia on Wednesday, sending residents around the region scurrying from buildings and raising fears of a huge tsunami as in 2004, but authorities said there were no reports suggesting a major threat.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in Aceh, the Indonesian province closest to the earthquake.
The quake struck at 0838 GMT and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said soon afterwards a tsunami watch was in effect for the entire Indian Ocean. It later said the threat of a big tsunami had receded, although the warning remained in place.
"It doesn't look like a major tsunami. But we are still monitoring as tsunamis come in waves," Victor Sardina, a geophysicist on duty at the Hawaii-based institute, told Reuters.
Individual countries, including Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India, issued their own warnings.
People near the coast in six Thai provinces were ordered to move to higher ground and authorities shut down the international airport in the beach resort town of Phuket.
The quake struck 308 miles (500 km) southwest of the city of Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island, at a depth of 20.5 miles (33 km), the US Geological survey said.
Indonesia's disaster management agency said power was down in Aceh province and people were gathering on high ground as sirens warned of the danger.
"The electricity is down, there are traffic jams to access higher ground. Sirens and Koran recitals from mosques are everywhere," said Sutopo, spokesman for the agency.
But Yudhoyono said there were no signs of a disaster.
"There is no tsunami threat although we are on alert," said he said at a joint news conference in Jakarta with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said Britain was standing ready to help if needed.
"The situation in Aceh is under control, there's a little bit of panic but people can go to higher ground," Yudhoyono said.
He said he had ordered a disaster relief team to fly to Aceh, which was devastated by the 9.1 magnitude 2004 quake, which sent huge tsunami waves crashing into Sumatra, where 170,000 people were killed, and across the Indian Ocean.
In all, the 2004 tsunami killed about 230,000 people in 13 Indian Ocean countries, including Thailand, Sri Lanka and India.
"HORIZONTAL SHIFT"
Wednesday's quake was felt as far away as the Thai capital, Bangkok, and in southern India, residents said.
Hundreds of office workers in the Indian city of Bangalore left their buildings while the Indian port of Chennai closed down because of the danger of a tsunami, the port said.
The quake was in roughly in the same area as the 2004 quake which was at a depth of 18 miles (30 km) along a fault line running under the Indian Ocean, off western Indonesia and up into the Bay of Bengal.
One expert told the BBC the Wednesday quake was a "strike-slip" fault, meaning a more horizontal shift of the ground under the sea as opposed to a sudden vertical shift, and less risk of a large displacement of water triggering a tsunami.
The quake was also felt in Sri Lanka, where office workers in the capital, Colombo, fled their offices, and in Phuket, both of which were hit hard by the 2004 tsunami.
Mahinda Amaraweera, Sri Lanka's minister for disaster management, called for calm while advising people near the coast to seek safety.
"I urge the people not to panic. We have time if there is a tsunami going to come. So please evacuate if you are in the coastal area and move to safer places," Amaraweera told a private television channel.
In Bangladesh, where two tremors were felt, authorities said there appeared to be no threat of a tsunami. Australia also said there was no threat of a tsunami there.
Eleven people died and 28 were wounded when two suicide attackers rammed a car bomb into a government compound near the western city of Herat, the interior ministry said.
Provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb told reporters that the bombers were being pursued by police when they detonated the vehicle at the entrance to the Guzara district compound along the road from the airport to the city.
"The car was under our surveillance. It was ordered twice to stop but they didn't stop," said the police chief.
"There were two individuals in the car, one was wearing a burqa. One of the bombers is totally shattered and the other person's body is still there with his (suicide) vest still unexploded."
The dead included three policemen and eight civilians, a provincial spokesman said.
Just hours later, four policemen died when three suicide bombers stormed their compound in the southern province of Helmand, a local government spokesman said.
Two of the bombers set off explosives strapped to their bodies and a third was shot dead by police guarding the Musa Qala police offices in the troubled province, Daud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the provincial administration, told AFP.
"Three suicide attackers entered the police compound in Musa Qala district of Helmand. Two of them detonated their explosives, one was killed by police," Ahmadi told AFP.
Police chief Abdul Wali and four others were wounded in the attack, he said.
In the Herat bombing, most of the victims were civilians visiting the local administration offices on business, an official said.
An AFP reporter, among the first to arrive at the scene, said he saw bodies strewn among rubble and pieces of metal from the bombers' car.
Another witness told AFP that women and children were present when the bombing happened.
"Shortly before it happened, I saw some women and children there. After the bombing I saw up to 10 people lying in blood," the witness told AFP.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either attack, but suicide bombings are a hallmark of Taliban insurgents fighting to topple the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
“The end of the print set is something we’ve foreseen for some time,” Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica, said in a statement.
“It’s the latest step in our evolution from the print publisher we were, to the creator of digital learning products we are today.” The “coolly authoritative” reference books were coveted as a “goalpost for an aspirational middle class” who often paid for the multivolume sets in installments in the 1950’s and 1960s, the New York Times wrote in glowing tribute to the end of era. Sales peaked in 1990 when 120,000 sets were sold in the United States and dropped off precipitously as the Internet became the reference of choice for most Americans, with the huge growth of online reference site Wikipedia.
The gold-lettered books once sold by a “fleet” of door to door salesmen became a luxury item with a price tag of $1,395, the Times reported. Only 8,000 of the 12,000 collections printed for the 2010 edition were sold.
Britannica offered its first digital edition in 1981 for LexisNexis users, published the first multi-media CD in 1989 and the first encyclopedia on the Internet in 1994. It also expanded into the school curriculum market.
The online version — which offers some services for free and charges an annual fee for enhanced content — attracts an audience of 100 million people worldwide, Britannica said.
Standing before a crowd of parliamentarians, tribal leaders and foreign dignitaries at the presidential palace in Sanaa, Saleh formally ceded power to his deputy Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, pledging to support his efforts to “rebuild” a country still reeling from months of violence.
“I hand over the banner of the revolution, of the republic, of freedom, of security and of stability... to safe hands,” said Saleh as he stood beside Hadi and gave a farewell speech carried live on state television.
The main opposition coalition, the Common Forum, which currently heads the interim government, boycotted Monday’s ceremony, saying in a statement late on Sunday that Hadi officially became president after winning the February 21 election, not because Saleh handed him the post.
Hadi will serve for an interim two-year period under a Gulf-brokered transition plan signed by Saleh last November after 10 months of protests demanding his ouster.
Saleh said that he would “stand... by my brother the president of the republic,” and urged Yemenis to rally behind Hadi in his fight against “terrorism, first and foremost, Al-Qaeda.”
“There is no place for terrorism,” he said.
Hadi cautioned that the past year of turmoil that has crippled the economy and unleashed nationwide insecurity was not yet over, and appealed to Yemenis to “cooperate with the new leadership” to help the country emerge from the crisis.
He said he hoped that after his two years in office, Yemen could have a peaceful transition.
“I hope we will meet in this room again... to bid farewell and welcome a new leadership. I hope that in two years, I will stand in President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s place and a new president will stand in mine,” he said.
Presidential and parliamentary elections will be held at the end of Hadi’s two-year term.
Saleh is the fourth Arab leader to fall since the beginning of the Arab Spring revolutions that forced the resignation of veteran leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, and led to the gruesome death of Libya’s long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Saleh got the best deal in return for stepping aside: he and his closest aides were granted immunity from prosecution for alleged crimes committed during the brutal crackdown on dissent which left hundreds dead and thousands wounded.
Hadi took the oath of office in parliament on Saturday, and in his first speech as new leader he vowed to fight Al-Qaeda and restore security across the Arab world’s poorest nation.
“It is a patriotic and religious duty to continue the battle against Al-Qaeda. If we don’t restore security, the only outcome will be chaos,” Hadi said.
His taking the oath was overshadowed by a suicide bomb attack at a presidential palace in the southeastern Hadramawt province, killing 26 elite troops in an attack military officials said bore the hallmark of Al-Qaeda.
Yemen’s local Al-Qaeda branch, the self-proclaimed Partisans of Sharia (Islamic law), has exploited the decline in central government control that accompanied the anti-Saleh protests that eventually forced him to cede power.
During the unrest, the militants seized large swathes of southern and eastern Yemen.
On Tuesday Hadi received 99.8 percent of the votes in a presidential election with a 60 percent turnout. He was the sole candidate.
Hadi now faces monumental security, humanitarian and economic challenges that if not resolved, could threaten to derail the political settlement.
The UN’s Yemen envoy and key player in the power-transfer deal, Jamal Benomar, has described the political transition as the “beginning of a difficult and thorny road,” warning that the country still faces “many dangers.”
In Kabul and in provinces to the east, north and south of the capital, furious Afghans took to the streets screaming “Death to America”, throwing rocks and setting fire to shops and vehicles as gunshots rang out.
In the eastern city of Jalalabad, students set fire to an effigy of President Barack Obama, and the US embassy in Kabul went into lockdown.
The American Embassy said its staff were in “lockdown” and travel had been suspended as thousands of people expressed fury over the burning, a public relations disaster for US-led Nato forces fighting Taliban militants ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
In Kabul, hundreds of people poured onto the Jalalabad road, throwing stones at US military base Camp Phoenix, where troops guarding the base fired into the air and black smoke rose from burning tyres, an AFP photographer said.
Demonstrators set fire to part of a housing compound used by foreign contract workers. A Reuters witness said the fire damaged part of a guesthouse at the Green Village complex, where 1,500 mostly foreign contractors live and work.
The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, apologised and ordered an investigation into the incident, admitting that religious materials, including Qurans “were inadvertently taken to an incineration facility”. Allen and US deputy defence secretary Ashton Carter called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai Wednesday to apologise again for the incident at Bagram airbase north of Kabul, the president’s office said.
Karzai asked Allen to cooperate fully with a government investigation into the burning and told him to “make sure that such incidents do not happen again in future”, a statement said.
Karzai also urged the US military to speed up a transfer to Afghan control of the controversial US-controlled prison at Bagram, sometimes known as Afghanistan’s Guantanamo Bay.
“The sooner you do the transfer of the prison, the fewer problems and unfortunate incidents you will have,” the president told Carter.
Two US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP the military removed Qurans from the prison because inmates were suspected of using the holy book to pass messages to each other.
Six protesters were killed and 13 wounded in Shinwar district of Parwan province north of Kabul, provincial administration spokeswoman Roshna Khalid told AFP, saying the protesters had attacked police with rocks and some were armed.
Kabul demonstrators attacked anti-riot police, forcing them to retreat and shots were fired as they tried to march on the centre of the capital, killing one person and wounding at least 11, according to a health ministry official.
The demonstrators were driven back and the protest was over by mid-afternoon, witnesses said.
About 100 university students demonstrated in west Kabul and dozens more people gathered at parliament until they were driven away by riot police.
“We are the protectors of the Holy Quran, we want those who burnt the Quran to be handed over to us, we want justice,” said Rahim Shah outside parliament.
In Jalalabad, more than 1,000 demonstrators, many of them university students, blocked the highway shouting “Death to Americans, Death to Obama”, while there were pockets of demonstrations across the city.
Doctor Ahmad Ali said one person was killed and 10 others had been admitted to Jalalabad hospital with gunshot wounds.
Elsewhere in the country, about 800 gathered in district centre Baraki Barak in Logar province, a flashpoint for Taliban violence south of Kabul, shouting anti-US slogans, said Sayed Wakil Agha, the district chief.
Reports that the Holy Quran had been mistreated emerged on Tuesday, but it remains unclear exactly who was responsible.
A spokesman for the US-led Nato force in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, told AFP he could not confirm that the Qurans had been burnt by Americans at the base, saying it was still under investigation.
Separately, nine schoolgirls were injured in a Nato helicopter attack in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, an Afghan official alleged on Wednesday.
Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was looking into the allegation but had no immediate information.
“This morning a school was attacked by a Nato helicopter. Nine children, all girls, and the school’s janitor have been injured,” Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, the Nangarhar provincial government spokesman told AFP.
“Some of the girls were discharged after receiving treatment but about five of them are still in the hospital,” Abdulzai said, accusing the US-led ISAF force of carrying out the attack.
An Isaf spokesman said the force was aware of the claim but “we don’t have operational reporting of it”.
He went straight into talks with Foreign Minister Ashur bin Khayyal and was also to meet with Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib. Ping said his talks were focused on African Union (AU) efforts to help restore security to Libya and aid its post-war reconstruction as well to improve ties with its African neighbours, the Libyan news agency LANA reported. It said they also discussed the agenda of the AU summit at the end of January in Addis Ababa.
The AU only recognised Libya's new leaders in September, after having failed to assert itself as a mediator in the conflict between rebels and Gaddafi, who was a founder of the pan-Arab organisation.
The rebels, who had the support of NATO, turned down AU appeals for dialogue with the Gaddafi regime.
After the border clash, the officials said, the Obama administration had decided to suspend its regular and hugely unpopular drone campaign inside Pakistan to avoid further unsettling relations. There was a 55-day hiatus.
Then, early this month, in a rare display of deference the Central Intelligence Agency informed the Pakistani government that it planned a drone strike against a terrorist target in the North Waziristan tribal region and asked Islamabad’s permission. When Pakistan declined, the strike was cancelled, officials said.
However, barely a week later when the US wanted to launch another drone strike in North Waziristan, officials said that Pakistan was notified in advance but permission was not sought. Another drone strike followed two days afterward.
Thanks, but no thanks: Pakistan tells Grossman
The paper also reports that Marc Grossman, the Obama administration’s top diplomat in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan, had asked to visit Islamabad during his current trip to the region, but Pakistani officials responded that it was not convenient.
Grossman is due to visit regional capitals Ankara, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Kabul this week in what is being termed the US’ new push to engage the Taliban.
The move by Pakistani officials seems to imply that, in the aftermath of the November killings of Pakistani soldiers by Nato forces, the country is changing its attitude on US overtures towards the Taliban. But security officials and analysts who spoke to The Washington Post said that there were no significant changes in bilateral counterterrorism cooperation.
The “fundamentals” of mutual interest in destroying al Qaeda and safely managing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal haven’t changed, said a senior Obama administration official, who, like several sources in this article, discussed sensitive diplomatic matters on condition of anonymity.
But, he said, the two countries are trying to find what he called “a new normal” — somewhere between the strategic alliance that US President Obama once proffered in exchange for Pakistan severing its ties with militants, and a more businesslike arrangement with few illusions.
“It’ll be much more realpolitik,” another US official said. “It’s getting away from the grandiose vision of what could be to focusing on what is.”
Pakistan seeks change
However, a senior Pakistani military official told the paper that the country wants some “significant changes” in the way Pakistan and the US do business. Speaking about past incidents of bilateral intelligence and military cooperation in pursuit of Pakistan-based al Qaeda and Taliban militants, he said, “We’ve had some glorious times.” But he spoke emotionally about the deaths of the 24 soldiers in November and said the incident would not soon be forgotten.
The same, he said, is true of what he called other “insults” in 2011, including the Raymond Davis killings, the May 2 Abbottabad raid and then US chairman of joint chiefs of staff Admiral Mike Mullen’s statement that the Haqqani group was a ‘veritable’ arm of Pakistan’s ISI.
Reviewing cooperation
A Pakistani parliamentary committee, with input from feuding military and civilian political factions, is conducting what Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday called “a full review of the terms of cooperation” with America and the US-led international coalition in Afghanistan.
A senior Pakistani government official said the committee’s recommendations will probably include a demand for explicit US assurances that there will be no violation of sovereignty — no American boots on the ground, no more unilateral raids, no manned airstrikes. The official said there is likely to be some arrangement on drone attacks, with Pakistan calling for large reductions in their number and geographic scope, and demanding prior notification and approval of every strike.
Any explicit agreement on drones would be a major change from past practice.
Pakistan also wants more explicit compensation for US and Nato supplies transiting its ports and roads, perhaps in the form of taxes. And it wants more comprehensive information about CIA operations and personnel. “There are over 1,000 houses in Pakistan that have been hired by the US Embassy, and we don’t know who lives in them,” the Pakistani official said.
US peace talks with the Taliban are also a top issue for Pakistan.
The Chinese leader met King Abdullah on Sunday, Saudi state news agency SPA said, adding that the two leaders "discussed regional and international developments, as well as cooperation between the two countries."
Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of oil to energy-hungry China and bilateral trade between the two countries amounted to $58.5 billion in the first 11 months of 2011, according to Xinhua Chinese news agency.
The two countries inked several economic and cultural agreements on Sunday including a Memorandum of Understanding between Saudi petrochemical giant SABIC and China's Sinopec to build a petrochemical plant in Tianjin, SPA said.
They also signed a cooperation agreement for the "peaceful use of nuclear energy," it added without elaborating.
On Saturday, Wen met with Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, who is Saudi's interior minister, SPA reported.
Wen also held talks with the head of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, an OIC statement said.
The Gulf tour will also take Wen to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
His trip comes as the West ups the stakes in its standoff with Iran, threatening to impose sanctions on the oil exports of the Islamic republic, which provides 11 percent of China's oil imports.
Iran is the third largest provider of oil to China. Qatar and the UAE, although both major oil-producing states, do not yet figure among the top 10 oil exporters to Beijing.
The visit comes days after Wen met with US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was in Beijing to drum up support for the new US sanctions that aim to squeeze Iran's crucial oil revenues.
The measures bar any foreign banks that do business with Iran's central bank -- responsible for processing most oil purchases in the Islamic republic -- from US financial markets.
But China opposes the sanctions on Iran, which Washington and other nations accuse of developing nuclear weapons -- a claim denied by Tehran.
Japan's Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba was in the Gulf last week also on a tour aimed to secure oil supplies in case of a shortage resulting from sanctions on Iran's oil exports.
Iran has starkly warned Gulf states not to make up for any shortfall in its oil exports under the new US and EU sanctions.
If Arab neighbours compensate for a looming EU ban on Iranian imports, "we would not consider these actions to be friendly," Iran's representative to OPEC, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, was quoted as saying by the Sharq newspaper on Sunday.
A senior US military official said the Marines believed they had identified the unit at the center of the allegations, which evoked memories of previous abuses committed by US troops in Iraq and during the decade-long Afghan war.
"We cannot release the name of the unit at this time since the incident is being investigated," a spokesman from the Marines said, referring to images that could spark outrage and unrest in Afghanistan and the wider Muslim world.
US cable network CNN quoted an unnamed US Marine official as saying the military branch was "confident" the troops in the inflammatory video were from the 3rd Battalion 2nd Marine Regiment, based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
The unit deployed to Afghanistan, mainly in Helmand province, in early 2011 and returned in September or October, CNN reported.
The video appeared to show four servicemen urinating on three bloodied corpses, and one of the men, apparently aware he was being filmed, saying: "Have a great day, buddy," referring to one of the dead.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pledged that "those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent," and a Pentagon spokesman confirmed a probe into the alleged abuse was under way.
"This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards or values our armed forces are sworn to uphold," Panetta said in a statement.
"I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters of her "total dismay at the story concerning our Marines," and joined Panetta in condemning "the deplorable behavior that is reflected in this video."
"It is absolutely inconsistent with American values, with the standards of behavior that we expect from our military personnel," Clinton said.
The Taliban, who have made recent moves toward talks to end 10 years of US-led war in the impoverished country, described the apparent abuse as "an inhumane and savage act by the American soldiers in Afghanistan."
But spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said he did not think it would destroy tentative peace negotiations with the United States, "which at this stage are mainly about prisoner exchange".
Earlier in the day, the insurgents issued another statement supporting talks to end the war against US-led forces, while warning that this did not mean surrender.
The Pentagon says it has not yet verified the footage, which has been broadcast by leading Afghan television station Tolo News and posted on the Live Leak website.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement that the government of Afghanistan was "deeply disturbed" at the desecration.
"This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms," he said, requesting that the US urgently investigate and "apply the most severe punishment" to anyone found guilty.
On the subject of peace talks, the Taliban, who have announced their readiness to open a political office in Qatar, said they had increased their "political efforts to come to mutual understanding with the world."
"But this understanding does not mean a surrender from jihad and neither is it connected to an acceptance of the constitution of the stooge Kabul administration," the hardline Islamists said in a statement received by AFP.
"But rather the Islamic Emirate (the Taliban) is utilizing its political wing alongside its military presence and jihad in order to realize the national and Islamic aspirations of the nation and its martyrs."
The United States earlier announced that it would send a senior official to meet Karzai next week to see if he will agree to a resumption of preliminary talks with the Taliban. A US official said the talks could open within weeks.
A key Washington demand for any progress in negotiations is that the Taliban accept the Afghan constitution, which mandates protection for the rights of women and minorities, which were stifled during Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001.
Another crucial element would be a renunciation of violence by the Taliban and a break with Al-Qaeda and other "terrorist" groups, the US says.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has suspended drone missile strikes on gatherings of low-ranking militants in Pakistan due to tensions with that country, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Citing unnamed current and former US officials, the newspaper said late Friday the undeclared halt in CIA attacks is aimed at reversing a sharp erosion of trust between the two countries.
US-Pakistani relations deteriorated last month after a series of US air strikes killed 24 Pakistan soldiers near the border with Afghanistan.
A joint US-Nato investigation concluded that a disastrous spate of errors and botched communications led to the deaths. Pakistan has rejected the findings.
The pause in the missile strikes comes amid an intensifying debate in the administration of President Barack Obama over the future of the CIA’s covert drone war in Pakistan, the paper said.
The CIA has killed dozens of al Qaeda operatives and hundreds of low-ranking fighters there since the first Predator strike in 2004, but the program has infuriated many Pakistanis, the report noted.
Some officials in the State Department and the National Security Council say many of the airstrikes are counterproductive, The Times said.
They argue that rank-and-file militants are easy to replace, and that Pakistani claims of civilian casualties, which the United States dispute, have destabilised the government of President Asif Ali Zardari.
Some US intelligence officials are urging the CIA to cut back the paramilitary role it has assumed since the September 11, 2001, attacks to refocus on espionage, the paper pointed out.
They suggest handing the mission to the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, which flies its own drones and conducts secret counter-terrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia, The Times noted.
Citing unnamed current and former US officials, the newspaper said late Friday the undeclared halt in CIA attacks is aimed at reversing a sharp erosion of trust between the two countries.
US-Pakistani relations deteriorated last month after a series of US air strikes killed 24 Pakistan soldiers near the border with Afghanistan.
A joint US-Nato investigation concluded that a disastrous spate of errors and botched communications led to the deaths. Pakistan has rejected the findings.
The pause in the missile strikes comes amid an intensifying debate in the administration of President Barack Obama over the future of the CIA’s covert drone war in Pakistan, the paper said.
The CIA has killed dozens of al Qaeda operatives and hundreds of low-ranking fighters there since the first Predator strike in 2004, but the program has infuriated many Pakistanis, the report noted.
Some officials in the State Department and the National Security Council say many of the airstrikes are counterproductive, The Times said.
They argue that rank-and-file militants are easy to replace, and that Pakistani claims of civilian casualties, which the United States dispute, have destabilised the government of President Asif Ali Zardari.
Some US intelligence officials are urging the CIA to cut back the paramilitary role it has assumed since the September 11, 2001, attacks to refocus on espionage, the paper pointed out.
They suggest handing the mission to the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, which flies its own drones and conducts secret counter-terrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia, The Times noted.
The apparently coordinated blasts and the murder of a family-of-five in restive Diyala province were the first major sign of violence in a row that has threatened Iraq’s fragile political truce and heightened sectarian tensions just days after US forces completed their withdrawal.
The Baghdad attacks, the deadliest in more than four months, largely coincided with the morning rush hour, and security forces cordoned off bomb sites, AFP correspondents and officials said.
Iraqi helicopters could be heard hovering overhead at many of the blast sites and emergency response vehicles rushed to the scene of attacks, while tightened security at checkpoints worsened Baghdad’s already choking traffic.
The attacks came in the Allawi, Bab al-Muatham and Karrada districts of central Baghdad, the Adhamiyah, Shuala and Shaab neighbourhoods in the north, Jadriyah in the east, Ghazaliyah in the west and Al-Amil and Dura in the south, the officials said.
Health ministry spokesman Ziad Tariq put the toll at 57 dead and 176 wounded in 10 attacks. An interior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 63 people were killed and 185 wounded.
“They didn’t target any vital institutions or security positions,” Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta told AFP.
“They targeted children’s schools, day workers, and the anti-corruption agency.” Atta, who said there had been a dozen attacks across the city, said it was “too early to say” who was behind the violence.
A family of five – parents, their two daughters and a son – were gunned down by insurgents in a suburb of the Diyala provincial capital Baquba, north of the capital, early on Thursday, medical and security officials said.
The father and son were both members of the anti-Qaeda Sunni tribal militia known as the Sahwa which sided with the US military from late-2006, helping turn the tide of the insurgency.
Thursday’s violence was the worst since August 15, when 74 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a series of attacks across 17 Iraqi cities.
The attacks come with Iraqi politicians at loggerheads over a warrant issued for the arrest of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanding that Kurdish authorities hand over the Sunni Arab leader, who is holed up in their autonomous region. Hashemi denies the charges.
Maliki has also called for his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlak, who belongs to the same Iraqiya bloc as Hashemi, to be sacked after he described the Shiite-led government as a “dictatorship”.
Iraqiya, meanwhile, has boycotted parliament and the cabinet, and Maliki has threatened to replace their ministers in the year-old unity government.
Washington has urged calm, with the crisis coming just days after US troops completed their withdrawal, leaving behind what President Barack Obama had described as a “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq.”
At a news conference in Baghdad on Wednesday, Maliki called for Kurdish officials to transfer Hashemi, and warned Iraqiya that he would replace its nine cabinet ministers if they continued to boycott government sessions.
Hashemi denied the terror charges against him after the warrant was issued for his arrest on Monday, and insisted he is willing to stand trial on condition that it is held in the autonomous Kurdish region.
He has added that apparent confessions aired on state television linking him to attacks were “false” and “politicised.” His office has complained of “intentional harassment.”
Maliki and other leaders have called for talks to resolve the crisis, but the premier’s spokesman told AFP he would not accept any mediation over the charges against Hashemi.
Violence is down from its peak in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common.A total of 187 people were killed in violence in November, according to official figures.
In the space of just a few short days, the close-knit community of Sangrampur in eastern India – along with a number of smaller surrounding villages – has been devastated by a case of mass poisoning from toxic, home-brewed alcohol.
So far 170 people have died, almost exclusively men, most of whom were the sole bread-winners in families that were already struggling with life on the poverty line.
“At the moment, it feels like all roads lead to the burial ground,” said Abdul Mannan Gayen, who lost two sons and has a third battling for his life in hospital along with more than 100 other critically ill villagers.
In India, disasters – fires, flood, earthquakes, epidemics – often take their heaviest toll among the poor, who live in the most vulnerable, densely packed communities in poorly constructed, makeshift homes.
But the tragedy that struck the district around Sangrampur in West Bengal state was particularly narrow and devastating in its focus.
Illegal, home-distilled liquor or “hooch” has been brewed in such places for decades, catering to an impoverished male clientele of labourers, farmers and rickshaw drivers unable to afford branded alcohol.
On Tuesday evening, the half-litre measures of hooch – costing as little as 10 US cents – were drunk and shared as they are most evenings.
By Wednesday morning, local hospitals were already struggling with the chronically sick and dying and the next few days saw the death toll rise inexorably from 50 to 100, to 150 and beyond.
Those who died, died painfully, wracked by cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea – leaving behind wives and children who now face a perilous future.
“We’re ruined,” said Roserana Naskar, whose husband died Wednesday after drinking from the toxic batch of methanol-laced alcohol at the home of a relative who was celebrating the birth of his second son.
“We have nothing now. Just our home and I don’t know how we can keep that,” said Naskar, who has four young children.
Jhunu Bibi, a 30-year-old mother of four, broke down as she contemplated life after the death of her husband whose body was brought home from the hospital on Friday evening.
“I don’t know what to do. I have to carry on because of the children. How do I feed them?” she said.
Newly-married and now widowed Anwara Bibi, 23, said she had no choice but to return to her father’s house just months after leaving it to start a new life with her husband, a tailor.
“My life has been taken away,” she said.
In the district’s largest hospital, in the town of Diamond Harbour, bodies were being laid outside on Saturday, with the facility’s small morgue unable to cope with the number of dead.
“We’re helpless,” said hospital superintendent Chiranjib Murmu. “This stuff is so toxic, there’s really no treatment.
“By the time people get here, they are already dying. They don’t respond to any medicine,” he said.
Days after the poisoning first surfaced, the sick were still being brought in, going the opposite way to hospital rickshaws and even horse-drawn carts ferrying bodies back to their home villages.
Amid the grief, there was also intense anger. On Friday evening, a crowd ransacked the house of one man who allegedly controlled a string of illegal distilleries in the area.
Methanol, a highly toxic form of alcohol used as an anti-freeze or fuel, is often added to bootleg liquor in India as a cheap, quick method of upping the alcohol content.
If the dosage is too high, it results in a lethal brew that can induce blindness and death.
Equally toxic, social workers say, is the collusion of local police and politicians who take a sizeable cut of the profits for turning a blind eye to the “hooch” cottage industry.
“While the hunt is on for the manufacturers … it’s necessary to realise they are just smaller cogs in a much larger criminal wheel,” the Hindustan Times said in an editorial on Saturday.
“To run this well-oiled racket, manufacturers and distributors of spurious liquor get support from the very same people who are supposed to stop such activities,” the newspaper said.
Pyongyang urged people to rally behind Kim’s youngest son Jong-Un, describing him as “great successor” to the leader who presided over a famine that saw hundreds of thousands die, but still built an atomic arms arsenal.
State television, which delivered the shock news in a tearful announcement from a female news reader, aired footage of hysterical North Koreans, young and old alike, pounding the ground in a display of abject grief. South Korea put its military on emergency alert but urged its people to stay calm, and swiftly closed ranks with its close ally the United States. Analysts said there would likely be little turbulence in the North - at least for now.
Neighbouring China and Russia, both influential players in Pyongyang, sent their condolences and observers said Beijing would beef up its all-important patronage to prevent an implosion in the communist North.
There was wariness about where North Korea goes now under Kim Jong-Il’s son, but Britain, France and Germany voiced tentative hope for a new dawn at the end of a tumultuous year that has seen regimes topple across the Middle East.
The “Dear Leader”, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), “passed away from a great mental and physical strain” at 8:30 am on Saturday (2330 GMT Friday) while travelling by train on one of his field trips.
It urged people to support the Swiss-educated Kim Jong-Un, who is in his late 20s and was last year made a four-star general and given top ruling party posts despite having had no public profile.
“All party members, military men and the public should faithfully follow the leadership of comrade Kim Jong-Un and protect and further strengthen the unified front of the party, military and the public,” the female announcer, clad in black, said on television.
KCNA said Kim died of a “severe myocardial infarction along with a heart attack”. He suffered a stroke in August 2008 which triggered an acceleration in the succession plans.
Kim’s funeral will be held on December 28 in Pyongyang but no foreign delegations will be invited, KCNA said. National mourning was declared until December 29.
“We must hold high the flag of songun (military-first) policy, strengthen military power a hundred times and firmly defend our socialist system and achievement of revolution,” it said.
North Korea’s propaganda machine has rolled into action to build up the same personality cult for Jong-Un that surrounded his father and late grandfather Kim Il-Sung, the founder and “eternal leader” of North Korea who died in 1994.
“The North’s top guys have already sorted out everything and the regime seems to be stable under the new leadership,” said Paik Hak-Soon of Seoul’s Sejong Institute.
“I don’t expect any major turbulence or power struggle within the regime in the foreseeable future.
“The Kim Jong-Un era has already started.”
Kim Jong-Il’s only sister Kim Kyong-Hui and her husband Jang Song-Thaek, the country’s unofficial number-two leader, are expected to act as the younger Kim’s mentors and throw their weight behind the son’s leadership.
Analysts stressed that North Korea was entering an uncertain period, although its senior figures were likely to stick closely together for now.
South Korea summoned a meeting of the National Security Council and President Lee Myung-Bak called an emergency cabinet meeting.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff said it had increased monitoring along the border along with US forces in the country but had detected no unusual activity.
North and South Korea have remained technically at war since their three-year conflict ended only in an armistice in 1953. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South.
Lee and US President Barack Obama were quick to talk by telephone after Kim’s death was announced at noon (0300 GMT), officials said.
A White House statement said: “The president reaffirmed the United States’ strong commitment to the stability of the Korean peninsula and the security of our close ally, the Republic of Korea.”
Japan, Korea’s former colonial ruler, offered its condolences over the death but also called an emergency security meeting, while Britain said it could be a “turning point” and France hoped that North Koreans could now “find freedom”.
The news shocked South Koreans and some expressed fears of renewed conflict.
KCNA, quoting a statement from the national funeral committee headed by Jong-Un, said Kim Jong-Il’s body would lie in state in Kumsusan palace where his father’s embalmed body is on display.
Kim took over after his father and founding president Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, coming to power with a reputation as a playboy who revelled in the high life.
But in the mid- to late-1990s he presided over a famine which killed hundreds of thousands of his people. Severe food shortages continue and the UN children’s fund estimates one-third of children are stunted by malnutrition.
Kim still found the resources to continue a nuclear weapons programme which culminated in tests in October 2006 and May 2009. The country is believed to have a plutonium stockpile big enough for six to eight weapons.
Pyongyang test-fired a short-range missile off its east coast on Monday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said, but quoted an unnamed government official as saying it was unrelated to the announcement of Kim’s death.
Such test launches are relatively common in the North, which has an arsenal of chemical and conventional weapons including thousands of short- and medium-range missiles.
The fibreglass boat had a capacity of 100 but was carrying about 250 people when it sank on Saturday, 40 nautical miles off eastern Java, in heavy rain and high waves, Indonesian officials said.Thirty-three survivors were plucked from the shark-infested waters, officials said, after the vessel sank along a well-worn - and occasionally lethal - route from Java to Australia's remote Christmas Island.Officials said there was little hope of finding any other passengers alive, which would make the sinking Indonesia's deadliest migrant boat accident."We sent out five boats and three helicopters but no survivor or body was sighted.
It's unlikely they were washed up on islands as the closest shore is 40 miles away," district search and rescue official Kelik Purwanto told AFP.Purwanto said the accident was the "worst disaster involving migrant boats" to date.
"If we find no survivor, then this is by far the largest loss of life," he added.National Search and Rescue Agency spokesman Gagah Prakoso earlier said "it's very llikely they have all drowned.
"It's impossible even for a good swimmer with a life vest to swim to shore safely in such extreme conditions.
When boats sink like this, the bodies usually surface on the third day," he told AFP.Bad weather, strong winds and waves of up to five metres (16 feet) hampered rescue efforts on Sunday, with 300 rescuers including navy and police officers deployed to comb the sea for bodies.
One survivor, 17-year-old Afghan student Armaghan Haidar, said he was sleeping when a storm came up and began to rock the boat."I felt water touching my feet and woke up.
As the boat was going down, people were panicking and shouting and trying to rush out," he told AFP ashore."I managed to swim out and hang on to the side of the boat with about 100 others.
(There were) about 20 to 30 others with life jackets, but another 100 people were trapped inside," he said.
Survivors were floating in the sea for six hours before fishermen rescued them, survivors and officials said.The survivors are being kept at a community hall near Prigi beach, 640 kilometres (400 miles) south-east of Indonesia's capital Jakarta, and say they had official UN documentation to prove their refugee status.
Survivors interviewed by AFP and local officials said that most of the passengers came from Afghanistan or Iran, and they had paid agents between $2,500 and $5,000 to seek asylum in Australia.
Others claimed to be Iraqi, Pakistani, Turkish or Saudi nationals, and that their papers were lost at sea.Haidar, the Afghan student, said he flew from Dubai to Indonesia and boarded a boat in West Java."We want to go to Christmas Island and live a better life in Australia," he said.
"There is nothing in Afghanistan.
There's a lot of terrorism.
We couldn't study, go to college, find jobs.
There's no future for us there."Thousands of asylum-seekers head through Southeast Asian countries on their way to Australia every year and many link up with people-smugglers in Indonesia for the dangerous sea voyage.Christmas Island is a favoured destination for people-smugglers, lying closer to Indonesia than Australia.
Nearly 50 would-be migrants are believed to have died in wild seas during a shipwreck there in December 2010."Our focus today is on the search and rescue effort and our thoughts today are with the people who died and with the families of those still lost at sea," Australian Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said of Saturday's sinking."Whenever people make a dangerous journey and risk their lives, I am concerned," he said, adding that Australia had offered an Orion surveillance aircraft to help the rescue effort.Australia has failed in its efforts to set up a regional processing centre in neighbouring countries to reduce the flow of asylum-seekers heading to its shores.The number of boatpeople arriving in Australia ballooned to almost 900 in November, with at least nine ships intercepted in Australian waters so far this month.Ian Rintoul, co-ordinator of the Refugee Action Coalition, said any sympathy the Australian government or opposition expressed for those who died at sea would amount to "hypocrisy" until the parties adopted humane policies.The UN High Commissioner for Refugees in November said at least nine people were killed when an overloaded vessel capsized in rough seas off Java on the way to Kupang in eastern Indonesia.
It also said that 303 people had been wounded in the unrest in the capital, whose centre has turned into a smoke-filled battleground in some of the most violent clashes since a popular uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak last February.
Egypt’s Dar al-Iftah, the body that issues Islamic fatwas (edicts), said one of its senior officials, Emad Effat, was among the dead, state news agency MENA said.
Clashes around government offices and parliament raged on after nightfall on Friday, with protesters throwing petrol bombs and stones at soldiers who used batons and what witnesses said appeared to be electric cattle prods.
The violence has sharpened tensions between the ruling army and its opponents, and clouded a parliamentary vote set to bring Islamists, long repressed by Mubarak, to the verge of power.
