Homeland Security News and More

Thursday, April 10, 2014

ISLAMABAD ( 16 Dead in Blast on Train in Pakistan )

ISLAMABAD – At least 16 people died and 40 were wounded Tuesday in an explosion aboard a passenger train in the southwestern town of Sibi, Pakistani police told Efe.

The blast occurred about 1:30 p.m. inside a passenger car where more than 80 people were riding, according to Mohammed Akbar, a spokesman for the police in Sibi, which is in Baluchistan province.

The train was headed north from Quetta, the provincial capital, to Rawalpindi.

The explosion and subsequent fire could have been produced by a bomb that was detonated long-distance, according to sources cited by the daily Dawn.

Some of the injured are in critical condition.

The blast occurred after on Monday at least 22 insurgents died in combat with members of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps in Baluchistan.

Three people have been killed and more than 60 wounded so far this year in attacks on Pakistan’s rail network.

Several of the attacks were in Baluchistan, a region that is very much affected by insurgent violence linked to Islamist groups and independence-minded Baluchi organizations.

Mexico City ( More Missing Persons Located in Mexico Children’s Shelter Scandal )

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said it has located three people who went missing six years ago from a children’s shelter in this capital, two of whom are now adults.

It said in a statement that its organized crime unit and the local branch of the AG’s office in the central state of Puebla located the three individuals on April 2.

The AG’s office noted that 15 kids went missing in 2008 from the Casitas del Sur children’s refuge in Mexico City and two other private shelters for minors in northern and southeastern Mexico, prompting the Federal District Attorney’s Office to raid the Mexico City establishment and arrest its administrators.

The AG’s office also launched a search for the youths and members of the evangelical Restored Christian Church who operated the shelters and “were responsible for removing the minors and giving them to other members of the same congregation,” the statement said.

To date, the AG’s office’s organized crime and people-trafficking units have recovered 12 of the 15 missing persons, who have been fully identified and reunited with their relatives, the statement said.

The scandal erupted in 2008 when a woman reported that her granddaughter had disappeared from the Casitas del Sur shelter.

At least seven people – including Restored Christian Church leader Antonio Domingo Paniagua Escandon, a dual Spanish-Mexican citizen – are currently being prosecuted for the disappearance of the minors.