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Pakistan ( Taliban stormed Pakistan’s biggest airport on Sunday and killed 26 )

ISLAMABAD: Militants stormed Pakistan’s biggest airport on Sunday and at least 26 people were killed in a night-long battle at one of the country’s most high-profile targets.
The assault on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan’s sprawling commercial hub of 18 million people, took place as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government tries to engage Taleban militants in talks to end years of fighting.
The attack began just before midnight when 10 gunmen wearing military uniforms shot their way into the airport’s old terminal used mainly for charter and executive flights.
The Pakistani Taleban, an alliance of insurgent groups fighting to topple the government and set up a sharia state, claimed responsibility, saying it was in response to army attacks on their strongholds along the Afghan border.

“It is a message to the Pakistan government that we are still alive to react over the killings of innocent people in bomb attacks on their villages,” said Shahidullah Shahid, a Taleban spokesman.
The attack all but destroys prospects for significant peace talks with the government of Sharif, who came to power last year promising to find a negotiated solution to years of violence.
At the airport, gun battles went on for five hours and television pictures showed fire raging as ambulances ferried casualties away. At least three loud explosions were heard as militants wearing suicide vests blew themselves up.By dawn on Monday, the army said the airport had been secured but heavy smoke rose above the building.
“Ten militants aged between 20 and 25 have been killed by security forces,” said a spokesman for the paramilitary Rangers force. “A large cache of arms and ammunition has been recovered from the militants.”
Pakistan’s paramilitary force said that the attackers were ethnic Uzbeks. Pakistani officials often blame foreign militants holed up in lawless areas on the Afghan border for staging attacks alongside the Pakistani Taleban around the country.
“Three militants blew themselves up and seven were killed by security forces,” Rizwan Akhtar, the regional head of the paramilitary Rangers, said in televised remarks. “The militants appear to be Uzbek.”
Officials said no aircraft had been damaged.
Earlier, officials said all flights had been diverted.
Peace talks between the government and the Pakistani Taleban have failed in recent months, dampening hopes of reaching a negotiated settlement with the insurgency, which continues attacks against government and security targets.
Pakistan’s Taleban are allied with but separate from the Afghan Taleban.

BAGHDAD ( At Least 38 Dead in Clashes with Jihadists in Northern Iraq )

BAGHDAD – At least 38 people died Sunday, including 30 alleged members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in clashes between Iraqi security forces and that jihadist group in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

According to what local police told Efe, the clashes in the capital of Nineveh province, some of the western districts of which are controlled by the ISIL, resumed Sunday morning and are still continuing.

Besides the Islamist fighters, eight civilians died and 15 were wounded in bombardments of the neighborhoods of Tamuz, Al Islah, Al Zarai, Al Saha and Yarmuk.

Mosul police said that at least five snipers are among the terrorists who were killed.

Iraqi forces managed to drive some militants out of portions of the neighborhoods they had controlled, but the ISIL – which has expanded its influence into several provinces around the country – still holds sway in significant parts of Mosul, and the army has sent reinforcements in to deal with them.

Over the past three days, dozens of ISIL fighters, as well as Iraqi police officers and soldiers, have been killed in Mosul.

Also on Sunday, at least 17 people, including five police officers, were killed and 65 others were wounded in a double bomb attack in front of the headquarters of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan in the city of Jalula, capital of the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala.

Police told Efe that a car bomb exploded next to the party’s offices and, when police arrived on the scene, a suicide bomber detonated the explosives he had strapped to his body.

Iraq is experiencing an increase in sectarian violence and terrorist attacks, which in 2013 killed more than 8,860 people, 7,818 of them civilians, according to a United Nations tally.

Mexico ( Police Rescue 7 Captives in Mexico City )

 

MEXICO CITY – Seven people being held captive were rescued and four suspected kidnappers were arrested by police in Mexico City, Federal District Public Safety Secretary Jesus Rodriguez Almeida said.

Police staged the rescue operation early Saturday in the Narvarte district, Rodriguez Almeida said.

The captives – five adults and two children – are all originally from Tampico, a port city in the Gulf state of Tamaulipas.

The group was taken from their house in the Mexico City borough of Xochimilco, Rodriguez Almeida said.

One of the captives was hospitalized for treatment of a gunshot wound, the police chief said.

Officers seized four firearms and three vehicles from the suspects, Rodriguez Almeida said.

Police turned the suspects and the victims over to the anti-kidnapping unit of the Federal District Attorney’s Office, which will conduct the investigation.

The federal government unveiled a new strategy to deal with kidnappings in January.

A total of 1,695 kidnappings were reported in Mexico last year, up 20 percent from the 2012 level, National Public Safety System figures show.

An unknown number of kidnappings, however, are never reported.

India ( Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party has said rapes happen “accidentally” )

NEW DELHI: A minister from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party has said rapes happen “accidentally” in the latest controversial remarks by a politician, amid renewed outrage over attacks against women.
Ramsevak Paikra, the home minister of central Chhattisgarh state who is responsible for law and order, said late on Saturday that rapes did not happen on purpose.
“Such incidents (rapes) do not happen deliberately. These kind of incidents happen accidentally,” Paikra, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which also rules at the national level, told reporters.
Paikra, who was asked for his thoughts on the gang-rape and lynching of two girls in a neighboring state, later said he had been misquoted. His original remarks were broadcast on television networks.
The remarks come just days after the home minister of the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh state said rapes were “sometimes right, sometimes wrong.”
The minister, Babulal Gaur, gave the remarks on Thursday amid growing anger over the gang-rape and murder of the girls, aged 12 and 14, in northern Uttar Pradesh state late last month.
Modi, whose party came to power in a landslide election victory and has pledged increased women’s security, has so far stayed silent over the rapes.
India brought in tougher laws last year against sexual offenders after the fatal gang-rape of a student in New Delhi in December 2012, but they have failed to stem the tide of violence against women across the country.
Police said a Malaysian woman, 30, was raped in a car last Thursday in the western state of Rajasthan after a man, whom she had met to discuss business projects, drugged her — the latest in a series of sex attacks on foreigners in India.
“As she came to us, we rounded up the accused and placed him under arrest. We have seized his car and also recovered a pistol from the vehicle,” Amandeep Singh, a senior state police official, told AFP on Sunday.
Earlier this year, a Danish tourist was gang-raped at knifepoint after losing her way in central Delhi.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has faced severe criticism for his perceived insensitivity over the attacks on the low-caste girls in his state, who were found hanging from a mango tree after being sexually assaulted multiple times.
Yadav’s father Mulayam Singh — leader of the Samajwadi Party — was also the target of public anger in April when he told an election rally that he opposed the recently introduced death penalty for gang-rapists, saying “boys make mistakes.”
Women’s groups have slammed the comments as evidence that politicians were unable to stem sexual violence because they lacked respect for India’s women and were ignorant of the issues.
Politicians also came under fire after the fatal gang-rape in Delhi in 2012, a crime that angered the nation and shone a global spotlight on India’s treatment of women.
Several politicians have sought to blame tight jeans, short skirts and other Western influences for the country’s rise in rapes, while the head of a village council pointed to chowmein which he claimed led to hormone imbalances among men.
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BAGHDAD ( 15 Dead in Series of Baghdad Explosions )

 
BAGHDAD – At least 15 people died Saturday and 70 were wounded in a series of attacks chiefly launched against Baghdad districts with a Shi’ite majority, Iraqi security officials told Efe.

The wave of explosions coincides with a wide offensive by jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in several Iraqi provinces including Anbar, where on Saturday within a few hours they took hundreds of hostages at a university in Ramadi.

A total of five car bombs and an improvised explosive device (IED) went off almost simultaneously in the capital.

The deadliest attack took place in the downtown Baghdad district of Karrada, near the Babilon Hotel, where four people died and 15 were wounded when a car bomb exploded.

Another of the vehicles blew up in the New Baghdad district on the city’s south side, leaving three people dead and injuring another 14.

The perpetrators of these attacks are as yet unknown, though they all bear the imprint of the ISIL, which since last Thursday has kept security forces in check.

The extremists broke into a university in Ramadi on Saturday after detonating two IEDs and clashing with security guards of the building, where they remained entrenched for several hours.

Combined forces of the army and police rushed to the scene and managed to evacuate the hostages and later fought the radicals in several Ramadi neighborhoods.

Combat between the ISIL and Iraqi troops also continued Saturday in the northern city of Mosul, where over the past 48 hours some 30 jihadists, 25 police and 10 soldiers have been killed.

Iraq is going through a surge in sectarian violence and terrorist attacks that cost the lives of more than 8,860 people in 2013, of whom 7,818 were civilians, according to United Nations figures

Mexico ( U.S. Marine Tried to Escape Twice from Mexican Jail )

MEXICO CITY – U.S. Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, jailed in Mexico in April after crossing the border with several guns in his possession, has tried to escape twice and exhibited violent behavior, officials said.

When the 25-year-old suspect was incarcerated, he “manifested violent conduct, tried to escape on two occasions and inflicted physical harm on himself,” the Attorney General’s Office said Friday in its first statement on the case.

He was therefore placed “in the infirmary area,” the AG’s office said, adding that “his basic rights, including (the right to) due process, his personal safety and his right to consular notification and access” have been respected since his arrest.

Tahmooressi, a Marine sergeant who served two tours in Afghanistan, was arrested on April 1 when he entered the northwestern Mexican border city of Tijuana from San Diego with firearms, ammunition and ammunition clips that are reserved for the use of the Mexican army.

Tahmooressi did not identify himself as an active member of the U.S. Armed Forces at the time of his arrest and did not provide Mexican customs officials with a permit for importing or carrying the weapons, the AG’s office said.

Federal prosecutors launched an investigation into violations of Mexican firearms and explosives law and on April 3 the suspect was brought before a judge and jailed at the La Mesa penitentiary in Tijuana.

He was later transferred to another facility, also in Baja California state.

Two hearings in his case were postponed after Tahmooressi changed his defense attorney and no new dates have been set.

Signs warning that it is prohibited to enter Mexico with firearms are “clearly visible” near border crossings, the AG’s office said.

Congressman Duncan D. Hunter, a member of the House Armed Services committee, has made efforts to secure the suspect’s release, arguing that the whole episode was a misunderstanding.

Hunter, a war veteran like Tahmooressi, asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to suspend all military aid to Mexico until the Marine is released from custody.