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Gah ecstatic, wishes Manmohan well
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British High Commissioner hurt in blast Dhaka, May 21 The new British High Commissioner in Bangladesh, Mr Anwar Choudhury and more than 100 others including senior government officials and policemen, were wounded in a powerful bomb blast at the shrine of Hazrat Shah Jalal (R) in eastern town of Sylhet after today’s Jumma prayers. French TV team released in Baghdad Photos of US soldiers posing with body shown on TV
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Nine killed in Karbala clashes Pakistan to test Ghauri-III
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Gah ecstatic, wishes Manmohan well
Gah (Pakistan), May 21 He may have left more than 60 years ago, but this native son has become India’s Prime Minister-elect. ‘’I am very happy a son of our village is going to be the Prime Minister of India,’’ said Raja Gulsher, a farmer who served in the medical corp during the 1965 war, one of the three fought with India since Partition. ‘’If any of the air and water in this place has had an effect on him, he will strike a friendship with Pakistan.’’ In a quirky happenstance, both leaders of the nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan were born in what is now enemy territory. Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf was born in Delhi. Both men carry memories of those tumultuous times when the subcontinent was divided. Dr Singh has pledged to work with Musharraf to put decades of enmity between their now nuclear-armed nations behind them. Gulsher said he knows it won’t be easy for Dr Singh. ‘’We know his constraints. Even then I am sure he will maintain friendship with us. If he comes to our village, I’ll be the first to welcome him.’’ The pace of life in this rural backwater some 80 km southwest of Islamabad hasn’t changed much since Dr Singh was raised here in the 1930s. Traffic races over the nearby motorway, but there is no road from it to Gah. Women still draw water by hand from the wells, where Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs of a bygone era once filled their pitchers from separate pools. They have electricity these days, and some have televisions. But the modern world makes few intrusions among the mud-walled homes or down the narrow uneven lanes of this community of less than 2,000 persons and their cattle, sheep and goats. What has changed now is that everyone is a Muslim. When Dr Singh attended the government primary school in the late 1930s, Hindus and Sikhs accounted for about half of Gah’s population.
— Reuters |
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British High Commissioner hurt in blast Dhaka, May 21 One person was killed on the spot, witnesses said. His identity could not be confirmed immediately. A duty officer at the British High Commission in Dhaka said the High Commissioner had been injured and admitted to a hospital in Sylhet. Two of his security guards were also injured. It could not be known immediately who exploded the bomb or if the High Commissioner was the target. This is for the first time that a foreign diplomat came under terrorist attack in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia condemned the incident and ordered the police to track down the culprits. Bangladeshi-born British High Commissioner Choudhury suffered splinter wounds in his legs. He was admitted to Sylhet Osmani Hospital, reports said. Mr Choudhury submitted his credentials to the Bangladesh President on May 15. Deputy Commissioner of Sylhet Abul Hossain and three policemen also suffered splinter injuries in the blasts occurred at about 1.45 pm. Independent UNB news agency said the bomb exploded at the second gate of the shrine immediately after the prayer over at about 1.45 pm (BST). One person died on the spot and more than 50 were injured, some were critical, the agency said Bengali private TV channel ATN Bangla said more than 100 persons were injured in the
blast. Hundreds of Muslim devotees attended today’s prayers at the holy shrine. The policemen were deployed at all entry and exit points of the holy city in a bid to nab the culprits. Police also cordoned the Sylhet Osmani Hospital and the shrine preventing people and local journalists to enter the areas. In February this year, five persons were killed when several bombs were exploded at a religious gathering at the mazar. Opposition parties, including Awami League at that time blamed the Muslim fundamentalist group for the bomb blasts.
— UNI |
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French TV team released in Baghdad Paris, May 21 The three journalists and their driver were let go after being detained for 29 hours, television station Canal” said late last evening, adding that it has asked for an investigation into the incident. The station thanked the French Foreign Ministry for working on behalf of the journalists. Journalists Michel Despratx, Mohamad Ballout and Stephane Rossi were arrested near the Baghdad Hotel while filming and were taken to a detention facility by the US forces. The journalists said their hands were tied and they were blindfolded numerous times. The Geneva Conventions were read to them while it was discussed what to do with them in Arabic, they said. In the end, the Americans apologised and invited them to a meal.
— DPA |
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Photos of US soldiers posing with body shown on TV Washington, May 21 The photographs show Army Sgt. Charles A. Graner Jr. and Spc. Sabrina Harman, both of whom have already been charged in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal. They were shown first on Wednesday by ABC-TV and yesterday by the Arabic TV station Al-Arabiya. A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the dead detainee as Manadel al-Jamadi. The official confirmed that al-Jamadi’s death was among those being investigated for possible criminal violations by Justice Department prosecutors. The detainee, whose badly bruised corpse was in a body bag packed with ice, died in the prison’s showers while being interrogated by the CIA or other civilian agents, ABC reported on Wednesday. At least three such CIA cases have been referred by the agency to the Justice Department for prosecution, the official said. Meanwhile FBI agents who interviewed detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq did not witness any abuse or take part in any mistreatment, FBI Director Robert Mueller has said. Mr Mueller said FBI rules prohibit agents from taking part in interrogations involving force, the threat of force or coercion and they are obligated to report any such incidents they see. “In the cases where we have been handling interviews, particularly over in Iraq, it has been done according to our standards and there has been no waiver of that,” Mr Mueller said yesterday in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
— AP |
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Nine killed in Karbala clashes Karbala, May 21 According to the head of the local hospital, the dead include a cameraman who worked for the Qatar-based satellite television network al-Jazeera. He died when US troops fired at his hotel. The Mukhaim mosque, where radical Shiite Moslem cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr has an office, was destroyed. Witnesses said US troops had pulled out of the city today after the clashes, which lasted about six hours. They had earlier negotiated with religious leaders and political groups to end the confrontation with Al-Sadr’s “Mahdi army”. Iraqi police was patrolling the city. The Washington Post published more pictures on Friday showing Iraqi prisoners being humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison and US soldiers appearing to delight in the abuse. As part of efforts to quell the scandal over the detainees, the US military said it was releasing a further 472 persons from Abu Ghraib today as part of a programme to halve inmate numbers in a few weeks. Six buses left the prison carrying some. The USA is moving to renew the exemption for its peacekeepers from prosecution by a global criminal court, an action human rights groups say is unjustified as the Iraqi prisoner scandal unfolds. A UN Security Council resolution on the criminal court was expected to be adopted today.
— DPA |
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Pakistan to test Ghauri-III Islamabad, May 21 The Ghauri-III missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and has a range of 3,500 km covering all the major cities in India. The missile is likely to be fired from the Nowshehra test range into the Arabian Sea, a leading Pakistan daily reported today. Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali was informed about the test-date when he visited the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) yesterday, the paper added. Based on liquid fuel, Ghauri-III is a ground-to-ground ballistic missile. If test fired, Ghauri-III would be the second long-range missile developed by the KRL.
— UNI |
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