Serial blasts kill 127 in Baghdad

Baghdad, December 8
Five massive vehicle-borne bombs rocked Baghdad today, killing 127 persons, including women and students, and wounding hundreds in the third coordinated massacre to devastate the city since August.

The attacks shattered a month of calm in the Iraqi capital and came hours before an official said the war-torn country’s general election, the second since the US-led ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein, would be held on March 6.

Baghdad’s top security officer said the attacks, four of which were conducted by suicide attackers driving cars or minibuses, and which targeted key government buildings, bore “the touch of Al-Qaida.”

One of the suicide bombers detonated his payload at an office of the finance ministry, another attacker struck at a tunnel leading to the labour ministry, and a third drove a four-wheel-drive car into a court building.

“The suicide bomber drove up to the court and the security forces tried to stop him by firing their Kalashnikovs, but they did not kill him before he exploded,” police sergeant Emad Fadhil said.

A fourth suicide bomber in a car struck a police patrol in Dora, in southern Baghdad, causing 15 deaths, 12 of them students at a nearby technical college, an interior ministry official said.

The first explosion in the centre of Baghdad was heard at 1255IST, another came within seconds and a third one minute later.

Although no group has yet claimed responsibility, the timing of the blasts and the fact that three of them targeted government buildings bears all the hallmarks of an Al-Qaeda operation.

The interior ministry official said 127 persons had been killed and 448 wounded in the bombings, with the finger of blame pointed at Al-Qaida.

“The same black hand that was behind the attacks in August and October committed today’s bombings,” Major General Qassim Atta, a spokesman for security operations in Baghdad, said.

“This has the touch of Al-Qaida and the Baathists,” he said, referring to the outlawed Baath party of now executed dictator Saddam.

Both groups were blamed for bloody attacks, including truck bombings outside the finance, foreign and justice ministries, in Baghdad in August and October that killed more than 250 persons and punctured confidence in the Iraqi security forces.

Those caught up in Tuesday’s bombings described scenes of horror. “I heard the sound of the explosion, I fainted, then I found myself on this bed covered with blood,” Um Saeed, whose arms and face were wounded in the court blast, told AFP at a local hospital, her clothes covered in blood.

An official at Medical City hospital in the centre of the capital said many of the 39 bodies they had received “had been blown apart,” and some of them were women. — AFP

US justice dept unravels Headley’s terror plot
Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the US Department of Justice and the FBI on Monday sent a team to New Delhi to share with Indian law-enforcement counterparts information disclosed by Headley relating to his alleged roles in the Mumbai attacks and plots in Denmark

The visit was a reflection of President Barack Obama's commitment to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the latter’s recent visit to Washington to cooperate closely on the case. After India, the US team will travel to Islamabad to brief Pakistani security officials.

The State Department official said US law-enforcement authorities were working with Pakistani officials to follow up on leads regarding Headley’s activities in Pakistan. “We have also been cooperating or consulting closely with Pakistani authorities on this case as well, following the practices developed in previous high-profile counter-terrorism investigations,” Kelly said.

A US Justice Department complaint against David Coleman Headley lays out in painstaking detail the Pakistani American's alleged role in plotting the Mumbai attacks. The complaint, unsealed in Chicago on Monday, says Headley travelled to Mumbai for extended periods between 2006 and 2008, and, on the advice of his co-conspirators, took multiple boat trips in and around Mumbai harbour where he filmed surveillance videos.

Headley shared the videos with Lashkar-e-Toiba and his other co-conspirators while in Pakistan and also discussed potential landing sites for a team of attackers who would arrive by sea in Mumbai. Authorities say that among the conspirators was Ilyas Kashmiri, commander of the Harakat-ul-Jihad-Islami (HuJI), a group that trained terrorists and executed attacks in Jammu and Kashmir.

The complaint says Headley conducted surveillance of potential targets in Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal Hotel, Oberoi Hotel, Leopold Cafe, Nariman House and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station, and in other parts of the country, including the National Defence College in Delhi.

After learning from members of the LeT in 2005 that he would travel to India to perform surveillance and other tasks for LET, he changed his name from Daood Gilani to David Headley on or about February 15, 2006, in Philadelphia in order to present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani.

Headley attended LeT training camps in Pakistan around February and August, 2002 and then again in April and December, 2003. The complaint says he conspired with members of LeT, a person identified only as “Individual A,” and others to deliver, place and detonate explosives in public spaces, state and government facilities, public transportation systems and infrastructure facilities in India, with the intent to cause death and serious bodily injury.

Gorshkov deal successfully done: Nirupama Rao

Moscow, December 8
India and Russia have “successfully” concluded the agreement on the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier, ending a long standoff over the key defence deal, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said.

The issue, Rao said, came up during the summit level talks between visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Monday.

“Both the leaders discussed the issue and noted excellent progress on negotiations on price and technical issues which have been brought to a successful conclusion,” she told reporters in a late night briefing.

But the foreign secretary gave no details about the price. Sources had earlier said that it was “satisfactory” for both sides. The delivery of the aircraft carrier, now rechristened INS Vikramaditya, was agreed years ago but has been long delayed due to bargaining over refitting prices.

The haggling of the Soviet-era carrier had come to symbolise the strains in relations between the two Cold War allies. — IANS

Nepal media’s appeal to Maoists

Kathmandu, December 8
Appealing to Maoists to exempt media houses from their anti-government general strike tomorrow, a prominent body of publishers and broadcasters today asked the former rebels not to stifle the people’s right to information.

The call by the Nepal Media Society (NMS) came after the Maoist-aligned All Nepal Trade Union Federation-Revolutionary asked all industries and transport services, including the publication houses, to close down tomorrow. It said the call to close down publication houses is an attempt by the former rebels to stifle people’s right to information and an endeavour to undermine people’s freedom. — PTI 

12 die in ISI office attack
Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad

At least 12 persons, including four security personnel, were killed and 35 others wounded in a suicide attack on the regional office of Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), in Multan, the hometown of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, on Tuesday. This was the fourth strike by terrorists within 24 hours.

“At least seven terrorists were involved in the attack,” Mohammad Ali Gardezi, commissioner Multan told reporters. “At least two of them forced their way by destroying army checkpost in Qasim Bela cantonment area with rockets and machine gunfire located about half a kilometre from the ISI office and later carried out two suicide blasts in quick succession,” he added.