DarkTimes - 24Hr Global News Blog

KABUL, Afghanistan — A huge blast from a suicide car bomb at the gates of the Indian Embassy on Monday killed 41 people in the deadliest suicide car bombing since the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 ousted the Taliban.

Among the victims of the attack, the first in seven years on a regional diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, were at least four Indian citizens: the Indian defense attaché, a political counselor and two other Indian officials. Six Afghan police officers were also killed. Many of the rest appeared to be civilians.

The fact that the Indian Embassy was attacked raised suspicions among Afghan officials that Pakistani operatives allied with the Taliban had used the bombing to pursue Pakistan’s decades-long power struggle with India.

India said it would send a delegation to Pakistan to investigate what the Indian Foreign Ministry called “this cowardly terrorist attack.”

There have been a number of attacks in Afghanistan in recent months notable for their increased sophistication and deadliness. Afghan and Western officials have said such attacks are signs of the growing strength of militants in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and the influence of Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists and even elements of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.

Suicide bombers attacked the five-star Serena Hotel in January and mounted a sophisticated assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai during a military parade in April, an attack that Afghan intelligence directly linked to the Inter-Services Intelligence.

Pakistani intelligence has had a long involvement in supporting militant groups fighting in Kashmir and Afghanistan as a means to influence regions on its borders, and according to some Western diplomats and military officials, they maintain those links today, including with some elements of the Taliban.

In a statement Monday, Mr. Karzai said the “enemies of peace in Afghanistan” wanted to hurt Kabul’s international relationships, “particularly with India.”

“Such attacks will not hamper Afghanistan’s relations with other nations,” Mr. Karzai said.

The attack comes amid the worst summer fighting Afghanistan has seen since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and as concerns mount about the weakness of the Karzai government. Taliban insurgents have proved resilient, NATO and military officials said, and killed 46 members of the international force serving here in June. That was the highest toll since the invasion in 2001.

The Indian Embassy is located on a leafy thoroughfare close to the Afghan Interior Ministry, in what is supposed to be one of the best-guarded neighborhoods of the city, protected by police roadblocks. But the bomber managed to get through, and rammed a car laden with explosives into the embassy gates.

Witnesses said the bomber struck as two diplomatic vehicles were approaching the gates. Nearby, people were standing in line for visas and shopping in a market. The explosion left body parts and bloodstained clothing strewn in the wreckage. Ambulance sirens wailed as residents peered at the wreckage of a dozen vehicles.

Haji Khial Mohammad, 45, one of those in line for an Indian visa, said he saw more than a dozen who appeared to be dead. “I was shocked and could not hear anything after the attack,” he said. “But I saw at least 10 men and three women in the queue who were probably killed.”

Mohammad Ajmal, 26, a shopkeeper in the market, said the explosion sent goods from his shelves spilling out. “I could barely could stand up,” he said.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahed, denied responsibility. “The suicide bomb attack was not carried out by Taliban, we strongly reject that accusation,” he said by telephone. “We don’t know who carried it out.”

The Taliban frequently disavows knowledge of attacks that cause heavy civilian casualties.

Pakistani intelligence has had a long history of supporting militant groups fighting in Afghanistan and Kashmir, officials here said, and has regarded Afghanistan as its backyard. It fiercely resents the growing influence there of regional rival India. The Afghan Interior Ministry said it believed the attack was carried out in collaboration with “an active intelligence service in the region.”

The ministry did not elaborate on the identity of that service. But relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have become so strained after a series of attacks that Mr. Karzai has threatened to send troops across the border to attack militants operating from bases in Pakistan.

India, meanwhile, is a close ally of Afghanistan. It is spending $750 million on building roads and power lines here in what has become India’s biggest bilateral aid program ever.

It has opened consulates in several parts of the country, and promoted initiatives to offer scholarships for Afghan students.

But there have been some challenges to its influence. Several Indian workers have been killed in recent months, and Indian television shows have been restricted because of objections on religious grounds. Senior Indian Foreign Ministry officials have said for months that they were worried about the safety of Indian personnel in Afghanistan.

Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, Somini Sengupta from New Delhi and Carlotta Gall from Islamabad, Pakistan.

GOLETA, CALIF. -- A fast-moving wildfire that consumed some 6,600 acres rained smoke and ash from the mountains Friday, leaving residents here wondering whether a stiffer breeze would come up to sweep the blaze into their neighborhoods overnight.

About 800 firefighters, backed by 10 air tankers and six helicopters, continued their assault on the blaze. Although the evening brought temporary relief, erratic winds known as "sundowners" were expected at up to 20 mph between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m.

Because of the fire's proximity to populated areas, officials made it the state's top priority among the 335 wildfires burning across California, including a nearly 69,000-acre fire in the Big Sur area that continues to threaten homes and popular campgrounds.

Throughout the day, the Goleta blaze, called the Gap fire, left residents in the Santa Barbara County community hurriedly preparing to leave if necessary. Hundreds of smoke masks were distributed to residents.

After several unsettling nights in her Goleta neighborhood, Heather Wehnau, 27, decided to bunk with friends in Isla Vista, a community on the coast next to UC Santa Barbara. "Picture 'The Twilight Zone,' " she said. "The sky is orange. There's no power. Your neighbors are sitting on their porches with radios and flashlights. You can see the fire, you can smell it, you can't breathe -- but you don't know where it is."

Wehnau packed her cat, her dog, jewelry, documents, a Dr. Seuss book -- "Oh, the Places You'll Go" -- that was inscribed for her by her parents when she graduated from high school. Lacking electricity, she and some friends wore headlamps, lighted candles and threw a piece of tri-tip on the barbecue.

The flame front stayed about a mile north of Goleta's rustic neighborhoods Friday. Residents of more than 1,800 homes were ordered to evacuate and those in an additional 1,400 were told to start packing up their valuables in case an evacuation order came. No homes have burned since the fire started Tuesday. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to visit with Santa Barbara County officials today.

The "sundowners" are a quirk of Santa Barbara's mountainous east-west coastline, bringing stiff, Santa Ana-like winds around sunset. They were expected to weaken over the weekend but remained a serious threat Friday.

Firefighters hoped the irrigated lemon and avocado groves north of Cathedral Oaks Road would slow any run the fire might take down the canyons. But the winds have caught them off guard before.

For residents of Goleta, Isla Vista and Santa Barbara, information about the fire became a precious commodity. Sheriff's deputies at each corner in the evacuation zones provided the best, most up-to-date news. Neighbors who seldom talked to each other offered up whatever they knew.

"We should print bumper stickers," said Wehnau, a grower at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. " 'It takes a fire to build a community.' "

Some residents ignored evacuation orders -- law enforcement cannot force people to leave their homes. It's a tricky public policy issue.

During last year's blazes in Southern California, firefighters conceded that untold numbers of homeowners who defied evacuation orders saved their homes. The threat to most houses is not a wall of flames, but embers that blow through windows, attic vents and gaps in roof tile -- and can be doused if they are spotted in time.

Eddie Marciniak, 42, had no qualms about leaving his log cabin in the area known as Trout Club. He saw what sundowner-driven flames can do when the Painted Cave fire of 1990 burned it to the ground. He didn't want to be there if it happened again.

On Friday night, he loaded his car with clothing and paintings. "I saw the tips of the flames coming over the ridge toward our house," said Marciniak, a construction worker and abstract painter who took shelter with friends in Santa Barbara. "It felt like it was less than 100 yards away."

Heavily wooded, the Trout Club neighborhood was built as a second-home refuge for Santa Barbarans in the 1940s. A creek running through it was stocked with trout. But the idyllic spot could be dangerous when flames swept through.

Marciniak came to the area about eight years ago from Big Sur, where friends have lost their homes to the big fire raging there.

On that stretch of coast, more than 68,000 acres have burned, 20 structures have been destroyed and about 1,300 are threatened. But while the fire continued to inch downhill toward the Big Sur community Thursday night, it moved at a slow enough pace that firefighters had time to cut brush and trees to protect buildings. Almost 1,800 firefighters are battling the blaze.

"Fire behavior was considered minimal, which was good," said Leanne Langeberg, a spokeswoman for the multi-agency team fighting the blaze.

Firefighters are focusing on the Palo Colorado Canyon area, where the fire is still some distance from a hamlet of 250 homes, and on the southwest edge of the fire near the Esalen Institute, Langeberg said. The red flag warning issued Thursday has been lifted, with moderate winds expected today.

The Fourth of July weekend is normally one of the busiest along Highway 1. A cavalcade of cars and campers snakes along the scenic ribbon of pavement, clinging to precipitous cliffs and dipping into redwood glens. But Friday there was a strange tranquillity as parking lots sat empty beneath a thick plume of smoke.

Kurt Mayer, 53, owner of the rustic Big Sur Center deli and gift shop, spent the night on the floor of his store. He had cleared brush, built a perimeter and smeared the weathered wood building with white fire-retardant gel.

He said the fire would cause a big revenue loss for merchants. But he seemed unfazed by it all.

"Lots of stuff happens," he said. "Floods. Mudslides. Blah, blah, blah. The usual stuff. You just do what you can do and try to take care of yourself."

LONDON (AFP) — The Metropolitan Police were on Friday investigating a "frenzied, brutal and horrific attack" on two French students found stabbed to death in a charred London flat.

The bound and battered bodies of Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were found in the ground-floor flat in New Cross, southeast London, on Sunday when emergency services were called to the fire.

Bonomo had been stabbed nearly 200 times while Ferez suffered around 50 wounds in a prolonged ordeal, unidentified police sources quoted by the domestic Press Association news agency said.

The detective leading the investigation said they were dead before the fire took hold, adding that they were knifed in the head, neck, torso and back.

"The extent of the injuries are horrific," Detective Chief Inspector Mick Duthie said, adding that all the officers working on the case had been shocked by the extent of the violence.

"I have never seen injuries like this throughout my career. We are here today because I don't know why these boys were killed or who killed them."

Duthie appealed for witnesses to come forward to help explain "a frenzied, brutal and horrific attack."

As a forensic search of the scene continued, Duthie said the two students -- both biochemists from a university in Clermont-Ferrand, central France -- were on a short exchange programme at London's prestigious Imperial College.

They were due to return home at the end of July.

At the scene, police guarded the front door of the 1980s flat in a leafy cul-de-sac and tarpaulin covered a broken window. When the wind blew the tarpaulin up, it revealed several broken windows and a blackened sofa inside.

"A Spanish woman who lives in the block told me she had seen two men banging on their window" from the outside, said Christina Ramires, 32, a Brazilian journalist who lives on the same floor as the flat but had not been at home at the time of the attack.

"The Spanish woman said they were wearing hats... then she heard a very strong sound, a bomb."

Another resident in the road, Farzana Akbary, 27, from Afghanistan, said she had seen the force of the blast from the block of flats opposite.

"I just saw the fire as I was washing dishes in my kitchen. It blew out the windows of their flat," she told AFP.

Police said they were searching for a white man seen running away from the scene at the time of the explosion.

They also revealed that the flat had been burgled in the days leading up to the men's deaths, and a computer was stolen.

The university the men attended in Clermont-Ferrand, central France said they were "brilliant students." Bonomo, who was renting the flat where the attack took place, was head of the university's student union.

The deaths coincided with growing concern about knife crime and gang culture in London, which newly-elected Conservative mayor Boris Johnson and Metropolitan Police chief Ian Blair have vowed to tackle.

Three teenagers were set to appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court on Friday, charged with the murder of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella who was stabbed outside a London bar over the weekend.

Police and the Home Office say overall knife crime in London is falling. But 17 teenagers have been knifed to death so far this year -- already more than half the total number for the last 12 months.

KARACHI: The death of Benazir Bhutto engulfed Karachi in unprecedented violence that claimed the ten lives and led to the torching of more than 150 vehicles, burning of banks, petrol pumps, a hospital, houses and factories.

The police, who along with the Rangers were largely missing from most of the affected areas during the first four hours of the turmoil, claimed that they had rounded up more than 30 people involved in the violence.

Observers said that the law-enforcement agencies provided ample opportunity to miscreants to plunder and damage public property. Also, it was noted that most of the violence was carried out by criminal elements who might not have any affiliation with political parties. “The pattern of ransacking and looting shows the involvement of criminal elements,” said an observer familiar with security issues. He said that the absence of law-enforcement agencies emboldened the criminal elements.

As a result, one of the posh areas of the city Zamzama was ransacked by unidentified people who looted showrooms, shops and boutiques. Within minutes of the breaking of the news of the death of PPP chairperson, enraged crowds went on the rampage, indiscriminately burning cars, motorcycles, fire tenders and banks, plunging the whole city into a state of lawlessness and anarchy that was seldom seen before.

Unidentified men killed three persons in Sohrab Goth, two at Lasbella Chowk, one each near the Shamama Shopping Center close to Safari Park, near the RCD Highway, in Gulshan-i-Hadeed, in Malir and Ranchore Lane. On the whole, more than 65 persons were injured in firing by the miscreants.

Gun toting people came out on the roads and got the shops closed. Indiscriminate firing frightened the people who started rushing towards their homes. This led to massive traffic jams throughout the city. People got stranded on roads for hours altogether and could hardly reach their homes.

Two banks and one hotel were looted in Block-7, Gulistan-i-Jauhar. After committing the offence, the accused torched the banks and fled. An angry mob came out of the Pehlwan Goth area and damaged the police post situated near the Rabia City, Gulshan-i-Iqbal. Near the Civic Center, about 20 vehicles were torched. In Gulshan-i-Iqbal Block-3, a house No-309/1 was burnt.

In several areas, residents said that some persons riding on motorcycles and cars came and threatened them to switch off their lights or face the consequences. People living near the Disco Bakery, Banaras and Patel Para spoke about visits by such people.

A building was torched near Ghas Mandi, a shop was burnt in Napier and petrol pumps in Sachal, Sohrab Goth, Jamshed Town and Gulshan Town. Also burnt was one wagon in Azeempura, one car in Darakhshan, and forty vehicles packed in the traffic mess near the Punjab Chowrangi, Clifton.

In Orangi Town, seven vehicles were torched, in Malir two vehicles were burnt, in Liaquatabad miscreants torched scores of cars, buses, mini-buses, motorcycles, rickshaws parked from Essa Nagri to Baloch Hotel.

An Edhi spokesman said that more than 30 vehicles were damaged in various parts of the city and two ambulances were hijacked from Lyari. In a separate incident in Lyari, angry protesters damaged the Chakiwara, Kalakot and Baghdadi police stations, burnt one petrol pump, torched tires on the streets and carried out aerial firing.

They also burnt a factory in Lyari and there were reports that some workers were present in the factory when it was put on fire. Another factory was torched in Korangi. Chief Fire Officer Ehtesham said that four fire stations at Civic Center, Landhi, Lyari and Korangi were damaged when miscreants sprayed bullets on it and three fire tenders were smashed.

The Keamari Town Nazim office was torched, miscreants attacked the Gulistan-i-Jauhar police station, damaged the Mauripur Traffic Section and the Gulshan-i-Iqbal Traffic Section. A Steel Mills bus was torched in Gulshan-i-Hadeed. Police officials were injured in New Town and Gulistan-i-Jauhar police limits.

A group of miscreants came from Kala Pull side and attacked the National Hospital and torched 11 vehicles parked in the parking lot and later attacked the hospital, looted valuables and cash and torched the hospital building.

Six injured were shifted to Civil Hospital, Karachi, including Imran from Baldia, Faizan from Al-Mumtaz Society while the others remained unidentified. There were also reports of armed gangs looting houses.

All petrol pumps of the city were closed and several vehicles were parked on roadsides because of shortage of fuel and gas. Some other areas where tires were burnt were Lyari, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Malir, Sohrab Goth, Gulshan, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Malir, North Nazimabad, Nazimabad, Peerabad, Landhi, Korangi and Bin Qasim.

The uncontrolled protestors put the Gulistan-e-Jauhar Police Station on fire. Four Chinese engineers got stranded in Gulshan-e-Iqbal area and sought refuge at the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Police Station. They were later safely evacuated from there.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of employees of various companies, corporate houses and shops were stranded when public transport disappeared from the city’s main arteries. These people were seen walking on roads for hours to reach their homes. On the other hand, thousands of employees were forced to stay back at their offices or took refuge with their friends and relatives.

When contacted, the Capital City Police Officer, Karachi, Azhar Ali Farooqi, claimed that as soon as he heard about the blast, he ordered high alert in the city and directed the Karachi police to carry out maximum patrolling in their respective towns.

He also directed the DIGs of three zones, SPs and SPOs of various towns of the city to remain alert. CCPO Farooqi added that late Thursday night, the situation was under control and the police had rounded up more than 30 criminals involved in creating violence and damaging public and private property.

He said eight were held from the New Town police limits, when miscreants were robbing a private bank. The SHO New Town saved the bank but was injured in firing. Another ASI was injured in Gulistan-i-Jauhar while resisting the law breakers.

CCPO added that the Reserve Police were also on alert and Rangers were also working with the police. He directed maximum patrolling in the city.

KARACHI: Fire breaks out in a plastic godown in Bihar Colony area of Lyari in Karachi Sunday midnight, no casualties occurred in the incident.

Plastic chips used for making plastic bags were stored in the godown, the residents of the area said. The fire, which was suddenly erupted in the godown, rapidly covered the whole space of the storage. The blaze also affected the electric wires in the store causing problems in the relief operation, fire brigade staff said.

The firefighters however extinguished the blaze effectively. The cause of the blaze still not established.