Tag Archives: Suicide Bombing

Two dead in Pakistan as suicide bomber targets judges

Volunteers search for remains in vehicle that was truck in bomb attack

By Mehreen Zahra-Malik

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A suicide bomber attacked a van carrying judges in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Wednesday, killing the driver and a passerby, police said, the second attack of the day in a new surge in militant violence.

Security has improved in Pakistan over the past few years but a spate of attacks in recent days, and a threat by a hardline militant faction to unleash a new campaign against the government, has raised fears of bloodshed.

“A suicide bomber on a motor bike rammed into an official van in which some judges were traveling,” senior superintendent of Peshawar police, Sajjad Khan, told media.

He said three female judges and one male judge had been taken to a nearby hospital while the driver of the van and a passerby had been killed.

The attack took place in a wealthy neighborhood of the northwestern city, where Taliban gunmen attacked a military-run school in December 2014 and killed 134 children and 19 adults.

Former cricket star Imran Khan, Pakistan’s main opposition leader, was due to visit the nearby hospital. Media reported that he was unharmed.

Khan’s party rules Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of which Peshawar is capital.

In a separate attack on Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a government office in the northwestern Mohmand Agency, killing five people.

There was no immediate claim for the Peshawar attack but the Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the Mohmand blast.

The same group claimed an attack in the city of Lahore on Monday in which 13 people, five of them policemen, were killed.

The group said the Lahore attack was the beginning of a new campaign against the government, security forces, the judiciary and secular political parties.

Separately on Monday, a bomb squad commander was killed along with another policeman while they were trying to defuse a bomb in the southwestern city of Quetta.

The spate of attacks has underlined the threat militants pose to the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif despite an army offensive launched in 2014 to push them out of their northwestern strongholds.

Pakistan had announced a 20-point National Action Plan after the Peshawar school massacre in 2014, the main thrusts of which included expanding counter-terrorism raids, secret military courts and the resumption of hangings.

(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar; Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Taliban attack near Afghan parliament kills more than 20

Afghan policement at site of suicide bombing

KABUL (Reuters) – A Taliban suicide attack in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday killed more than 20 people and wounded at least 20 others, as twin blasts near parliament offices hit a crowded area during the afternoon rush hour.

Saleem Rasouli, a senior public health official, said 23 people had been killed and more than 20 wounded in the attack on the Darul Aman road, near an annexe to the new Indian-financed parliament building.

Another official put the death toll at 21 but said more than 45 had been wounded in the worst attack Kabul has seen in weeks.

The Islamist militant Afghan Taliban movement, which immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, said its target had been a minibus carrying staff from the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency. It put casualties at around 70.

Officials said a suicide bomber blew himself up in the Darul Aman area, and was followed almost immediately by a car bomber in an apparently coordinated operation.

Earlier on Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed seven people and wounded nine when he detonated his explosives in a house in the southern province of Helmand used by an NDS unit.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in Afghanistan in the 15 years since the Taliban government was brought down in the U.S.-led campaign of 2001.

In July, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported that 1,601 civilians had been killed in the first half of the year, a record since it began collating figures in 2009.

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by James Mackenzie and Mike Collett-White)

Turkey jails 17 over Istanbul attack

Paramedics help casualties outside Turkey's largest airport, Istanbul Ataturk, Turkey, following a blast

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey jailed 17 suspects on Tuesday, mostly foreigners, over last week’s suicide bombing at Istanbul’s main airport, which President Tayyip Erdogan described as the work of Islamic State militants from the ex-Soviet Union.

The arrests bring the total number of people jailed pending trial to 30 over the triple suicide bombing at Ataturk Airport, which killed 45 people and wounded hundreds, the deadliest in a series of bombings this year in Turkey.

It was followed by major attacks in Bangladesh, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the past week, all apparently timed for the runup to Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the Ramadan holy fasting month.

“The incident is of course completely within the framework of Daesh, a process conducted with their methods,” Erdogan told reporters after praying at an Istanbul mosque at the start of the holiday. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Three bombers opened fire to create panic outside the airport before two of them got inside and blew themselves up. The third militant detonated his explosives outside at the entrance to the international arrivals terminal.

“There are people from Dagestan, from Kyrgyzstan, from Tajikistan,” Erdogan said, referring to a mainly Muslim province of Russia’s North Caucasus region, and two former Soviet states in Central Asia. “Unfortunately, people from neighboring northern Caucasus countries are involved in this business.”

The 17 remanded in custody early on Tuesday included 11 foreigners. All were accused of “membership of an armed terrorist organization”, the private Dogan news agency said. Thirteen others were jailed on Sunday, including three foreigners.

The state-run Andolu news agency said last week that two of the bombers were Russian nationals. One government official has said the attackers were Russian, Uzbek and Kyrgyz nationals.

Moscow says that thousands of Russian citizens and citizens of other former Soviet states have joined Islamic State, traveling through Turkey to reach Syria. Russia fought two wars against Chechen separatists in the North Causcasus in the 1990s, and more recently has fought Islamist insurgents in Dagestan.

Russia and Turkey have been at odds over Moscow’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Turkey’s backing of rebels opposed to him, especially since last year when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the border.

But recent weeks have seen a thaw in relations between the two countries, with both citing a need to bury their differences to fight the common Islamic State foe.

The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper has said the organizer of the attack was suspected to be a Chechen double-amputee called Akhmed Chatayev. He is identified on a United Nations sanctions list as an Islamic State leader responsible for training Russian-speaking militants.

SUSPECTS DENY ALLEGATIONS

During questioning in court, as reported by Dogan, the suspects denied links to the bombers.

One of them, identified as a Russian citizen named as Smail A., said he stayed in a crowded house where he thought he would be able to read the Koran.

“When the police caught us they said terrorists had stayed there previously, but we didn’t know. I was in that house at the wrong time,” he was quoted as saying during questioning.

A suspect identified as Kamil D., also a Russian citizen, denied knowing one of the bombers, who has been identified as Rahim Bulgarov.

“The people constantly changed in the house where we stayed. Maybe he came and stayed but I don’t know him,” he said.

A third suspect, Turkish citizen Cengizhan C., said he embraced the views of Islamic State after following related groups on Facebook.

“I learned Daesh ideas. I bonded with them idea-wise. I believed what they stood for,” he said, adding he traveled to the border province of Sanliurfa with the aim of joining them in Syria but had been dissuaded from doing so.

In the wake of the attack, Turkey has beefed up security at airports and train stations, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday ahead Eid al-Fitr, which continues until Thursday.

Turkey is a member of a U.S.-led coalition fighting against Islamic State. It also faces a separate security threat from a Kurdish insurgency in its largely Kurdish southeast.

(Writing by Daren Butler; editing by David Dolan and Peter Graff)

Islamic State prime suspect in Istanbul airport suicide bombing

Relatives of one of the victims of yesterday's blast at Istanbul Ataturk Airport mourn in front of a morgue in Istanbul, Turkey,

By Ayla Jean Yackley and Humeyra Pamuk

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish investigators pored over video footage and witness statements on Wednesday after three suspected Islamic State suicide bombers opened fire and blew themselves up in Istanbul’s main airport, killing 41 people and wounding 239.

The attack on Europe’s third-busiest airport was the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings this year in Turkey, part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and struggling to contain spillover from neighboring Syria’s war.

President Tayyip Erdogan said the attack should serve as a turning point in the global fight against terrorism, which he said had “no regard for faith or values”.

Five Saudis and two Iraqis were among the dead, a Turkish official said. Citizens from China, Jordan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Iran and Ukraine were also among the 13 foreigners killed.

One attacker opened fire in the departures hall with an automatic rifle, sending passengers diving for cover and trying to flee, before all three blew themselves up in or around the arrivals hall a floor below, witnesses and officials said.

Video footage showed one of the attackers inside the terminal building being shot, apparently by a police officer, before falling to the ground as people scattered. The attacker then blew himself up around 20 seconds later.

“It’s a jigsaw puzzle … The authorities are going through CCTV footage, witness statements,” a Turkish official said.

The Dogan news agency said autopsies on the three bombers, whose torsos were ripped apart, had been completed and that they may have been foreign nationals, without citing its sources.

Broken ceiling panels littered the kerb outside the arrivals section of the international terminal. Plates of glass had shattered, exposing the inside of the building, and electric cables dangled from the ceiling. Cleanup crews swept up debris and armed police patrolled as flights resumed.

“This attack, targeting innocent people is a vile, planned terrorist act,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters at the scene in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“There is initial evidence that each of the three suicide bombers blew themselves up after opening fire,” he said. The attackers had come to the airport by taxi and preliminary findings pointed to Islamic State responsibility.

Two U.S. counterterrorism officials familiar with the early stages of investigations said Islamic State was at the top of the list of suspects even though there was no evidence yet.

No group had claimed responsibility more than 12 hours after the attack, which began around 9:50 p.m. (1850 GMT) on Tuesday.

VICTIMS OF MANY NATIONALITIES

Istanbul’s position bridging Europe and Asia has made Ataturk airport, Turkey’s largest, a major transit hub for passengers across the world. The Istanbul governor’s office said 109 of the 239 people hospitalized had since been discharged.

“There were little babies crying, people shouting, broken glass and blood all over the floor. It was very crowded, there was chaos. It was traumatic,” said Diana Eltner, 29, a Swiss psychologist who was traveling from Zurich to Vietnam but had been diverted to Istanbul after she missed a connection.

Delayed travelers were sleeping on floors at the airport, a Reuters witness said, as some passengers and airport staff cried and hugged each other. Police in kevlar vests with automatic weapons prowled the kerbside as a handful of travelers and Turkish Airlines crew trickled in.

The national carrier said it had canceled 340 flights although its departures resumed after 8:00 am (0500 GMT).

Paul Roos, 77, a South African tourist on his way home, said he saw one of the attackers “randomly shooting” in the departures hall from about 50 meters (55 yards) away.

“He was wearing all black. His face was not masked … We ducked behind a counter but I stood up and watched him. Two explosions went off shortly after one another. By that time he had stopped shooting,” Roos told Reuters.

“He turned around and started coming towards us. He was holding his gun inside his jacket. He looked around anxiously to see if anyone was going to stop him and then went down the escalator … We heard some more gunfire and then another explosion, and then it was over.”

AIM TO MAXIMIZE FEAR

The attack bore similarities to a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants at Brussels airport in March that killed 16 people. A coordinated attack also targeted a rush-hour metro train, killing a further 16 people in the Belgian capital.

Islamic State militants also claimed gun and bomb attacks that killed 129 people in Paris last November

“In Istanbul they used a combination of the methods employed in Paris and Brussels. They planned a murder that would maximize fear and loss of life,” said Suleyman Ozeren, a terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Global Policy and Strategy Institute.

Turkey needs to work harder on “preventative intelligence” to stop militants being radicalized in the first place, he said.

The two U.S. officials said the Istanbul bombing was more typical of Islamic State than of Kurdish militant groups which have also carried out recent attacks in Turkey, but usually strike at official government targets.

Yildirim said it was significant that the attack took place when Turkey was having successes in fighting terrorist groups and mending ties with some of its international partners.

Turkey announced the restoration of diplomatic ties with Israel on Monday after a six-year rupture and has been trying to restore relations with Russia, a major backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

One of the U.S. officials said there had been a “marked increase” in encrypted Islamic State propaganda and communications on the dark web, which some American officials interpret as an effort to direct or inspire more attacks outside its home turf to offset its recent losses on the ground.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the probe, which they said is being led by Turkish officials with what they called intelligence support from the United States and other NATO allies.

(Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Can Sezer, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Ercan Gurses in Ankara, John Walcott in Washington, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Sami Aboudi in Dubai, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Philippa Fletcher, Janet McBride)

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar claims responsibility for Easter bombing in Pakistan

Pakistan Blast

PESHAWAR, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The Taliban faction that killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in a park in Lahore on Easter Sunday has been quickly gaining attention in militant circles.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar’s recent rise to prominence – Sunday’s attack was the fifth it has claimed since December – plus its onetime pledge of allegiance to Islamic State show the fractured and sometimes competitive nature of Pakistan’s myriad militants.

“They are nowadays the main group claiming attacks in the past few months,” said Mansour Khan Mehsud, lead researcher of the FATA Research Group, said of Jamaat-ur-Ahrar.

In Sunday’s attack, 29 of the 70 killed were children enjoying an Easter weekend outing. Pakistan is a majority Muslim state but has some two million Christians, and Easter is a public holiday.

It was the most deadly attack in Pakistan since the December 2014 massacre by the Taliban of 134 school children at a military run academy in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

A spokesman for Jamaat-ur-Ahrar (JA) on Monday threatened other attacks, including more against religious minorities.

“We don’t target women and children, but Islam allows us to kill men of the Christian community who are against our religion,” spokesman Ehansullah Ehsan said.

The group’s leader, Omar Khalid Khorasani, has a background that reads like a history of Pakistani militancy.

Born Abdul Wali in a small village called Lakaro in the northwestern Mohmand tribal region, Khorasani started out as an anti-India jihadist fighting in Kashmir, according to a long-time friend and militant colleague who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He later joined the Pakistani Taliban in 2007 to fight the government to establish strict sharia Islamic law.

In 2013, Khorasani was one of the candidates to lead the Pakistani Taliban – who are separate from but loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban – after its chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a U.S. drone strike.

After losing out to Maulana Fazlullah, Khorasani left the next year to form his own group.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar in September 2014 swore allegiance to Islamic State, also known as Daesh.

“We respect them. If they ask us for help, we will look into it and decide,” spokesman Ehsan told Reuters of Islamic State, while rejecting the main Pakistani Taliban leadership.

By March 2015, however, the group was again swearing loyalty to the main Pakistani Taliban umbrella leadership. The reason for its return to the fold remains murky, but JA never specifically disavowed Islamic State either.

Khorasani was seriously wounded in a NATO air strike in eastern Afghanistan last year, Ehsan confirmed, but said he has fully recovered and is in hiding. Like many Pakistani militants, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar’s fighters sometimes flee into Afghanistan to escape a Pakistani army crackdown along the border that began in 2014.

Pakistani authorities have expressed fears that the ideology of the Middle East-based Islamic State – which places greater emphasis on killing Christians and minority Shia Muslims – could intensify sectarian violence in Pakistan.

Targeting minorities is not-uncommon among Pakistan’s predominantly Sunni Muslim militants, but it is a far more pronounced trait of Islamic State.

Jamaat-ur-Ahrar had previously targeted Christians – in March 2015, it claimed two church bombings in Lahore that killed 14 people – but researcher Mehsud said he doubted JA’s loose affiliation to Islamic State was the cause.

Pakistan has been plagued by militant violence for the last 15 years, since it joined a U.S.-led campaign against Islamist militancy after the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

While the army, police, government and Western interests have been the prime targets of the Pakistani Taliban and their allies, Christians and other religious minorities have also been attacked by various factions.

Nearly 80 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a church in the northwestern city of Peshawar in 2013.

JA is vying for attention in the militant-saturated northwest that has some 60-70 armed Islamist groups, researcher Mehsud said.

“They target Christians and other minorities because it will get media attention … this is not something new,” he said. “They want to strike fear and show that they are still here and the military has not defeated the Taliban.”

(Additional reporting by Asad Hashim and Mubasher Bukhari; Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

Suicide bombing exposes divisions tearing at Turkey’s stability

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – “Government resign!” chanted some of the mourners at the funeral on Tuesday of four young victims of the suicide bombing in Turkey’s capital Ankara.

“Our child has become a victim of ugly politics. We don’t want any politicians at our funeral,” one of the relatives called out, before family members hushed him and warned him against speaking out in front of journalists.

Far from bringing the nation together in mourning, the aftermath of Sunday night’s attack has again laid bare the deep divisions tearing at Turkey as it struggles to avoid being drawn into its neighbors’ conflicts.

If Turkey continues on this path, some analysts warn, it risks a cycle of violence and a lurch away from the European standards of freedom and democracy to which it once aspired. President Tayyip Erdogan shows little sign of healing the rifts.

Parties from across the political spectrum – from nationalists to the pro-Kurdish opposition – have condemned the car bombing, which killed 37 people in the heart of Ankara and was the third in the city in five months.

But the question of how to respond is far more divisive.

Officials quickly blamed Kurdish militants. Turkish warplanes began bombing their camps in northern Iraq within hours, and clashes with the security forces widened in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast.

In his first speech since the attack, Erdogan said the country’s anti-terrorism laws, already seen by rights groups as too invasive and used in recent months to detain academics and journalists, should be widened further.

“It might be the terrorist who pulls the trigger and detonates the bomb, but it is these supporters and accomplices who allow that attack to achieve its goal,” he told a dinner for doctors in his palace late on Monday.

“The fact their title is lawmaker, academic, writer, journalist or head of a civil society group doesn’t change the fact that individual is a terrorist…We should redefine terror and terrorist as soon as possible and put it in our penal code.”

Erdogan’s opponents say he is using anti-terrorism laws to silence dissent and that his authoritarian leadership is dangerously dividing a nation needed by its European and NATO allies as a bulwark against the instability of the Middle East.

Almost as Erdogan spoke in Ankara, police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse several hundred leftist demonstrators in Istanbul who had gathered to protest what they perceive to be the government’s failure to prevent Sunday’s attack.

Some in the crowd began chanting “Thief, Murderer, Erdogan”, a rallying cry during the anti-government protests of recent years, prompting police to intervene, Reuters witnesses said.

“ANGRY COUNTRY”

“Turkey has become a country that can neither rejoice nor mourn together, or find a common sense to unite around. It has become an angry country, with ever shrinking and fragmenting tribal outlooks,” said Turkish-British researcher Ziya Meral.

“Pressure on media and denials of freedom of expression are only fuelling mistrust, dangerous propaganda and misinformation,” Meral, a research fellow at Britain’s Sandhurst military academy and founder of the London-based Centre on Religion and Global Affairs, wrote in a blog post.

The ruling AK Party, founded by Erdogan more than a decade ago, was “no longer driven by pragmatism” but by its own survival and its ambition of securing the stronger presidential system that Erdogan wants, he said.

Since winning Turkey’s first popular presidential election in 2014, Erdogan has lobbied for replacing its parliamentary system with an executive presidency more akin to the United States or France.

Many of his supporters, who represent just over half the electorate and see him as champion of the pious working class, believe the narrative that Turkey, battered by regional conflicts, needs strong leadership for its long-term stability.

His opponents fear too much power in the hands of a man who brooks no dissent.

CHAOS OR STABILITY

Security officials have said the two perpetrators of Sunday’s bombing, a man and a woman, were linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in southeast Turkey.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the authorities had “very serious and almost certain” evidence suggesting the PKK was responsible. There has been no claim of responsibility.

Against a backdrop of rising violence in the southeast, where a PKK ceasefire collapsed in July, the AK Party campaigned for a parliamentary election in November by promising stability if it won, or the risk of chaos if it lost.

It won, clawing back a majority lost five months earlier, but opponents say the victory brought anything but stability.

“In the democratic countries of the world, when a bomb goes off, everyone would be side by side, shoulder to shoulder … That is what we are missing,” said Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the pro-Kurdish HDP, parliament’s third largest party.

“They don’t give account. They don’t apologize. They don’t say we made a mistake … They just keep polarizing.”

Yet amid the fragmentation, there are no opposition figures who appear capable of bringing people together.

The divisions are ever more keenly felt far beyond the corridors of power.

Amedspor, one of the most prominent soccer teams in the southeast, were unable to find rooms for an away match in the central city of Sivas on Tuesday, with hoteliers refusing to take their reservation when they realized who was calling.

Eventually the local governor’s office found them accommodation 25 miles out of town, the team’s president, Ali Karakas, told Reuters.

“We’re seeing a severing of emotional bonds and this is such a dangerous thing,” Karakas said. “Sports should be uniting. Brotherhood and solidarity should be its basis. But because of Turkey’s politics, even sport has been poisoned.”

(Additional reporting by Osman Orsal and Melih Aslan; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Janet McBride)

Twin suicide bombing kills 70 in Baghdad’s deadliest attack this year

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A twin suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State killed 70 people in a Shi’ite district of Baghdad on Sunday in the deadliest attack inside the capital this year, as militants launched an assault on its western outskirts.

Police sources said the suicide bombers were riding motorcycles and blew themselves up in a crowded mobile phone market in Sadr City, wounding more than 100 people in addition to the dead.

A Reuters witness saw pools of blood on the ground with slippers, shoes and mobile phones at the site of the blasts, which was sealed off to prevent further attacks.

In a statement circulated online, Islamic State said it was responsible for the blasts: “Our swords will not cease to cut off the heads of the rejectionist polytheists, wherever they are,” it said, using derogatory terms for Shi’ite Muslims.

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition have driven Islamic State back in the western Anbar province recently and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul.

But the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control, often targeting members of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, most recently on Thursday when two Islamic State suicide bombers killed 15 people at a mosque in the capital.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the attacks were in response to Islamic State’s recent defeats: “This gang targeted civilians after it lost the initiative and its dregs fled the battlefield before our proud fighters,” he said on his official Facebook page.

At dawn on Sunday, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Iraqi security forces in Abu Ghraib, seizing positions in a grain silo and a cemetery, and killing at least 17 members of the security forces, officials said.

Security officials blamed Islamic State, and a news agency that supports the group said it had launched a “wide attack” in Abu Ghraib, 25 km (15 miles) from the center of Baghdad and next to the international airport.

Footage circulated online by the Amaq news agency appeared to show Islamic State fighters crouching behind dirt berms and launching the attack with automatic rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Reuters could not verify the video’s authenticity.

Security forces had mostly regained control by Sunday evening but officials said there were still clashes.

Baghdad-based security analyst Jasim al-Bahadli said the assault suggested it was premature to declare that Islamic State was losing the initiative in Iraq.

“Government forces must do a better job repelling attacks launched by Daesh. What happened today could be a setback for the security forces,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

COUNTER OFFENSIVE

Army and police sources said the militants had attacked from the nearby Islamic State-controlled areas of Garma and Falluja, driving Humvees and pickup trucks fixed with machine guns.

A curfew was imposed as a regiment of Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism forces was mobilized to retake the silo in Abu Ghraib and prevent the militants approaching the nearby airport, security officials said.

Iraqi army helicopters bombarded Islamic State positions in the and Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said at least 20 militants had been killed in the government’s counter offensive.

Fighters from the Hashid Shaabi, a coalition of mainly Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, were mobilized to Abu Ghraib to reinforce regular government forces in the area, said Jawad al-Tulaibawi, a local Hashid commander.

Powerful Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr also called on fighters loyal to him to be on alert to protect Baghdad. Shi’ite militias like Sadr’s ‘Peace Brigades’ were seen as a bulwark against Islamic State’s sweeping advance in 2014 which threatened Iraq’s capital and its most sacred Shi’ite shrines.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles; Editing by Ros Russell)

Islamic State bombing kills at least two dozen in Syria’s Homs

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A bomb attack claimed by Islamic State in the Syrian government-controlled city of Homs killed at least 24 people on Tuesday.

The governor of Homs said the first of two explosions was caused by a car bomb which targeted a security checkpoint. A suicide bomber then set off an explosive belt, state media reported.

“We know we are targets for terrorists, especially now the (Syrian) army is advancing and local reconciliation agreements are being implemented,” the governor told Reuters by phone.

Seventeen people are still in hospital, one of whom is in a critical condition, the governor said.

Syrian state TV earlier reported 22 people had died and more than 100 people had been injured.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 29. It said those killed in the explosions, which took place in a mostly Alawite district, included 15 members of government forces and pro-government militiamen.

Syria’s nearly five-year-old civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and jihadi fighters.

Islamic State said in a statement its attack had killed at least 30 people.

The Syrian army and allied forces have been battling Islamic State in areas to the east and southeast of Homs city. They recently took back several villages including Maheen 50 miles southeast of the city.

(Reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Tom Perry and Dominic Evans)

Suicide bomber kills at least 15 outside Pakistan polio center

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Wednesday, the latest militant attack on the anti-polio campaign in the country.

Two militant groups – the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, which has links with the Taliban and has pledged allegiance to Islamic State – separately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The bomb blew up a police van that had just arrived at the center to provide an escort for workers in a drive to immunize all children under five years old in the poor southwestern province of Baluchistan.

“It was a suicide blast, we have gathered evidence from the scene,” Ahsan Mehboob, the provincial police chief told Reuters.

“The police team had arrived to escort teams for the polio campaign.”

Ahmed Marwat, who identified himself as a commander and spokesman for Jundullah, said his group was responsible.

“We claim the bomb blast on the polio office. In the coming days, we will make more attacks on polio vaccination offices and polio workers,” he said by telephone.

The Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility in a statement released by their spokesman, Mohammad Khorasani.

Teams in Pakistan working to immunize children against the virus are often targeted by Taliban and other militant groups, who say the campaign is a cover for Western spies, or accuse workers of distributing drugs designed to sterilize children.

The latest attack killed at least 12 policemen, one paramilitary officer and two civilians, officials said. Twenty-five people were wounded.

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic, the World Health Organization says.

The campaign to eradicate the virus in Pakistan has had some recent success, with new cases down last year, but violence against vaccination workers has slowed the effort.

(Reporting by Gul Yousafzai and Syed Raza Hassan; Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Jibran Ahmed in Peshawar; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel)

U.S. officials warn of “imminent attack” in Afghanistan

United States officials have received “credible reports of an imminent attack” somewhere in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to the state department’s Overseas Advisory Council.

The council on Monday issued what it called an emergency message for United States citizens currently in Afghanistan’s capital city, cautioning them to be careful during the next 48 hours.

“There were no further details regarding the targets, timing or method of the planned attack,” according to the posting.

The state department has an ongoing travel warning in effect for all of Afghanistan and urges Americans not to visit the country at all, citing an “extremely unstable” security situation. It notes Taliban-associated extremists remain active in the country.

Just two days ago, Agence France-Presse reported a suicide bomber targeted the life of one of the senior members of Afghanistan’s election commission as he entered his car in Kabul. The official survived the attack, but one of his employees died and two others were wounded.