The world in brief

Saturday, May 11, 2013

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“No one heard me. It was so bad for me. I never dreamed I’d see the daylight again.”

Reshma Begum, a seamstress who was rescued after being trapped for 17 days in the rubble of a collapsed building in Bangladesh Article, 1A

Bombs kill 3 at Pakistan election offices

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Two bombs targeting the offices of candidates running in this weekend’s election killed three people on Friday in northwest Pakistan.

At least 130 people have been killed in attacks on candidates and party workers since the beginning of April.

The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for most of the attacks, saying the country’s democracy runs counter to Islam.

The Taliban are suspected in the abduction of former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s son Thursday, although there has been no claim of responsibility. Gilani said he has asked Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency to help find his 25-year-old son, Ali Haider Gilani, who was taken as he was leaving an election event in the central Pakistani city of Multan.

The elder Gilani said the abduction should not interrupt today’s election, which will mark the first time a civilian government has completed its full five-year term and transferred power in democratic elections.

“The election process should continue,” the former prime minister said.

Suicide bombers attack in 2 Mali towns

BAMAKO, Mali - Five suicide bombers carried out two simultaneous attacks on soldiers in Mali on Friday in another indication of the growing coordination of operations by militants against African and French forces.

The attacks killed the bombers and wounded two Malian soldiers. They highlighted the continued threat posed by the al-Qaida-linked militants, four months after France launched an offensive to oust them from urban centers in this West African nation.

Four men entered the northern Malian town of Gossi at around 4:30 a.m. Friday, according to local official Sidi Ben Hamou. Three blew themselves up at a military checkpoint, wounding two Malian soldiers.

Meanwhile, another attacker in a vehicle loaded with explosives tried to enter a military camp in the town of Menaka, authorities said.

In Paris, French President Francois Hollande and visiting Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou portrayed the French-led intervention as a military victory. The French, helped by troops from neighboring African countries including Niger, launched a military operation to take back the north of Mali on Jan. 11.

Mosque bombing kills 3, hurts 7 in Iraq

BAGHDAD - A bombing at a Sunni mosque near Baghdad on Friday killed three worshippers and wounded seven others, police said, reflecting rising sectarian tensions across Iraq.

Insurgents have been targeting Sunni mosques after a deadly crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest site in Hawija town last month. Sunnis were protesting perceived discrimination by the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government.

The surge in sectarian-based fighting raises concerns that the nation is on a path back to the fighting of the past decade that approached a state of civil war.

Police said a bomb went off after midday Muslim prayers as worshippers were leaving the al-Sultan mosque in Mahaweel, 35 miles south of the capital.

Also Friday, police said a bomb explosion struck an army patrol in western Iraq, killing one soldier and wounding two others.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualties. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

Egypt detains leading youth activist

CAIRO - Egypt’s prosecutor general ordered a prominent youth leader to be detained Friday for four days pending an investigation into accusations he incited anti-government violence, a security official said, in the latest case of a pro-democracy activist being held over similar charges.

Meanwhile President Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood staged an anti-Israel rally, the first of its kind by the group since they rose to prominence in the wake of the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The security official said Ahmed Maher, a leader of the April 6 Youth Movement that was at the forefront of the anti-Mubarak revolt, was arrested at Cairo’s main airport as he arrived from the United States.

He said Maher stands accused of “incitement” for actions at a demonstration in March against the country’s interior minister, when protesters hurled underwear at the minister’s house to oppose a police crackdown on the activist group.

Maher is being held on the premises of the prosecutor’s office in the capital’s Nasr City eastern district, the official said, after the four-day detention was ordered.

Maher’s April 6 group was one of Morsi’s top allies during his presidential campaign last year against a rival who was a Mubarak-era official the group feared would restore Mubarak’s regime.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 05/11/2013