BAGHDAD: A bomb hidden in a plastic bag near a Shiite shrine on Wednesday killed seven people and wounded 23, including women and children, in the third straight day of attacks in Baghdad, officials said.The mid-morning explosion occurred at a security checkpoint only 200 metres (yards) from the Musa Kadhim mosque, security officials told a foreign news agency."The bomb was inside a bag filled with screws and nails," said a police official, asking not to be identified."(The attacker) couldn't pass one of the checkpoints to take the bomb to the nearest place to the shrine, so he left it in that place and ran away."Yasser Abdul Hussein, a shop owner whose goods were damaged and scattered by the force of the blast, said: "Someone came and placed the bag in the street. We don't know if it was a man or a woman. They ran away immediately." Only hours before US President Barack Obama flew into Baghdad on Tuesday on a surprise visit and said that Iraq would soon have to defend itself, a car bomb in the same district killed eight people and wounded 20 others.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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