Saturday, August 29, 2009 BAGHDAD: Two bomb attacks in volatile parts of northern Iraq killed at least 15 people on Saturday and wounded more than 30, police said, interrupting a relatively peaceful start to the Ramadan fast.In one attack, a suicide car bomber killed at least nine people and wounded 11 others at a police station in the town of Shirqat, 300 km (190 miles) north of Baghdad, in Salahuddin province. Four of those killed in the attack were police.The blast, at about 8 a.m. (6 a.m. British time), destroyed many shops in the area, a police source in Shirqat said. The death toll may rise, the source said.The other bombing killed six people and wounded 20 in the town of Sinjar, 390 km (240 miles) northwest of Baghdad, which is home to Yazidis, members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect.At least 21 people were killed in two suicide attacks in Sinjar earlier this month, part of a wave of violence that has hit ethnically and religiously mixed northern Nineveh province.Iraq is struggling to recover from years of sectarian slaughter and an insurgency triggered by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.A rash of violence in the past two months has raised doubts about the durability of security gains, including truck bomb attacks that killed almost 100 people at government ministries on August 19.There also has been a series of attacks in areas of northern Iraq where tension is high between majority Arabs, ethnic Kurds and other minorities. Much of the violence has taken place in Nineveh.The Shi'ite Muslim-led government, looking towards a general election in January, wants to show Iraqis that it is on top of the security situation as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw gradually by the end of 2011.
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
Comments