Pakistan orders inquiry into killing of five Chechens

QUETTA: A Pakistan provincial government on Thursday ordered an inquiry into the killing by security forces of five Chechens, including three women, after media said they had been unarmed.

The group was killed this week, with authorities saying they were al-Qaeda-linked suicide bombers.

Islamist militants have stepped up attacks in Pakistan after the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in the northwestern town of Abbottabad on May 2. Last week, 80 people were killed in twin suicide bombings at a paramilitary academy in the northwestern town of Charsadda.

On Tuesday, the paramilitary Frontier Corps and police gunned down five Chechens near a security checkpoint on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, saying explosives were strapped to their bodies and they were attempting to attack government forces.

But the media raised doubts over statements by security forces, with television footage showing a wounded woman waving her hand in the air before her death.

The daily Dawn on Thursday quoted witnesses as saying that the suspects were unarmed, had put up no resistance to the security forces and appeared to be about to surrender.

“The chief minister has ordered an inquiry after media reports raised doubts about the whole incident,” a provincial government spokesman told Reuters, referring to the head of the province.

Two officials of a bomb disposal squad which searched the bodies after the shooting told Reuters that they found no explosives strapped to the bodies of the Chechens.

“They were unarmed and had no suicide jackets or explosives with them,” one of the officials said.

“Five valid and two expired Russian passports were found in a ladies’ handbag lying with the bodies,” the second official said.

A witness earlier this week said the five had got out of a vehicle and were chased by police before they were shot.

Pakistan’s commitment to fighting militancy has come under intense scrutiny after discovery of the al Qaeda chief near a military academy in the military town not far away from Islamabad.

Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afgfhan border has been described as a global hub for militants, including Arabs and Chechens inspired by Al Qaeda.

A decade after federal forces drove separatists out of power in Chechnya in the second of two wars, the North Caucasus are plagued by near-daily violence, where rebels want to carve out a separate Islamic state with Sharia law. While Chechnya now rests on a shaky peace, neighbouring regions are at the heart of a growing Islamist insurgency.

Medvedev blames security lapse for Moscow blast

MOSCOW: President Dmitry Medvedev placed the blame on Tuesday on a lapse in security for allowing a suspected suicide bomber to kill at least 35 people and wound scores at Russia’s busiest airport.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday’s attack at Moscow”s Domodedovo airport, but the action bore hallmarks of militants fighting for state in the North Caucasus region on Russia”s southern frontier.

“It’s obviously a terrorist act that was planned well in advance in order to cause the deaths of as many people as possible,” said President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday.

“What happened shows that there were clear security violations,” he said. The attacker evaded security to carry the explosives into the airport’s arrival hall.

North Caucasus rebels have threatened attacks against cities and economic targets in the run-up to parliamentary elections this year and 2012 presidential polls. The choice of Domodedovo, resulting in the deaths of several foreigners, suggested the attackers sought to raise uncertainty beyond Russia”s borders.

Russia is due to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, on the edge of the Caucasus, which some rebels consider part of the territory they aim to include in separate state.

Medvedev, due to open the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, delayed his departure to the Swiss city of Davos and was due to hold a meeting with his security services on Tuesday. On Monday he vowed to track down and punish those behind the blast.

Two killed in attack on Russian power station

MOSCOW: Two security guards were killed in a suspected “terrorist act” when an explosion struck a hydroelectric power station in the Kabardino-Balkaria region of Russia”s North Caucasus on Wednesday, officials said.

A powerful blast ripped through part of the Baksanskayaplant, Rushydro , Russia”s largest hydroelectric power producer which runs the station, said in a statement. Media quoted Emergencies Ministry workers as saying it took almost three hours to contain a fire that followed the blast.

“According to preliminary information, a terrorist act was the cause of the explosion and of the fire. Two guards died, two other people have been taken to hospital,” Rushydro said. Media quoted security sources as saying the two guards had been killed in a shootout with rebels. Rushydro said power supplies to consumers had not been interrupted.

Four police killed in shootout in Russian Caucasus

MOSCOW: Four police and three suspected rebels were killed Wednesday in a shootout in the Russian Caucasus region of Dagestan, a police spokeswoman told foreign news agency.

The shootout took place as police surrounded suspected rebels in a village in the Khasavyurtovsky district in northern Dagestan, the spokeswoman for the Dagestan interior ministry said.

Dagestan, in the volatile North Caucasus region in the south of Russia, has been the site of regular attacks against security services.

Suicide bomber kills dozens at Afghan wedding party

KANDAHAR: At least 40people were killed and 77 injured by a suicide bomb attack on a wedding party in insurgency-plagued southern Afghanistan, a police official said on Thursday.

“A suicide bomber went inside the party where hundreds of people were sitting and blew himself up,” the official said of Wednesday night”s blast in Arghandab district, north of Kandahar, where foreign troops are focusing on a push in coming months to whittle out the Taliban.

A Kandahar policeman said many of the guests had links to local police officials or a local militia, which was why it was likely targeted by the Taliban. In the immediate aftermath, he said, some panicked guests mistakenly thought the party had been struck by an air raid.

NATO blames Taliban over deadly attack on Afghan wedding

KABUL: NATO forces in Afghanistan on Thursday blamed the Taliban over an “indiscriminate attack” on a wedding in the southern province of Kandahar that the government said killed more than 40 civilians.

Ten rebels killed in Chechnya

MOSCOW: Ten rebels including a Jordanian were killed during an operation by Russian forces in the volatile Chechnya region, local news agency reported Thursday.

The operation took place in a forest in the Vedeno region of southwest Chechnya, an official with the Russian special forces in the north Caucasus told the agency.

“Ten rebels were shot dead. One of them has been identified,” he said, naming the man as Yassir Amarat, a Jordanian who was leader of the rebel group.

Amarat was suspected of several crimes against Russian soldiers and local residents, the official said.

Authorities in Russia”s volatile North Caucasus region, which includes Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, are battling an insurgency that has seen almost daily shootings and bomb attacks.

8 dead in blast in Russia”s Dagestan

MOSCOW: Eight people were killed on Thursday in a bomb attack in Russia”s southern region of Dagestan, the latest unrest in the troubled North Caucasus, officials said.

“At around 10:30 (0630 GMT), an explosive device went off as repair workers drove by in a vehicle,” the investigative committee of Russian prosecutors said in a statement.

“As a result, eight people died and four police officers escorting the workers were wounded.”

The victims were workers who were sent to fix a cell phone mast that had been blown up the previous day by unidentified attackers in the district of Sergokalinsk, investigators said.

The cellphone mast belonging to Russian telephone company Beeline and a neighbouring television mast had been damaged by automatic gun fire, a spokesman for the interior ministry told the RIA Novosti news agency.

“Police were sent to the scene and a shootout is currently in progress with the attackers,” a spokesman for the local branch of the Federal Security Service told a foreign news agency.

A group of investigators had set off for the scene and information on the dead and wounded was being checked, the investigative committee said. It has launched a criminal investigation, although it did not specify the charge.

The workers from the republic”s radio and television broadcasting centre may have been lured into an ambush by rebels and blown up by a landmine, Russian NTV television reported.

The police wounded included the commander of the republic”s riot police, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.

The local pro-Kremlin authorities in Dagestan and other North Caucasus regions are battling to defeat an Islamist insurgency that has already left scores of civilians and police dead.

On May 7, a bomb placed in a rubbish bin at a train station in the Dagestani town of Derbent exploded as passengers boarded a train, killing one person and injuring six.

In the most deadly recent attack in Dagestan, two suicide bombers triggered explosions outside a police station in the town of Kizlyar on March 31, killing 12 people, including a local police chief.

Russian investigators say that two women from Dagestan carried out twin suicide bombing attacks in the Moscow metro on 29 March that left 40 dead.

The suicide bombers were named as Mariam Sharipova, the wife of an Islamist fighter, and Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, whose Dagestani Islamist husband was killed in a special operation last year.

The so-called “Caucasus Emirate,” an Islamist group led by Chechen rebel warlord Doku Umarov, has claimed responsibility for the metro attacks.

At least seven dead in attack in Russia”s Dagestan

MOSCOW: At least seven people were killed on Thursday in an attack in Russia”s troubled southern region of Dagestan, the local branch of the Federal Security Service said.

“Seven or eight people were killed in the attack,” the official said, adding that the victims were workers who were repairing a television transmitter but without specifying the nature of the attack.

“Police were sent to the scene and a shootout is currently in progress with the attackers,” he added.

The local pro-Kremlin authorities in Dagestan and other North Caucasus regions are battling to defeat an Islamist insurgency that has already left scores of civilians and police dead.

U.S. warns Syria on weapons transfers

WASHINGTON: The United States summoned the senior Syrian diplomat in Washington to address “provocative behaviour” regarding the potential transfer of Scud missiles to Hezbollah that it said could be a threat to both Lebanon and Israel.

“The United States condemns in the strongest terms the transfer of any arms, and especially ballistic missile systems such as the SCUD, from Syria to Hezbollah,” the statement, issued by State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid, said.

“The transfer of these arms can only have a destabilizing effect on the region, and would pose an immediate threat to both the security of Israel and the sovereignty of Lebanon.”

The U.S. statement stopped short of confirming the alleged transfer of long-range Scud missiles to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, which if true could cast doubt on U.S. President Barack Obama”s diplomatic outreach to Syria.

The State Department said this was the fourth time in recent months that Washington has raised the issue with the Syrian Embassy.

U.S. officials said last week they believed Syria intended to transfer the weaponry, but had doubts about whether the missiles were delivered fully assembled or had actually been transferred to Lebanon.

Damascus has denied the transfer and said Israel might be using the accusation as a pretext for a military strike against Syrian targets.

The U.S. statement was a strong warning to Damascus, saying that weapons transfers were an obstacle to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and noting that Syria”s designation as a “state sponsor of terrorism” was tied to its support for groups such as Hezbollah.

“The risk of miscalculation that could result from this type of escalation should make Syria reverse the ill-conceived policy it has pursued in providing arms to Hezbollah,” the statement said.

“We call for an immediate cessation of any arms transfers to Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations in the region.”

A senior U.S. official, while declining to confirm any U.S. intelligence related to the Scuds, said the statement was a sign that the allegations were being taken seriously.

“We wouldn”t have called them in if we didn”t think something was going on,” the official said.

The alleged deal to transfer the Scud missiles to Hezbollah has fuelled cross-border tensions with Israel, which remains wary of the Iranian- and Syrian-backed group that it went to war with in 2006.

Scud missiles in Hezbollah hands could strike deep inside Israel, while a partial transfer could involve weapons parts, documents or funding, according to U.S. officials.

If the transfer is confirmed, it could create fresh obstacles to U.S. Senate confirmation of a new ambassador being returned to Damascus after a five-year absence.

The Obama administration has said that improved U.S. diplomatic ties with Syria are an important part of the Mideast peace process.

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