Target killing: Three lawyers gunned down in Karachi

TrendPK.com

KARACHI: In apparently a target killing incident, three lawyers were shot dead by armed assailants at Pakistan Chowk in Karachi, TrendPK reports Wednesday.

Police said the lawyers were on their way in a car when unidentified gunmen riding in motorbikes targeted them at Pakistan Chowk near City Court, killing three law practitioners on the spot and injuring another.
 
The attackers managed to flee from the scene afterwards.

The slain lawyers are identified as Shakeel Jafferi, Kafeel Jafferi and Badar Munir.

“It was a target killing incident, they all were lawyers. Two of them are father and son,” a police official told TrendPK at the spot, adding that the dead bodies and injured have been shifted to civil hospital Karachi for medico-legal formalities where an injured, Babar, was in critical state.

“Doctors are trying to save the life of an injured. The victims have received bullets in arms, heads and chests,” Medico Legal Officer (MLO) civil hospital told reporters outside the hospital.

Police and Rangers arrived at the scene soon after the incident and collected evidence from the site.

AGENCIES ADD: The victims included a father and his son. Armed motorcyclists sprayed bullets at their car in the city’s southern Arambagh neighbourhood, police said.

“All the victims are lawyers, two of the dead are father and son,” police official Mohammad Naeem told AFP.

Another police official described the victims as members of Pakistan’s minority Shiite Muslim community.

Manzoor Wassan, home minister of southern Sindh province, of which Karachi is capital, said the attack was sectarian.

“We have noticed a few sectarian killings lately, which are aimed at creating chaos in Karachi,” he told AFP.

The Supreme Court Bar Association said they would protest against the killings by observing a country-wide boycott of court proceedings on Thursday.

Karachi last year endured its worst ethnic and political unrest in 16 years. The southern port city is used by the United States to ship supplies to NATO troops fighting against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s rights bodies said more than 1,000 people had been killed in violence in Karachi last year, including more than 100 in one week alone in October. TrendPK/ AGENCIES

Iraq: Twin suicide blasts kill 17

Twin suicide bombings rocked a government compound in Iraq’s western city Ramadi on Monday, killing at least 17 people and injuring several others.

Details of the attack, the second on the compound this month, were still sketchy, with some confusion surrounding the number of those killed and injured. The death toll has risen to 17, most of them police officers, and 47 people have been wounded, said a police official at the site of the attack, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said the blasts were caused by two successive vehicle bombs, and rescue operations were still under way. Anbar Governor Qassim Mohammedsaid the attacks killed seven and wounded 28. He said the first blast happened when a minibus exploded outside the compound. The second blast was caused by a suicide bomber on foot, disguised as a policeman.The compound houses the provincial council as well as the police headquarters for Anbar province. While overall violence in Iraq has dropped from the peak of sectarian warfare in 2006-7, bombings and attacks still occur daily. A suicide car bomber killed 13 people and wounded dozens at the same compound on Dec. 12. The sprawling desert province of Anbar was the heartland of a Sunni Islamist insurgency after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Its main cities, Ramadi and Falluja, witnessed some of the fiercest fighting of the war.Ramadi is 100 kms west of Baghdad.

Death toll in Iraq suicide bombings rises to 17

BAGHDAD: Two suicide car bombers targeting a government compound in the Iraqi town of Ramadi killed at least 17 people and wounded 47 on Monday, a police official said.

“The death toll has risen to 17, most of them police officers, and 47 people have been wounded,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said most of the wounded were in serious condition.

He said rescue operations were continuing.

Ramadi is 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad. AGENCIES

Karachi target killings: 4 accused remanded in police custody

A local court in Karachi has remanded four accused including former police official in police custody till October 27 in target killing report. CID police presented police official Bilal Farooqi, Asad, Hanif and Babar in the court of Judicial Magistrate Sara Junejo in the hearing of target killing case against them. Police had requested 14-day physical remand of the accused but the court giving 4-day remand directed the police to submit challan in the court on time after the completion of investigation.

Three killed during protest in Indian Kashmir

JAMMU: Three people were killed in Indian occupied Kashmir Wednesday when police clashed with Muslim protesters as the government and opposition parties met in New Delhi to try to end the worst violence in the region in years.

The deaths came two days after the worst single episode of violence in two decades of protests against Indian rule and are the latest in a three-month long series of demonstrations in the Himalayan region.

At least 10 people were seriously injured in the latest round of protests, in the Mendhar area of Poonch, a district which has rarely seen separatist demonstrations, about 120 km (75 miles) south of Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar.

“We had to open fire when our repeated attempts failed to disperse the mob who were trying to reach to a nearby Christian missionary school in the area,” a police official said.

The protests

India PM says China wants foothold in South Asia

NEW DELHI: India must be prepared for a newly-assertive China that wants a foothold in South Asia, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, in a rare open criticism of the Asia giant competing for regional resources and geopolitical clout.

Indian news paper quoted the Indian Prime Minister on Tuesday as saying that China could use the “soft underbelly” of Kashmir and Pakistan “to keep India in low level equilibrium.”

An official at the prime minister’s office, on condition of anonymity, said the newspaper quotes were correct. AGENCIES

India may allow Pak judicial panel to interrogate Kasab

NEW DELHI: The government seems willing to give access to a judicial commission from Pakistan to visit India and examine witnesses associated with the interrogation of Ajmal Kasab, the 26/11 terror attack convict, now in Arthur Road jail in Mumbai.

“They (Pakistan) want to examine two witnesses… A Commission is a well-known mechanism to examine witnesses,” said a government source, indicating India’s willingness to consider the proposal favourably.

The government has now asked the Pakistan Interior Ministry to send a formal proposal.

Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik recently told reporters in Islamabad that he had proposed sending a judicial commission to India to quiz an Indian police official and a magistrate who had interrogated and recorded Kasab’s statement. To this, India had suggested that the witnesses can be interrogated through video

Taliban execute Afghan woman in public: police

KABUL: Taliban insurgents publicly executed an Afghan woman for alleged adultery, a police official said on Monday, in a reminder to the era when the militant group ruled Afghanistan.

The 48-year-old widow was given dozens of lashes before being shot dead on Sunday in the remote Qades district, held by the militants in northwestern Badghis province, said Abdul Jabar who serves as a senior officer in the province.

“It happened before the public … despite that no one has complained, the government will take its own measures about the incident,” Jabar reported by phone from Badghis.

The unidentified man who had the alleged affair with the woman had escaped, he said.

When in power from 1996 until 2001, the radical Taliban staged public stonings or lashings of those found to have sex outside marriage. A spokesman for the Taliban. who lead the insurgency against the Afghan government and foreign forces, said he was not aware of the incident and could not comment on it.

If confirmed, Sunday”s execution would be the second of a woman by the Taliban since their ouster from power nine years ago. A woman was previously executed for alleged spying for foreign forces.

The judiciary in neighbouring Iran last month suspended a sentence of death by stoning for a woman convicted of adultery after an international outcry over the case.

Two US, six German doctors killed in Afghanistan: police

KABUL: The bodies of two American and six German doctors have been discovered in northern Afghanistan, a police official told meida Saturday.

Provincial police chief Aqa Noor Kintoz said the foreigners and one Afghan man were believed to have been killed by armed men in a densely forested part of Badakhshan province, according to the testimony of a sole Afghan survivor.

“The bodies were found in the forest in Kuran wa Minjan district,” he said, referring to an area on the border with Nuristan province, one day”s drive from the provincial capital Faizabad.

A US Embassy spokeswoman said “several” American citizens were believed to be among the dead, found on Friday, but could not give further details.

“(We) are actively working with local authorities and others to learn more about the identities and nationalities of these individuals,” the spokeswoman said.

10 N.Koreans killed in bus crash in Kaesong: report

SEOUL: About 10 North Koreans are believed to have been killed in a traffic accident at a South Korean-funded joint industrial estate just north of the border, a report said Wednesday.

The accident happened last Friday evening when a bus carrying homebound North Korean workers at Kaesong crashed into another bus at a crossroads in heavy rain, Yonhap news agency said.

The agency, citing an unidentified police official at South Korea”s Paju city near the border, said around 10 North Koreans were killed and 40 injured. No South Koreans were hurt.

The South”s unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations, confirmed the July 2 accident but it said it had no details. Police in Paju told media they could not confirm the Yonhap report.

Kaesong is the last joint reconciliation project still operating, after relations worsened in recent years between the two Koreas.

About 44,000 North Koreans work for more than 120 South Korean companies producing goods such as textiles, footwear, watches and kitchenware.

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