Pakistan mosque blast that killed 100 was ‘revenge against police’

Pakistan mosque blast that killed 100 was ‘revenge against police’
Police officers examine the site of Monday’s suicide bombing after authorities finished the rescue operation, in Peshawar on Jan. 31, 2023. (AP)
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Updated 31 January 2023

Pakistan mosque blast that killed 100 was ‘revenge against police’

Pakistan mosque blast that killed 100 was ‘revenge against police’
  • Authorities are investigating how a major security breach could happen in one of the most tightly controlled areas of the city
  • Sanaullah told Pakistan’s national assembly the dead included 97 police officers and three civilians

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A suicide blast at a mosque inside a Pakistan police headquarters was a targeted revenge attack, a police chief said Tuesday, as rescue efforts ended with the death toll standing at 100.
Between 300 and 400 policemen had gathered for afternoon prayers at the compound’s mosque on Monday in the provincial capital Peshawar when an entire wall and most of the roof were blown out, showering rubble on officers.
“We are on the frontline taking action against militants and that is why we were targeted,” city police chief Muhammad Ijaz Khan told AFP.
“The purpose was to demoralize us as a force.”
On Tuesday evening rescuers finally ended a marathon operation which saw them pry survivors and corpses out of the wreck of the mosque, rushing those who could be saved to hospitals.
Low-level militancy, often targeting security checkpoints, has been steadily rising in the areas near Peshawar that border Afghanistan since the Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021.
The assaults are claimed mostly by the Pakistani Taliban, as well as the local chapter of the Islamic State, but mass casualty attacks remain rare.
The head of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province police force, Moazzam Jah Ansari, told reporters that a suicide bomber had entered the mosque as a guest, carrying 10-12 kilogrammes (about 22-26 pounds) of “explosive material in bits and pieces.”
He added that a militant group that was on-and-off affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban could be behind the attack.
Authorities are investigating how a major security breach could happen in one of the most tightly controlled areas of the city, housing intelligence and counter-terrorism bureaus, and next door to the regional secretariat.
The nation is already being hobbled by a massive economic downturn and political chaos, ahead of elections due by October.
Interior minister Rana Sanaullah told Pakistan’s national assembly the dead included 97 police officers and three civilians, with 27 patients still in critical condition.
“I remained trapped under the rubble with a dead body over me for seven hours. I had lost all hope of survival,” Wajahat Ali, a 23-year-old police constable whose feet were broken, told AFP from hospital on Tuesday.
Survivor Shahid Ali said the explosion took place seconds after the imam started prayers.
“I saw black smoke rising to the sky. I ran out to save my life,” the 47-year-old police officer told AFP.
Dozens of slain police officers have already been buried in several mass prayer ceremonies, with coffins lined up in rows and draped in the Pakistani flag while a guard of honor was performed.
“Terrorists want to create fear by targeting those who perform the duty of defending Pakistan,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement.

In a statement, the Pakistani Taliban — separate from the Afghan Taliban but with a similar Islamist ideology — denied it was responsible for the latest blast.
Known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, it carried out a years-long wave of horrific violence after emerging in 2007 but recently has attempted to rebrand itself as a less brutal outfit, claiming not to target places of worship.
But a security official in Peshawar, who asked not to be named, said Tuesday that authorities were considering all possibilities including the involvement of a TTP splinter faction, Daesh or a coordinated attack by several groups.
“Often in the past militant groups, including the TTP, that carry out attacks in mosques do not claim them” because a mosque is considered a sacred place, the official told AFP.
Pakistan was once plagued by almost daily bombings, but a major military clearance operation which started in 2014 largely restored order.
Analysts say militants in the former tribal areas adjacent to Peshawar and bordering Afghanistan have become emboldened since the return of the Afghan Taliban, with Islamabad accusing the new rulers of failing to secure their mountainous frontier.
“Terrorism has become a national security crisis for Pakistan again — as it was a decade ago — and it will worsen unless concerted action is taken to address it,” Brookings Institution analyst Madiha Afzal told AFP.
Mass casualty attacks remain relatively rare, with Daesh claiming the most recent blast on a Shiite mosque in Peshawar last March that killed 64.
Provinces around the country announced they were on high alert after the blast, with checkpoints ramped up and extra security forces deployed, while in the capital Islamabad snipers were posted on buildings and at city entrance points.
The drastic security breach came on the day United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan had been due to visit Islamabad, although the trip was canceled at the last minute due to bad weather.
Pakistan is also hosting an International Monetary Fund delegation from Tuesday as it works toward unlocking a vital bailout loan to prevent a looming default.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday condemned the blast as “abhorrent,” and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken extended his condolences for the “horrific attack.”

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Asylum seekers in UK face being moved into camps and ferries, reports say

Asylum seekers in UK face being moved into camps and ferries, reports say
Updated 18 sec ago

Asylum seekers in UK face being moved into camps and ferries, reports say

Asylum seekers in UK face being moved into camps and ferries, reports say
  • Temporary structures on old military bases and disused ferries to be used for new arrivals, sources tell media

LONDON: Asylum seekers in the UK face being held in camps on abandoned military bases and on disused ferries under government plans, reports say.

Sources told the BBC that former bases in Lincolnshire and Essex are to be confirmed next week and the first people will be moved in within weeks. An announcement on old ferries is also due in the same time frame, the sources said.

The plans come as the government pushes the “Illegal Migration Bill” through parliament, which will ban people arriving in small boats from across the Channel from ever applying for asylum, and confirm plans to send some of them to Rwanda with no chance of return. The law has been condemned by rights groups and international bodies alike.

According to reports, the planned camps on military bases would house between 1,500 to 2,000 migrants. They would be used initially for new arrivals rather than relocating the nearly 51,000 asylum seekers being housed in hundreds of hotels at a reported cost of £6.8 million a day.

The proposals, first reported by the Daily Telegraph, have not been denied by government sources. 

A Home Office spokesperson told the BBC that the government had been “upfront about the unprecedented pressure being placed on our asylum system, brought about by a significant increase in dangerous and illegal journeys into the country.”

In 2018, 300 people reached Britain via the channel. The number rose to 45,000 last year. 

The spokesperson added: “We continue to work across government and with local authorities to identify a range of accommodation options.”

Hotels housing asylum seekers have been targeted for protests by far-right groups, including in Knowsley, Merseyside, where a crowd fought police and set fire to a police van last month. 

Last week residents near the former RAF Scampton base in Lincolnshire, heard that the site could house about 1,500 people, including in temporary cabins on the former runway.

Meanwhile, Europe’s top human rights body wrote to British MPs on Monday urging them to prevent the passing of the “Illegal Migration Bill”, saying it was “incompatible with the UK’s international obligations.” 

The Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, Dunja Mijatovic, said in the letter that the bill created a “clear and direct tension with well-established and fundamental human rights standards.”


Female shooter kills 3 children, 3 adults in Nashville school attack

Female shooter kills 3 children, 3 adults in Nashville school attack
Updated 49 min 21 sec ago

Female shooter kills 3 children, 3 adults in Nashville school attack

Female shooter kills 3 children, 3 adults in Nashville school attack
  • Deadly mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States, but a female attacker is highly unusual
  • There have been 89 school shootings — defined as anytime a gun is discharged on school property — in the US so far in 2023

At least three children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday before police shot dead the shooter, who appeared to be a teenage girl.
Police began receiving calls of a shooter at The Covenant School at 10:13 a.m.. Officers could hear gunfire coming from the school’s second floor, Don Aaron, a spokesperson for Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, told reporters.
The shooter had at least two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, Aaron said. Two officers from a five-member team shot at her in what Aaron described as a lobby area and she was dead by 10:27 a.m..
“We do not know who she is at this juncture,” Aaron said.
Deadly mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States, but a female attacker is highly unusual. Only four of the 191 mass shootings since 1966 catalogued by The Violence Project, a nonprofit research center, were carried out by a female attacker.
There have been 89 school shootings — defined as anytime a gun is discharged on school property — in the US so far in 2023, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, a website founded by researcher David Riedman. Last year saw 303 such incidents, the highest of any year in the database, which goes back to 1970.
Three students were pronounced dead after arriving at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt with gunshot wounds, John Howser, a hospital spokesperson, said in a statement. Three adult staff members were killed by the shooter, police said.
Besides the deceased, no one else was shot, Aaron said.
Students’ parents were told to gather at a nearby church.
The Covenant School, founded in 2001, is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville with about 200 students, according to the school’s website. The school serves preschool through 6th graders and held an active shooter training program in 2022, WTVF-TV reported.


UK travel agent makes millions off migrant accommodation crisis

UK travel agent makes millions off migrant accommodation crisis
Updated 27 March 2023

UK travel agent makes millions off migrant accommodation crisis

UK travel agent makes millions off migrant accommodation crisis
  • Hoban’s company made over £6m in 2022 primarily by finding bridging hotels for Afghan refugees

LONDON: A former travel agent made £2.19 million ($2.7 million) in 2022 from winning UK government contracts to house migrants in hotels, the Daily Mail reported on Monday.

Debbie Hoban is one of the most prominent private-sector chiefs profiting from the UK’s crippling refugee crisis.

Her Leeds-based company, Calder Conferences, made more than £6 million last year, primarily by finding bridging hotels for Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban’s takeover in 2021.

The company is now among many being paid to house small-boat arrivals and other asylum seekers in nearly 400 hotels throughout the UK, the Daily Mail reported.

Hoban lives in a £3 million country farmhouse with four bedrooms, a triple garage, swimming pool, jacuzzi, and basement wine cellar. Social media shows on her lavish trips to India’s Taj Mahal and attending the F1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi.

The BBC revealed that due to a severe scarcity of official accommodation a total of 395 hotels in the UK are being used to house 51,000 asylum seekers. This costs taxpayers more than £6.8 million per day.

“The number of people arriving in the UK who require accommodation has reached record levels and has put our asylum system under incredible strain,” a British Home Office spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

“The Home Office is committed to making every effort to reduce hotel use and limit the burden on the taxpayer,” they added.

In early 2020, Calder was reported to have had secret talks on behalf of the Ministry of Justice to support housing up to 2,000 prisoners in a Butlin’s holiday camp in the English east-coast town of Skegness to alleviate the jails crisis during the coronavirus pandemic, the Daily Mail reported.

Calder’s representatives met with Butlin’s executives and discussed a £10 million scheme to place low-risk prisoners in leisure facilities. However, senior government officials halted the plan before it could be implemented.

The Daily Mail approached Calder Conferences for a comment, but were told, “we decline to comment.”


Humza Yousaf becomes Scotland’s first Muslim leader

Humza Yousaf, the first Muslim leader of a major UK political party, faces an uphill battle to bring Scotland independence
Humza Yousaf, the first Muslim leader of a major UK political party, faces an uphill battle to bring Scotland independence
Updated 27 March 2023

Humza Yousaf becomes Scotland’s first Muslim leader

Humza Yousaf, the first Muslim leader of a major UK political party, faces an uphill battle to bring Scotland independence
  • Glasgow-born Yousaf took oath in English and Urdu when first elected to Scottish Parliament in 2011
  • Yousaf vowed in victory speech Monday to deliver independence in this generation

EDINBURGH: Humza Yousaf, the first Muslim leader of a major UK political party, faces an uphill battle to revive Scotland’s drive for independence following the long tenure of his close ally Nicola Sturgeon.
The new and youngest Scottish National Party (SNP) leader, 37, says his own experience as an ethnic minority means he will fight to protect the rights of all minorities.
The Glasgow-born Yousaf took his oath in English and Urdu when he was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2011, before progressing to become the first Muslim to serve in the devolved government’s cabinet.
He has been hailed by his supporters as a polished communicator who can unite the party as support stagnates for the SNP’s central policy — independence for Scotland.
Despite the UK government’s opposition to a new referendum, and a Supreme Court setback, Yousaf vowed in his victory speech Monday to deliver independence in this generation.
And, as his wife and mother brushed away tears, he paid tribute to his paternal grandparents after they came to Scotland from Pakistan in the 1960s barely speaking English.
They would not have imagined “in their wildest dreams” that their future grandson would become the leader of their adopted homeland.
“We should all take pride in the fact that today we have sent a clear message: that your color of skin or indeed your faith is not a barrier to leading the country that we all call home,” Yousaf said.
He also vowed to be his own man as Scotland’s first minister. But far from running away from Sturgeon’s controversial record, he also says he will keep his experienced predecessor on “speed dial” for advice.
That has fed into critics’ portrayal of Yousaf as a political lightweight who will remain in thrall to Sturgeon’s camp.
At the same time, he is promising a more collegial style of leadership. “Mine would be less inner circle and more big tent,” he told LBC radio.
With the independence push stymied for now, following Sturgeon’s more than eight-year tenure as first minister, Yousaf takes over facing crises in health care and education under the SNP’s own watch in Scotland.
His record as Sturgeon’s minister for justice and health care was savaged on the campaign trail by his chief rival, Kate Forbes, and Yousaf must also heal a fractured party after its bruising leadership election.
Yousaf says he was toughened after facing racist abuse growing up in Glasgow, especially after the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
“I’ve definitely had tough times,” he recalled, reflecting on his time in politics.
“I’ve thought to myself, ‘goodness, is there more that I can take personally’ because I also come under a tremendous amount of abuse online and, unfortunately, sometimes face to face.”
Yousaf’s Pakistani-born father forged a successful career in Glasgow as an accountant. The new SNP leader’s mother was born into a South Asian family in Kenya.
Yousaf attended an exclusive private school in Glasgow, two years behind Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
He studied politics at Glasgow University, and worked in a call center before becoming an aide to Sturgeon’s predecessor as SNP leader and first minister, Alex Salmond.
Yousaf entered the Scottish cabinet in 2012, serving in various roles including justice, transport and most recently health.
He married former SNP worker Gail Lythgoe in 2010, but they divorced seven years later.
In 2021 he and his second wife Nadia El-Nakla launched a legal complaint against a nursery, accusing it of racial discrimination after it denied admission to their daughter.
The complaint was upheld by education inspectors but the couple have now dropped it, and the nursery denied the accusations.
He was accused of deliberately skipping a Scottish vote to legalize gay marriage in 2014, due to pressure from Muslim leaders.
Yousaf insisted he had a prior engagement, and contrasts his own record to Forbes’ religiously conservative views as a member of a Scottish evangelical church.
He says he will “always fight for the equal rights of others” and not legislate based on his own faith.
But one person’s constitutional position will not be protected in a Yousaf-led Scotland — that of King Charles III.
“I’ve been very clear, I’m a republican,” he told Scottish newspaper The National, calling for debate on whether Scotland should move to an elected head of state.


Kremlin denies Turkish media reports of planned Putin visit to Ankara

Kremlin denies Turkish media reports of planned Putin visit to Ankara
Updated 58 min ago

Kremlin denies Turkish media reports of planned Putin visit to Ankara

Kremlin denies Turkish media reports of planned Putin visit to Ankara

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Monday denied Turkish reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning to visit the Turksih capital, Ankara.

Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported on Monday that the deputy foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria may hold consultations in Moscow in early April.

Kyiv on Sunday said it was seeking an emergency meeting of the UN’s Security Council to counter Russia’s “nuclear blackmail” after President Vladimir Putin announced his country would station tactical nuclear arms in Belarus.

Putin said the deployment was similar to moves from the US, which stores such weapons in bases across Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, an analogy western allies called “misleading.”