Suicide attack kills 21 and 20 injured at MARDAN,Pakistan military event on 10/02/2011

MARDAN, Pakistan — A suicide attack killed 21 people and 20 people injured at a Pakistan military parade in the country's northwest on Thursday, where the Taliban have vowed to step up attacks on security forces, officials said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Taliban have vowed to step up attacks on Pakistani security forces in the region to avenge a fresh offensive against Islamist sanctuaries in the tribal district of Mohmand.

"It was a suicide attack. The teenager bomber was on foot and was wearing a school uniform," Abdullah Khan, a senior police officer in the city of Mardan, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the regional capital Peshawar, told AFP.
"21 soldiers were killed on the spot and one in hospital. twenty others have been injured," he said. Two military officials in Peshawar confirmed the suicide attack and the death toll.
Mardan is some 50 kilometres east of Mohmand tribal district where Pakistan launched an offensive last month and officials said that a surge in bomb and suicide attacks was a reaction to the operation.
Some 25,000 people have fled in just a week from Mohmand tribal zone, a UN official said last week.
Pakistan suffers near-daily attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants that have killed more than 4,000 people since government troops evicted Islamists from an Islamabad mosque in a deadly July 2007 siege.
Local Taliban, who are fiercely opposed to the US-allied government, recently vowed to step up attacks on Pakistani police and security forces.
Pakistan's northwest and tribal areas have been wracked by violence, mostly targeting security officials, since hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters sought refuge there after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
The military has claimed victory in a number of battles against militants, perhaps most notably in 2009 in the Taliban's former headquarters of South Waziristan, but attacks have continued across the country.
Washington has said eliminating militant sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal belt, particularly North Waziristan, is vital to winning the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and defeating Al-Qaeda

RAHUL VALLAMBER

8 killed and 35 injured in a Car Bomb Blast at KIRKUK, Iraq on 09/02/2011

KIRKUK, Iraq — Three near-simultaneous car bombs killed at least 8 people and in the ethnically-divided northern city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, attacks blamed on Sunni militant group Ansar Al-Islam. More then 35 of others were wounded in the triple blasts at around 10:25 am (0725 GMT) in the west of the oil-rich city, which is at the centre of a major land dispute between Iraq's central government and its autonomous Kurdish region.
"We are certain that this terrorist group, Ansar Al-Islam, is behind this attack," Kirkuk province police chief Major General Jamal Taher Bakr told AFP.
"Our security forces will punish that group, because they have targeted all the people of Kirkuk. They are trying to raise sectarianism but they will fail, as they failed before."
Bakr said the three explosions killed eight people and left 104 others wounded. Sadiq Omar Rasul, the head of the province's health department, earlier put the toll at eight killed and 68 injured.
The police chief said the three blasts included a car bomb driven by a suicide attacker which struck the office of asayesh forces, or Kurdish internal security, loyal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani.
He said the second car bomb struck a police patrol in the same west Kirkuk neighbourhood as the first, while a third vehicle packed with explosives detonated nearby targeting the convoy of a senior police officer.
Police Major Salam Zangana, who said eight people were killed and 83 wounded in the attacks, added that a woman, a child and two policemen were among the dead.
Ansar al-Islam is a Sunni militant group created in 2001 by veterans of the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and had its headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan, near the border with Iran.
Shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, US special forces and fighters from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan fought Ansar al-Islam, whose fighters fled their headquarters.
In September 2003, many Ansar al-Islam members formed the soon-to-be renowned militant group Ansar al-Sunna.
Kirkuk, 240 kilometres (150 miles) from Baghdad, is populated by a mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, and is the capital of the province of the same name.
It is at the centre of a tract of disputed territory claimed by the central government in Baghdad as well as Kurdish authorities in the north, who want it incorporated into their autonomous region.
US military officials have said the unresolved land dispute is a key threat to Iraq's future stability, and tensions across the area have led some analysts to dub the border between the two sides the "trigger line."

Rahul Vallamber