Islamic Jihad militant killed in Gaza

A bomb explosion in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip has killed at least seven people, among them Ayman Fayed, an Islamic Jihad leader. Fayed's wife and two of their children were also killed. Hamas, which is in control of the Gaza Strip, said that it was not clear what had caused the explosion, while Islamic Jihad blamed Israel and promised revenge (BBC).

Taliban blamed for Kandahar suicide bombing

At least 65 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a dog fighting match in Kandahar. According to Kandahar governor Assadullah Khalid, the Taliban carried out the attack. One of the people killed was a police chief called Abdul Hakim, and he is thought to have been the main target of the attack (BBC).

Al-Qaeda commander reportedly killed

According to a pro-militant website, a top-level Al-Qaeda commander, Abu Laith al-Libi, was killed earlier this week in the North Waziristan Agency of Pakistan. According to a Pakistani newspaper, Libi died in a US air strike. The US suspected Libi of being behind several suicide bombings in Afghanistan (BBC).

Suicide bomber kills 50 worshippers in Pakistan

A suicide bomber detonated his weapon in the midst of worshippers celebrating Eid al-Adha at a mosque near Peshawar, Pakistan on 21 December, killing at least 50 people and injuring around 100. He was apparently to be targeting the Aftab Ali Sherpao, a former interior minister unpopular in some quarters in Pakistan due to the military campaign he waged against Islamist rebels (BBC).

If the perpetrators bomb fellow-Muslims on Eid, what remains to be said about the state of their morals?

40 killed in Afghanistan by suicide bomber

A suicide bomber has allegedly set off an explosion in which 40 people, mostly civilians and including children, were killed in Afghanistan's Baghlan Province today.

The attacker targeted a sugar factory where a visit by a parliamentary delegation was underway. Six MPs, including the opposition politician Mustafa Kazimi, a veteran of the anti-Soviet struggle, were killed in the attack. The children who were killed were there to welcome the MPs.

The Taliban have denied responsibility for the bombing, and have condemned the attack (BBC).

I am inclined to believe the Taliban on this one, mostly because how far away this attack was from their usual area of activity. However, I wouldn't put it past them to do this sort of thing elsewhere in the country. The Taliban are no strangers to using suicide bombing, without regard to civilian casualties, as a means to try to evict NATO soldiers from Afghanistan.

Suicide bombing in Algeria

An unknown group has carried out a suicide bombing in the Algerian city of Batna, killing at least 15 people. The attack seemed to be aimed at crowds waiting for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Although there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack, Bouteflika blamed Islamist militants, adding that "terrorist acts have absolutely nothing in common with the noble values of Islam" (BBC).

India blames Pakistani, Bangladeshi groups for bombing

The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, has blamed unnamed "terrorist organisations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan" for the recent bombings in Hyderabad, which killed 42 people.

Meanwhile, Indian President Pratibha Patil has indicated that the intention of the bombers had been to harm harmony between Hindus and Muslims in the city (BBC).

Is the Indian authorities' tendency to blame most terrorist attacks on Pakistani -- and recently Bangladeshi -- groups a symptom of the fact that they do not possess adequate knowledge of terrorist groups possibly operating within their own country? In other words, why did it have to be Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, and not Indians?

The very idea that terrorists from Pakistan and Bangladesh supposedly cooperated in this attack is kind of hard to take given the sheer distance between the two countries. On the other hand, operatives representing unsavoury groups in the two countries may have met up in India, in which case someone was possibly harbouring them, and that someone might be an Indian group. So any way you look at it, blaming Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups looks like a copout.

Partial curfew imposed in Baghdad

A partial curfew of indefinite duration has been imposed on Baghdad and its surroundings by the Iraqi government, meaning that, while cars are still allowed to move, two-wheeled vehicled and push-carts are not. This is a measure aimed at protecting Shi'ite pilgrims who are due to attend a festival next week (BBC).

The question is: what good is a curfew that gives cars freedom of movement in a country where so much damage has been wrought by car bombs? Is this a failure of the imagination on the part of the Iraqi government, or just an attempt at not embittering the population further by making life even more difficult for them?

Suicide bombers strike Yazidis; scores of casualties

Several suicide bomb attacks have killed 175 or more people near Mosul. The attacks were aimed at Iraq's Yazidi minority, whose members worship Malak Ta'us, or the Peacock Angel. The attack came after a period of rising tension between the Yazidis and Muslims of the area, after an incident in April in which a group of Yazidis allegedly stoned a formerly Yazidi girl who had converted to Islam (BBC).

It looks like some people in Iraq are really determined to drive all minorities out of the country.

US court orders Sudan to pay Cole victim families

A US federal court in Virginia has found Sudan guilty of involvement with the bombing of USS Cole by al-Qaeda in 2000, and has ordered the Sudanese government to pay US $8 million (Canadian $8.4 million) in compensation to the families of 17 US Marines who died in the attack.

According to Judge Robert Doumar, who presided over the trial, "It is depressing to realise that a country organised on a religious basis with religious rule of law could and would execute its power for purposes which most countries would find intolerable and loathsome."

The ruling was based on the Death on the High Seas Act. The families can collect the sum from Sudanese assets frozen in the US.

Sudan denies any ties with al-Qaeda, and the US government seems to agree (BBC).

I wonder if Doumar took the US government's position into account in making his judgement.

Most Muslims against the use of suicide bombing

The results of a Pew Global Attitudes Survey carried out in April in 47 countries (available in a PDF file) show that the majority (often an overwhelming one) of Muslims in 15 different countries are against suicide bomb attacks on civilian targets.

According to the survey, the proportions of Muslims who believe that suicide bombing is sometimes or often justified are: 34% in Lebanon, 20% in Bangladesh, 9% in Pakistan, 23% in Jordan, 10% in Indonesia, 11% in Tanzania, 42% in Nigeria, 16% in Turkey, 39% in Mali, 26% in Malaysia, 21% in Kuwait, 18% in Ethiopia, 18% in Senegal, 11% in Morocco, and 8% in Egypt.

The only territory polled where a majority of Muslims supports the use of suicide bombing as a tactic was Palestine, where 70% of respondents think it can sometimes or often be justified.

Korean and German hostages in danger in Afghanistan

The Afghan government has denied the Taliban's claims to have executed two German hostages it was holding, saying that one of them was still alive, while the other had died of a heart attack.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has kidnapped upto 23 South Korean Christians, who came to Afghanistan to preach and provide aid. According to Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, the movement would start executing the South Koreans unless 23 Taliban prisoners were released (BBC).

By kidnapping civilians, the Taliban is making it that much harder for those in the international community who advocate a negotiated end to the war in Afghanistan. It seems they are not interested in finding a way out of the conflict, but are instead trying to live off it. This strategy may backfire if Afghan civilians eventually tire of their suicide bombings, kidnappings, and other violations of common decency.

Conflict at Jerusalem gay pride march

About 2,000 have joined in a gay pride march through Jerusalem. They were being guarded by 7,000 Israeli policemen. The reason for such a high security presence was a counter-demonstration by several hundred Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews, who denounced the gay pride march, set dustbins on fire and held banners with "Shame" written on them.

An ultra-Orthodox Jew was arrested by Israeli police for allegedly planning to set off a bomb on the route of the gay pride march (BBC).

Taliban turn to suicide bombing

The Taliban seem to be deploying increasing numbers of suicide bombers in their war against NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan. The movement is copying tactics used by insurgents in Iraq.

Arsala Jamal, the Governor of Khost Province, sees the use of this tactic by the Taliban as a sign of desperation. Most of the volunteers for suicide bombing operations are teenage boys lured by the Taliban by promises of paradise; this fact might indicate a shortage of adult recruits ready to engage in conventional combat.

Nevertheless, suicide bombing has so far proved an effective tactic for the Taliban (BBC).

The question is: do the Taliban also tell their recruits that suicide is forbidden in Islam, or do they conveniently forget to do so?

Israeli rabbi calls for massive bombing of Gaza

In a letter he sent to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in late May, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Mordechai Eliyahu, has declared all the resident of Gaza collectively guilty for the firing of rockets at Israel by some of their number. The letter was later distributed in synagogues across Israel. Eliyahu used texts from the Bible, and from Moses Maimonides's Biblical commentary, as proof for his statement.

Commenting on Eliyahu's statement, his son Shmuel Eliyahu, who is the chief rabbi of the Israeli city of Sefed, said that Mordechai Eliyahu advocated bombing the area from which the rockets were fired, no matter how many Palestinian lives were lost as a result.

According to Shmuel Eliyahu, "If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop" (Jerusalem Post).

I should mention that Qassam rockets fired by Palestinian militants have killed 12 Israelis since 2001. Just so that we are clear about the enormity of what the Eliyahus are saying, it seems that they would not mind seeing a million Palestinians killed to avenge these 12 people.

These statements demonstrate in a rather chilling fashion that extremism and the perversion of religious teachings are not the sole preserve of any one group.

Somali PM assassination fails

A suicide bomber trying to kill Ali Mohamed Ghedi, the interim prime minister of Somalia, was shot by Ghedi's bodyguards before he could reach the prime minister's residence. Nevertheless, he succeeded in blowing his car up, killing six people.

Ghedi is blaming Al-Qaeda for the attack (BBC).

Militants destroy CD and movie shops in Pakistan

Over a dozen CD and film shops have been destroyed in explosions in Tangi and Charsadda, in the North West Frotier Province (NWFP). It seems that the bombing campaign was carried out by militants convinced that the shops contravened Islamic principles (BBC).

I wish the militants engaged in this sort of thing would understand what effect their blind hatred has on perceptions of Islam around the world. As Pervez Musharraf's failed military campaign in the NWFP shows, the solution to the problem may well lie in the region itself. The common people of the NWFP ought to turn these gangs out of every hiding place of theirs.

Terrorists attack Banlgadeshi railway stations

A new terrorist organisation that calls itself "Jadid al-Qaeda" has set off simultaenous bombs at railway stations at the Bangladeshi cities of Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet. The bombs were placed in cotton bags at the stations. They resulted in a single casualty: a rickshaw driver was wounded in Chittagong when he opened the bag containing one of the bombs.

Jadid al-Qaeda had left metallic plaques inside the bags claiming responsibility for the attacks. The plaques also contained threats against the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim sect, and warnings to Bangladeshis to stop working for NGOs, which, in some cases, receive foreign funding (BBC).

You'd think that this cowardly group, in its search for a scary-sounding Arabic name for itself, would at least double-check its grammar. "Jadid al-Qaeda" makes no grammatical sense in Arabic.

All that these bombs have succeeded in doing was to injure the poor, innocent rickshaw driver. How is he related to NGOs?

The lunatic bombers, who aim to kill innocent people in the name of Islam, should understand that Bangladesh is not the right country for them. Their type lost all legitimacy by siding with Pakistan in 1971. The newfound extremists are merely setting themselves up for destruction.

Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for Algiers bombing

With a phone call to Al-Jazeera, a man claiming to represent the terrorist group Al-Qaeda has taken responsibility for the two bombs that exploded in Algiers today, killing 23 people and wounding 160 (BBC).

Once again, this goes to show Al-Qaeda's murderous ideology: they make no distinctions between Muslim and non-Muslim, "guilty" and innocent, target and bystander.