A suicide car bomber has struck a bus carrying employees of
Afghanistan's top court in Kabul, killing at least 17 people and
wounding 40 others, officials say.
Women and children were among the victims in Tuesday's blast, the interior ministry said.
General
Mohammad Zahir, the ministry's head of criminal investigations, said
the bomber detonated his vehicle after targeting the bus carrying
Supreme Court staff near the US embassy.
The blast happened on the
main road to the international airport, a few hundred metres from the
US embassy gates. The gates are quite a distance from the actual embassy
building and also from nearby NATO headquarters.
The area has a number of military facilities belonging to the US-led coalition.
"The
target was tree minivans full of Supreme Court employees. Eyewitnesses
told us there were deaths at the site itself," said.
"Security forces cordoned off
the site and were concerned about a lot of other vehicles already parked
in the neighbourhood. A lot of windows were blown out of apartments
surrounding the area."
Several Taliban fighters were killed on
Monday after launching a gun and grenade attack on military buildings
near Kabul airport's perimeter fence.
The response from Afghan
security forces was widely praised as a sign of their growing
professionalism as they take over responsibility from 100,000 US-led
foreign combat troops who will pull out by the end of next year.
Kabul
also came under attack on May 24, when the Taliban launched a
coordinated suicide and gun assault on a compound of the International
Organisation for Migration.
China's latest manned spacecraft blasted off with three "taikonauts" onboard on a 15-day mission to an experimental space lab.
The
Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, atop a Long March 2 rocket, was launched on
Tuesday from a remote site in the Gobi desert. The event that was
carried live on state television.
Once in orbit, the craft will
dock with the trial laboratory Tiangong [Heavenly Palace] 1. The crew
- two men and one woman - will then carry out tests on the module's
systems in the latest step towards the development of a space station.
They are also set to give a lecture to students back on earth.
China
successfully carried out its first manned docking exercise with
Tiangong 1 last June, a milestone in an effort to acquire the
technological and logistical skills to run a full space station that can
house people for long periods.
'Glorious and sacred'
President
Xi Jinping oversaw the latest launch. He addressed the crew before
blast-off and hailed the mission as "glorious and sacred", according to
state media.
This mission will be the longest time Chinese have
spent in space, and marks the second mission for lead crewmember Nie
Haisheng.
It is China's fifth manned space mission since 2003.
China also plans an unmanned moon landing and the deployment of a rover,
as a pretext to sending a man to the moon after 2020.
A thousand members of Japan's security force are preparing to take part in joint drills with US Marines.
The
exercises are taking place at a time of growing tension in the region -
with Japan suggesting it could officially reinstate its military for
the first time since the end of the second world war.
General
Shigeru Iwasaki, chief of Japan's defence staff, said that changing the
name of the country's Self Defence Forces would free it from
constitutional restraints that have kept it from responding fast enough
or striking in case of threats.
"When you look at the instability
factors that exist around us, for example, China has been increasing its
military spending by more than 10 percent year on year. Their armament
has grown to become a significant power," Iwasaki said.
Al Jazeera's Steve Chao was given exclusive access to the elite unit taking part in the war games in Yokosuka.
A Muslim man has been sentenced to 26 years in prison in
Myanmar for an attack on a Buddhist woman that triggered a bout of
religious violence last month.
The man, who was
described by state media as a 48-year-old drug addict, was convicted in a
court in Lashio of intent to kill, assault and drug use, a police
source told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
The
24-year-old victim, a petrol vendor, suffered burns in the attack, which
provoked Buddhist-Muslim riots in the town that left at least one
person dead and saw a mosque and orphanage burned.
The
violence last month followed a serious spate of attacks in March, where
dozens of people were killed in central Myanmar, and thousands of homes
were set ablaze.
Ten Muslims have been sentenced to prison
terms of up to 28 years in connection with the March violence in the
central town of Meiktila. No Buddhists are yet known to have been
convicted.
Communal unrest last year in the western state of
Rakhine left about 200 people dead and 140,000 displaced, mainly
Rohingya Muslims.
Several internet companies have struck an agreement with the US
government to release limited information about the number of
surveillance requests they receive, two sources familiar with the
discussions told the Reuters news agency.
Facebook became the first to release aggregate numbers of requests, saying in a blogpost
that it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data in the
second half of 2012, covering 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts.
The company said it released the information after reaching a deal about disclosures with US national security authorities.
"These
requests run the gamut - from things like a local sheriff trying to
find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a
police department investigating an assault, to a national security
official investigating a terrorist threat," Facebook said in its
blogpost on Friday.
Microsoft Corp said later on Friday that for
the last six months of 2012 it received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal
and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between
31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from local, state and federal US
governmental entities.
'Tiny fraction'
Facebook is quick to point out that these cover "only a tiny fraction of one percent" of its 1.1 billion active user accounts.
"We will continue to be vigilant in protecting our users’ data from
unwarranted government requests, and we will continue to push all
governments to be as transparent as possible."
The agreements
underscore the pressure imposed on the US government and internet
companies after news leaked last week of a controversial National
Security Agency programme involving surveillance of foreigners.
The disclosure of that programme triggered concern about the scope and extent of the information-gathering exercise.
Other
internet companies are expected to release numbers of government
requests without revealing how many originate from the National Security
Agency, the sources said.
Google, Facebook and Microsoft have
publicly urged the US government to allow them to reveal the number and
scope of the surveillance requests they receive, including confidential
requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Nelson Mandela, the ailing former South African president and
anti-apartheid hero, is recovering well from a lung infection which has
kept him in a serious condition in hospital for a week, his grandson
says.
The comment by Mandla Mandela on Saturday was the latest
indication that the health of 94-year-old grandfather, South Africa's
first black president, was showing signs of improvement.
Mandela
has been receiving visits from family members after he was rushed to
hospital a week ago with a recurrence of lung problems.
"Madiba is
recovering very well and looks good," Mandla Mandela said in Qunu, a
village in the Eastern Cape province where Mandela was born and spent
his early years.
Speaking in Xhosa at a funeral of another relative, Mandla used the clan name 'Madiba' by which Mandela is popularly known.
"I
thank the nation and the world for the prayers for Madiba, and the
doctors and the office of the ANC for keeping the family updated," he
said.
South Africa's government said on Thursday that Mandela was continuing to recover but his condition remained serious.
Mandela's
hospitalisation is his fourth since December and has reinforced growing
awareness among South Africa's 53 million people that they will one day
have to say goodbye to the father of the "Rainbow Nation" created from
the ashes of apartheid.
Mandela has a history of lung problems
dating back to his time at the windswept Robben Island prison camp near
Cape Town. He was released in 1990 after 27 years behind bars and went
on to serve as president from 1994 to 1999.
Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq has rejected orders from Ayman al-Zawahiri,
the group's global chief, to break up his group's claimed union with
the Jabhat al-Nusra, an armed Islamist group in Syria, according to a
new audio message.
The purported remarks by head of Islamic State
of Iraq (ISI) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the message posted on jihadist
forums on Saturday indicate tensions between ISI and al-Qaeda's central
command.
In April, Baghdadi announced that ISI had merged with Syria's Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Nusra Front.
Al-Nusra
leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani acknowledged a relationship between the
two groups, but he denied there had been a merger and publicly pledged
his allegiance to Zawahiri.
In Saturday's message, the man
identified as Baghdadi said "the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
will remain, as long as we have a vein pumping or an eye blinking. It
remains and we will not compromise nor give it up".
"It remains, and we will not compromise; we will not give up [...] until we die."
Baghdadi had "made a mistake" by announcing a merger "without consulting us", he said.
The
merger plan has been "damaging to all jihadists", Zawahiri said, adding
that "Al-Nusra Front is an independent branch of Al-Qaeda".
But
the message on Saturday said: "When it comes to the letter of Sheikh
Ayman al-Zawahiri - may God protect him - we have many legal and
methodological reservations."
After consulting with the
consultative council of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [...] I
chose the order of God over the orders that contravenes Allah in the
letter.
The audio message could not immediately be independently verified.
Al-Nusra Front, created in January 2012, joined al-Qaeda last December on a US list of foreign terrorist organisations.
An
al-Nusra front member in Syria, speaking on condition of anonymity,
told Al Jazeera that following the release of Zawahiri's letter, many
members of ISI rejoined al-Nusra, particularly in the province of Deir
Ezzor.
He said this new audio recording causes further division and confusion among those fighting on the ground.
"Defying the orders of Zawahiri is a black dot on Baghdadi's career", he said.
Among
elements fighting to oust the regime of Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, al-Nusra is one of the best armed and most successful on the
battlefield. It has carried out some of the deadliest attacks in the
uprising, claiming responsibility for several suicide bombings.
Syrian artillery and warplanes have hit rebel-held areas of Damascus,
as Russia has warned against any attempt to establish a no-fly zone
over the country.
The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, a UK-based group, said jets and artillery had attacked Jobar, a
battered district where rebels operate on the edge of central Damascus,
on Saturday.
It said heavy artillery was also shelling opposition fighters in the provinces of Homs, Aleppo and Deir Ezzor.
Fighting
was also reported around dawn on the outskirts of the Palestinian
Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus, which also came under regime fire
along with southern Al-Hajar al-Aswad.
Outside the capital,
loyalist troops fired mortar rounds at several areas including western
Moadamiyet al-Sham, southern Sbeineh and the region of Wadi Barada,
northwest of Damascus.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign
minister, however, said on Saturday that any attempt to establish a
no-fly zone using F-16 fighter jets and Patriot air defence missile
systems from Jordan would "violate international law".
"You don't
have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate
international law," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news
conference with his Italian counterpart in Moscow.
Western
diplomats said on Friday the United States was considering a no-fly zone
over Syria, but the White House said later that it would be far harder
and costlier to set one up there than it was in Libya in 2011, stressing
that the United States had no national interest in pursuing that
option.
Lavrov also scoffed at suggestions that Assad's regime
would use chemical weapons now in light of its apparent growing
advantage against the rebels.
"The regime doesn't have its back to
the wall. What would be the sense of the regime using chemical weapons,
moreover at such a small quantity?" he said.
Moderate Hassan Rouhani has secured more than 50 percent of the Iran
presidential ballot to win the election, the Interior minister
has said.
In a statement, reported by the Iranian media
on Saturday, the president-elect hailed his election as a "victory of
moderation over extremism.
"This victory is a victory for wisdom, moderation and maturity... over extremism," Rouhani, who was backed by reformists, said.
Interior
minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar told a press conference earlier that
Rouhani had won Iran's presidential election with more than 18 million
of the votes.
Najjar said 72 percent of the 50 million eligible
Iranians had turned out to vote, and that Rouhani had secured just over
the 50 percent of the vote needed to avoid a run-off.
Rouhani's closest
rival, Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, garnered six million
votes, less than 16 percent. Other candidates close to Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, including current nuclear negotiator Rouhani
Jalili, scored even lower.
Khamenei congratulated Rouhani and the Iranian people on the the presidential election win, the website leader.ir reported.
"I
urge everyone to help the president-elect and his colleagues in
the government, as he is the president of the whole nation," he said. Civil rights charter
Al Jazeera's Soraya Lennie, reporting from Tehran, said that all
Rouhani needed was 50 percent plus one vote in order to avoid a run-off.
"Everybody
was predicting a very close race and that this would end in a run-off
between Rouhani and Qalibaf," our correspondent said.
The outcome
will not soon transform Iran's long tense relations with the West, call
into question its disputed pursuit of nuclear power or lessen its
support of Syria's president in the civil war there - matters of
national security that remain the domain of Khamenei.
But the
president runs the economy and wields important influence in
decision-making and Rouhani's meteoric rise could offer latitude for a
thaw in Iran's foreign relations and more social freedoms at home after
eight years of confrontation and repression under President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
Though an establishment figure, Rouhani is a former chief nuclear negotiator known for his nuanced, conciliatory approach.
He has pledged to promote a policy of "constructive interaction with the world" and to enact a domestic "civil rights charter". Crowds celebrate
Tens of thousands of jubilant Iranians took to the streets of
Tehran, toting pictures of 64-year-old Rowhani and chanting pro-reform
slogans as news of his victory spread.
At the last presidential election in 2009, the jubilation of crowds sensing a reformist victory in Tehran turned to shock and
anger
after results showed Ahmadinejad had won, a result opposition leaders
said was rigged. Security forces crushed the protests and authorities
insisted the result was fair.
This time, Iranian authorities and
the candidates themselves, including Rouhani, discouraged large street
rallies to forestall any possible flare-up of violent instability in
the sprawling OPEC member state of 75 million people.
Leading world figures spoke highly of the new president-elect.
Britain's
former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who dealt with Rouhani during
nuclear negotiations from 2003 to 2005, called him a "very experienced
diplomat and politician".
"What this huge vote of confidence in Dr
Rouhani appears to show is a hunger by the Iranian people to break away
from the arid and self-defeating approach of the past and for
more constructive relations with the West," he said before
Rouhani's victory was declared.
"On a personal level I found him
warm and engaging. He is a strong Iranian patriot and he was tough, but
fair to deal with and always on top of his brief."
Ahmadinejad still has about a month and a half of his presidency left and then Rouhani will be sworn in.
Riot police have fired tear gas and water cannon at protesters in
Istanbul's Taksim Square and Gezi Park, dispersing them just hours after
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a Sunday deadline for those
occupying the park to leave or face eviction.
Lines of police
backed by armoured vehicles sealed off Taksim Square in the centre of
the city on Saturday as officers stormed the adjoining Gezi Park, where
protesters had been camped in a ramshackle settlement of tents for more
than two weeks.
Residents in surrounding neighbourhoods took to
their balconies or leant out of windows banging pots and pans, while car
drivers sounded their horns in support of the protesters.
Several people were brought out of the park on stretchers as ambulances waited to receive them.
Earlier, PM Erdogan addressed a rally of thousands of supporters in the capital Ankara.
"We
have our Istanbul rally tomorrow. I say it clearly: Taksim Square must
be evacuated, otherwise this country's security forces know how to
evacuate it," he said.
Erdogan flexed his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party's
muscles in the rally organised hours after sit-in protesters in Gezi
Park rebuked the government’s calls for them to leave their position.
Turkey
has been in turmoil since late May after a sit-in protest against an
urban development project in the heart of Istanbul transformed into
In the AK Party rally in Ankara, the prime minister also accused "a
network of treachery" of being responsible for the unrest that has
gripped the country for more than two weeks.
Erdogan said that the
protests are not about the environment, as those in Taksim Square say,
but are part of a plot "coordinated inside and outside" Turkey.
"I will reveal this network of treachery with the documents proving [it]," he said.
He
blamed the protesters for vandalism both towards AK Party buildings and
public property. He also accused the protesters of attacking women
wearing headscarves and entering mosques with their shoes on.
Reporting
from Ankara, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said that Erdogan was very
defiant in his speech, lashing out at protesters. "Now we have to wait
the reaction of the protesters at Gezi Park to Erdogan’s ultimatum," our
correspondent said.
Erdogan's ruling party has organised a series
of rallies in Ankara and Istanbul this weekend in order to show the
support he continues to enjoy. The rally in Ankara on Saturday was
entitled "Respect for the National Will".
The prime minister
frequently makes remarks about his party's legitimacy and the fact that
it won 50 percent of the votes in 2011 elections, referring to "the
ballot box" as the base of democracy. Sit-in action continues
Meanwhile, in Gezi Park itself, protesters have refused to vacate the siteof the sit-in despite a call from the president
for
them to withdraw and a pledge from Erdogan to wait for a final court
verdict to decide on the urban development project that ignited the
protests in the first place.
"We will continue our
resistance in the face of any injustice and unfairness taking place in
our country," the Taksim Solidarity group, seen as most representative
of the protesters, said in a statement on Saturday.
The decision came a day after Erdogan met with members of the group, along with artists and actors.
President Abdullah
Gul, who has struck a more conciliatory tone than Erdogan throughout
the protests, has called on the protesters to return home.
"The fact that negotiation and dialogue channels are open is a sign of democratic maturity,” he said via his Twitter account.
Following
the meeting with protesters early on Friday, Erdogan accepted to delay
the redevelopment of Gezi Park pending a court decision on its legality.
He also said a referendum would be held to determine the park's fate,
even if the court ruled in favour of re-development.
Earlier
on Saturday, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition
Republican People's Party (CHP), called on the government to respect the
decision taken by the sit-in protesters at Gezi Park to continue their
action.
"The youths have taken the decision to go on with their
sit-in protest. They have been discussing [to continue or not] for a
while. We have to respect their decision as it is supposed to be in
democracies," Kilicdaroglu, who met foreign media members at a hotel in
Istanbul, said, stressing that in his opinion the sit-in action is
legal.
Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's president, has announced that Egypt is cutting
off diplomatic relations with Syria and has ordered that Damascus
Embassy in Cairo to be closed.
Morsi told thousands of supporters
in a rally held on Saturday that his government is also withdrawing the
Egyptian charge d'affaires from Damascus.
Morsi also called on
Lebanon's Hezbollah armed group to leave Syria, where the group has been
fighting alongside troops loyal to embattled President Bashar al-Assad
against the rebel forces.
"We stand against Hezbollah in its
aggression against the Syrian people," Morsi said. "Hezbollah must leave
Syria - these are serious words. There is no space or place for
Hezbollah in Syria."
The Egyptian president also called on the
international community to implement a no-fly zone over Syria, where the
UN says that more than 93,000 people have been killed since a popular
uprising escalated into civil war more than two years ago.
The
rally that Morsi addressed on Saturday was called for by hardline
Islamists loyal to the Egyptian president to show solidarity with the
people of Syria. However, Morsi also used the occasion to warn his
opponents at home against the use of violence in mass protests planned
for June 30, the anniversary of his assumption to power.
Morsi
repeated the allegation that Egyptians loyal to the now-ousted regime of
autocrat Hosni Mubarak were behind the planned protests and that they
were working against the January 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak.
"Some
who are delusionary want to pounce on the January revolution and think
that they can undermine the stability that is growing daily or undermine
the resolve that people have clearly forged with their will,'' he said.
The first explosion happened on a bus near the campus of the Sardar
Bahadur Khan Women's University, with a bomb hidden in the vehicle,
reports said.
The second blast struck the casualty ward of
the Bolan Medical Complex, and firing continued in the aftermath. At
least eight unidentified gunmen were reported to have taken positions in
the hospital, and killed at least four security personnel who were
attempting to resecure the facility and three nurses, local officials
said.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the country's interior minister,
said that the siege had ended by 8:30pm local time (15:30 GMT) on
Saturday, with security forces freeing 35 people trapped inside the
building and killing four of the attackers. One of the attackers was
also arrested.
Khan confirmed that four security forces personnel and one senior government official had been killed during the violence.
Zubair
Mahmood, the city police chief, described the bombing targetting the
bus earlier in the day as having been carried out by an "improvied
explosive device". The bomb exploded after the students had boarded and
the bus was leaving the university.
Another police official,
Fayyaz Sumbal, added that the bus caught fire after the explosion and
many students were critically wounded.
"As casualties were being
brought to the hospital terrorists had taken position inside the
hospital building," Khan told reporters. "They opened fire on on
administration and police officials who arrived at the hospital.One
suicide bomber blew himself up in the hospital." Siege at hospital
Authorities
say that Abdul Mansoor Khan, the deputy commissioner of Quetta, was
among those killed at the hospital, Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder reported.
So far, at least 36 people have been injured in both attacks, he said.
Pakistani security forces surrounded the hospital and carried out an operation to clear it once the gunmen had taken over.
Quetta is the capital city of Balochistan province, and regularly witnesses violence on a large scale.
The attack happened in the early hours of Saturday in the
resource-rich province of Balochistan, only days after a new government
vowed to end an insurgency there.
Three rocket-propelled grenades
slammed into the Quaid Azam Residency in the hill town of Ziarat,
district commissioner Nadeem Tahir said.
A policeman died and the ensuing blaze tore through the two-storey wooden building, damaging several other houses nearby.
A police official said it appeared that the rockets were fired from nearby mountains.
Balochistan,
a vast province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, has suffered a
long-running armed independence movement, and what rights groups call a
campaign of forced disappearances by security forces.
'Kill-and-dump'
Balochistan
supplies much of the natural gas feeding Pakistan's lifeline textile
industry in eastern Punjab province, and is home to a deepwater port at
Gwadar.
Saturday's attack was the first since a new chief minister
of the province, which contains largely unexplored copper and gold
deposits, took office last week.
Chief minister Abdul Malik has
urged security forces, who deny wrongdoing, to end rights abuses and
support his hopes of kindling talks with the fighters, who are seeking
an independent homeland.
On the day chief minister Malik took oath, five bullet-riddled bodies were found in the province.
The discoveries were seen by many as a message that security forces were intent on continuing what human rights
groups have dubbed a systematic campaign of "kill-and-dump".
Jinnah stayed in the Quaid Azam Residency as he tried to recover from a lung disease in 1948, a year after his
successful campaign to separate Pakistan from India.
He died in Karachi soon after. The residency is a national heritage site.
