Five children hurt in fresh attack on school in China

Five young children have been hurt at a school in north-eastern China after a man attacked them with a hammer before killing himself.

It was the third such incident in China in as many days.
The man, said to be a local farmer, grabbed two children before setting himself on fire at the pre-school in Shandong province's Weifang city.



The children were pulled to safety, and all five - plus an injured teacher - were said to be stable in hospital.
China is reeling from a spate of apparent copy-cat attacks in schools.


On Thursday, 28 children - most of them aged around four - and three adults were attacked by an unemployed man wielding a knife at a nursery school in Jiangsu province, eastern China. Five of the children were taken to hospital in a critical condition.

And a day earlier, some 15 pupils and a teacher were wounded by a former teacher - who was on sick leave - at their primary school in Guangdong province.


Earlier on Wednesday, a doctor convicted of stabbing eight children to death in Fujian province in March was executed.


Friday's attacker was a local farmer identified as Wang Yonglai, Xinhua news agency reports.

He used a motorcycle to break down the gates in to Shangzhuang primary school, striking a teacher who tried to stop him and then turning the hammer on the children.

He grabbed two of the children before dousing himself in petrol and setting himself alight. Teachers seized the two children from him in time.

The motive of the attack is not yet known.
The attacks are unsettling in a country where such violent attacks are rare.
Since a spate of attacks in 2004, many schools in China have employed professional guards but the latest incidents have led to public calls for increased security in schools.

The education ministry ordered all schools to upgrade their security facilities earlier this month, as well as teach students about safety and ensure young children are escorted home, state media has reported.

But such measures are expensive, says our correspondent, and in reality there is little that can be done to prevent such acts of violence.

The incidents have also sparked a debate about the motives of the killers, with some suggesting that rapid social change and growing unemployment has led to an increase in psychiatric illnesses.

British ambassador survives attack in Yemen

The British ambassador to Yemen survived an apparent suicide bomb attack Monday on his convoy in the capital, Sanaa, the British government and Yemen Embassy in Washington said.


"There was (a) small explosion beside the British ambassador's car. He was unhurt. No other embassy staff or British nationals were injured," said a statement by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

In a separate statement, the spokesman for Yemen's U.S. Embassy, Mohammed al-Basha, said the lone fatality of the morning attack was the alleged suicide bomber, described as a man dressed in sports gear with explosives strapped to his body.

In Yemen, an Interior Ministry statement identified the alleged suicide bomber as Othman Ali al Salwi, 22, from Taiz province.

Initial reports said two Yemenis -- a man and a woman -- were injured in the attack and taken to a hospital, but a Yemeni government official said three bystanders were rushed to the hospital.

The official asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the news media. government or the Yemeni Embassy.

There was no confirmation of those reported injuries in the statements from the British government or the Yemeni Embassy.

The convoy carrying Ambassador Tim Torlot, 52, was a short distance from the British Embassy at the time of the blast. Yemeni security forces sealed off the area and began an investigation.

Torlot was appointed ambassador to Yemen in July 2007.
"The embassy will remain closed to the public for the time being," the Foreign Office said. "We advise all British nationals in Yemen to keep a low profile and remain vigilant. We are working urgently with the Yemeni authorities to investigate what happened."

Al-Basha's statement said the attack occurred at 8 a.m. in Noqom in the eastern district of Sanaa.
"Following the attack, the Yemeni Interior Ministry deployed police units and dispatched additional crime scene investigators to assist with the investigation," al-Basha's statement said. It quoted an unnamed senior Yemeni security official as saying the attack "bore the hallmarks" of al Qaeda.

The statement noted Yemeni security forces killed two suspected al Qaeda operatives and arrested a third in the western coastal city of Hodeidah on April 18, and said the government has increased security measures around vital installations and foreign missions for fear of retaliation.

Taliban claims deadly suicide attack in Pakistan

The Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed at least 13 people and injured dozens in the northwest part of the country Saturday, authorities said.
The attack at a security checkpoint in the city of Saidu Sharif injured 37, according to Ibrahim Khan, a police official in the Swat District, where the military launched an offensive against the Taliban last year. The city is near Mingora, the largest city in the district.
Khan said the suicide attacker, who was dropped off on a rickshaw, approached a checkpoint manned by police and military personnel.
Security personnel opened fire when the attacker refused to stop. Moments later, the attacker detonated explosives.

Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, told by phone that his organization takes responsibility for the deadly blasts in Lahore on Friday and the attack Saturday.
The Saturday blast comes a day after a twin suicide bombing on a military convoy in Lahore killed 44 people and injured nearly 100 others. Assailants targeted military convoys, approaching on foot and detonating their explosives 15 to 20 seconds apart, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sana Ullah said. Five of the dead were Pakistani soldiers, he said.
"Pakistan has become a colony of Blackwater," Tariq said, referring to the company now known as Xe Services that provided security to U.S. officials in Iraq.
"The government of Pakistan has become puppet of U.S," he added.
Tariq warned that failure to halt operations against the Taliban will lead to more attacks.
"Our 2,000 suicide bombers, who have already spread across the country, will act against security personnel and government installations," Tariq said.
Tariq said the attacks on both days were a retaliation for the killing of innocent "Mujahedeen" by Pakistani government under the orders of the United States. A Pakistani crackdown on militants has resulted in the arrests of top Taliban.
After the twin bombings Friday, a series of low-level blasts occurred in succession in the Iqbal Town area of the city that night. Three people were injured in the blasts and damage was minimal, Lahore Police said.

Earlier this week, gunmen entered a North West Frontier Province compound of the humanitarian agency World Vision, threw grenades, opened fire on the staff inside and detonated a homemade bomb before leaving, according to a World Vision statement.

New blast heard in Lahore, hours after twin suicide attack

7-blasts reported till now and one more found......



New blast heard in Lahore, hours after twin suicide attack.......details are coming...

A third explosion has rocked the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, hours after suicide bombers killed at least 45 people and injured 100.

The earlier two attacks occurred within seconds of each other and targeted military vehicles as they passed through a crowded area.
At least nine soldiers were killed and some 100 people were wounded.
No immediate details were given of the third explosion but one report suggests it happened near a police station.

Iraq suicide bomber targets hospital in triple attack

 A suicide bomber ended a series of deadly attacks in central Iraq by detonating explosives in a hospital emergency ward where victims of two earlier blasts were being treated.


At least 29 people were killed and 42 wounded in the triple bombing attack in Baquba, northeast of the capital Baghdad.

The first car bomb attack targeted a government office near a police checkpoint. Two minutes later, a second suicide car bomb went off near the party headquarters of former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in central part of the city.

About an hour later, as the victims of the first two explosions were being rushed to Baquba general hospital, a third suicide bomber walked into the hospital's emergency room and detonated a bomb.

 The blasts took place just four days before the country is set to hold parliamentary elections -- its second since the ouster of former President Saddam Hussein.

More than 6,000 candidates will compete for 325 seats in the Iraq parliament in the March 7 vote.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned of large-scale attacks in the run-up to the voting. And al Qaeda in Iraq's umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, has promised to disrupt the elections.

Iraqi forces have been taking part in drills to improve their response to suicide attacks.

Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, is about 60 km (37 miles) north of Baghdad. Sunni insurgents continue to fight U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces there.

Five Sydney terror attack plotters sentenced

Five men convicted of a terrorist conspiracy in the Australian city of Sydney have been handed jail sentences of between 23 and 28 years.

The men were found guilty last year of charges such as possessing bomb-making instructions and explosives chemicals.

Prosecutors said they were plotting violent jihadist attacks in protest at Australia's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The men cannot be named for legal reasons.

The exact details of the plot and the men's intended targets have never been specified, but their trial was the longest in Australian history.

Justice Anthony Whealy of the New South Wales Supreme Court, who passed sentence, said they had been motivated by "intolerant, inflexible religious conviction".

They had shown contempt for the Australian government, its leaders and laws, he said.

Some of the men were reported to have smiled in court as the sentences were handed down.

'Actions inept'

The arrests in 2005 followed tip offs from hardware store and gun shop owners.

Their suspicions had been raised when the men started to order unusually high amounts of chemicals and guns.

Prosecutors said one defendant had attended a training camp in Pakistan of the Lashkar-e-Taiba group and had set up a paramilitary style camp in rural New South Wales to train three of the other men.

When police raided the men's homes, they found "large quantities of literature which supported indiscriminate killing, mass murder and martyrdom in pursuit of violent jihad", said prosecutor Richard Maidment.

The trial, carried out in a purpose-built courthouse, heard there was overwhelming evidence the men wanted to create "at the very least, serious damage to property" and posed a "serious risk" to the public.

Justice Whealy said the men had on occasions been "inept and clumsy" but that this "did not make their conspiracy any the less dangerous".

"There is no reason to doubt that, absent the intervention of the authorities, the plan would have come to fruition in early 2006 or thereabouts," he said.

But the sister of one of the men said the sentences were too long.

"Not even murderers get sentenced that much," the AFP news agency quoted the unnamed woman as saying.

"Twenty-three years, that's half of his life. It's not fair to him, our community or our religion."

Australia is a close ally of the United States. It was among the first to commit troops to US-led campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It has not suffered a major peacetime attack on home soil, but 95 Australians have been killed in militant bombings in neighboring Indonesia since 2001.

3 American Soldiers Die in Attack in Pakistan

Three US soldiers have become the first known American military fatalities in Pakistan as they died in a bomb near a school in the north-west.

Three schoolgirls were among the dead while 70 people, including another 63 schoolgirls and two US soldiers, were injured in the explosion in Lower Dir.

The US embassy said the military personnel had been training Pakistan's Frontier Corps in counter-insurgency.

Both governments deny large numbers of US troops are in Pakistan.

The US embassy in Islamabad confirmed in a statement three American military personnel were killed and two wounded in what it branded a "vicious terrorist bombing".

The statement also said the Americans had been due to attend the inauguration of a girls' school recently renovated with US humanitarian assistance.

Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement to AFP news agency.

Military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas told the BBC that the US personnel were attached to the Frontier Corps as military trainers.

Pakistan's Frontier Corps is a paramilitary force responsible for operations against militants in the volatile north-west, near the Afghan border.

The US soldiers were said to have been travelling in a convoy, along with Pakistani troops, that was heading to the inauguration of a newly built girls' school in Maidan, an area of Lower Dir district in the North West Frontier Province.

The bomb - which police said was activated by remote control - occurred near a different school in Koto, a heavily populated village along the route.

The impact flattened much of the Koto Girls' High School, leaving pupils crying for help under the rubble.

'Highly embarrassing'

At least three of the dead were schoolgirls, police said, adding that security guards and three local journalists were also among the wounded.

News that three US soldiers were killed will be highly embarrassing for the Pakistani government, which is acutely aware of the unpopularity of its close ties to Washington, says the BBC's Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.

Critics accuse Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari of turning a blind eye to repeated American drone attacks in the north-west, which have killed more than 600 people during the past year, our correspondent says.

The US has argued in the past that its soldiers are in Pakistan to provide security for US citizens, he adds.

Last year, the Pakistani army carried out a major offensive to drive Taliban insurgents out of Lower Dir and the neighbouring districts of Swat and Buner.

But the Taliban are still present in remote areas and the latest attack shows that the militants remain a powerful force in the region, says the BBC's Mark Dummett in Islamabad.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani also condemned the attack and ordered an investigation, the AFP news agency reports.

The Taliban has frequently targeted girls' schools in recent years, burning several to the ground. Many are now being rebuilt.