Another attack in France; grenades thrown at mosque, policewoman shot by gunman dead

January 8, 2015

France attackParis, Jan 8: A policewoman was killed and a city employee was seriously hurt on Thursday after a man opened fire with an automatic rifle outside Paris, police said. However, no link has yet been established with the deadly attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The gunman is still on the run, said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve -- who rushed to the scene at Malakoff just south of the city -- contradicting information given earlier by a source close to the case, who said the suspect had been detained.

An explosion rocked a kebab shop next to a mosque in Villefrance-sur-Saone in eastern France early on Thursday morning, a police source told Reuters.

"The window was blow out by an explosion in the night. The kebab shop was adjacent to a mosque," the source said, adding it appeared to be a criminal act.

Police initially said the two victims were critical, but Cazeneuve said just the policewoman was fighting for her life.

Meanwhile, an explosion is said to have occurred at a restaurant (Kebab shop) near a mosque in the city of Lyon.

The incident comes on a day of mourning in France after Islamist gunmen stormed the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo yesterday, killing eight journalists, two police and two others.

Latest updates

15:44 IST Thursday, 8 January 2015

According to Bloomberg Paris, grenades have been thrown at Mosque mosque in Le Mans.

15:14 IST Thursday, 8 January 2015

According to reports, A an explosion occurred at a kebab shop near a mosque in the eastern French town of Villefranche-sur-Saone. AFP quoted a local official as saying that the blast at the kebab shop in eastern France was a "criminal act" with no apparent link to yesterday's attack.

14:14 IST Thursday, 8 January 2015

On Thursday, authorities released photos of the two French nationals still at large, calling them "armed and dangerous."

Seven people have already been arrested in the ongoing investigation, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.

On Wednesday (January 7), hooded gunmen had stormed the Paris offices of a weekly French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo known for lampooning Islam and other religions, shooting dead at least 12 people, including two police officers, in the worst militant attack on French soil in decades.

Attacker Cherif Kouachi had previously been tried on terrorism charges and served 18 months in prison. He was charged with criminal association related to a terrorist enterprise in 2005. He had been part of an Islamist cell that enlisted French nationals from a mosque in eastern Paris to go to Iraq to fight Americans in Iraq. He was arrested before leaving for Iraq to join militants.

Yesterday's attack took place as the magazine was holding its weekly editorial meeting. Three cartoonists, Cabu, Tignous and Wolinski, and a French economist, Bernard Maris have been killed in the attack.

Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is well known for courting controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders of all faiths and has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad. Jihadists online repeatedly warned that the magazine would pay for its ridicule.

The last tweet on its account mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic State, which has taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria and called for "lone wolf" attacks on French soil.

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News Network
May 2,2020

Balochistan, May 1: Sajid Hussain, Editor-in-Chief of Balochistan Times, has been found dead in a Swedish town, the police have confirmed.

The Swedish police informed his family on Thursday night that they discovered his body from a river in Uppsala, The Times reported.
The Baloch journalist had been missing from the Swedish city since March 2 this year.

Sajid, 39, left Pakistan in 2012 and had been living as a refugee in Sweden since 2017. He wrote extensively on the suffering of the Balochis at the hands of the Pakistani military establishment.

His work often got him into trouble as the authorities did not like his reporting of Balochistan's forbidden stories, the reason he had to leave and live in exile.

The Baloch journalist was found dead two months after he went missing in Sweden.
Sajid left Pakistan because of security threats from Pakistan Army and its intelligence service ISI.

The spokesperson of the Baloch National Movement, Hammal Haider told news agency: "We are deeply saddened by the demise of prominent Baloch intellectual and writer Sajid Hussain."
"His death is indeed a loss of a great mind for the people of Balochistan. Due to his straightforwardness, he was loved among all journalistic, literary and political circles," added Haider.

"After this incident, we have serious concerns about our members and other Baloch refugees living in the West," he said.

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News Network
February 11,2020

Feb 11: China reported 108 new coronavirus deaths on February 10, the highest daily toll since the outbreak began in Wuhan late last year, as two senior officials in the hard-hit province of Hubei were removed from their jobs.

The total number of deaths on the mainland reached 1,016 in the 24 hours until midnight, the National Health Commission said on Tuesday.

Some 2,478 new cases were confirmed, bringing the total to 42,638.

Of the new deaths, 103 were in the province of Hubei, including 67 in the provincial capital of Wuhan. The virus is thought to have originated there in a market that sold seafood as well as wild animals.

Two senior health officials in the province - Zhang Jin who was Party Secretary of the health commission for Hubei and Ling Yingzi who was director of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission - were both removed from their posts, state media reported on Tuesday,  a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited health facilities in Beijing.

In his first public appearance since the outbreak began, Xi donned a face mask and had his temperature checked while visiting medical workers and patients in the capital.

"We have seen very little of Xi Jinping since the outbreak began but he was out and about in Beijing on Monday," Al Jazeera's Katrina Yu said from Beijing. "He has been trying to rally the troops saying: 'We can win this battle.' But it's also a sign that the battle is far from over."

The other fatalities on Monday were in the provinces of Heilongjiang, Anhui and Henan and the cities of Tianjin and Beijing, the National Health Commission said.

During a meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on Monday, a group of leaders tasked with beating the virus said it would work to solve raw material and labour shortages and boost supplies of masks and protective clothing.

They said nearly 20,000 medical personnel from around the country had already been sent to Wuhan, and more medical teams were also on the way.

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June 25,2020

Islamabad, Jun 25: The coronavirus cases in Pakistan crossed the 192,000-mark after 4,044 new Covid-19 infections were detected in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said on Thursday.

According to the Ministry of National Health Services, 148 more people died due to the deadly virus in the country, taking the death toll to 3,903.

With the detection of 4,044 new cases in the last 24 hours, the coronavirus tally in the country now stands at 192,970, it said.

Sindh reported a maximum number of 74,070 infections, followed by 71,191 in Punjab, 23,887 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 11,710 in Islamabad, 9,817 in Balochistan, 1,365 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 930 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

A total of 81,307 patients have recovered so far from the disease.

Health authorities have so far conducted 1,171,976 coronavirus tests, including 21,835 in the last 24 hours.

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