Death toll from Pakistan church bombing rises to 81

September 22, 2013

Pakistan_church

Peshawar/Pakistan, Sep 23: The death toll from a double suicide bombing on a church in Pakistan rose to 81 on Monday, as Christians protested across the country to demand better protection for their community.

The attack on All Saints church in the northwestern city of Peshawar after a service on Sunday, claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, is believed to be the deadliest ever to target Pakistan's small Christian minority.

Doctor Arshad Javed of the city's main Lady Reading hospital told AFP the death toll had risen to 81 overnight, including 37 women. A total of 131 people were wounded.

Christians demonstrated in cities around Pakistan, including Karachi and Faisalabad, to protest against the violence and demand better protection from the authorities.

In Islamabad more than 100 protesters blocked a major city highway for several hours during the Monday morning rush hour, causing long tailbacks, an AFP reporter said.

Pakistan's umbrella Taliban movement claimed responsibility, saying it had set up a new faction, Junood ul-Hifsa, to kill foreigners to avenge US drone strikes on Taliban and al-Qaida operatives in the country's tribal areas along the Afghan border.

"We carried out the suicide bombings at Peshawar church and will continue to strike foreigners and non-Muslims until drone attacks stop," Ahmad Marwat, a spokesman for the group, told AFP by telephone.

In June, the group claimed responsibility for killing 10 foreign climbers at a base camp of Nanga Parbat, the second highest mountain in Pakistan after K-2.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the "cruel" attack, saying it violated the tenets of Islam.

Pope Francis also spoke out against the violence, calling it "a bad choice of hatred and war", while Pakistan's Ulema Council, an association of leading Muslim scholars, branded the attack "shameful".

Former minister for inter-faith harmony Paul Bhatti and provincial lawmaker Fredrich Azeem Ghauri both said the attack was the deadliest ever targeting Christians in Pakistan.

The small and largely impoverished Christian community suffers discrimination in the overwhelmingly Muslim-majority nation but bombings against them are extremely rare.

The 400 or so worshippers were exchanging greetings after the service when the bombers struck, littering the church with blood, body parts and pages from the Bible.

The walls were pockmarked with ball bearings that had been packed into the bombs to cause maximum carnage in the busy church.

Sectarian violence between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims is on the rise in Pakistan but Sunday's bombings will fuel fears the already beleaguered Christian community could be increasingly targeted.

Islamist militants have carried out hundreds of bombings targeting security forces and minority Muslim groups they regard as heretical, but attacks on Christians have previously largely been confined to grenade attacks and occasional riots.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a deeply conservative province bordering the tribal districts along the Afghan frontier which are home to Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

Provincial lawmaker Ghauri said there were about 200,000 Christians in the province, of whom 70,000 lived in Peshawar.

Only around two percent of the country's population of 180 million are Christian. The community complains of growing discrimination.

Christians have a precarious existence in Pakistan, often living in slum-like "colonies" cheek-by-jowl with Muslims and fearful of allegations of blasphemy, a sensitive subject that can provoke outbursts of public violence.

In the town of Gojra in Punjab province in 2009, a mob burned 77 houses and killed seven people after rumours that a copy of the Islamic holy book the Koran had been desecrated during a Christian marriage ceremony.

Rimsha Masih, a Christian girl who was arrested for alleged blasphemy last year, fled to Canada with her family in June after the charges were dropped.

Earlier:
56 killed as suicide bombers attack church in Pakistan
Peshawar, Sep 22: Two suicide bombers on Sunday killed at least 56 people and wounded more than 70 at a church in the restive northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, officials said.

"The death toll has risen to 56 and there are more than 70 wounded," Doctor Sher Ali, deputy medical superintendent of Peshawar's main Lady Reading Hospital, said.

Another hospital official and a senior administration official confirmed the death toll

An official said that the bomber targeted worshippers when they were coming out of one of the oldest churches in the city's Kohati Gate district after Sunday mass.

The church is situated in a very congested locality which is always jam packed with the people mostly women as the area is the hub markets and shopping centres. The Christian community lives in the vicinity and visited the church for Sunday service in large number.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but radical Islamists have been blamed for previous attacks on the country's minority communities, including Christians.

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News Network
June 9,2020

Jun 9: The World Health Organization says it still believes the spread of the coronavirus from people without symptoms is “rare,” despite warnings from numerous experts worldwide that such transmission is more frequent and likely explains why the pandemic has been so hard to contain.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO''s technical lead on COVID-19 said at a press briefing on Monday that many countries are reporting cases of spread from people who are asymptomatic, or those with no clinical symptoms.

But when questioned in more detail about these cases, Van Kerkhove said many of them turn out to have mild disease, or unusual symptoms.

Although health officials in countries including Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere have warned that COVID-19 is spreading from people without symptoms, WHO has maintained that this type of spread is not a driver of the pandemic and is probably accounts for about 6 per cent of spread, at most.

Numerous studies have suggested that the virus is spreading from people without symptoms, but many of those are either anecdotal reports or based on modeling.

Van Kerkhove said that based on data from countries, when people with no symptoms of COVID-19 are tracked over a long period to see if they spread the disease, there are very few cases of spread.

“We are constantly looking at this data and we''re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question,” she said. “It still appears to be rare that asymptomatic individuals actually transmit onward.”

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News Network
February 19,2020

Washington, Feb 19: US President Donald Trump has said he is "saving the big deal" with India for later and he "does not know" if it will be done before the presidential election in November, clearly indicating that a major bilateral trade deal during his visit to Delhi next week might not be on the cards.

"We can have a trade deal with India. But I'm really saving the big deal for later," he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews Tuesday afternoon (local time).

The US and India could sign a "trade package" during the visit, according to media reports.

Asked whether he expects a trade deal with India before the visit, Trump said, "We're doing a very big trade deal with India. We'll have it. I don't know if it'll be done before the election, but we'll have a very big deal with India."

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the point-person for trade negotiations with India, is likely to not accompany Trump to India, sources said. However, officials have not ruled it out altogether.

In an apparent dissatisfaction over US-India trade ties, Trump said, "We're not treated very well by India." But he praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said he is looking forward to his visit to India.

"I happen to like Prime Minister Modi a lot," Trump said.

"He told me we'll have seven million people between the airport and the event. And the stadium, I understand, is sort of semi under construction, but it's going to be the largest stadium in the world. So it's going to be very exciting... I hope you all enjoy it," he told reporters.

Meanwhile, the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF) in a report said the latest quarterly data depict continuation of overall positive bilateral trade trends. The third quarter data reflects some downslide in growth rates.

"It may be due to several reasons, including the unexpected economic slowdown in India's economic growth, impact of US-China trade war, GSP withdrawal from the US side and retaliatory tariffs on specific US goods from the Indian side," USISPF said.

According to the report, the data available for the first three quarters of 2019 (January-September) pulled the overall growth rate in cumulative bilateral trade down to 4.5 percent from 8.4 percent registered for the first two quarters.

Goods and services trade performance in third quarter was dismal at -2.3 percent, in contrast with the impressive 9.6 percent growth witnessed for the first two quarters of the year; while trade in services was up two percent goods trade dropped five percent, the report said.

The cumulative US-India trade in goods and services (USD 110.9 billion) for the first three quarters of 2019 increased 4.5 percent with US exports and imports growing at four percent and five percent respectively.

The US exported USD 45.3 billion worth of goods and services to India in the first three quarters 2019, up 4 percent from the corresponding period in the previous year; and the US imported USD 65.6 billion worth of goods and services from India, up five percent from the previous year's USD 62.5 billion level for the same period, it said.

The USISPF has projected that the total bilateral trade can touch USD 238 billion by 2025 if the current 7.5 percent average annual rate of growth sustains; however, higher growth rates can result in bilateral trade in the range of USD 283 billion and USD 327 billion.

The US remains the top trading partner for India in terms of trade in goods and services, followed by China. While the bilateral trade between US and India is approximately 62 percent in goods and 38 percent in services, the bilateral trade between India and China is dominated by goods.

China had a huge trade surplus of USD 58 billion with India, indicating Beijing's strength in the Indian market, especially in sectors, such as electronics, machinery, organic chemicals, plastics and medical devices.

The US goods exports to India, in comparison, were mainly concentrated in mineral fuels, precious stones, and aircraft. The US faces tough competition with China in the Indian market in areas such as electronics, machinery, organic chemicals and medical devices.

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News Network
June 30,2020

Washington, Jun 30: Indian-American Medha Raj has been named by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his digital chief of staff, a key role in his election campaigns which are entirely going virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.

In this capacity, Raj will work across all facets of the digital department to streamline and coordinate how to maximise the impact of its digital outputs, the Biden campaign said.

“Excited to share that I've joined Joe Biden's campaign as the Digital Chief of Staff. 130 days to the election and we're not going to waste a minute!” she said on LinkedIn.

Raj comes from Pete Buttigieg's campaign, who has now endorsed Biden.

The news was first reported by CNN, which the news channel said is part of the efforts of the Biden campaign to adapt to an almost entirely virtual campaign trail brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

The US is the hardest-hit country by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 2.64 million official cases and over 128,000 deaths.

According to CNN, Clarke Humphrey, who previously worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, will act as the Biden campaign's new deputy digital director for the grassroots fundraising.

Jose Nunez is the campaign's new digital organising director.

He is from the Kamala Harris' campaign. Christian Tom is the new director of digital partnerships. Over the past few months, Biden has been relying more and more on digital campaigning and raising funds virtually.

A graduate in international politics from Georgetown University, Raj has earned her MBA from Stanford University.

Biden, 77, is challenging the 74-year-old Republican incumbent President Donald Trump in the November 3 presidential elections.

Former US vice president Biden would formally accept his Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s scaled back convention in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee city on August 20.

In view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) on Wednesday announced its convention plan to broadcast from Milwaukee and across the nation to reach out to all Americans.

According to some of the latest opinion polls, Biden is leading by more than eight percentage points over Trump.

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