Aboard The Democracy Train

London, June 4: The death toll has risen to seven with a further 48 injured following last night’s terror attack in central London, the second major act of terrorism to strike the United Kingdom in less than two weeks.
The attack began late Saturday night, when a white van swerved into crowds of pedestrians on London Bridge, leaving bodies lying in the roadway, according to witness reports. At least one pedestrian is thought to have jumped into the Thames to escape being hit.

The suspects are then believed to have exited the van and proceeded on foot towards the nearby area of Borough Market, one of the capital’s most popular nightlife spots.

Eyewitnesses spoke of abject panic as three men armed with “foot-long” knives burst into packed restaurants and cafes, slashing at those inside indiscriminately. Many customers fought off the attackers, using chairs, pint glasses and bottles. Others hid behind tables and inside bathrooms or attempted to flee.

In total, the marauding attack lasted approximately eight minutes, according to police, who shot dead all three known suspects at the scene. At least one of the suspects appeared to be wearing a suicide bomb vest, though this was later confirmed by police to be a hoax.

The London Ambulance Service, who dispatched upwards of 80 medics to help deal with the incident, said at least 48 people were taken to five hospitals across the capital, with many more treated at the scene. French and Australian nationals have been confirmed by their respective governments as among those affected.

A police officer who was responding to the attack on London Bridge was also stabbed. The officer received serious but not life-threatening injuries, according to an official police statement.

Heightened state of terror
The third terrorist attack to have occurred in the UK this year and the second in London, Saturday’s attack will renew the debate around the safety of the capital in light of the increased terror threat.

In a press conference Sunday morning, London Mayor Sadiq Khan praised the quick police response and asked Londoners to remain calm and vigilant. This is the second time Khan has addressed the public in response to a terror attack since becoming mayor, and he repeated his previous insistence that London remains one of the safest global cities in the world.

“We will not be cowered by terrorism and we will not let them win,” said Khan, who promised an increased police presence throughout the capital in the coming days.

For many in London, Saturday’s attack will be a grim reminder of the events on Westminster Bridge on March 22, when Khalid Masood drove a car into pedestrians, killing four and injuring 50, before stabbing a police officer to death at the entrance to parliament. The attacker — who reportedly had a criminal record and may have had connections to violent extremism — was gunned down by a police officer.

Khan is expected to join British Prime Minister Theresa May at an emergency meeting of Cobra — the UK’s emergency crisis committee — Sunday in response to the attack. May had earlier labeled the attack as “terrible incident.”

Aiming at the people
The attack began just after 10 p.m. local time on London Bridge, just north of an area famed for its cafes and bars, and near the London Bridge rail and underground interchange.

Witness Mark Roberts, who was on the bridge at the time of the attack, told CNN the van was traveling south across the River Thames at a speed and was swerving as it struck several people, knocking one person “about 20 feet into the air.”

The van swerved into oncoming lanes before hitting a bus stop and coming to a stop, Roberts said.

“Within my line of sight, there were five or six people on the ground that were not moving,” he said. “It looked to me that the van was aiming at the people.”
Roberts said he heard what sounded like gunshots about 10 minutes later. He estimated 100 people were on the bridge at the time, fewer than earlier in the night because it was getting late.

“I froze, to be honest,” Roberts said. “As I was thinking … which direction should I run, the van swerved across the other side of the bridge from me.”

Restaurant panic
Witnesses at the Elliot restaurant in Borough Market described seeing large groups of people running up the street — as it became apparent an attack was underway.

“Someone said, ‘What is going on?’ and one of the people running said, ‘There is a man with a knife up there and he is coming this way.’ There was complete panic as everyone ran to the back of the restaurant and crouched down trying to hide themselves from view,” one witness told CNN.

“A man suddenly appeared in the restaurant with a massive knife … (he) stabbed a waitress, who was hiding behind a partition, in the neck and stabbed a man in the back before running out of the restaurant,” the witness added.

Another witness said a masked man entered the nearby El Pastor restaurant and slashed a woman in the side with a knife.

Jack Applebee, who owns a restaurant one block away from Elliot’s restaurant, said he was standing outside when people came running down the street. A girl said, “They’re stabbing everyone.”

Applebee told his customers to go to the back of the restaurant. He said he started to pull down his shutters and turned around to see three men standing outside, one holding a machete.

The men just looked at the people in the restaurant said Applebee, who at that point was unsure what to do. After a brief pause, the men continued down the street, at which point Applebee and a colleague pulled down the shutters. Five minutes later they heard gunshots.

About 90 minutes later, police evacuated the restaurant, he said.

Police activity spread throughout the Borough Market area. Officers rushed into the nearby Katzenjammers bar and ordered people to sit on the floor, patron Paul Connell told CNN.

“The police were absolutely brilliant, they came in and explained the situation,” said Connell. ” Armed police came in. They told us to remain on the floor but to stay calm. We were eventually led out of the bar and some kind people working in a hotel let us come in to use the bathroom and to give us water.”

Official reaction
During a press conference in the early hours of Sunday morning, the UK’s most senior counter terrorism officer, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations, Mark Rowley, praised efforts by police in confronting the attack: “At 22:08 yesterday evening we began to receive reports that a vehicle had struck pedestrians on London Bridge. The vehicle continued to drive from London Bridge to Borough Market.”

“Armed officers responded very quickly and bravely, confronting three male suspects who were shot and killed in Borough Market. The suspects had been confronted and shot by the police within eight minutes of the first call.”
England has been on edge since May 22, when a suicide bomber killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena.

A benefit concert for victims of that attack was scheduled for Sunday in Manchester. On Saturday, the singer tweeted, “Praying for London.”

CNN’s Steve Almasy, Ralph Ellis, Natalie Gallon, Alex Felton, Carol Jordan, Matt Wells, Antonia Mortensen, Paul P. Murphy and Donie O’Sullivan contributed to this report.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A truck bombing near the Afghan presidential palace early Wednesday killed at least 80 people and wounded hundreds, officials said. The death toll seemed certain to rise, and the attack appeared to be one of the bloodiest of the long Afghan war
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The huge blast during the morning rush hour caused panic in much of central Kabul, shattering windows as far as a mile away. Nearly two hours after the explosion near Zanbaq Square, a crowded area in the capital that leads to the presidential palace as well as major foreign embassies, plumes of smoke were still rising from the scene.

At a time when the United States is weighing sending more troops to Afghanistan to try to halt the government’s losses, the attack on Wednesday highlighted the continued ability of militants to strike even in the most secure parts of the capital. And outside the country’s main cities, the Taliban have rapidly been seizing territory and have kept the Afghan security forces badly bloodied and on the defensive.

At a news conference in Kabul, Gen. Murad Ali Murad, the deputy interior minister, said that more than 80 people had been killed and 463 wounded.

Kabul’s police chief, Gen. Hassan Shah Frogh, said the explosives used in the blast had been in a tanker truck used to empty septic tanks. The bomb was detonated near the square just as the street turns toward the German Embassy, he said. “The blast was so huge that it dug a big crater as deep as four meters,” or 13 feet, General Frogh said.

The German Embassy was extensively damaged, with dozens of windows blown in, the public broadcaster ARD reported. It broadcast images showing stunned civilians pressing makeshift bandages to bloody limbs, stumbling through a smoke-filled street as ambulances rushed to the scene, their sirens blaring.

Germany’s foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, said that an Afghan security guard employed by the embassy had been killed. He also said that several Germans had been wounded, without providing details. He condemned what he called an attack on “those who are in Afghanistan working with the people there for a better future.”
“To target these people is especially despicable,” Mr. Gabriel said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, and it was unclear whether the embassy had been specifically targeted. A spokesman for the Taliban, whose forces are responsible for most of the intensifying violence across Afghanistan, insisted that they were not behind the attack and condemned the toll on civilians.
But even that was no sure indication of who might be responsible. In recent years, the Taliban have frequently denied responsibility for attacks that intelligence officials believe the insurgents actually did commit. And militants loyal to the Islamic State have staged more attacks in recent months, though they have been smaller.

In Germany, the blast was sure to fuel a debate over the government’s efforts to repatriate Afghans whose applications for asylum have been rejected. About 1,000 German soldiers are stationed in Afghanistan as part of the NATO force, and Germany has invested billions in military and aid to stabilize the country.

German officials have been at pains to insist that parts of Afghanistan are safe, despite an overall security situation that the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, has described as “complicated.” Hours after the blast, the government in Berlin said that a flight carrying deportees bound for Afghanistan scheduled for Wednesday had been postponed, citing logistical reasons for embassy employees on the ground.

President Ashraf Ghani called the attack “a crime against humanity.” A statement by Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan, applauded the Afghan security forces for preventing the truck full of explosives from entering the Green Zone, a reference to the area that houses the headquarters of the coalition forces as well as several foreign embassies.

“The attack demonstrates a complete disregard for civilians and reveals the barbaric nature of the enemy faced by the Afghan people,” the statement said.

Pictures from the scene showed smoke and chaos, with bloodied people on the ground as emergency personnel tried to evacuate victims. Video footage that witnesses filmed immediately after the blast showed vast destruction to the buildings in the area and people stuck in destroyed vehicles amid flames.

There was a heavy security presence, including forces from the United States-led coalition, and helicopters circled overhead. Dozens of people waited outside the large security cordon for news of their loved ones.

Emotions were running high among the Afghan security forces at the scene. Intelligence officers closely checked the paperwork of emergency workers shuttling between the blast site and the hospitals, fearing that they might have been infiltrated by militants planning a follow-up attack.

At one point, after a senior police official tried to pass the cordon with a large entourage of guards, a scuffle broke out, and the police officers and intelligence officers cocked their weapons at one another. But the situation was quickly defused.
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The sheer force of the blast was staggering, though it was not unprecedented. In 2015, a similar truck bombing in the Shah Shaheed neighborhood of the city also caused hundreds of casualties and left a strip of shops leveled and houses in a wide radius damaged. Other large truck bombings have targeted the offices of an elite force that provides security to senior government officials, as well as a compound for Western contractors.

Shopkeepers as far as a mile from the scene of Wednesday’s blast were sweeping glass from shattered windows, as parents arrived to escort panicking children home from school.

“There was a big tremble, and then we heard a massive explosion,” said Ramin Sangar, a cameraman at a television channel near the site of the explosion, as he was loaded into an ambulance. “All the windows are broken. Our studios collapsed.”

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I’ve been part of Western efforts to defeat the Taliban and stabilize the Afghan government. I drank a lot of chai with soldiers and rug..
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Most of the victims appeared to be civilians on their way to work during the morning rush hour. A BBC driver, Mohammed Nazir, as well as Aziz Navin, an information technology worker for the Afghan television channel ToloNews, were among those killed.

Lotfullah Najafizada, the director of ToloNews, described a painful search for his colleague’s remains. He and his co-workers examined seven mostly unrecognizable bodies at the military hospital before heading over the civilian side, where the 44th body had just arrived.

“We found Aziz in a large, dirt-colored sack, and his relatives were trying to transport him home,” Mr. Najafizada wrote on Facebook. “The ambulances were busy, and Aziz waited in the hall of the hospital for his final trip home.”

Crowds were building throughout the day outside the main hospitals in Kabul as people searched for their loved ones among the wounded or dead.

More than 300 people anxiously waited outside the Emergency Hospital, one of the main trauma centers in the city. Some were weeping and wailing, while others were trying to look up names of loved ones on the lists that employees handed out. Inside the hospital, where the windows had also been shattered by the force of the blast, doctors were attending to dozens of wounded.

Outside Wazir Akbar Khan, the main government hospital, a white-bearded man in his 60s named Azizullah searched for news of his 22-year-old son, Abdullah, who worked at a telecommunications company near the site of the blast.

“I searched all hospitals. He is nowhere,” said Mr. Azizullah, who would crouch and then get up to pace. “Abdullah has two children, a wife and an old mother. What will I tell them?”

Mr. Azizullah received a call from someone who appeared to be inside the hospital, telling him about unrecognizable bodies.

“Can you search the person whose body is cut up?” he asked the caller. “He may be my son. Try to find his documents.”

Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting from Kabul, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.

Manchester, UK May 23: The Manchester Arena suicide bomber had made trips to Libya, Downing Street said last night, as intelligence agencies combed his connections with al-Qaeda and Islamic State in his parents’ homeland.

Salman Abedi, 22, who was reportedly known to the security services, is thought to have returned from Libya as recently as this week.

A school friend told The Times: “He went to Libya three weeks ago and came back recently, like days ago.”
Abedi born in Manchester and grew up in tight-knit Libyan community that was known for its strong opposition to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

He had become radicalised recently – it is not entirely clear when – and had worshipped at a local mosque that has, in the past, been accused of fund-raising for jihadists.

Abedi’s older brother Ismail had been a tutor at Didsbury mosque’s Koran school. The imam last night said that Salman Abedi, who wore Islamic dress, had shown him “the face of hate” when he gave a talk warning on the dangers of so-called Islamic State.

Born in 1994, the second youngest of four children, Abedi’s parents were Libyan refugees who fled to the UK to escape Gaddafi.

His mother, Samia Tabbal, 50, and father, Ramadan Abedi, a security officer, were both born in Tripoli but appear to have emigrated to London before moving to the Whalley Range area of south Manchester where they had lived for at least a decade.

Abedi went to school locally and then on to Salford University in 2014 where he studied business management before dropping out. His trips to Libya, where it is thought his parents returned in 2011 following Gaddafi’s overthrow, are now subject to scrutiny including links to jihadists.

A group of Gaddafi dissidents, who were members of the outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), lived within close proximity to Abedi in Whalley Range.

Among them was Abd al-Baset Azzouz, a father-of-four from Manchester, who left Britain to run a terrorist network in Libya overseen by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaeda.

Azzouz, 48, an expert bomb-maker, was accused of running an al-Qaeda network in eastern Libya. The Telegraph reported in 2014 that Azzouz had 200 to 300 militants under his control and was an expert in bomb-making.

Another member of the Libyan community in Manchester, Salah Aboaoba told Channel 4 news in 2011 that he had been fund raising for LIFG while in the city. Aboaoba had claimed he had raised funds at Didsbury mosque, the same mosque attended by Abedi. The mosque at the time vehemently denied the claim. “This is the first time I’ve heard of the LIFG. I do not know Salah,” a mosque spokesman said at the time.

At the mosque, Mohammed Saeed El-Saeiti, the imam at the Didsbury mosque yesterday branded Abedi an dangerous extremist. “Salman showed me the face of hate after my speech on Isis,” said the imam. “He used to show me the face of hate and I could tell this person does not like me. It’s not a surprise to me.”

Salman visited the mosque on a number of occasions to pray, but the imam insisted “he was not my friend, he is not close. I could understand that he was not happy with me because I did combat Isis in that Friday sermon sometimes”.

The imam added: “When he passed by me, we Muslims greet each other and you know he is not happy with me if he doesn’t greet you.”

At the Abedi family home in Elsmore Road, a non-descript red-brick terrace, neighbours told how Abedi had become increasingly devout and withdrawn.

Lina Ahmed, 21, said: “They are a Libyan family and they have been acting strangely. A couple of months ago he [Salman] was chanting the first kalma [Islamic prayer] really loudly in the street. He was chanting in Arabic.
“He was saying ‘There is only one God and the prophet Mohammed is his messenger’.’

A family friend, who described the Abedis as “very religious”, said most of the family had returned to Libya, leaving only Salman and his older brother Ismail behind.

“They have not been there for quite a while. Different people come and go,” said Alan Kinsey, 52, a car-delivery driver who lives across the street. Mr Kinsey’s wife, Frances, 48, a care worker, said she believed that the parents had left before Christmas and just one or two young men had been living in the property.

Mr Kinsey said a huge flag, possibly Iraqi or Libyan, had been hanging from their house. “There was a large Iraqi flag hanging out the window but we never thought anything or it,” added Mr Kinsey, “We thought it was about football or a protest at home or something.”

Neighbours woke up to the reality that the quiet young man next door had blown himself up, murdering at least 22 innocent victims.

Police blasted down the door of the family home at 11.30am. According to locals, two helicopters and at least 30 police officers in camouflage, riot gear and shields arrived for the raid.

“The police were very heavily armed. All of them. It was like something out of a war scene,” said Mr Kinsey, “It was terrifying. About thirty of them arrived in camouflage and riot gear and removed the wooden fence between two properties.

“Then they attached a black strip to the door and there was a loud explosion. The door came off its hinges. The windows were shaking. The whole operation lasted about 90 seconds.

“I didn’t see them leading anyone out of the house. I believe it was empty.”

© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2017

At least 10 labourers were killed in Balochistan’s Gwadar district on Saturday as unidentified assailants opened fire at the construction site where they were working, Levies sources said.
Unidentified gunmen on motorcycles opened indiscriminate fire on a group of labourers working at a road in Gwadar’s Pishgan area, killing eight of them on the spot, Levies sources confirmed.

Key updates
• Two gunmen on motorbikes opened fire on group of labourers in Gwadar
• Baloch Liberation Army claimed responsibility of attack
• The road where labourers were working was not a specific CPEC-funded project

A spokesman for the separatist Baloch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the incident in a telephone call to AFP.

Two of the injured labourers succumbed to gunshot wounds while they were being rushed to the District Headquarters Hospital, they added.

The tough road to corridor
Local administration official Munir Zamari told AFP there were two gunmen riding on motorbikes who opened fire on the construction workers at the site.

The assailants attacked the men at two separate construction sites three kilometres apart along the same road. They then fled the scene.

“All the labourers were shot at close range,” said senior levies official Muhammad Zareef.

A special military C-130 aircraft flew the remains of the slain labourers after funeral prayers to their hometown in Sindh’s Naushahro Feroze district.

Frontier Corps, police and levies personnel have reached the spot and an investigation is underway.

Security challenges facing Balochistan and CPEC
The shooting incident occurs as Pakistan and China inks agreements aimed at boosting cooperation in various sectors between the two countries on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum, which is underway in Beijing at the moment.

China is also developing the warm water Gwadar port, a prominent feature of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) plan. The CPEC project — with an investment of $46 billion and the Gwadar port as its lynchpin — is billed to be a ‘game-changer’ and manifestation of strategic partnership between Pakistan and China.

Though the road where the labourers were working was not a specific CPEC-funded project, it was a part of a network of connecting roads that are part of the corridor ─ a common target for separatists militants who view construction projects as a means to take over their land.

Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti also confirmed the death toll while speaking to DawnNews. Condemning the incident, he said, “We will not bow down before terrorists.”

The government has deployed a Maritime Security Force (MSF) and Special Security Division (SSD) to protect projects under CPEC, including Gwadar and other coastal areas, and ensure safety of locals and foreigners working on CPEC projects.

’44 workers killed since 2014′
The need to tighten security in Balochistan has grown over the years as separatist militants continue to wage their campaign against the central government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich region’s resources.

Security officials have said previously that militants trying to disrupt construction on the economic corridor have killed 44 workers since 2014, all of whom were Pakistani but often hailing from other provinces.

Armed militants attacked at labourers camp in Turbat on April 11, 2015 killing 20 labourers. The defunct Baloch separatist organization Baloch Liberation Front had claimed the responsibility for the attack. Similarly, in April this year, four Sindhi labourers were gunned down by suspected militants while working on a road that was under construction in Kharan district.

Islamabad, May 12 – A bomb explosion targeting a senior politician in southwestern Pakistan has killed at least 25 people and wounded 37 others, medical officials say.

The blast took place in the town of Mastung, about 50km south of Balochistan provincial capital Quetta, shortly after the end of Friday prayers, according to a government spokesman.

Senate Deputy Chairman Abdul Ghafoor Haideri escaped the attack with light wounds, medical officials said, but his driver and another aide in the same vehicle were killed.

“He was wounded by the blast but someone who was sitting next to him, and his driver were both killed,” said Dr Sher Ahmed, the government’s district health chief in Mastung, while confirming the death toll.

Haideri received “light wounds from broken glass”, according to Dr Shafi Zaidi, chief of the local hospital where the senator was initially treated.

At least 37 people who received serious wounds from the blast were transferred to Quetta, said Dr Ahmed. They mainly suffered from shrapnel wounds, he said.

Television footage from the scene showed several badly damaged vehicles and motorcycles, with windscreens shattered and severe blast damage visible, as the police established a cordon around the site.

Haideri himself spoke to local media over the phone while en route to the hospital, saying he was not badly wounded.

“I am fine, thank God. I have been wounded. I am being taken to the [Combined Military Hospital in Quetta],” Haideri told Pakistan’s Geo News television channel.

“The explosion happened on my car … the glass from the front windscreen hit me, and the side door also buckled after the blast,” he added.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Anwar ul-Haq Kakar, spokesman for the Balochistan provincial government, told Al Jazeera that the attack occurred when Haideri was leaving a mosque after Friday prayers.
“As soon as they started the journey back there was an explosion,” Kakar said.
“Law enforcement personnel are collecting evidence at the site and examining the crime scene. It would be premature to say what kind of blast it was at this stage.”
Haideri is a member of the right-wing religious Jamaat Ulema Islam party’s Fazl faction (JUI-F), and has been a senator since 2008. He has been the deputy chairman of the Senate since 2015.
He has previously represented his native district of Kalat, also in Balochistan, in the lower house of parliament.
In February, Pakistan’s Senate boycotted a UN-sponsored event in the United States in protest against an “undue delay” by the US in issuing a visa to Haideri to attend.