A truck filled with some 1,000 kilograms of explosives rammed into the front gate of the five star Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan today, killing at least 60 people and injuring some 200 others. The 290 room hotel is a popular location for foreign envoys and the Danish Foreign Ministry confirmed that one of its [...]
Updated 9/20 5:15 PM EST Though the State Department said of today’s Washington DC meeting between six of the world’s major powers that they were all committed to “exploring possible further measures” to punish Iran in the wake of this week’s IAEA report, they have been, as expected, unable to agree on the content or [...]
Updating a previous story, it has now been three weeks since Pakistan’s government declared its Ramadan ceasefire. With the Muslim holy month more than half way over the ceasefire still hasn’t materialized, and though Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the hundreds of thousands of displaced Bajauris that they could return home “without any fear” [...]
While the fighting in Iraq continues to kill scores of civilians every week, the relative decline in violence over last year’s levels has been the cause of much optimism among war weary Americans and touted by President Bush as a vindication of his “surge” strategy. But though both major Presidential candidates having declared the surge [...]
Early this morning US forces surrounded a home in a small village near the Iraqi town of Tikrit and destroyed it with an air strike, killing eight people. According to Iraqi police and neighbors, all those killed were civilians. One of the neighbors reported his home was also raided during the operation and that American [...]
The United States is reportedly mulling further steps against Russia beyond the move announced earlier this month suspending a US-Russia civilian nuclear pact. It is unclear what these further measures might include, but State Department official William Burns told the Senate Wednesday that “we continue to review other options”. In a speech before the German [...]
Tensions between the United States and Pakistan continued to deteriorate today after Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted that the United States has the right to launch attacks into Pakistani territory. Pakistani Prime Minister Raza Gilani released a statement shortly after the news broke insisting that the American attack were “counterproductive,” and saying that his government [...]
Updated 9/18 8:10 PM EST If last night’s attack in South Waziristan threw into doubt Admiral Michael Mullen’s earlier promise that the United States would respect Pakistan’s sovereignty over its tribal areas amid reports of further planned US escalation in the region, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates today removed any doubts about where America stands [...]
Just days after General David McKiernan announced his “revised tactical order” designed to reduce the number of civilians killed in NATO raids, Australian special forces surrounded a house in the Afghan province of Oruzgan and opened fire, killing district governor Razi Khan and two of his bodyguards, and injuring two others. Afghan President Hamid Karzai [...]
The Crimean Parliament voted today 79-8 to press the Ukrainian government to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It seems highly unlikely that the Ukrainian government will act on the call given the collapse of its coalition government and the strongly anti-Russian sentiment of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. The move would also have [...]
