A farmer in southwest China killed a village leader in a suicide bombing that also seriously injured nine other local officials following a land dispute April 15. Yue Xiaobao detonated explosives strapped to his body as he approached officials from… Read moreChina: suicide bombing over land dispute
Violence between the Philippine army and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) continues in the southern region of Mindanao. Clashes with the 2,000-strong MNLF have left 21 dead and displaced 50,000 people. [AlJazeera, April 18] A suspected motorcycle blast has… Read morePhilippines: 50,000 displaced in Mindanao fighting
US officials in Afghanistan claim to have intercepted arms sent from Iran to the Taliban. The Bush administration had earlier accused Iran of abetting Shia death squads in Iraq, and more recently claiming that Tehran was backing both Sunni and… Read moreUS: Iran supports Taliban
Over 150 people have been killed [April 18] in a series of blasts in Baghdad, with at least 115 dying in a bombing at a food market in the [Shi’ite] district of Sadriya. The other major incident was an attack… Read moreBaghdad carnage grinds on —despite official optimism
The national human rights group CODHES [Council on Human Rights and Displacement] reports that more than 15,000 Colombians were displaced from their homes during the first one hundred days of 2007. The primary cause of this forced exodus has been… Read moreColombia: more than 15,000 displaced in 2007 —so far
From the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), April 15: IFC Launches an International Campaign to Free the Iraqi Detainees Being Held In the U.S. Camps in Iraq As a result of the new Bush security plan in Iraq, hundreds of people… Read moreIraq: civil resistance campaign to free detainees
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Antonio Guterres, has appealed to the international community for “genuine solidarity and unstinting aid to displaced Iraqis and to the states housing them.” Nearly 4 million Iraqis have been forced from their homes… Read moreIraq’s refugees: up to 4 million?
Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the group the Islamic State of Iraq, has described Iraq as “the university of terrorism.” According to al-Baghdadi, his al-Qaeda-associated group has used the war in Iraq as a training ground for jihadists, commenting that the… Read moreIraq: “university of terrorism”
A US soldier has today been put on trial in absentia, accused of shooting dead the Italian intelligence operative Nicola Calipari. Mario Lozano [of the 69th infantry regiment] opened fire on a vehicle carrying Calipari and Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena… Read moreItaly tries US soldier in Calipari affair
A UN vehicle has been hit by a remote-controlled bomb blast in the southern city of Kandahar, Afghanistan [April 17]. Four Nepalese contractors working with the UN Office for Project Services were killed, along with their Afghan driver. The vehicle… Read moreTaliban target UN workers
British International Development Secretary Hilary Benn has announced an end to the use of “war on terror” phraseology among the UK government. “What these [terrorist] groups want,” he observed, is to “force their individual and narrow values on others without… Read moreUK rejects GWOT nomenclature
Khartoum has agreed to an interim deployment of 3,000 UN peacekeepers in support of the African Union (AU) in Darfur. UN officials, however, have announced that enacting this measure may take as long as six months, while Sudan is yet… Read moreSudan accepts 3,000 UN reinforcements
