Deadly blasts hit Sufi shrine in Lahore
Suicide bombers have launched a deadly attack on a Sufi shrine in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
At least 35 people died in the blasts at the popular Data Darbar shrine late on Thursday evening, officials say.
At least 175 other people were hurt in the blasts, believed to be the first targeting a shrine in Lahore.
Read more @ BBC News
inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon.
hell is your abode suicide bombers.
inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane, by those who couldn't hear the music...
Horrible.
RIP
Baruch Dayan Emet
Footage of the attack.
My bets are on the US / Blackwater doing this to provide a new pretext for the Pak govt to carry on its crusade against the Taliban et al...
Strange how blackwater/US offices are sparkly and clean, no bombs going off or attempts to blow them up - just "sufis" who are not killing anyone and have nothing to do with the conflict... something smells, and it's not the fish!
Do you have any evidence to make such allegations?
Blackwater/Xe are not very likeable people and do a lot wrong (and being paid for mercenaries, they are never going to be likeable in any way), but blaming all the problems on foriegn elements will not fix anything as at most they can be instigators.
We have to accept that such people who consider the murder of other Muslims (along with other humans too) exist. Pakistan has had sectarian vaiolence for a long time and the only new thing recently has been a change from gunmen on motorcycles to bombers wearing vests.
There is a mindset that says such things are allowed that allows people to do such things and this cannot be blamed on foriegn elements.
A problem cannot be fixed unless it is first acknowledged to exist and from what I see, people from or linked to Pakistan have very great dificulty to acknowledge the problem of terrorism there.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
There are a large number of reports across Pakistan of police arresting foreign diplomats, westerners, americans etc with weapons - all freed relatively quickly by embassy involvement at governmental levels!
Unless one has a good understanding of what is going on, their political analysis is always going to be questionable and they will trust those who often are fermenting trouble for political goals believing them to be friends! Such tactics were common in the cold war and in Iraq too where sectarianism was stoked to divide the opposition to the invasion. Likewise, historically sectarianism and religious animosity has been stoked in a policy of ethnic politics in India, Palestine, Sudan, Nigeria, Lebanon, Indonesia etc
The Pakistan Foreign Office summoned US and Dutch diplomats after the Pakistani police arrested members of the US and Dutch embassies roaming Islamabad’s streets in unmarked cars carrying sophisticated weapons that diplomats are banned beyond military use. In the latest incident, Dutch diplomats arrested carrying such weapons were rescued by US Embassy officials. The incident has raised alarm bells in Pakistan’s diplomatic and security circles in the backdrop of growing evidence that the US Embassy and the country’s pro-government were building private armed militias without the knowledge of Pakistani security departments and intelligence agencies.
http://www.pakistanideology.com/pakistan-news/again-us-embassy-in-islama...
US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson is a suspect in a case of bribes amounting to little over US $ 270,000 paid by DynCorp in 2009 to senior officials at the federal Interior Ministry in Pakistan. The money went in exchange for allowing illegal weapons into Pakistan to be used by private US defense contractors without informing the country’s security departments and intelligence agencies. Ms. Patterson personally lobbied Pakistani officials for this concession to DynCorp. She even wrote a letter to Pakistani officials, followed by a letter by her Deputy Head of Mission Mr. Gerald Feierstein, asking Pakistani Interior Ministry officials to issue permits for weapons to be used by DynCorp in the ‘entire territory of Pakistan.’ The US ambassador is directly linked to the probe, which has resulted in the arrest of a key aide to Pakistan’s Minister of State for the Interior. But the government of President Zardari will not dare allow Pakistani investigators to pursue US Ambassador’s role in the scandal.
A key question in the probe is how the US Embassy and DynCorp allowed the cargo of illegal weapons into Pakistan. According to one lead, a huge cache of weapons reached a Pakistani tribal leader on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, who in turn wrote to the Interior Ministry announcing he was ‘gifting’ the weapons to a Pakistani subcontractor of DynCorp.
Incidents like this and others raised alarm bells inside Pakistani security departments and the intelligence community. In effect, key figures in President Zardari’s government were found to have given approval for the entry of a large number of US citizens into Pakistan for ‘official US government business’ without explaining what that is. When Pakistani authorities tried to get to the bottom of how private US defense contractors ended up inside Pakistan in large numbers and what they were exactly doing here, US officials and media launched what appears to be a media trial of Pakistan, accusing the country of ‘harassing’ US diplomats and denying visas to them because of alleged anti-Americanism. The unwillingness of the Zardari government to confront Washington and Pakistan’s generally weak media outreach skills allowed Washington to pain this as a case of anti-Americanism fueled by war on terror.
http://alaiwah.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/blackwaters-activities-in-pakistan/
How come the bodies of the suicide bombers are then not foriegners?
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
What's your answer to that question?
My answer is that there is a cancer in the system and it needs to be acknowledged.
Even if there is foriegn instigation (which I doubt), it is still local people doing the acts.
A year or so ago someone got caught riding up to where I have some relatives living and they said he looked like an ordinary religious person but they found out he was wearing a suicide belt (this was shortly before there wa a suicide bombing in AJK, so one eventually got through).
Ther ehave been groups there for years preaching that all other ects are kaafirs and that it is halaal to spread the blood of apostates and the chicken is only coming home to roost.
The bombing at data darbar would even have won some militant groups who are against places like data darbar as recruits for their cause.
It is cold and calculated.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
I agree there is a cancer in the system and it needs removing - the secular elites and their bankrupt ideology which is allowing foreigners into the country with large amounts of weapons. Add to this lethal cocktail, tens of millions who are in extreme poverty, with thousands committing suicide every year due to this poverty, it is not difficult to see how payments from foreigners can lead to locals committing acts of atroctities against civilians to generate public opinion for their nefarious war!
oh yes, lets blame someone else.
If there was "someone else" to blame, I would think that the religious elite and their schools have blame to share too. There has been sectarian violence for a long time and there have been many groups for a long time taught by their scholars that all the competing ideologies are kufr and thus their blood is halaal.
Do you think this has anything to do with the bloodshed that happens in Pakistan at all?
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
Read more @ BBC News
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
When groups like Taliban have made it clear they do not and are not targettign civilians it casts a major doubt over the killings of civilians.
Anyone who undertakes political analysis, will not absolve foreigners absolutely like you are doing.
you actually believe what they say?
The Taliban in Pakistan are also not one group, but a collective of groups with different aims and objectives. If one group denies responsibility, it does not mean none of the others did it, others they would nevertheless have some links with.
Its like before, when the Mehsuds had power, they would warn people to avoid markets and towns and then there would be explosions there. but how dare anyone assume that they were responsible for them.
I am not absolving foreigners. I am saying that they are not the key link even if they are involved in some of the attacks. The mindset allowing people to attack others is and was already present in Pakistan. I remember hearing people say a few years ago when talking about pakistan, "revolution requires a little blood" and now we are getting it and the same people are complaining, I guess because its other groups that are spilling the blood instead of theirs.
The attacks may even be used as recruiting tools to gain more volunteers for the groups.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
The evidence indicates foreign involvement.
Interesting how before they entered the region and the same has happened in Iraq!, civilians were not being blown up but as soon as they come along civilians are dieing and foreigners are being arrested with weapons and embassies are involved in getting high level officials to release them...
Only an idiot would not smell a rat!
Evidence? That word implies something concrete instead of hearsay and gossip.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
You don't even know the meaning of the term defining it as what is not instead of what it is!
No wonder you don't understand what constitutes evidence in political analysis as compared to evidence in a science experiment - the two are very different.
Finaly you point the finger at Muslims carrying out such attacks but violate even your own negative definition - double standards at work again!
You seem not only to be a non-Muslim, as a previous poster indicated, but a govt stooge! One cannot but help noticing that... Honestly, read up on Islam - you may come across a little more genuine if you understand what Islam's about and how various social sciences work!
No evidence provided. Again. As usual.
Moving on...
I don't need to know what it means. You just need to provide it. It is the islamic way afterall.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.