COPS VS V-DAY
The action of the Telangana Police in not allowing access to unmarried couples on the Necklace Road on Valentine’s Day is shocking (No entry for lovers, DC, Feb. 15). Has our state police degraded to the level of fringe organisations like the Sri Ram Sena and others?
L. Prabhakar Secunderabad
Baghdad, 16: A US-led coalition contractor was killed and an unspecified number of other civilians were wounded when a barrage of rockets struck outside an airport near where US forces are based in northern Iraq, Iraqi security and coalition officials said. More than a dozen rockets hit late Monday in areas between the civilian international airport in the city of Irbil in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdishrun region and the nearby base hosting US troops.
A little-known Shiite militant group calling itself Saraya Awliya alDam, Arabic for Guardians of Blood Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack. US Army Col. Wayne Marotto said Tuesday a civilian contractor with the coalition who was not a US citizen was killed. He did not provide further details about the citizenship of the killed contractor. Marotto also said a US military serviceman and eight civilian contractors were wounded in the assault.
An unspecified number of Iraqi and Kurdish civilians were
Feb.
wounded as rockets hit busy residential areas close to the airport. The coalition confirmed that 107 mm rockets, a total of 14, were launched, with three impacting an airbase hosting US troops. The Trump administration had said that the death of a US contractor would be a red line and provoke a US escalation in Iraq against Iranbacked groups.
The December 2019 killing of a US civilian contractor in a rocket attack in province of Kirkuk sparked a titfor-tat fight on Iraqi soil that brought the country to the brink of a proxy war.
The official position of President Joe Biden is not yet clear.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was pledging its support for investigating the attack and holding accountable those who were responsible. It was the first attack since September to target Irbil's airport. Coalition forces based close to the Baghdad airport have been a frequent target for rocket attacks, which the U.S. has blamed Iran-backed Shiite militia groups.
Dhaka, Feb. 16: Five Islamist extremists were sentenced to death on Tuesday over the brutal murder of a Bangladeshi-American writer and rights activist six years ago.
Avijit Roy, a prolific blogger and the author of 10 books, including the best-selling “Biswasher Virus” (“Virus of Faith”), was hacked to death outside Bangladesh's largest book fair by machetewielding extremists in February 2015.
The murder enraged the Muslim-majority nation's secular activists, who staged days of protests.
The judge at Dhaka's Special Anti-Terrorism Tribunal found six people guilty, sentencing five to death and one to life in prison. Two of them were tried in absentia, including sacked army officer Syed Ziaul Haque, who was accused of leading the group that carried out the attack — known as Ansarullah Bangla Team, or Ansar al Islam.
A defence lawyer said they would appeal the verdict at a higher court.
Roy was born in Bangladesh in 1972 and moved to the United States in 2006 from where he continued to criticise the government for the jailing of atheist bloggers..