Pakistanis mourn victims of carnage

Afghan civilian deaths up

QUETTA, Pakistan, July 15, (Agencies): Pakistanis are observing a day of mourning for the victims of the horrific weekend attacks that killed 132 people, including a provincial assembly candidate during an election rally in the country’s southwest.

Friday’s suicide bombing in Mastung district took place as the Baluchistan Awami Party’s candidate Siraj Raisani was holding a rally.

That attack killed 128. Another suicide bombing on Friday struck an election campaign convoy in northwestern Pakistan, killing four.

Black flags of mourning were hoisted at Baluchistan Awami Party’s offices and residents displayed banners denouncing the massacre.

Caretaker Prime Minister Nasirul Mulk was visiting the provincial capital of Quetta to express condolences to Raisani’s family and others.

So far more than 150 people have died in election-related attacks, underscoring the security threat ahead of the July 25 vote.

Meanwhile, a second major Pakistani political party Saturday warned of pre-poll rigging ahead of a general election on July 25, a day after tensions were ratcheted higher by the dramatic arrest of former premier Nawaz Sharif.

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), said the caretaker government installed ahead of the vote was not giving his party a “level playing field” in the campaign.

“The press is facing censorship, political activists are being detained, and this is not only a violation of human rights but also pre-poll rigging,” he told a press conference in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

PPP politicians have said they have been prevented several times from holding campaign rallies, including one in Punjab province last week.

Media, politicians, and analysts have widely accused the powerful military of meddling in the polls, which would be only the second democratic transition of power in the country. The military denies taking any “direct role” in politics.

Mulk

Mob lynches 1, injures 3:

Police in southern India have arrested nearly three dozen people for participating in the lynching of a young engineer and wounding three men, including a Qatari national, after rumors that the victims were members of a gang of child kidnappers.

Police said Sunday that the victims were traveling in a car through a village in Karnataka’s Bidar district when a mob armed with sticks and stones attacked them on Friday night.

The villagers were infuriated after the men tried to hand over some chocolates to village kids, said police officer Chandrashekhar, who uses only one name.

The kids panicked, attracting local villagers who started beating them, the officer said. The men gave them a slip but locals had already clicked their pictures and a video and circulated them through WhatsApp to alert neighboring villages that four child abductors were trying to escape, he said.

The officer said as the men reached another village, they hit a roadblock set up by the awaiting villagers and their car flipped. The mob of some more than 2,000 people attacked them, killing one and wounding the three others, he said.

As the assault continued, police tried to stop the mob, triggering clashes in which four police officers sustained injuries, Chandrashekhar said.

The slain man was a 32-year-old software engineer from the neighboring state of Telangana and was visiting a friend with his cousins and a Qatari friend.

5 teen footballers drown:

Five teenage footballers drowned in a river in southeast Bangladesh moments after they played a friendly match between supporters of Argentina and Brazil, police said Sunday.

Police recovered the bodies from the Matamuhuri river at Chokoria town Saturday night, some six hours after the boys drowned as they went to bathe in the coastal river following the match.

Local police chief Bakhtiaruddin Chowdhury told AFP that 22 boys from a school played the friendly after dividing themselves between supporters of Brazil and Argentina.

Six of them went swimming afterwards clad in jerseys from the South American rivals.

“The river at that place was very deep. We rescued a boy. Later five bodies were recovered. The dead included two brothers,” Chowdhury said.

Tens of thousands joined their funeral on Sunday, he said.

Bangladesh is traditionally cricket territory, but every four years the country of 160 million people — whose national team is ranked 197th out of 202 in the world by FIFA — goes World Cup crazy.

Flags in the colours of Argentina and Brazil take over the streets as the two Latin American teams are favourites among Bangladeshi fans.

Civilian deaths hit record high:

The number of Afghan civilians killed in the country’s long-running conflict hit a record high in the first six months of 2018, UN figures showed Sunday, with militant attacks and suicide bombs the leading causes of death.

The toll of 1,692 fatalities was one percent more than a year earlier and the highest for the period since the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) began keeping records in 2009.

Another 3,430 people were wounded in the war, down five percent from the same period last year, the report said.

Overall civilian casualties — 5,122 — fell three percent year on year.

The record high death toll came despite an unprecedented ceasefire by Afghan security forces and the Taleban last month that was largely respected by both sides, UNAMA said.

The ceasefire for the first three days of Eid was marked by scenes of jubilation as security forces and Taleban fighters celebrated the Islamic holiday, raising hopes that peace was possible after nearly 17 years of conflict.

But the suspension of hostilities was marred by two suicide attacks in the eastern province of Nangarhar that killed dozens of people and were claimed by the Islamic State group, which was not part of the ceasefire.