Bomb attacks kill 35 and leave 100 injured

TV footage showed panicked people rushing to safety following the Parachinar market bombings. Mohammad Amir, an official at a government-run hospital in Parachinar, said they had received 24 dead bodies and more than 20 of the wounded were listed in a critical condition.

It was unclear who was behind the attack in Parachinar but Sunni militant groups have claimed responsibility for numerous similar attacks in the past. Friday’s car bombing in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, was powerful enough that it was heard across the city, shattering windows on nearby buildings, said police spokesman Shahzada Farhat.

Wasim Beg, a spokesman at a government hospital, said the death toll from the bombing had risen to 11 and some of the wounded remained in critical condition. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility. NORTH Korea has called itself the “biggest victim” over the death of an American student who was detained for more than a year and died days after being released in a coma.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) denied that North Korea cruelly treated or tortured Otto Warmbier and accused the United States and South Korea of a smear campaign that insulted what it called its “humanitarian” treatment of him.

The comments published by the agency were North Korea’s first reaction to Mr Warmbier’s death in a US hospital on Monday. Doctors at the hospital said Mr Warmbier had suffered a severe neurological injury from an unknown cause.

Relatives say they were told the 22-year-old had been in a coma since shortly after he was

Otto Warmbier died on Monday in the United States.

to 15 years of hard labour in North Korea in March 2016.

His family and others have blamed North Korea for his condition.

Mr Warmbier was accused of stealing a propaganda poster.

Through statements on KCNA, North Korea said it dealt with him according to its domestic laws and international standards.

“Although we had no

reason at all to show mercy to such a criminal of the enemy state, we provided him with medical treatments and care with all sincerity on a humanitarian basis until his return to the US,” the agency quoted a spokesman of Pyongyang’s foreign ministry as saying.

“To make it clear, we are the biggest victim of this incident,” the spokesman added. A LEADING Polish human rights official has come under fire for saying the “Polish nation” took part in the implementation of the Holocaust - a controversial statement in a country that never collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Adam Bodnar, the country’s human rights commissioner, or ombudsman, apologised for the comment but members of Poland’s conservative government said he should resign.

The row threatens to weaken Mr Bodnar, who heads one of the last state institutions still independent from the ruling conservative Law and Justice party.

After taking power in 2015, the party moved quickly to consolidate its hold over the Constitutional Tribunal, public media and other state bodies in a way that has eroded the separation of checks and balances, sparking criticism by the Eurosentenced