Indian Bollywood star Preity Zinta (C) speaks to the media about the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan during the first of five one-day cricket matches between India and New Zealand in Napier March 3, 2009. Five members of the Sri Lankan cricket team were wounded when around a dozen gunmen attacked their bus as it drove under police escort on Tuesday to a stadium in the Pakistani city of Lahore, officials
officers and wounding six Sri Lankan players.Lahore police chief Habibur Rehman said at least 12 gunmen attacked the convoy near Lahore's Gaddafi stadium Tuesday with rockets, hand grenades and automatic weapons. He called it a terrorist attack. Pakistan TV showed footage of gunmen running through the streets and firing on vehicles.Sri Lanka's sports minister say at least five players and an assistant coach received minor injuries in the attack, including Kumar Sangakkara, Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavithana.Security concerns have plagued Pakistan for many years, and some foreign sports teams have refused to play in the country.
and other terrorist activities.On August 17, 2005, JMJB, under Islam's leadership, launched a nation-wide attack by exploding 500 makeshift bombs. Along with Shaykh Abdur Rahman, Islam is alleged to have masterminded the bombing. In late 2005, a series of suicide bomb attacks rocked Bangladesh. JMJB and Jamaat-al-Mujahedin Bangladesh have claimed responsibility of these attacks.
Police say that more than 50 people have been arrested in connection with the blasts.
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia condemned the attacks as "cowardly".
In each incident, bombs were set off in crowded spots, mainly at government offices, journalists' clubs and courts, between 1030 and 1130 local time.
Mr Babor said timing devices were found at the scenes of blasts but most of the bombs were small, homemade devices - wrapped in tape or paper.
Leaflets from the Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh have appeared at the site of some of the blasts.
"It is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh" and "Bush and Blair be warned and get out of Muslim countries", the leaflets say.
the British High Commissioner in Bangladesh was hurt in a grenade explosion at a Muslim shrine in the north-eastern town of Sylhet.
Mexico City - Indiscriminate kidnappings. Nearly daily beheadings. Gangs that mock and kill government agents.This isn't Iraq or Pakistan. It's Mexico, which the US government and a growing number of experts say is becoming one of the world's biggest security risks.The prospect that America's southern neighbour could melt into lawlessness provides an unexpected challenge to Barack Obama's new government. In its latest report anticipating possible global security risks, the US Joint Forces Command lumps Mexico and Pakistan together as being at risk of a "rapid and sudden collapse"."The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels," the command said in the report published Nov. 25.
"How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state."The US Justice Department said last month that Mexican gangs are the "biggest organised crime threat to the United States." National security adviser Stephen Hadley said last week that the worsening violence threatens Mexico's very democracy.Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently told The New York Times he ordered additional border security plans to be drawn up this summer as kidnappings and killings spilled into the US.The alarm is spreading to the private sector as well. Mexico, Latin America's second biggest economy and the United States' third biggest oil supplier, is one of the top 10 global risks for 2009 identified by the Eurasia Group, a New York-based consulting firm.Mexico is brushing aside the US concerns, with Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez-Mont saying Wednesday: "It seems inappropriate to me that you would call Mexico a security risk. There are problems in Mexico that are being dealt with, that we can continue to deal with, and that's what we are doing."Still, Obama faces a dramatic turnaround compared with the last time a new US president moved into the White House. When George Bush was elected in 2000, the nation of 110 million had just chosen Vicente Fox as president in its fairest election ever, had ended 71 years of one-party rule and was looking forward to a stable, democratic future.Fox signalled readiness to take on the drug cartels, but plunged them into a power vacuum by arresting their leaders, and gangs have been battling each other for territory ever since.Felipe Calderon, who succeeded Fox in 2006, immediately sent troops across the country to try to regain control. But soldiers and police are outgunned and outnumbered, and cartels have responded with unprecedented violence.Mob murders doubled from 2007, taking more than 5,300 lives last year. The border cities of Juarez and Tijuana wake up each morning to find streets littered with mutilated, often headless bodies. Some victims are dumped outside schools. Most are just wrapped in a cheap blanket and tossed into an empty lot.Many bodies go unclaimed because relatives are too afraid to come forward. Most killings go unsolved.Warring cartels still control vast sections of Mexico, despite Calderon's two-year crackdown, and have spawned an all-pervasive culture of violence. No one is immune.Businesses have closed because they can't afford to pay monthly extortion fees to local thugs. The rich have fled to the US to avoid one of the world's highest kidnapping rates. Many won't leave their homes at night.The government has launched an intensive housecleaning effort after high-level security officials were accused of being on the take from the Sinaloa cartel. And several soldiers fighting the gangs were kidnapped, beheaded and dumped in southern Mexico last month with the warning: "For every one of mine that you kill, I will kill 10."But the U.S. government is extremely supportive of the Mexican president, recently handing over $400 million in anti-drug aid. Obama met briefly with Calderon in Washington last week and promised to fight the illegal flow south of US weapons that arm the Mexican cartels.While fewer Americans are willing to drive across the border for margaritas and handicrafts, visitors are still flocking to other parts of Mexico. And the economy seems harder hit by the global crisis than by the growing violence.The grim assessments from north of the border got wide play in the Mexican media but came as no surprise to people here. Many said the solution lies in getting the US to give more help and let in more migrant workers who might otherwise turn to the drug trade to make a living.Otherwise the drug wars will spill ever more heavily into America, said Manuel Infante, an architect. "There is a wave of barbarity that is heading toward the US," he said. "We are an uncomfortable neighbour." - Sapa-AP
