|
(Continued from page 45)
Afghan insurgent group says it carried out Kabul suicide attack to avenge anti-Islam film
• KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a mini-bus carrying foreign aviation workers to the airport in the Afghan capital early Tuesday, killing at least nine people in an attack that a militant group said was revenge for an anti-Islam film that ridicules the Prophet Muhammad.
• The criminal director for the Kabul police department, Mohammad Zahir, said eight men believed to be civilian foreign nationals working for an aviation company at the airport died in the blast and 10 Afghan bystanders were wounded. The nationalities of the eight were not immediately known. The ninth person killed in the attack was believed to be Afghan.
• Haroon Zarghoon, a spokesman for the Islamist militant group Hizb-i-Islami, claimed responsibility for the dawn attack in telephone call to The Associated Press. He said it was carried out by a 22-year-old woman named Fatima. Suicide bombings carried out by women are extremely rare in Afghanistan -- and few if any women drive cars.
• Zarghoon threatened more attacks against foreigners working for NATO and said the group had been seeking targets since a video clip of the film was posted on the Internet last week. The bombing was a worrisome escalation of violence in the capital, where most attacks are usually blamed on the Haqqani network -- a Pakistan-based militant group affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida.
• Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said they had nothing to do with the attack.
• ___
Coptic Christians, Muslims unite to denounce film, violence as filmmaker and his family hide
• LOS ANGELES (AP) -- California Coptic Christian and Muslim leaders on Monday denounced an anti-Islamic movie that has sparked violence in the Middle East, as the filmmaker and his family left their suburban home and went into hiding.
• The Southern California religious leaders joined a chorus of condemnation about last week's killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans as violence continued and the leader of the powerful militant group Hezbollah called for more protests.
• At the center of the controversy is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Cerritos man and self-described Coptic Christian who made "Innocence of Muslims," a crudely produced film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, philanderer and child molester.
(Continued on page 47)
|
|
