Six killed in a blast west of Baghdad: sources

FALLUJA: Six people were killed and eight wounded when a roadside bomb exploded and hit a small truck carrying workers in the western outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday, police and medical sources said.

“It was a roadside bomb that went off near a pick-up carrying construction workers in Zobaa village west of Abu Ghraib,” said a police source who asked not to be named.

A medical source at the nearby hospital in Falluja said they had received six dead bodies and eight wounded.

Abu Ghraib was once one of the most volatile areas in Iraq and was used by al-Qaeda fighters as a safe haven during the peak of sectarian fighting in Iraq in 2006-2007.

Nearly nine years after the US led-invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, violence has declined sharply in Iraq, but bombings and other attacks still occur daily as the last American troops prepare to leave at the end of the year.

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Posted in: INTERNATIONAL

India urges action against Mumbai attack planners

NEW DELHI: India has urged Pakistan to take strong action against the planners of the Mumbai terror attack that killed more than 160 people three years ago.

External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna said on Saturday that India is waiting for Pakistan to act decisively after New Delhi sent evidence to Islamabad on the alleged planners, who are living in Pakistan.

Saturday was the third anniversary of the attack that saw 10 gunmen lay siege to Mumbai, India’s financial hub, killing 166 

people.

Nine of the 10 gunmen were killed in the attack, which was blamed on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant organization.

The gunman who survived is in jail in Mumbai.

India has maintained that Pakistani intelligence helped plan the attack and that Pakistan has not done enough to crack down on those behind it.

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Posted in: INTERNATIONAL