Suicide Attack

A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a checkpoint in Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley, killing at least five people Saturday. It was the first suicide attack in Swat since July, when the government said its forces had mostly driven out Pakistani Taliban fighters from the area in its largest offensive against the militants in years. About 2 million people fled the area during the fighting. A day earlier, Swat residents who had returned staged celebrations of Pakistan's independence day. In some places, women danced in the streets -- an act of defiance, since the hard-line Islamist Taliban banned women from public during their rule.

A standoff with a gunman deemed France's public enemy No. 1 after he claimed responsibility for three shootings that left seven people dead entered its second day Thursday as heavily armed police tried to extricate the suspect from a barricaded apartment in Toulouse. Elite SWAT-style officers had cordoned off the four-story building and spent more than 24 hours trying to persuade 23-year-old Mohamed Merah to surrender after he boasted of a 10-day terrorist rampage that left three Jewish children, a rabbi and three French paratroopers dead.

Suicide bombers killed at least 17 people at government headquarters in western Iraq's Anbar province Monday, in the second attack in less than a month, security sources said. A car bomb exploded at a checkpoint just yards from the main gate to the compound in Ramadi, the provincial capital. As people scrambled to help, a second bomber approached on foot and detonated his explosives. The attack mirrored twin blasts two weeks ago at the compound, which houses the province's government and police.

President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledged Tuesday that the assassination of the head of the Afghanistan High Peace Council would not stop them from working toward a peaceful resolution to conflict in that country. But the death of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani cast a dark shadow over the talks in New York, where Obama and Karzai were meeting for the first time since the U.S. announced its schedule for withdrawing military troops from Afghanistan. The meeting took place in the aftermath of what is believed to be a suicide attack on Rabbani, who had been working to negotiate an end to the ongoing war with the Taliban.

A suicide bomber killed at least 16 people in southern Iraq on Thursday as the country braced for attacks from Al Qaeda in Iraq in the aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden. The car bomber blew up his vehicle at a police headquarters in the mainly Shiite Muslim city of Hillah before 7 a.m. as the police switched from overnight to day shift. It was the second major attack in Iraq since Bin Laden was killed early Monday. The attacker in Hillah set off his explosives as officers gathered outside during their shift change, local officials said on state television.

A suicide car bomber struck the presidential motorcade in the restive Russian republic of Ingushetia on Monday morning, killing at least one aide and sending the president to the hospital amid conflicting reports of his condition. The attempt to assassinate Yunus Bek Yevkurov, a career military and intelligence officer charged with taming the violence in the largely Muslim republic, underscored the instability and insurrections in Russia's southern borderlands.

In a brazen attack on Iran's military elite, a suicide bomber today killed five Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and 26 others at a gathering of tribal leaders in a southeastern province near the Pakistan border that's known for drug running and religious extremism, according to the official Iranian news agency. The assault was carried out by a lone man who reportedly disguised himself in tribal dress and detonated an explosives belt at a gymnasium in the city of Pisheen in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, a harsh land plagued by heroin smuggling and ethnic animosities.

An explosion in a house in the Israeli village of Kfar Yavetz near the West Bank killed two people, and police were investigating the possibility that a suicide bomber was involved. The bodies of the female homeowner and a young man were found. Police Cmdr. Amihai Shai said that "there are signs that this was an attack." Fire chief Eli Barza said the initial assessment was that a gas leak caused the blast, but there were questions about the man's identity.

At least 18 people were killed Friday when a suicide bomber smashed a car through the gates of the U.N. headquarters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, raising fears that a homegrown Islamic militant group inspired by the Taliban is widening its attacks to include Western targets. A spokesman for Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack, the most serious by the group, which is based in Nigeria's Muslim majority north and that some believe is forging links to Al Qaeda. "More attacks are on the way, and by the will of Allah we will have unfettered access to wherever we want to attack," the spokesman, Abu Darda, said by phone.

Nine policemen were killed and 31 wounded when a suicide bomber drove a car into their checkpoint west of Baghdad, a police source said. He said most of the injured were policemen. The attack occurred in the Khan Dhari area. Another police source put the death toll at three, with 30 wounded.

At least 18 people were killed Friday when a suicide bomber smashed a car through the gates of the U.N. headquarters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, raising fears that a homegrown Islamic militant group inspired by the Taliban is widening its attacks to include Western targets. A spokesman for Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack, the most serious by the group, which is based in Nigeria's Muslim majority north and that some believe is forging links to Al Qaeda. "More attacks are on the way, and by the will of Allah we will have unfettered access to wherever we want to attack," the spokesman, Abu Darda, said by phone.

A roadside bomb killed 22 people, many of them women and children, crammed into a minivan in western Afghanistan on Thursday, a grim reminder of the toll that the 10-year war against Taliban insurgents takes on civilians. The blast was one of two that struck civilians in the Owbeh district of the western province of Herat on Thursday morning. A separate roadside bomb killed an Afghan woman and injured seven people in a small Mazda truck, said Mohayuddin Noory, a spokesman for the Herat governor's office.

A roadside bomb killed 22 people - many of them women and children - crammed into a minivan in western Afghanistan on Thursday, a grim reminder of the toll that the 10-year war against Taliban insurgents takes on Afghan civilians. FOR THE RECORD: Afghanistan provinces: An earlier version of this online article misidentified the names of two Afghanistan provinces. Gardez is the capital of Afghanistan's Paktia province, not Paktika, and the Obeh district is in the province of Herat, not Heart.

A suicide bomber with explosives packed into his turban killed the mayor of Kandahar on Wednesday -- the latest in a wave of assassinations that claimed the life of President Hamid Karzai's half-brother earlier this month. The assailant apparently mingled with a crowd of constituents meeting Mayor Ghulam Hamidi, who had lived in the United States for years before returning to Afghanistan and taking up his dangerous post. The blast killed at least one other person, a provincial spokesman said.

A suicide bomber struck a Kandahar mosque where a memorial service was being held Thursday for the assassinated half brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The attack killed at least four people and could mark the start of a violent power struggle in southern Afghanistan in the wake of Ahmed Wali Karzai's death. A number of high-ranking officials were present at the time of the attack, according to the Kandahar provincial government. The dead included a prominent cleric and a child, and 15 other people were injured, the Interior Ministry said.

Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen recently discussed surgically implanting an explosive device under the skin of a suicide bomber to get past airport detectors and blow up a U.S.-bound passenger plane, a U.S. official said Wednesday. There is no indication of an immediate plot, but the government has warned airlines, stepped up security at U.S. airports and encouraged other countries to adjust security measures. The focus is mostly on international flights, but domestic passengers are likely to see more bomb-sniffing dogs and an increased use of swabs that test for traces of explosive material on hands and luggage.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed Saturday that the United States had been in contact with the Taliban about a possible political settlement in the war here, which has dragged on for nearly a decade. His comments came as violence continued to rage across Afghanistan: Three suicide bombers attacked a police compound in Kabul's old city Saturday, killing four security officials and five civilians. And the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said, without offering details, that two of its troops were killed in separate insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan.

Amid the throngs of Sufi Muslim followers streaming through the white marble corridors of the Data Darbar shrine, a young man in a cream-colored tunic and oversized sunglasses shuffled gingerly, guided by a brother on one side and his father on the other. Twice a month Qasim Javed Malik comes here, a place he associates with spiritual recharging, not with the deafening clap of a suicide bomb blast, the odor of charred flesh, the blinding flash before everything went black. "There's a strong divine attraction that pulls me here," Malik, 28, said softly, his face and hands pocked with scars from a suicide bomb attack at the shrine last summer that also left him blind.