Suicide Bombings

The markets of this chaotic city are usually cacophonous places, alive with the din of motorcycle rickshaws and legions of Pakistanis sizing up the pyramids of mangoes in one stall, office furniture in the next. But on a recent dusky evening at Sadar market, shopkeepers sipped tea and looked out into an empty street. No one, they fretted, wants to risk being there the next time a suicide bomber strikes.

BEIRUT - Two weeks after a supposed cease-fire was meant to bring an end to violence in Syria, an explosion Friday ripped through the capital, Damascus, killing at least nine people and injuring almost 30. A suicide bomber in the pro-opposition Midan neighborhood detonated an explosives belt near a school and the Zein Abidin mosque as worshipers were leaving Friday prayers, the Interior Ministry said. Those killed included civilians and law enforcement officers, state media said.

Double suicide bombings struck the strife-ridden Russian republic of Dagestan on Wednesday, killing 12 people and injuring dozens. The attacks came as a violent echo of this week's bombings in Moscow's subway system, which left 39 dead and stirred fear that volatility in Russia's mostly Muslim Caucasus region is again seeping deep into the rest of the country. A Chechen militant leader claimed responsibility for the subway bombings in a statement released Wednesday to a website affiliated with the militants.

IDLIB, Syria - Scattered around the house that Abu Nadim once shared with his wife and five children are hints of its former existence: a SpongeBob SquarePants pillow, a baby's crib, a woman's purse. Now the four-room home is a bomb-making workshop. Bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, containers of peroxide and acetone and powdered aluminum cover the floor, along with boxes of wires, PVC pipes, computer parts and cigarette ash, as if someone had wandered through without thought for an ashtray.

As many as a dozen suicide bombers staged synchronized attacks Tuesday on government buildings in a provincial capital in eastern Afghanistan, triggering a day of chaotic fighting that left at least 20 people dead. Scores of people were injured in the fighting in Khowst, the site of a large U.S. military base. The wounded included at least three American soldiers. The brazen assault was reminiscent of an earlier attack on the U.S.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Rochester, N.Y. -- A bomber slipped into a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday and detonated a suicide vest, killing eight CIA officers in one of the deadliest days in the agency's history, current and former U.S. officials said. The attack took place at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khowst province, an area near the border with Pakistan that is a hotbed of insurgent activity. An undisclosed number of civilians were wounded, the officials said.

Afghan authorities said Tuesday that they had broken up a suicide bombing cell responsible for a string of attacks in the capital, including a massive explosion last month that killed an American serviceman and wounded five other U.S. soldiers.

Re "Bush's Mideast Policy on Hold," Oct. 29: Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, has tunnel vision when he criticizes U.S. Middle East policy and laments that 3,000 Palestinians have been killed, compared with 900 Israelis. The Palestinians have been the aggressors and supporters of terrorism. Khalidi ignores that the Palestinians have made no sincere efforts to eliminate Hamas or other terrorist groups. If Khalidi were really concerned about the Palestinians, he would be incensed about the terrorist activities that are destroying any peace efforts.

In a stunning attack on Somalia's shaky government, a suicide bombing Thursday at a graduation ceremony in Mogadishu killed three Cabinet ministers and least 12 others, government officials said. The bomber sneaked in amid hundreds of guests and graduating medical students at the Shamo Hotel in the south of the capital. Government forces control only a sliver of Mogadishu, and the attack was another indication of the reach of Islamist militants and Al Qaeda operatives. The carnage was a devastating blow to a transitional government, backed by U.S. arms shipments and African Union troops, that is fighting a civil war against an Islamic insurgency.

An immigrant from Morocco armed with an automatic weapon and wearing what he thought was a suicide vest packed with explosives was arrested near the U.S. Capitol building in Washington by FBI agents who had been closely monitoring him in an undercover sting operation, officials announced Friday. Amine El Khalifi, 29, who allegedly had overstayed his visa after first arriving in the U.S. when he was 16, was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against government property.

Six months ago, in a moving ceremony during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, President Hamid Karzai went on Afghan television to pardon about two dozen young boys, the youngest only 8 years old, who had been caught trying to carry out suicide attacks. On Monday, authorities in Kandahar province reported that two of the children, 10-year-olds, had been rearrested last week, apparently intending again to carry out bombings. Provincial spokesman Zalmay Ayubi said the boys each had a vest full of explosives when they were detained along with three adults suspected of being militants, and that they told intelligence officers they had been recruited for suicide missions.

In a dramatic twist in the nine-month uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad, government officials said Friday that two suicide car bombers detonated hundreds of pounds of explosives in front of buildings used by intelligence agencies in the heart of Damascus, the capital. Officials quickly pointed the finger at Al Qaeda, saying the dramatic escalation in violence confirms their contention that armed terrorists are behind the unrest. To reinforce the point, state television broadcast video of mangled body parts, burned-out vehicles and bloodied pavement against an action-movie-like soundtrack.

As many as 13 Americans were killed Saturday when a suicide bomber struck their armored military bus in Kabul, in what may be the single deadliest attack on U.S. citizens in the Afghan capital since the war began a decade ago. A U.S. official said the death toll was believed to be 13 U.S. citizens: five service members and eight civilian contractors. But, the official said, a Canadian and at least one British national could also be among the dead. The full extent of the casualties was unclear, he said, because the massive explosion had made identifying the dead difficult.

A decade ago, Peshawar's bomb squad had it pretty easy. Occasionally, one of its 20 members would be dispatched to a cornfield to defuse a mine planted by a villager who was feuding with his neighbor. Bombs were small and crude; the only tools an officer needed were pliers and a roll of electrical tape. Because their budget was minuscule, the officers traveled by taxi. Today, the squad careens through week after week of carnage and peril in this volatile city near the Afghan border.

A series of blasts and gunshots ripped across Iraq on Monday, killing at least 70 people and wounding more than 300 in a spasm of bloodshed that raised fresh concerns that the nation's security forces might be overwhelmed by insurgents when American soldiers withdraw later this year. The sprawling attacks, including suicide bombers, car explosions and militants firing Kalashnikov rifles, struck from north to south throughout the morning in what appeared to be a coordinated plan. Soldiers, police officers and market shoppers were targeted in Najaf, Kut, Baghdad, Baqubah and other areas.

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.

In the afternoon of Dec. 30, 2009, a meek Jordanian doctor who had gained access to the top commanders of Al Qaeda was driven onto a secret CIA base at Khost in eastern Afghanistan for his first formal debriefing. More than a dozen CIA officers and other Americans stood in a receiving line to welcome the so-called "golden source. " Camp cooks had even baked him a celebratory cake. Until then, no American had ever met the star informant, and only a handful even knew his name: Humam al-Balawi.