Habib Siddiqui

  A suicide bomber has detonated explosives at a political rally in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 44 people and wounding nearly 200, according to officials. The blast took place on Sunday at a gathering of the conservative Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) party on the outskirts of Khar in Pakistan’s northwestern Bajaur district, which borders Afghanistan. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Provincial police said in a statement that the suicide bomber set off his explosives vest close to the stage where several senior party leaders were sitting. It said initial investigations suggested the ISIL (ISIS) group could be behind the attack and officers were still investigating. The armed group has been active in neighbouring Afghanistan after the fall of  President Ashraf Ghani’s government.  It opposes Afghanistan’s Taliban administration and has members known to cross the porous mountainous border and hide in the Peshawar area. Feroz Jamal, the provincial in...

  Amnesty International has condemned an Israeli court decision to   demolish the village of Ras Jrabah in the Naqab region of southern Israel   and expel its 500 Palestinian Bedouin residents in order to build a new neighbourhood for the Israeli city of Dimona. In a statement issued on Friday, the global human rights group said that the judgement showed the “deep discrimination that Palestinian citizens of Israel face  under apartheid ”. On Thursday the Beersheba Magistrate’s Court in Israel said that Ras Jrabah’s residents must evacuate their homes and pay a fine of around 117,000 new Israeli shekels (US$31,700). They have lived in the village for decades but will now be relocated to the impoverished Bedouin town of Qasr al-Sir. RELATED Nakba in the Negev: Israel ramps up Pale stinian displacement Society Amy Addison-Dunne and Marwa Koçak A request by the villagers to be integrated into the planned Dimona neighbourhood was refused by Israeli authorities. “This judg...

  Russian officials say they shot down three Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow early Sunday, hours before the start of a major military parade attended by  President Vladimir Putin. Images from a crash site in Moscow showed the façade of a skyscraper damaged on one floor, with glass shattered and structural beams snapped and deformed. One person was injured in the strikes, which forced the closure of airspace over Moscow and outlying regions, and an hour's delay in takeoffs and and landings at Vnukovo International Airport, according to TASS.  The incidents were the latest in a series of  attempted drone assaults  — including on the Kremlin and on Russian border towns — that  Moscow has blamed on Kyiv.  On Monday, a drone fell in the center of the capital near defense ministry headquarters, while another hit the south of the city, gutting several upper floors of a building. The  Russian defense ministry  described Sunday's incident as an "att...