A car bomb tore through a busy market in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 91 people as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the country and pledged American support for its campaign against Islamist militants.
More than 200 people were wounded in the blast in the main northwestern city of Peshawar, the deadliest in a surge of attacks this month. The government blamed militants seeking to avenge an army offensive launched this month against al-Qaida and Taliban in their stronghold close to the Afghan border.
The bomb destroyed much of a market selling bangles, dresses and toys that was popular with women and children.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the U.S. and Russia have made “considerable” progress toward reaching agreement on a new strategic arms treaty.
The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires in December and negotiators have been racing to reach agreement on a successor.
Lavrov spoke Tuesday during a joint news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is in Moscow for talks on a range of issues.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toughened her message to Kenya on Thursday, saying that if the Kenyan government refused to set up a tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of last year’s election-driven bloodshed, the International Criminal Court at the Hague would get involved.
“I have urged that the Kenyan government find the way forward themselves,” she said, “But if not, then the names turned over to the I.C.C. will be opened, and an investigation will begin.”
She was referring to a list of prime suspects that the former United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, handed to the International Criminal Court in a sealed envelope in July. The court itself has also recently threatened to intervene if Kenyan leaders decide to continue the country’s stubborn history of impunity
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slammed the capture of a US soldier by Taliban forces in Afghanistan as “outrageous” and vowed to do “everything we can” to free him, in an interview aired Monday.
“We are attempting to do everything we can to locate him and free him,” Clinton, on a visit to India, told US television network ABC in New Delhi.
The Taliban, whose resurgence in Afghanistan has led to heightened unrest in the country, released a video over the weekend of a visibly-shaken captive US soldier who was snatched by the Islamist militants in Afghanistan late last month.
In the 28-minute clip posted online at the weekend, the soldier identified by the Pentagon on Sunday as 23-year-old Private First Class Bowe R. Bergdahl sits on the floor in traditional pale grey Afghan clothing and pleads for US troops to leave the war-torn nation.
The shaven-headed young man, who sports a fledgling beard and appears nervous and frightened, answers questions in English, occasionally choking back sobs as he tells his captors he is scared and wants to see his family.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Saturday that this week’s deadly suicide bombings in Iraq are a sign that extremists are afraid the Iraqi government is succeeding.
Making her first trip to Iraq as America’s top diplomat, Clinton said the country has made great strides despite the recent violence that killed at least 159 people on Thursday and Friday.
“I think that these suicide bombings … are unfortunately, in a tragic way, a signal that the rejectionists fear that Iraq is going in the right direction,” Clinton told reporters traveling aboard her plane ahead of her unannounced visit to Baghdad.
“I think in Iraq there will always be political conflicts, there will always be, as in any society, sides drawn between different factions, but I really believe Iraq as a whole is on the right track,” she said, citing “overwhelming evidence” of “really impressive” progress.
“Are there going to be bad days? Yes, there are,” Clinton said. “But I don’t know of any difficult international situation anywhere in the world or history where there haven’t been bad days.”
