Suicide bombers hit Afghan city

T
aliban militants have tried to carry out multiple suicide attacks on government buildings in the eastern Afghan city of Khost, officials say.

They say at least six attackers wearing suicide belts targeted the main police station, but were killed in a gun battle with security forces.

Another militant died in a suicide car bombing. At least 17 people were wounded in the violence.

It comes amid a rise in attacks ahead of the 20 August presidential election.

The interior ministry says six suicide bombers armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades attacked Khost's police station and nearby buildings on Saturday.

"All of the bombers who had suicide vests on their bodies were identified and fired at by our brave police before they reached their targets," the ministry said.

It was unclear which attackers were shot dead by security forces and how many managed to detonate their vests.

The suicide car bomber injured a number of policemen at an old military hospital in the city.

Defence officials said an eighth attacker may have got away.

In total three security officers and 14 civilians were wounded in Saturday's fighting. One civilian is in a critical condition, a defence ministry spokesman said.

Security worries

One of the presidential candidates, Ramazan Bashardost, was in Khost but was not affected.

The attack is a big blow to the authorities who have promised better security for the elections next month, says the BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.

Such attacks will only add to the worries of local Afghans in the country's restive south-eastern provinces.

After attacks in Khost, Paktia and Ningarhar provinces recently, security was beefed up specifically on the outskirts of the city which borders Pakistan.

According to local residents, all vehicles coming in and out of Khost were checked on regular basis.

In May, six people were killed when militants launched simultaneous assaults on government buildings in Khost.

Last week at least four security personnel were killed in attacks on Gardez, about 50 miles (80km) northwest of Khost, when militants attacked the police chief's office, a police station and the intelligence directorate, as well as the governor's compound.

Another security official died in an attack in eastern city of Jalalabad.

Share

Blogger Widgets

Europe fast-tracking swine flu vaccine

L
ONDON -In a drive to inoculate people against swine flu before winter, many European governments say they will fast-track the testing of a new flu vaccine, arousing concern among some experts about safety issues and proper vaccine doses.
The European Medicines Agency, the EU's top drug regulatory body, is accelerating the approval process for swine flu vaccine, and countries such as Britain, Greece, France and Sweden say they'll start using the vaccine after it's greenlighted — possibly within weeks.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization's flu chief, warned about the potential dangers of untested vaccines, although he stopped short of criticizing Europe's approach outright.
"One of the things which cannot be compromised is the safety of vaccines," he said Friday. "There are certain areas where you can make economies, perhaps, but certain areas where you simply do not try to make any economies."
Flu vaccines have been used for 40 years, and many experts say extensive testing is unnecessary, since the swine flu vaccine will simply contain a new ingredient: the swine flu virus.
But European officials won't know if the new vaccine causes any rare side effects until millions of people get the shots. Still, they say the benefit of saving lives is worth the gamble.
"Everybody is doing the best they can in a situation which is far from ideal," said Martin Harvey-Allchurch, a spokesman for the European Medicines Agency. "With the winter flu season approaching, we need to make sure the vaccine is available."
In Europe, flu vaccines are usually tested on hundreds of people for several weeks or months, to ensure the immune system produces enough antibodies to fight the infection.
But to ensure swine flu vaccine is available as soon as possible, the European Medicines Agency is allowing companies to skip testing in large numbers of people before the vaccine is approved.
The main issue is probably that without thorough testing it's difficult to gauge the effective dosage — meaning Europeans might get too weak a vaccine. It's unlikely the vaccine would endanger anyone, but until it is used in large numbers of people, no one will know for sure.
Europeans appear ready to use the vaccine widely before conducting any big studies to prove it is safe and effective. Neither the vaccine makers nor the European Medicines Agency would specify what basic safety tests are being done.
The U.S. is taking a more cautious approach: the government called Wednesday for several thousand volunteers to be injected with the swine flu vaccine in tests beginning in August to assess the vaccine's safety. American officials said results should be ready by the time the U.S. plans to roll out a vaccination campaign in October.
Results from the U.S. tests will be of limited use to Europe, since countries like Britain plan to start vaccinating as early as August — before any American trial data is available. The vaccines used in the U.S. will also be different from those in Europe.
Some experts favor urgent action.
"The consequences of not having a vaccine if this virus gets worse are very high," said Leonard Marcus, a public health expert at Harvard University. "If (regulatory authorities) took all the time that was necessary to make sure there are no side effects, ironically, in the effort to save a few lives, many lives could be lost."
But critics say dangers lurk in any strategy to vaccinate without robust testing.
Scant information exists on flu vaccines with adjuvants, a component used to stretch the active ingredient that is commonly found in European flu vaccines. There are no licensed flu vaccines with the ingredient in the U.S.
There is also limited or no data on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines with adjuvants in children under 3 and pregnant women — two of the most vulnerable groups in a pandemic — a global outbreak.
Mass swine flu vaccination campaigns will also take place in the shadow of the 1976 swine flu disaster, when hundreds of people in the U.S. developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing disorder, after being vaccinated.
Experts don't know why that happened, but say modern vaccine production techniques have improved since 1976. To avoid a similar episode, some say comprehensive testing before the vaccine is rolled out is essential.
"I can't see any possible excuse to not test it for safety before it's given to anyone," said George Annas, a bioethics expert at Boston University.
If the vaccine turns out to have dangerous side effects, it could generate a public backlash, particularly in a country like Britain, where many people remain suspicious of vaccines because of unsubstantiated allegations linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism. That could lead to millions of people refusing vaccination.
When the bird flu crisis hit several years ago, the European Medicines Agency designed a special protocol to approve a vaccine for use in a pandemic as soon as possible.
The agency let companies submit data for a "mock-up" vaccine, using H5N1 bird flu. The idea was to do most of the testing before the global epidemic hit so when it did, drugmakers could insert the pandemic virus into the vaccine at the last minute.
When the first swine flu vaccine doses are ready, the European Medicines Agency will approve them largely based on data from the bird flu vaccine, since both will have the same basic ingredients.
If the agency thinks the bird flu data predicts how the swine flu virus will work, they will approve it, said spokesman Harvey-Allchurch.
The agency will then require regular reporting of the vaccine's effects as it is being administered — monitoring that is normally done beforehand.
WHO's Fukuda said everyone involved in making the vaccine, from manufacturers to regulatory agencies, is looking at what steps can be taken to streamline the process.
"But there is no one who disagrees that one of the absolutes is that there can't be any question whether the vaccine is safe or not," he said.
WHO reported that the swine flu viruses aren't producing enough of a key vaccine ingredient, which may limit how much vaccine is available. Its laboratory network is now working to produce a new set of viruses that it hopes will work better.
Drugmakers including Baxter International, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Novartis and Sanofi-Pasteur, however, insist they will be able to start shipping the first batches of vaccine soon.
British health officials have repeatedly said they will start vaccinating in August, as soon as the vaccine is approved. Other European countries, including Greece, France, Sweden, say they will use the vaccine after it gets the green light from the European agency, but none other than Britain expect to start the shots next month.

Share

Blogger Widgets

Pakistani held over Polish death

P
olice in Pakistan have arrested a former right-wing parliamentarian who is accused of ordering the murder of a Polish engineer by the Taliban.

Shah Abdul Aziz, who was arrested on Friday, is known for his close links to the Taliban and Islamic militants.

He had gone missing in May after allegedly being detained by security agencies.

The engineer, Peter Stanczak, was kidnapped by the Taliban in September 2008.

Mr Stanczak had been working on a project in the volatile north-west of Pakistan. He was beheaded by the militants in February after talks with the government for the release of captured Taliban members broke down.

Identification

Ataullah Khan, a Taliban militant, said in a confessional statement before a magistrate on Saturday:

"I kidnapped the Polish engineer with the help of Commander Tariq, Mufti Ilyas and others."

He was speaking in an anti-terrorism court in the northern garrison city of Rawalpindi.

"Later, we killed him on the orders of Shah Abdul Aziz after negotiations broke down."
Officials say Mr Khan clearly indentified Shah Abdul Aziz in court as the man who gave the order for Mr Stanczak to be killed.

Ataullah Khan was arrested on 16 July by the Islamabad police at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city.

Police officials said a substantial number of arms and explosives were found in his possession.

He has since been in police custody.

During interrogation, officials say, he has confessed to being part of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan's (TTP) Darra Adam Khel wing led by Taliban commander Tariq Afridi.

He also admitted to having being involved in 50 murders, including that of Mr Stanczak, officials say.

Mr Afridi's group is held to be responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Mr Stanczak.

It operates under the larger aegis of Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud's TTP organisation.

Mr Aziz is known to have close links to Mr Mehsud and his organisation.

He had recently been trying to negotiate a peace deal between them and the Pakistan army.

The army is currently engaged in an operation in Baitullah Mehsud's South Waziristan stronghold.
Army officials say they were aware of Mr Aziz's efforts, but added the army was "not interested in dealing with miscreants".

In this regard, it is interesting to note that Mr Aziz was said to have been carrying a letter to Pakistan's army chief with a proposed outline of a peace deal.

Pakistan's top army spokesman, Gen Athar Abbas, had earlier denied the existence of such a letter, calling it "utter speculation".

But the most interesting aspect about this entire episode is that Mr Aziz had been missing since 27 May 2009 from Islamabad.

A police complaint in this regard had been registered on the same day by his friend, Khalid Khawaja, in Islamabad's Aapara police station.

Sworn affidavit

Mr Khawaja had nominated police and security officials in his complaint, saying Mr Aziz was in government custody.

But the Islamabad police expressed their ignorance over Mr Aziz's whereabouts.

In fact, on 21 July, Islamabad police officials had submitted a sworn affidavit saying they had looked everywhere for Mr Aziz and could not find him.

"The government is implicating an innocent man," Mr Khawaja told the BBC.

"How can he have been arrested yesterday, when he was taken away two months ago.

"The Punjab government is guilty of gross human rights violation and illegal detention.

"They should first ask Mr Aziz where he was all this time before making such statements about him. "We intend to approach the supreme court on this matter."

The anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi has given custody of Shah Abdul Aziz to the police for three days.

Mr Aziz is a former member of Pakistan's national parliament.

He was elected from the district of Karak in North West Frontier Province in the 2002 and subsequently lost his re-election bid in 2008.

Mr Aziz is a member of the right wing MMA political alliance.

The next hearing is to be held on 28 July.

Share

Blogger Widgets