Gunmen kill 42 in Pakistan attack
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Gunmen opened fire on vehicles carrying Shiite Muslims in Pakistan’s restive northwest on Thursday, killing at least 42 people, including six women, and wounding 20 others in one of the region’s deadliest such attacks in recent years, police said.
The attack happened in Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where sectarian clashes between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites have killed dozens of people in recent months.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attack. It came a week after authorities reopened a key highway in the region that had been closed for weeks following deadly clashes.
Local police official Azmat Ali said several vehicles were traveling in a convoy from the city of Parachinar to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, when gunmen opened fire. He said at least 10 passengers were in critical condition at a hospital.
Aftab Alam, a provincial minister, said 42 people were killed in the attack, and that officers were investigating to determine who was behind it.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi called the shootings a “terrorist attack.” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack, and Sharif said those behind the killing of innocent civilians will not go unpunished.
Laos methanol poisoning toll hits 5
At least five people traveling in Laos, including an American, have died in recent days as officials in Australia and New Zealand said there has likely been an outbreak of methanol poisoning in that country caused by tainted alcoholic drinks.
Penny Wong, Australia’s foreign minister, said Thursday that Bianca Jones, an Australian, had died in Thailand, where she had been brought after becoming sick in Laos.
Jones, 19, had been hospitalized last week after consuming an alcoholic drink in Laos, said Col. Phattanawong Chanphon, the superintendent of the police station in Muang Udon Thani, the town in Thailand where she died. He said the cause was swelling in the brain caused by methanol.
It was unclear whether four other deaths of foreign travelers reported this week in Laos, a landlocked nation in Southeast Asia that is popular with backpackers, had been caused by methanol.
Methanol, a toxic chemical used in household and industrial products like antifreeze, is sometimes added to drinks as a cheaper alternative to ethanol, the alcohol used in alcoholic beverages.
The U.S. State Department said in an emailed statement Thursday that an American had died in Vang Vieng, a tourist town in Laos. It did not offer details.
Two Australian women and a New Zealand woman were all fighting effects of poisoning after drinking alcohol, while reports from the respective Foreign Ministries said that a British woman and two Danish citizens had died in Laos.
Canada’s jobs minister quitting post
OTTAWA, Ontario — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday that his employment minister was leaving his post after weeks of questions about his past claims of Indigenous identity.
Trudeau said in a statement that Randy Boissonnault would step away from his Cabinet position immediately to “focus on clearing the allegations made against him.”
Boissonnault came under scrutiny after the National Post newspaper raised questions about whether he had any Indigenous heritage. The newspaper reported that a company he co-owned had applied for government contracts while claiming to be Indigenous-owned.
Boissonnault has been described as Indigenous multiple times in communications from the Liberal Party and in 2018 referred to himself as “non-status adopted Cree.”
He has walked back those claims since the reports emerged, and opposition politicians from the Conservative and New Democratic Party this week called on him to resign.
12 arrested in deadly Serbian roof fall
BELGRADE, Serbia — Twelve people have been arrested in Serbia in connection with a roof collapse earlier this month at a train station in the northern city of Novi Sad that killed 15 people and severely injured two others, prosecutors said Thursday.
The suspects, who have not been identified, face charges of committing criminal acts against public security, causing public danger and irregular construction work, the Higher Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad said in a statement. They face up to 12 years in prison.
The prosecutor’s office first announced that 11 people were arrested. Later on Thursday they said one more person was detained and another one remains at large.
Serbian media reported that Goran Vesic, who resigned as construction minister after the collapse, was among those detained. Vesic said on the social media platform X he came in voluntarily.
The arrests came after a wave of protests erupted over the tragedy demanding that those responsible be brought to justice and punished.
— Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
An injured victim of gunmen firing incident on passenger vehicles, is treated at a hospital in Parachinar, in Kurram district of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Dilawar Hussain)