A Shiite Muslim procession in central Pakistani town of Khanpur was targeted by a homemade bomb on Sunday which claimed the lives of 18 people and wounded dozens. The remote-controlled device exploded as the procession approached, police said.
Armed insurgents set off a series of coordinated bomb blasts in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday before storming a police building. The violence in the predominantly Sunni city comes a day after a bomber killed scores of Shiite pilgrims in Basra.
In December 2011, the last G.I. left Iraq, ending nine years of occupation. The Americans leave behind them a profoundly divided country, beset by violence and in the grip of a political crisis. Our reporters went to meet the Shiites and Sunnis to guage the tension between the two communities.
A suicide bomber set off a car bomb Monday at the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, officials said. The blast killed at least five and wounded dozens of others in the wake of a wave of deadly attacks that struck Baghdad on Thursday.
A wave of seemingly coordinated attacks swept through Baghdad's neighbourhoods on Thursday, leaving dozens dead and many more injured. This, in the wake of heightened sectarian tensions between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite communities, as the country's fraglile coalition government led by Nouri al-Maliki, threatens to implode. It's perhaps not the picture of stability the United States would like to portray just days after it withdrew its remaining troops.
Baghdad was rocked by 14 deadly bomb blasts on Thursday which killed at least 67 people. The attacks come amid a widening rift between Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Sunni political leaders that threatens to tear the country apart.
Sectarian tensions are mounting in Iraq just days after US troops withdrew from the country. Iraqi officials have issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni Vice President, Tareq Al-Hashemi, for "terrorism" charges relating to alleged links to assassinations of government officials, last month in Baghdad. The Sunni majority Iraqiya bloc is boycotting Parliament, citing Nouri Al-Maliki's authoritarian tendancies and reluctance to share power.
As protests in Syria and Egypt continue to attract headlines, tensions are still high in the tiny gulf state of Bahrain between the Sunni royal family and its Shiite majority. France 24's Annette Young talks to Khalil al-Marzouk, a spokesman for Al Wifak, a Shiite opposition party in Bahrain, who says the King is not doing enough to implement true democratic reform.
Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi (pictured) has accused the country's Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, of attempting to undermine him a day after a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of terrorism.
Iraq has seen a rise in sectarian tensions following extraordinary allegations made by the Shiite-led government against its Sunni vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi (pictured) who fled Baghdad before a warrant for his arrest was issued.
