At least 21 people have been injured, after an explosion inside a train carriage, at the Songshan railway station in central Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Focus Taiwan TV reported that just before 10pm local time there was a loud bang in the sixth carriage of a crowded commuter train, which then quickly became engulfed […]
Chancellor Angela Merkel will pay an official visit to Kyrgyzstan on July 13-14, the German leader’s first visit to the Central Asian nation, officials in Bishkek say. Merkel will hold talks with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev as well as Kyrgyz parliamentarians and representatives of civil society, the president’s press office said on July 7. Merkel […]
The United States stepped up efforts to isolate North Korea on Wednesday, imposing sanctions on leader Kim Jong Un and 10 other senior officials for human rights abuses. Wednesday’s move by the U.S. Treasury Department marks the first time that Kim, hereditary ruler of North Korea since his father died in 2011, has been sanctioned […]
Two time synchronized suicide attacks have been reported near the el-Omran Shia mosque in Qatif City and near the Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in Medina. Residents report hearing multiple explosions at each location. Tasnim News Agency confirmed six innocent people died in the blasts including two security officers and four pilgrims. Separately, Saudi’s Arabiya TV confirmed […]
Iraqi officials say that at least 75 people have been killed in a car bombing carried out by the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in the center of Baghdad. The casualty figures were confirmed by police and hospital officials, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to release information to the press. In an […]
A muezzin has performed an Islamic call to prayer for the first time in 81 years in one of Istanbul’s iconic monuments, Hagia Sophia, famous for its grandiose dome. The traditional call to prayer, the adhan, has been played from Hagia Sophia’s minarets for the last four years. However, the muezzin had chanted it from […]
A Bangladesh military official says 20 hostages, all foreigners, have been killed during a siege in the capital, Dhaka, where security forces stormed a restaurant and killed six gunmen holding the hostages. “We’ve recovered 20 bodies. Most them had been brutally hacked to death with sharp weapons,” Brigadier General Nayeem Ashfaq Chowdhury told reporters on […]
Rakhine Buddhists in the town of Sittwe in western Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state submitted an open letter to the country’s leaders on Friday saying they will not accept terms other than “Bengali” to refer to the members of the minority Muslim community who live there. Hundreds of ethnic Rakhine residents and Buddhist monks signed the […]
