ISLAMABAD: A roadside bomb exploded near a police station in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi on Sunday, wounding at least 23 people, police said.
Initially police said a hand grenade was thrown near a water filtration plant across the road from the police station, but a senior Rawalpindi police officer Ahsan Younas later confirmed the blast was from a device planted on the side of the road.
Police said three of the casualties had deep wounds, while others were given medical care and discharged from the hospital.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion.
The Pakistani military’s headquarters and the offices of the country’s spy agencies are located in Rawalpindi, about 15 kilometers south of the capital, Islamabad.
A similar roadside bombing struck Rawalpindi earlier this month, killing one person and wounding seven others near a busy bus terminal. In June, a roadside bomb went off in a crowded bazaar in the city, killing one and wounding 15.
Pakistan has witnessed scores of militant attacks on security forces and other targets in recent years.
In October, a powerful bomb blast killed at least eight students and wounded 136 others at an Islamic seminary on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar.
Roadside bomb wounds 23 near Pakistan police station
https://arab.news/26tgh
Roadside bomb wounds 23 near Pakistan police station
- Police say the blast in Rawalpindi was from a device planted on the side of the road
- No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion
Hundreds of migrants, including Pakistanis, land in Greece after search operation at sea
- Rescued migrants were taken to a temporary facility on Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini
- Greece has made deportations of rejected asylum seekers a priority under its migration policy
ATHENS: Greece’s Coast Guard rescued about 540 migrants from a fishing boat off Europe’s southernmost island of Gavdos on Friday, one of the biggest groups to reach the country in recent months.
The migrants were found during a Greek search operation some 16 nautical miles (29.6 km) off Gavdos, a Coast Guard statement said. They are all well and are being taken to a temporary facility on the nearby island of Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini, a Coast Guard official said, adding most of the migrants were men from Bangladesh, Egypt and Pakistan.
In a separate incident on Thursday, the EU’s border agency Frontex rescued 65 men and five women from two migrant boats in distress off Gavdos, the Greek Coast Guard said.
Greece was on the front line of a 2015-16 migration crisis when more than a million people from the Middle East and Africa landed on its shores before moving on to other European countries, mainly Germany.
Flows have ebbed since then, but both Crete and Gavdos — the two Mediterranean islands nearest to the African coast — have seen a steep rise in migrant boats, mainly from Libya, reaching their shores over the past year and deadly accidents remain common along that route.
Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy will be eligible for help in dealing with migratory pressures under a new EU mechanism when the bloc’s pact on migration and asylum enters into force in mid-2026.
The center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said deportation of rejected asylum seekers will be a priority.
