Washed It!

A Taliban suicide bomber detonated a car in an alley behind a police station in a strategically important town in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 17 police and civilians in an explosion that shattered the station and neighboring homes.

About 40 people were wounded in the attack in Lakki Marwat, which sits on the main road between Punjab province, Pakistan’s largest and most prosperous, and the North and South Waziristan tribal regions. A Pakistani army offensive pushed many militants out of South Waziristan in October. The militants still control much of North Waziristan, where U.S. drone aircraft have been conducting a campaign of targeted killings.

Rescue workers and police officials were digging through rubble at the station in the town of Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police official Ghulam Mohammad Khan said. Nine police officers, four adult civilians and four children going to school were slain in the attack.

Police official Liaquat Ali said 45 police were in the building when the bomber struck.

“I said my morning prayers and we went to sleep, then suddenly there was a big bang. All the debris fell on us,” police official Ikramullah Khan told The Associated Press from a bed in a nearby hospital, where many of the wounded lay wailing in pain as relatives comforted each other.

Emergency workers and local residents used cranes to move the rubble of the mostly destroyed police station. Books and a schoolbag could be seen in the wreckage and the twisted frames of a motorcycle and a car sat nearby. A neighborhood shop and mosque also were partly destroyed.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they targeted the police for encouraging residents to set up militias to fight the militants — known locally as lashkars. The group pledged to carry out additional attacks unless the militias disbanded.

“After the police, we will attack those active in forming anti-Taliban lashkars if they have not given up their activities,” Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The police chief of Lakki Marwat district was killed in a suicide bombing several months ago and militants have carried out a string of attacks in the area since then.

In recent days, militants have launched attacks across the nation aimed at destabilizing the country and weakening a civilian government already struggling with a massive flooding that has displaced millions and caused widespread destruction.

The deadliest have targeted minority Shiite Muslims. A suicide bombing killed at least 43 Shiite Muslims at a procession in the southwestern city of Quetta on Friday. Two days earlier, a triple suicide attack killed 35 people at a Shiite ceremony in the eastern city of Lahore.

Both were claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, whose commander Qari Hussain Mehsud threatened Friday that his group would wage imminent attacks in the U.S. and Europe.

On the same day, Pakistani intelligence officials said two suspected U.S. missile strikes had killed at least seven people in North Waziristan, which is largely controlled by the Haqqani network, one of the main groups battling Americans in neighboring Afghanistan.
Taliban suicide bomber kills 17 in Pakistan

Powerful Hurricane Earl spun toward the East Coast on Wednesday, driving tourists from North Carolina’s vacation islands and threatening to bring damaging winds and waves to the Atlantic seaboard through Labor Day weekend.

Democratic Govs. Bev Perdue of North Carolina and Martin O’Malley of Maryland declared states of emergency in their states, and federal authorities have warned people along the coast to be prepared to evacuate if necessary.

The evacuation of the Outer Banks, a stretch of thin barrier islands, had begun in North Carolina, and hundreds of cars were backed up on the highway that is the sole link to the mainland. Earl’s strongest winds were expected to hit the coast Thursday night into Friday morning.

Earl’s effect on the East Coast will depend on when it makes its expected turn to the northeast.

A later-than-expected turn could mean the storm’s eye makes landfall on the extreme eastern tip of North Carolina as a Category 3 hurricane late Thursday or early Friday.

If that happens, hurricane-force winds could reach Long Island, N.Y., and Cape Cod, Mass.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, declared a state of emergency as a precaution, allowing the state to mobilize staff and resources before the storm. Emergency officials as far north as Maine urged people to have disaster plans and supplies ready.

Earl was on track to approach the North Carolina shore and then blow north along the coast, but forecasters cautioned that it was still too early to tell how close the storm might come to land.

The National Weather Service issued a hurricane warning for much of the North Carolina coast and hurricane watches from Virginia to Delaware.

Not since Hurricane Bob in 1991 has such a powerful storm had such a large swath of the East Coast in its sights, said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center.

“A slight shift of that track to the west is going to impact a great deal of real estate with potential hurricane-force winds,” Feltgen said.
Hurricane Earl approaches East Coast

Just days after U.S. auto safety regulators stepped up a probe into the risk that more than 1 million Toyota Corolla and Matrix vehicles could stall because of defective electronic engine control units the Japanese automaker announced a recall of the vehicles.

Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. said Thursday that it would recall 1.13 million 2005 to 2008 model year Toyota Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles sold in North America to address a problem with an electronic component called an engine control module that may have been improperly manufactured. No other Toyota or Lexus vehicles are involved in this recall.

This latest action brings the number of vehicles Toyota has recalled in the last year to about 10 million worldwide, a figure that is now approaching the total number of vehicles that will be sold by all manufacturers in America this year. The quality issues have hurt the automaker’s once sterling reputation for reliability and dependability and affected it sales position. Through the first seven months of this year, Toyota’s U.S. market share has dropped to 15.2% from 16.3%, dropping it to third place in the U.S. auto market behind No. 1 General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co.

Toyota has been plagued by a rash of quality problems involving faulty gas pedals, floor mats, brakes, electronic stability control systems, steering systems and other defects.

In the Corollas, Toyota said there is a crack that may develop either at various points on or in the component. When this happens, the check engine light may go on and the driver may experience harsh shifting. The engine might not start and in some instances the engine can stall while the vehicle is being driven. Toyota said there are three unconfirmed accidents alleged to be related to this condition, one of which might have resulted in a minor injury.

Toyota plans to replace the module on all of the recalled vehicles at no charge to owners. It will mail notice of the recall to owners starting in the middle of September. People will be told to bring their cars to dealers as replacement parts become available. Owners who have already experienced the problem and paid for the repair will be instructed on how to collect reimbursement.

People with questions can go to http://www.toyota.com/recall and or call Toyota at (800) 331-4331.

On Wednesday, safety regulators began an engineering analysis of stalling in Corolla and Matrix cars.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had received 26 complaints of vehicles stalling when it opened a preliminary evaluation in November. It reported 163 complaints when it opened the engineering analysis.

“The engine can stall at any speed without warning and not restart,” NHTSA said on its website.

jerry.hirsch@latimes.com
Toyota recalls Corolla, Matrix models due to an engine defect

Three bomb blasts killed 34 people Monday in northwest Pakistan, authorities said. Though no one claimed responsibility for the attacks, they came at a time when government officials have been warning that Islamic militants might try to exploit the strain that this summer’s catastrophic floods have put on the country’s military and government by unleashing a new wave of violence.

One of the attacks occurred in South Waziristan, a tribal area along the Afghan border long regarded as a stronghold for the Pakistani Taliban. A teenage suicide bomber appeared at a mosque in the town of Wana where 200 worshippers were praying and detonated explosives strapped to his body, witnesses said. The blast killed 25 people and injured 36 others, hospital officials said.

Among the dead was Maulana Noor Muhammad, a former lawmaker and head of the Islamic school where the mosque was located. He had just finished translating verses from the Koran when the blast occurred. Muhammad was a member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rehman) party, which historically has been sympathetic to the Taliban movement.

“I saw a teenager who shook hands with Maulana Noor Muhammad before detonating the explosives,” said Ayub Wazir, a worshipper who survived the blast.

The motive of the attack was unclear. At times, violence in the tribal areas occurs between rival tribal and militant factions.

A second attack occurred in the Kurram tribal district when a remote-controlled bomb exploded in a school where tribal elders had been meeting. The blast, which occurred in the village of Parachamkani, killed six people and injured seven others, authorities said.

The third attack occurred early in the evening on the outskirts of northwest Pakistan’s largest city, Peshawar. A bomb planted in a push cart exploded in the town of Mattani, killing three people and injuring six others, police said. Dilawar Khan, head of a local anti-Taliban militia, said his militia was the target of the attack. Two of the dead belonged to the militia.

In both South Waziristan and Kurram, Pakistani troops have launched offensives over the last year to flush out Taliban militants and reestablish governmental control over the regions. Despite the offensives, pockets of militants remain active in many parts of the tribal areas.

Last week, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for northwest Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, warned that militants had been regrouping in the tribal areas to take advantage of a time when the state has had to deploy thousands of Pakistani soldiers and police to cope with the ongoing flood crisis, which has killed more than 1,600 people and submerged vast swathes of the country.

In the tribal district of North Waziristan, two U.S. drone missile strikes killed 12 people and injured 15 others, intelligence sources said.

One of the missiles targeted Dandy Darpakhel, an area known as a stronghold of the Haqqani network, a wing of the Afghan Taliban. Among the seven killed were four women, the sources said. The other strike killed five people in the village of Derga Mandai, sources said.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

Special correspondent Ali reported from Peshawar and staff writer Rodriguez from Islamabad.
34 killed in Pakistan; bombings occur in Taliban stronghold areas

For nearly a decade, the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno has held a carnival on the Saturday following the end of Ramadan, during a festival that has been called the Muslim equivalent of Christmas. With pony rides, carnival attractions, games and Middle Eastern food, it’s a popular event for the community’s children.

This year, the center’s leaders had a sense of foreboding when they noticed the date on which the carnival would fall: Sept. 11.

This week, after listening to escalating rhetoric over plans for an Islamic community center within blocks of the destroyed World Trade Center site in New York, the Fresno center canceled the carnival.