A suicide attack outside a court in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad has killed 12 people and injured at least 27 others, the country’s interior minister said.
Mohsin Naqvi said a bomber was planning to attack the district courthouse but was unable to get inside.
Naqvi said authorities would prioritise identifying the bomber, and that those involved would be brought to justice.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has alleged that extremist groups “actively backed by India” were involved.
A spokesperson for the Indian government denied what they described as “baseless and unfounded allegations”.
In a statement, Sharif said that “terrorist attacks on unarmed citizens of Pakistan by India’s terrorist proxies are condemnable”.
Jumaat Ul Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), has claimed responsibility, according to local media. But two local journalists have told the BBC that the TTP’s central leadership has sent messages to them saying it has no link to the explosion.
Suicide blasts in Islamabad have been rare in recent years. Footage from the scene on Tuesday showed the remains of a burnt-out car and a police cordon in place.
The 27 people injured are receiving medical treatment, Naqvi said.
He added that the attacker detonated the bomb close to a police car after waiting for up to 15 minutes.
Footage of the aftermath showed plumes of smoke rising from a charred vehicle behind a security barrier. The incident occurred at 12:39 local time (07:39 GMT).
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said he “strongly condemned the suicide blast”.
A lawyer who said he was parking his car outside the court at the time described hearing a “loud bang”.
Rustam Malik told AFP news agency “it was complete chaos”.
“Lawyers and people were running inside the complex,” he added. “I saw two dead bodies lying on the gate and several cars were on fire.”
In a separate incident on Monday, a car exploded in India’s capital Delhi, killing eight people and injuring a number of others.
The Indian government has not called the incident a terror attack, although the case has been referred to the country’s anti-terror body.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said following the attack: “The conspirators behind this heinous act will not be spared. All those responsible will be brought to justice, no matter how deep the conspiracy runs.”
There is, however, no official word yet on what led to the blast.
The last time Pakistan’s capital was targeted by a suicide bombing was three years ago when a police officer was killed and several others injured.
There have been suicide attacks in other parts of the country in the years since but not in Islamabad. (BBC)
A spat between China and Japan over Japanese Premier Sanae Takaichi’s Taiwan comments showed no signs of abating on Wednesday with a series of vitriolic commentaries in Chinese state media and calls in Tokyo to expel a Chinese diplomat.
Takaichi sparked the furore with remarks in parliament last week that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could amount to a “survival-threatening situation” and trigger a potential military response from Tokyo.
That drew a formal protest from China and a threatening post from China’s Consul General in Osaka, Xue Jian, which Tokyo said was “extremely inappropriate” and complained to Beijing about.
While Takaichi has since said she would refrain from making such comments again and Tokyo called for mutual efforts to reduce friction on Tuesday, a brace of Chinese state media commentaries suggest the furore could rumble on.
State broadcaster CCTV said in an editorial late on Tuesday that Takaichi’s remarks were of “extremely malicious nature and impact” and have “crossed the line” with China.
A post on a social media account affiliated with CCTV called Takaichi a “troublemaker”, using the word as a play on the pronunciation of her family name in Chinese.
“Has her head been kicked by a donkey?” said the post on the Yuyuan Tantian account. “If she continues to spew shit without any boundaries like this, Takaichi might have to pay the price!”
The CCTV editorial also likened Takaichi’s reference to “survival-threatening situations” with Japan’s 1931 invasion of northeast China’s Manchuria.
Japan’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (JapanToday)
BBC director general Tim Davie has told staff that “we’ve got to fight for our journalism” after Donald Trump threatened to sue the corporation for $1bn (£760m) over a Panorama programme.
It comes after a leaked internal BBC memo, published by the Telegraph last Monday, said the film had misled viewers by splicing together parts of the US president’s speech on 6 January 2021 and made it appear as if he had explicitly encouraged the Capitol Hill riot.
“We have made some mistakes that have cost us, but we need to fight,” Davie, who resigned on Sunday alongside BBC News CEO Deborah Turness after mounting pressure over the memo, said on Tuesday.
“This narrative will not just be given by our enemies, it’s our narrative,” he added.
He said the BBC went through “difficult times… but it just does good work, and that speaks louder than any newspaper, any weaponisation”.
Trump threatened to take legal action if the BBC did not make a “full and fair retraction” of the programme by Friday. The corporation has said it will reply in due course.
BBC chair Samir Shah said in a letter to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMS) on Monday that the corporation would like to apologise for the edit, which he called an “error of judgement” which gave the impression of a “direct call for violent action”.
During Tuesday’s staff call, where Shah also spoke, neither Davie nor the BBC chair mentioned Trump’s legal threat.
Davie said the fact that “there was an editorial breach, and I think some responsibility had to be taken” was one of the reasons he was quitting.
He also cited the upcoming charter renewal – saying he wanted to give his successor a “runway into that” – and the personal pressures of the “relentless” role.
Shah also defended the fact that the corporation did not respond to the memo’s publication for seven days.
“We had a deadline, that was Monday… and we met that,” he said, referring to the deadline given by the CMS, and stressed that he “needed to be careful and get it right”.
No timeline was given for selecting Davie’s replacement, but the chair said the corporation was in “succession mode”.
The BBC’s culture editor Katie Razzall said there was “some disquiet” from BBC staff over the Q&A session, which was moderated by a member of the BBC’s communications team, not by a journalist.
Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy defended the BBC from “sustained attacks” by politicians who she said were going beyond criticising its editorial failures.
She said the “concerns are serious” but there was a “fundamental difference from raising serious concerns about editorial failings and members of this house launching a sustained attack on the institution itself.”
She added that the BBC was “essential to this country” and wasn”not just a broadcaster, it’s a national institution” – “It is a light on the hill here and around the world.”
Nandy confirmed that the once-a-decade process of reviewing the corporation’s charter would begin shortly and that it would ensure a BBC which is “fiercely independent” and “genuinely accountable” to the public.
At its meeting on Tuesday, the CMS committee agreed to hold an evidence session with members of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee in coming weeks, including Shah and BBC board members Robbie Gibb and Caroline Thomson.
Shadow culture secretary Nigel Huddleston said the BBC “needs saving from itself” and that whilst “we all want the BBC to succeed” there needed to be “institutional change…not just a few people at the top”.
Downing Street has refused to comment on Trump’s legal threat, explaining that this was a “matter for the BBC”.
“It is clearly not for the government to comment on any ongoing legal matters,” the prime minister’s official spokesperson said.
“Our position is clear, the BBC is independent and it’s for the cooperation to respond to questions about their editorial decisions.”
Asked whether there were concerns the issue would impact Keir Starmer’s relationship with Trump, the spokesperson said the two had a “very strong” relationship.
The spokesperson would not be drawn on whether the BBC should apologise directly to the president.
Trump’s legal team wrote to the BBC on Sunday threatening to take action over the “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements” in the Panorama programme.
The BBC said the programme, which was first broadcast on 24 October 2024, was not available to watch on iPlayer because it was “over a year old”. (BBC)
The Director General of the BBC, Tim Davie, announced his resignation on Sunday following a row over the editing of a documentary about US President Donald Trump.
Davie and the broadcaster’s head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned after accusations that a documentary by its flagship Panorama programme had edited a speech by Trump in a misleading way.
“Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable.
“While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision… I have to take ultimate responsibility,” Davie said in a statement posted on the BBC website.
The latest controversy follows a Daily Telegraph report this week that said concerns were first raised in the summer in a memo on impartiality by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee.
Earlier Sunday, the UK Culture, Media and Sport Minister Lisa Nandy called the allegations “incredibly serious”.
The BBC has promised “a full response” to Parliament’s culture, media, and sport committee on Monday.
The criticism emerged over clips spliced together from sections of a Trump speech on January 6, 2021, when he was accused of fomenting the mob attack on the US Capitol, seeking to keep him in power despite losing his re-election bid.
The edit made it appear he had told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them and “fight like hell”.
In the undistorted clip, however, the president urged the audience to walk with him, “and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
At the time, Trump was still disputing President Joe Biden’s election victory, in a vote that saw him ousted after his first term in office.
The edit was included in a documentary entitled “Trump: A Second Chance?” that was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.
Nandy said the Trump edit was one of several concerns about editorial standards at the BBC.
“It isn’t just about the Panorama programme, although that is incredibly serious,” she told BBC television in an interview.
“There are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC,” she said.
Nandy said she was concerned about a tendency for editorial standards and the language used in reports to be “entirely inconsistent”, whether it be on “Israel, Gaza… trans people or on this issue about President Trump”.
The licence fee-funded broadcaster earlier this year issued several apologies for “serious flaws” in the making of another documentary entitled “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone”, broadcast in February.
In October, it accepted a sanction from the UK media watchdog for what was deemed a “materially misleading” programme, whose child narrator was later revealed to be the son of Hamas’s former deputy agriculture minister. (Punch)
Democrats swept a trio of races on Tuesday in the first major elections since Donald Trump regained the presidency, elevating a new generation of leaders and giving the beleaguered party a shot of momentum ahead of next year’s congressional elections.
In New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, won the mayoral race, capping a meteoric and unlikely rise from an anonymous state lawmaker to one of the country’s most visible Democratic figures. And in Virginia and New Jersey, moderate Democrats Abigail Spanberger, 46, and Mikie Sherrill, 53, won the elections for governor with commanding leads, respectively.
Tuesday’s contests offered a barometer of how Americans are responding to Trump’s tumultuous nine months in office. The races also served as a test of differing Democratic campaign playbooks ahead of 2026, with the party locked out of power in Washington and still trying to forge a path out of the political wilderness.
That said, the midterm election is a year away, an eternity in the Trump era, and opinion polls show the Democratic brand remains broadly unpopular, even as Trump’s own approval rating has declined. The contests on Tuesday also all unfolded in Democratic-leaning regions that did not support Trump in last year’s presidential election.
Perhaps the biggest practical boost to Democrats on Tuesday came out of California, where voters gave Democratic lawmakers the power to redraw the state’s congressional map, expanding a national battle over redistricting that will shape the race for the U.S. House of Representatives.
The winning candidates on Tuesday could reenergize and inspire more engagement from Democratic voters, many of whom have clamored for fresh faces at the vanguard of the party. Turnout in the New York City mayoral race was the highest since at least 1969.
All three Democratic candidates emphasized economic issues, particularly affordability, an issue that remains top of mind for most voters. But Spanberger and Sherrill hail from the party’s moderate wing, while Mamdani used a viral video-fueled insurgent campaign to present himself as an unabashed progressive in the mold of Senator Bernie Sanders and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“The Democratic Party is back,” Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, assrted on X.
Mamdani, who will become the first Muslim mayor of the biggest U.S. city, outlasted former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, 67, who ran as an independent after losing the nomination to Mamdani earlier this year. Cuomo, who resigned as governor four years ago after sexual harassment allegations that he has denied, portrayed Mamdani as a radical leftist whose proposals were unworkable and dangerous.
Mamdani has called for raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for ambitious left-wing policies such as frozen rents, free childcare and free city buses. Wall Street executives have expressed concern about putting a democratic socialist at the helm of the financial capital of the world.
Republicans have already signaled they intend to present Mamdani as the face of the Democratic Party. Trump has incorrectly labeled Mamdani a “communist” and vowed to cut funding for the city in response to Mamdani’s ascension.
In a social media post on Tuesday night, Trump blamed the losses on the fact his name was not on the ballot and on an ongoing federal government shutdown.
Spanberger, who beat Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, will take over from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. New Jersey’s Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli and will succeed Democratic Governor Phil Murphy.
Both Sherrill and Spanberger had sought to tie their opponents to Trump in an effort to harness frustration among Democratic and independent voters over his chaotic tenure.
“We sent a message to the world that in 2025 Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship,” Spanberger said in her victory speech. “We chose our Commonwealth over chaos.”
Trump gave both candidates some late-stage grist during the ongoing government shutdown.
His administration threatened to fire federal workers — a move with an outsized impact on Virginia, a state adjacent to Washington, D.C., and home to many government employees. He froze billions in funding for a new Hudson River train tunnel, a critical project for New Jersey’s large commuter population.
In interviews at Virginia polling stations on Tuesday, some voters said Trump’s most contentious policies were on their minds, including his efforts to deport immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally and to impose costly tariffs on imports of foreign goods, the legality of which is being weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
Juan Benitez, a self-described independent, was voting for the first time. The 25-year-old restaurant manager backed all of Virginia’s Democratic candidates because of his opposition to Trump’s immigration policies and the federal government shutdown, for which he blamed Trump.
For Republicans, Tuesday’s elections served as a test of whether the voters who powered Trump’s victory in 2024 will still show up when he is not on the ballot.
But Ciattarelli and Earle-Sears, both running in Democratic-leaning states, faced a conundrum: criticizing Trump risked losing his supporters, but embracing him too closely could have alienated moderate and independent voters who disapprove of his policies. (JapanToday)
Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at 84.
Cheney died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said Tuesday.
The quietly forceful Cheney led the armed forces as defense secretary during the Persian Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son George W Bush.
Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He often had a commanding hand in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“History will remember him as among the finest public servants of his generation — a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he held,” Bush said.
Years after leaving office, Cheney became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after his daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s attempts to stay in power after his 2020 election defeat and his actions in the Jan 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Cheney said last year he was voting for Democrat Kamala Harris for president against Trump.
For all his conservatism, Cheney was privately and publicly supportive of his daughter Mary Cheney after she came out as gay, years before same-sex marriage was broadly supported. “Freedom means freedom for everyone,” he said.
In his time in office, no longer was the vice presidency merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers and energy.
A hard-liner on Iraq, Cheney was proved wrong about the rationale for the Iraq War, a point he didn’t acknowledge.
He alleged links between the 9/11 attacks and prewar Iraq that didn’t exist. He said U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators; they weren’t.
He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May 2005, when 1,661 U.S. service members had been killed, not even half the toll by the war’s end.
Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain, unspoken but well understood. Shelving ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was accorded extraordinary power.
His penchant for secrecy had a price. He came to be seen as a Machiavelli orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq War. And when he shot a hunting companion with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his coterie were slow to disclose that episode. The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and forgave him.
Bush asked Cheney to lead a search for his vice president, eventually deciding the job should go to Cheney himself. Their election in 2000 was ultimately sealed by the Supreme Court after a protracted legal fight.
On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs where he had once served as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 Republican House leader.
On Sept. 11, 2001, with Bush out of town, the president gave Cheney approval to authorize the military to shoot down hijacked planes. By then, two airliners had hit the World Trade Center and a third was bearing down on the capital. A Secret Service agent burst into the West Wing room, grabbed Cheney by the belt and shoulder and led him to a bunker underneath the White House.
Cheney’s career in Washington started with a congressional fellowship in 1968. He became a protégé of Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill., serving under him in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.
He later returned to Casper, Wyoming, and won the state’s lone congressional seat, the first of six terms.
In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., an oil industry services company.
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but failed out.
He moved back to Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife and daughters. (JapanToday)
A 32-year-old British man was the sole suspect accused of a mass stabbing on a train in England, after another man arrested in the case was released on Sunday with no charges.
British police said the knife attack that put 11 people in hospital was not a terrorist incident. A 35-year-old man who had been arrested earlier was released after officers concluded he was not involved in the attack.
By late on Sunday, five of the injured had been discharged from hospital. Among those still being treated was a member of the train crew who tried to stop the attacker and was in a life-threatening condition, police said.
“Detectives have reviewed the CCTV from the train and it is clear his actions were nothing short of heroic and undoubtedly saved many people’s lives,” police said.
Counterterrorism police had helped with the initial investigation after the mass stabbing of passengers on a train in eastern England on Saturday, but police later said there was nothing to suggest that the incident was terrorism.
Work was now ongoing to establish the events leading up to the attack and the suspect’s background, police said. A knife had also been recovered from the scene.
“Our investigation is moving at pace and we are confident we are not looking for anyone else in connection to the incident,” Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Cundy said in a statement.
Police described the sole suspect as a Black British national from Peterborough, 160 km north of London, who had boarded the train there.
The suspect was arrested by armed police after the train made an emergency stop at Huntingdon around 80 miles north of London.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it an “appalling incident” which was “deeply concerning”, while King Charles said he was “truly appalled and shocked”.
Knife crime in England and Wales has risen 87% over the past decade, with 54,587 offences last year alone, a 2% rise from 2023 and among the highest rates in Europe, according to figures from Britain’s interior ministry.
Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood said she was “deeply saddened”, while urging people to avoid speculation about the incident.
The government is keen to stop rumors spreading on social media following an incident in Southport in northwest England in 2024, when internet claims over the murder of three young girls sparked days of rioting across the country.
Witness Olly Foster told the BBC that he was on the train which was heading towards London on Saturday evening when someone ran past him saying a man was stabbing “everyone, everything”.
“I put my hand on this chair…and then I look at my hand, and it’s covered in blood. And then I look at the chair, and there’s blood all over the chair. And then I look ahead and there’s blood on all the chairs,” he said.
Another witness told Sky News that a suspect was seen waving a large knife before being tasered by police. (JapanToday)
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan was to be inaugurated on Monday, with the internet still blocked after election protests in which the opposition says hundreds were killed by security forces.
The electoral commission says Hassan won 98 per cent of the vote.
But the main opposition party, Chadema, which was barred from competing, has rejected the results and called for fresh elections, calling last Wednesday’s vote a “sham”.
State television said the public would not attend the inauguration, which would be held in the State House in the capital, Dodoma, rather than at a stadium as usual.
A total internet blackout has been in place since protests broke out on election day, so only a trickle of verifiable information has been getting out of the East African country.
A diplomatic source said there were credible reports of hundreds — perhaps even thousands — of deaths registered at hospitals and health clinics around Tanzania.
Chadema told AFP it had recorded “no less than 800” deaths by Saturday, but none of the figures could be independently verified.
The government has not commented on any deaths, except to reject accusations that “excessive force” was used.
Schools and colleges remained closed on Monday, with public transport halted.
The diplomatic source said there were “concerning reports” that police were using the internet blackout to buy time as they “hunt down opposition members and protesters who might have videos” of atrocities committed last week.
Dar es Salaam and other cities were much calmer over the weekend as a near-total lockdown was in place.
An AFP reporter said police were stopping almost everyone who moved around the city, checking IDs and bags, and allowing shops to open only in the afternoon.
AFP journalists on the island of Zanzibar — which has greater political freedom and saw few protests — saw masked armed men patrolling without visible insignia or identification in the days after the election.
A rights group in neighbouring Kenya presented gruesome footage on Sunday that it said was gathered from inside Tanzania, including images of dead bodies piled up in the street.
The images could not be independently verified.
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday called for prayers for Tanzania, where he said post-election violence had erupted “with numerous victims”.
“I urge everyone to avoid all forms of violence and to pursue the path of dialogue,” the pope said.
Hassan was elevated from vice-president on the sudden death of her predecessor, John Magufuli, in 2021.
She wanted an emphatic election victory to cement her place and silence critics within the ruling party, analysts say.
Rights groups say she oversaw a “wave of terror” ahead of the vote, including a string of high-profile abductions that escalated in the final days.
Despite a heavy security presence, election day descended into chaos as crowds took to the streets across the country, tearing down her posters and attacking police and polling stations, leading to an internet shutdown and curfew.
Polling stations had been largely empty before the violence broke out, AFP journalists and observers saw, though the electoral commission later said turnout was 87 per cent.
UN chief Antonio Guterres was “deeply concerned” about the situation in Tanzania, “including reports of deaths and injuries during the demonstrations”, his spokesman said last week. (Punch)
US President Donald Trump has ordered the military to prepare for action in Nigeria to tackle Islamist militant groups, accusing the government of failing to protect Christians.
Trump did not say which killings he was referring to, but claims of a genocide against Nigeria’s Christians have been circulating in recent weeks and months in some right-wing US circles.
Groups monitoring violence say there is no evidence to suggest that Christians are being killed more than Muslims in Nigeria, which is roughly evenly divided between followers of the two religions.
An advisor to Nigeria’s president told the BBC that any military action against the jihadist groups should be carried out together.
Daniel Bwala said Nigeria would welcome US help in tackling the Islamist insurgents but noted that it was a “sovereign” country.
He also said the jihadists were not targeting members of a particular religion and that they had killed people from all faiths, or none.
Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has insisted there is religious tolerance in the country and said the security challenges were affecting people “across faiths and regions”.
Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday that he had instructed the US Department of War to prepare for “possible action”.
He warned that he might send the military into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” unless the Nigerian government intervened, and said that all aid to what he called “the now disgraced country” would be cut.
Trump added: “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth replied to the post by writing: “Yes sir.
“The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”
Trump’s threat has triggered alarm across Nigeria. Many on social media are urging the government to step up its fight against Islamist groups to avert a situation where foreign troops are sent into the country.
But Mr Bwala, who said he was a Christian pastor, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that Trump had a “unique way of communicating” and that Nigeria was not taking his words literally.
“We know the heart and intent of Trump is to help us fight insecurity,” he said, adding that he hoped Trump would meet Tinubu in the coming days to discuss the issue.
Trump earlier announced that he had declared Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” because of the “existential threat” posed to its Christian population. He said “thousands” had been killed, without providing any evidence.
This is a designation used by the US State Department that provides for sanctions against countries “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom”.
Following this announcement, Tinubu said his government was committed to working with the US and the international community to protect communities of all faiths.
“The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality,” the Nigerian leader said in a statement.
Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province have wrought havoc in north-eastern Nigeria for more than a decade, killing thousands of people – however most of these have been Muslims, according to Acled, a group which analyses political violence around the world. (BBC)
Ten people were injured in a stabbing attack on a train that connects London to the north of England on Saturday night, authorities said.
Nine suffered life-threatening injuries while a 10th victim was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, the British Transport Police said in a statement early Sunday.
“There have been no fatalities,” the agency said.
The U.K.-wide Counter Terrorism Policing agency said it is assisting with the investigation being led by transport police.
The British Transport Police said they hope to discover the “full circumstances and motivation” for the attack, which was “declared a major incident.”
“At this early stage it would not be appropriate to speculate on the causes of the incident,” British Transport Police Chief Superintendent Chris Casey said in the statement.
Police and medics rushed to a station in Huntingdon, northwest of Cambridge, where the train was stopped following a report of stabbings at 7:42 p.m. GMT (3:42 p.m. ET), according to transport police and social media video of the aftermath.
The Cambridgeshire Police, which patrols the area, arrested two people at the scene in connection with the incident, authorities said. The suspects were not immediately identified and any allegations against them were not given.
An East of England Ambulance Service spokesperson said it scrambled numerous ambulances, tactical commanders, a hazardous response team, and two helicopters to transport “multiple patients” to the hospital.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the violence “appalling” and “deeply concerning” and said, “My thoughts are with all those affected, and my thanks go to the emergency services for their response.”
The London North Eastern Railway (LNER) issued a “Do Not Travel” alert for the line on Saturday. The train operating company said some lines remained closed Sunday and some services could be canceled or delayed.
LNER Managing Director David Horne said in an update early Sunday that staff was “shocked and saddened” by the attack, and he thanked emergency services for their quick response.
“The safety and wellbeing of everyone affected will remain our priority,” Horne said. “We will continue to do everything we can to support our customers and colleagues during this difficult time.”
The British Transport Police said the train was the 6:25 p.m. GMT (2:25 p.m. ET) service from Doncaster in the north of England to London King’s Cross. Huntingdon is about 77 miles north of London. (NBC)
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