Gunmen fatally shot at least seven people working on a strategic tunnel project in Indian-controlled Kashmir and injured at least five others, officials said on Monday. Police blamed militants who have been fighting against Indian rule for decades for the “terror attack” at a camp for construction workers near the disputed region’s resort town of Sonamarg. No rebel group immediately claimed responsibility. Kashmir gets largely powerless government after 5 years Police said at least two gunmen fired “indiscriminately” at officials and workers associated with the construction, leaving two dead on the spot. At least 10 others were taken to hospital, where five more died. The attack came shortly after workers returned to their lodgings on Sunday night. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the attack. The dead included five non-local laborers and officials, one Kashmiri worker and a Kashmiri doctor. Reinforcements of police and soldiers launched search operations in the area to nab the attackers. Omar Abdullah, the region's top elected official, condemned the attack in a post on social media platform X, calling it “dastardly & cowardly.” A key Kashmiri resistance leader said he was “deeply saddened by the outrageous killings.” “Another grim reminder of the unending cycle of violence and uncertainty we are suffering for decades,” Mirwaiz Umar Farooq wrote on X. Hundreds of people, mostly non-local laborers, are working on the ambitious tunnel project that aims to connect the Kashmir Valley with Ladakh, a cold desert region that is isolated for half the year because of massive snowfalls. Experts say the tunnel project is important to the military, which will gain significantly improved capabilities to operate in Ladakh. The strategically important region shares de facto borders with Pakistan and China, and Indian and Chinese soldiers have been engaged in a military standoff there since 2020. Both countries have stationed tens of thousands of soldiers there, backed by artillery, tanks and fighter jets. Sunday’s attack was the second attack on a non-local worker in the region since a largely powerless local government was sworn into office Wednesday, following the first local elections since India stripped the region of semi-autonomy five years ago. On Friday, body of a worker from eastern Bihar state, riddled with bullet wounds, was recovered from a maize field in southern Shopian district, police said. They blamed militants for the killing. Kashmir has witnessed a spate of killings, many targeting workers from other parts of India, since 2021. Police say the killings, which have also included local Muslim village councilors, police officials and civilians, have been carried out by anti-India rebels. India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety. The nuclear-armed rivals have fought two of their three wars over the territory since they gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. India insists that Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

Myanmar’s military government has denied reports of a new mass killing of civilians by its troops, instead blaming pro-democracy resistance groups for the deaths of more than 20 people, including three Buddhist monks and a woman. Members of armed resistance groups opposed to the military government have said the bodies of 22 people were found late Saturday in the compound of the Buddhist monastery in Nam Nein village, in the southern part of Shan State in eastern Myanmar. They blamed the army for the deaths. No independent witnesses have emerged. The military government's tight restrictions on travel and information make it virtually impossible to verify details of such incidents. Also Read: Social media companies must stand up to Myanmar junta's online terror campaign: UN experts The village is about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of the capital, Naypyitaw. The area is part of the Self-Administered Zone of the Pa-O ethnic minority. It is governed by the Pa-O National Organization, or PNO, which is allied with the military government. Other Pa-O support the resistance. Reports of the killings came about a week after accusations that troops earlier this month rampaged through several villages in western Myanmar, carrying out rapes and beheadings and killing at least 17 people. Critics of the military say there is strong evidence that the army has repeatedly carried out war crimes since seizing power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. Opposition to military rule has turned into what some U.N. experts have described as a civil war. Earlier this month, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk accused the ruling generals of implementing “a scorched earth policy in an attempt to stamp out opposition.” Anti-government resistance groups and villagers who had fled Nam Nein earlier but kept in touch by phone with the monastery said about 30 people had been sheltering in its main building since fighting in the area escalated last month. Exactly what happened Saturday morning is unclear, but the aftermath was documented in photos and video. Those released on social media by the anti-government Karenni Nationalities Defense Force showed monks and other men with apparent bullet wounds lying near and against the wall of the monastery’s main building. They also show pools of blood and bullet holes dotting the wall. The Pa-O area is next to Kayah State, where the Karenni, an ethnic minority fighting against the government, are dominant. A local leader of the Karenni guerrillas who took the photos said that his group’s snipers in the surrounding area had used their rifle scopes to watch about 100 soldiers firing their guns and torching houses as they entered the village Saturday morning. He said the snipers were unable to watch more, because they had to withdraw when coming under fire from government aircraft. The Karenni guerrilla, who asked not to be identified because of fear of reprisals by the military, acknowledged that his forces had not witnessed the killings, but had only seen the bodies when they entered the village late Saturday and took photos. He strongly denied the resistance forces had been responsible for the killings, as had been alleged by the army and its supporters. Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, a spokesperson for Myanmar’s ruling military council, said the violence was initiated by the resistance forces who ambushed army troops and members of an associated militia force, and then entered the village where fighting continued. He described the resistance forces, the Karenni National Progressive Party — an ethnic minority militia battling the army — and their allies in the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force and People’s Defense Force, as “terrorist groups” that had been posing threats to the area since early this month. The Karenni have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy. The People’s Defense Forces were formed by the pro-democracy movement after the 2021 military takeover, and are allied with groups such as the Karenni. “When (the) terrorist groups violently opened fire, it was seen that some villagers were killed and injured,” the military's spokesperson said in an interview published Tuesday in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper. Zaw Min Tun said that the army had only counterattacked against the three resistance groups, and reports that soldiers were responsible for killing villagers were misinformation. A 45-year-old Nam Nain resident who left the village in late February because of fighting told The Associated Press that he had been in daily touch by phone with the monastery’s presiding monk, who refused his entreaties to leave. “The monk called me at 8 a.m. on Saturday. He said ‘They are entering into the village. I can hear the sounds of gunshots and artillery,’ and he suddenly hung up the phone,” said the villager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared being punished by the authorities, “He couldn’t say which groups entered. So it is not clear who killed the people,” the villager said Monday. He added that the monk, who was his nephew, and two of his brothers-in-law, were among those killed. A village elder who also left Nam Nein in late February told AP that all those killed in the monastery compound were civilians who had stayed to help look after the monks. “More than 20 people who were killed in the monastery were just our villagers. They are not the PDF members, not soldiers and members of PNO,” said the villager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared being punished by both the authorities and local pro-democracy forces. He said he also was told over the phone by the presiding monk about troops entering the village on Saturday morning, but didn't know if they were from the army or the guerrillas. Manny Maung, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, speculated that the village's relative proximity to the country's capital might have caused the military to act to deter guerrilla activity in the area. “It’s impossible for independent verifiers or independent researchers to go in. But it has the classic hallmarks of military atrocities," she said. “I think that if we don’t get the opportunity to go in now, we’re likely never to know who the actual perpetrators were.”

After seven Hindus were killed in early January in two back-to-back attacks in Dhangri village in disputed Kashmir, former Indian army soldier Satish Kumar described his sleepy mountainous village as an “abode of fear.” Days after the deadly violence in the village in frontier Rajouri district, where homes are separated by maize and mustard fields, hundreds of residents staged angry protests across the Hindu-dominated Jammu region. In response, Indian authorities revived a government-sponsored militia and began rearming and training thousands of villagers, including some teenagers. Kumar was among the first people to join the militia under the new drive and authorities armed him with a semiautomatic rifle and 100 bullets. “I feel like a soldier again,” said the 40-year-old Kumar, who runs a grocery store since his retirement from the Indian military in 2018. The militia, officially called the “Village Defense Group,” was initially formed in the 1990s as the first line of defense against anti-India insurgents in remote Himalayan villages that government forces could not reach quickly. Also Read: 2 kids among 6 people die in Kashmir village attack: Police As the insurgency waned in their operational areas and as some militia members gained notoriety for brutality and rights violations, drawing severe criticism from human rights groups, the militia was largely disbanded. But the January violence stirred unpleasant memories of past attacks in Rajouri, which is near the highly militarized Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan and where combat between Indian soldiers and rebels is not uncommon. Brandishing his weapon inside his single-story concrete home on an overcast February day, Kumar justified his decision to join the militia as the “only way to combat fear and protect (my) family from terrorists.” “I am a trained person and have fought against terrorists. But what is the use of (military) training if you do not have a weapon,” Kumar said. “Believe me, I felt almost incapacitated due to fear.” On January 1, two gunmen killed four villagers, including a father and his son, and wounded at least five others. The next day, a blast outside one of the houses killed two children and injured at least 10 others. It is still unclear whether the explosive was left behind by the attackers. A week later, one of the injured died at a hospital, raising the overall death toll to seven. “There was carnage in our village and Hindus were under attack,” Kumar said. Also Read: Indian police say 4 suspected rebels killed in Kashmir The police blamed militants fighting against Indian rule for decades in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory claimed by India and Pakistan in its entirety. But two months later, they are yet to announce a breakthrough or name any suspects, exacerbating fear and anger among residents in the village of about 5,000 where Hindus represent about 70% and the rest are Muslims. The policy to rearm civilians comes after India stripped Kashmir of its semiautonomy and took direct control of the territory amid a months-long security and communications lockdown in 2019. Kashmir has since remained on edge as authorities also put in place a slew of new laws that critics and many Kashmiris fear could change the region’s demographics. In New Delhi’s effort to shape what it calls “Naya Kashmir,” or a “new Kashmir,” the territory’s people have been largely silenced, with their civil liberties curbed, as India has shown no tolerance for any form of dissent. So when the Dhangri violence occurred, the Indian government was swift to rearm the civilian militia even though it had announced its reconstitution in August last year. Officials said they have since armed and provided weapons training to over 100 other Hindu men in Dhangri, while also lifting the ban on gun licenses in the already militarized Rajouri. The village already had over 70 former militiamen, some of whom still possess the colonial British-era Lee–Enfield rifles allotted to them over a decade ago. For the first time, the militia has also been financially incentivized by the government, which said each member would be paid 4,000 Indian rupees ($48) a month. Still, the decision to revitalize the Village Defense Group is not without controversy. Some security and political experts argue that the policy could weaponize divisions in Jammu’s volatile hinterland where communal strife has historically existed. In the past, more than 200 police cases, including charges of rape, murder and rioting, were registered against some of the tens of thousands of militiamen in Jammu region, according to government data. “Small arms proliferation is dangerous for any society and when a state does it, it’s a tacit admission of failure to secure a society,” said Zafar Choudhary, a political analyst. India has a long history of arming civilians in its counterinsurgency efforts and civilian militiamen were first used to fight separatists in India’s northeastern states. In 2005, India’s federal government founded a local militia, the Salwa Judum, to combat Maoist rebels in the central Chhattisgarh state. It was accused by rights groups of committing widespread atrocities and was disbanded in 2011. In Kashmir, the civil defense groups were armed almost six years after the deadly insurgency against Indian rule began. S.P. Vaid was a young officer in 1995 when he supervised the creation of the militia’s first unit after two Hindu men were killed in a militant attack in a remote hilly village in Jammu region. Vaid, who recently retired as Indian-controlled Kashmir’s top police officer, said hours after his team reached the village the locals demanded arms for their protection. “I had no government brief on that, but I immediately sought permission from headquarters to provide the villagers with 10 guns,” he said. “That’s how it started.” The Indian government formally rolled out a policy to arm villagers a few months later. Security officials argue that arming civilians deterred militant activity and helped stop the out-migration of Hindus from remote areas, unlike in the Kashmir valley where a year after armed rebellion broke out most local Hindus fled to Jammu amid militant threats and the killings of local community leaders. Kuldeep Khoda, another former top police officer in the region credited for implementing the policy, said the results “surprised us." “It was an experiment but it worked,” Khoda said at his home in Jammu city. For its work on civil defense groups, the region’s police were given an award by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, an influential U.S.-based police group, Khoda said. The militia, he said, “played a pivotal role in defeating Pakistani designs to instigate communal tensions.” But Choudhary, the political analyst, said “civilians are not armed in a functional democracy.” The sharpening divisions already appear stark in Dhangri. Muslim residents in the village say fear and grief bind them together with their Hindu neighbors, yet their request to join the militia has been refused. Mohammed Mushtaq is a former paramilitary soldier who lives near the house where gunmen first fired on January 1. “We have lived together for generations and have a similar social system. But fingers have been pointed at us,” he said. Mushtaq and two other Muslim neighbors, also former soldiers, asked the authorities for weapons under the policy but were refused, he said. As Mushtaq spoke sitting outside his home, the sounds of religious hymns and devotional songs floated from the loudspeakers of a Hindu temple on top of a hill. The chants were interspersed with the chirping of birds and occasional whistles from pressure cookers in some village kitchens. Moments later, a muezzin called Muslims to early afternoon prayers. Kumar, the former soldier and militia member, said the decision not to induct his Muslim neighbors in the militia was “arbitrary” as “we still do not know who carried out the massacre” in Dhangri. Meanwhile, hundreds of old militia members in Rajouri’s remote hamlets are oiling their weapons again. “We had locked up our guns and thought we would never need them,” said 38-year-old Usha Raina, who has been a militia member since 2015 along with over two dozen other villagers in the neighboring hamlet of Kalal Khas. “The incident (in Dhangri) has scared us all and the guns are back in our living rooms,” she said.

Eight people including five children were found dead from gunshot wounds in a southern Utah home Wednesday, according to authorities who did not provide more details or a potential motive for the killings. The victims were found when police did a welfare check at the residence, according to a statement by city officials in Enoch, a city of about 8,000 people located 245 miles (394 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City. Read more: 3 dead in Paris shooting; suspect arrested Police said they did not detect any threat to the public. Iron County School District officials said in a letter sent to parents that the five children attended schools in the district. Enoch City Manager Rob Dotson said the community was sent reeling by news of the eight bodies and that the deceased — all members of one family — were well known in the southern Utah town. “Many of us have served with them in church, in the community and gone to school with these individuals,” Dotson said in a video statement Wednesday night. “This community at this time is hurting. They’re feeling loss, they’re feeling pain and they have a lot of questions,” Dotson added, noting that officials planned on releasing more information as it becomes available and the police investigation progresses. Read more: 5 dead and suspect killed in Toronto area condo shooting Welfare checks based on calls to the police department like the one that led them to the residence where the bodies were found are routine when individuals are not seen for extended periods of time, Dotson said. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox offered condolences in a tweet Wednesday night.

A fear of attacks that had rippled through Muslim communities nationwide after the fatal shootings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque gave way to shock and sadness when it turned out the suspect in the killings is one of their own.  Muhammad Syed, 51, was arrested late Monday after a traffic stop more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from his Albuquerque home. The Afghan immigrant denied any connection to the crimes that shook the city and its small Muslim community. In court documents, in fact, he told police that he was so unnerved by the slayings that he was driving to Houston to find a new home for his family, which includes six children. But investigators said they have ample evidence to prove his guilt, though they have yet to uncover the motive for the ambush-style killings, the first of which was in November and then three between July 26 and last Friday. According to the criminal complaint, police determined that bullet casings found in Syed’s vehicle matched the caliber of the weapons believed to have been used in two of the killings and that casings found at the crime scenes were linked to guns found at Syed’s home and in his vehicle. Read: 4 dead after sheriff’s office helicopter crash in New Mexico Of the more than 200 tips police received, it was one from the Muslim community that led them to the Syed family, authorities said, noting that Syed knew the victims and “an interpersonal conflict may have led to the shootings.” The news of Syed’s arrest stunned Muslims in Albuquerque. “I wanted a little closure for the community, as we saw it going out of hand and people were really panicking. But, I’ll be honest with you, I was shocked,” said Samia Assed, a community organizer and member of the Islamic Center of New Mexico. She said she did not want “these heinous crimes to be in any way, in any capacity used to divide a community.” Salim Ansari, president of the Afghan Society of New Mexico, said he felt relief at the news that an arrest had been made. But he was especially taken back because he knew Syed through social gatherings and was dumbfounded to learn the accusations against him and that court documents showed three domestic violence cases against the man.  “We never knew,” he said. Ansari said he first met Syed and the family when he was invited into their home in 2020 to tell them about the local Afghan community and the group that he heads. The couple ended up joining the society as members. As recently as last month, Syed and his family brought food and joined a potluck gathering, Ansari said. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. On Wednesday, Syed made his first court appearance during a virtual arraignment. He was shackled and in a jumpsuit that said “HIGH RISK” on the back. His case was transferred to state District Court, where a judge will consider a motion by prosecutors to keep him detained without bond pending trial. “He is a very dangerous person, and the only way to protect the community is to hold the defendant in custody,” prosecutors said in court documents. Syed, through an interpreter, asked for permission to speak, but his attorney asked that the court not take any statements from him. He was not asked to enter a plea. Syed has lived in the United States for about five years. When interviewed by detectives, Syed said he had been with the special forces in Afghanistan and fought against the Taliban, according to a criminal complaint filed late Tuesday. Police said they were about to search Syed’s Albuquerque home on Monday when they saw him drive away in a Volkswagen Jetta that investigators believe was used in at least one of the slayings. In the complaint, authorities said a 9mm handgun was seized from his vehicle, and they found an AK-47-style rifle and a pistol of the same caliber at the family home while serving a search warrant. Syed bought the rifle and his son Shaheen Syed purchased the pistol at a local gun shop. On Wednesday, Shaheen Syed was charged by federal prosecutors with providing a false Florida address when he bought two rifles last year. He has denied any role in the killings and has not been charged in connection with them. He and another brother were interviewed by police on Monday. The first of the four people fatally shot was Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, an immigrant from from Afghanistan. Naeem Hussain, a 25-year-old man from Pakistan, was killed last Friday. His death came just days after those of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, and Aftab Hussein, 41, who were also from Pakistan and members of the same mosque. Ehsan Chahalmi, the brother-in-law of Naeem Hussain, said he was “a generous, kind, giving, forgiving and loving soul that has been taken away from us forever.” Investigators consider Syed to be the primary suspect in the deaths of Naeem Hussain and Ahmadi but have not yet filed charges in those cases. Albuquerque police said Wednesday that as long as the suspect is detained, homicide detectives will not rush the case. Police say they are looking at a number of possible motives. When asked at a news conference Tuesday if Muhammad Syed, a Sunni Muslim, was angry that his daughter married a Shiite Muslim, Deputy Police Cmdr. Kyle Hartsock did not respond directly. He said “motives are still being explored fully to understand what they are.” CNN interviewed Syed’s daughter shortly before the announcement of his arrest. She said her husband was friends with two of the men who were killed. She also acknowledged her father initially was upset about her 2018 marriage but recently had been more accepting. “My father is not a person who can kill somebody,” the woman told CNN, which did not disclose her identity to protect her safety. “My father has always talked about peace. That’s why we are here in the United States. We came from Afghanistan, from fighting, from shooting.” In 2017, a boyfriend of Syed’s daughter reported to police that Syed, his wife and one of their sons had pulled him out of a car, punching and kicking him before driving away, according to court documents. The boyfriend, who was found with a bloody nose, scratches and bruises, told police that he was attacked because they did not want her in a relationship with him. Syed was arrested in May 2018 after a fight with his wife turned violent, court documents said. Prosecutors said both cases were later dismissed after the victims declined to press charges. Syed also was arrested in 2020 after he was accused of refusing to pull over for police after running a traffic light, but that case was eventually dismissed, court documents said. Former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole said the crimes Syed is suspected of carrying out fit the definition of a serial killer even though Albuquerque police have not classified him as such. She said serial killers often have red flags like domestic violence or sexual assaults in their past that precede the killings. “People don’t wake up one morning and just become a serial killer,” she said. “We would go back and we would look at other crimes that were occurring in the area before the serial murders occurred. Because there’s periods of time where they have to practice being violent. And that practice can begin at home.” O’Toole said motives for the four killings may have varied from victim to victim. O’Toole said she would want to know what prompted three killings in quick succession eight months after the first. “This behavior that we’re seeing in this case is cold-blooded, pre-meditated, and it involves hunting behavior – actually hunting human beings – which is probably as cold as it can get,” she said.

A 25-year-old woman and her five-year-old daughter were found dead in the city's Deshipara area on Wednesday night. The identities of the deceased could not be known immediately. After being alerted by local residents, a police team rushed to the spot and took the bodies into custody around 10 pm, said Ripon Chandra, assistant commissioner of police (sadar zone). READ: 2 killed in Dhaka road accidents Police suspect the assailants slit the throats of the mother-daughter duo with sharp weapons. “A probe is on to ascertain the reason behind the killings,” said Ripon. Also read: 3 female students drowns in Turag, another missing The bodies were sent to the morgue of Shaheed Tajuddin Ahmed Medical College and Hospital for post-mortem.

Dhaka, Apr 24 (UNB) - The 8th anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, the worst-ever tragedy in the country’s multi-billion-dollar ready-made garment (RMG) industry, is being observed on Saturday amid the coronavirus pandemic. This year, there will be no outdoor programmes to recall the victims due to the outbreak of coronavirus. Read Why Rana Plaza owner’s bail shouldn’t be stayed, asks HC Different right bodies, worker organisations and left-leaning political parties, including Rana Plaza Survivors’ Association, usually arrange various programmes every year, remembering the tragedy. On April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza, an illegally-constructed building in Savar which housed five garment factories, came down crashing, killing 1,138 people and injuring over 2,000 others. According to the survey conducted by ActionAid Bangladesh, the physical health condition of 14 percent of survivors is getting worse. Also read: 57pc Rana Plaza survivors remain unemployed: Survey Among them, 58.5 percent are more or less stable, and 27.5 percent are completely stable. Most of the 14 percent survivors reported that they are still bearing a headache, pain in hand and leg and back pain. In terms of psychosocial health, 12.5 percent are still in trauma in comparison to 10.5 percent survivors last year. Currently, 62 percent reported that they are more or less stable, and 25.5 percent have recovered fully compared to 21 percent last year. A total of 4.5 percent more survivors have improved their mental health than last year. Also read: HC issues rule on why Rana Plaza owner should not get bail These findings were disclosed in a virtual dialogue titled ‘COVID-19: Challenges for the Rana Plaza Tragedy Survivors’ on April 22 organised by ActionAid Bangladesh in memory of the 8th year of Rana Plaza tragedy. The survey was conducted among 200 survivors of the Rana Plaza collapse.