Terrorism

Suicide Watch

One hundred and seventy people died this weekend in two separate terror attacks by Islamist militants – one in Pakistan, where over a hundred people died when a market place was bombed, and another in Uganda, where a restaurant bomb killed more than 60 people.

The Chinese online newspaper, Xinhua, has a depressing summaryof these and other bomb attacks this year. According to their summary, approximately 700 people have died in these bomb attacks – many by suicide bombers – since the start of the year. Thousands more have been injured. All these bomb attacks have been by Islamist militants, except one when 45 people were killed by India’s extreme left-wing Naxal rebels.

The vast majority of the dead and injured have been Muslims.

In addition to the attacks catalogued by Xanhui, last week in Iraq alone, almost 100 people died in a string of attacks on Shia pilgrims, according to the BBC.

The attack on Uganda is thought to be the work of Somalian militants in response to  “the presence of Ugandan peacekeepers in Mogadishu to protect the fragile government against Islamic insurgents,” says the BBC.

All over the world, Islamist groups are blowing  people up (most frequently Muslims of the ‘wrong’ type) in pursuit of their aims. To think they are not hard at work in this country is a dangerous delusion.