Boston attacks are reminder of violence elsewhere

BAGHDAD (AP) — The blasts that struck the Boston Marathon on Monday were shocking not only for their brazenness and the lives they shattered, but also because attacks like this usually happen in far-off, troubled places — not in the middle of a major American city.

As the chief of emergency services at Massachusetts General Hospital, Alasdair Conn, put it: "This is what we expect from war."

Many who live in countries such as Iraq and Syria where violence remains troublingly common had mixed reactions to the bombings. While they were sorry to hear about the attacks, some expressed dismay that the assaults they face on a regular basis get less attention.

"Nobody cared about the dozens of victims who fell yesterday in Iraq and Syria," said Hazim Khazim, a teacher who lost a cousin in a bombing in Baghdad on Monday, in a reaction typical of many in the region.

Internet cafe owner Hassan Sabeeh in Baghdad was more understanding.

"The Iraqi people can feel, more than anybody else in the world, the misery of the Boston victims and their families," he said. "We sympathize and feel their suffering."

Authorities in the United States are urgently searching for clues into the bombing in Boston that killed three, including 8-year-old Martin Richard. More than 170 people were wounded.

Here is a look at some other countries that have faced violent attacks of their own in recent days:

SYRIA

Syrian warplanes swooped over the quiet town of Saraqeb in the country's north Saturday, dropping bombs on a residential district. The blasts shattered storefronts, set cars ablaze and sent huge plumes of smoke into the sky. Rubble and twisted metal littered the street after the airstrikes, which left 20 dead. Harrowing images like those have become routine for those watching the Syrian civil war unfold. Activists say an average of 120 people get killed daily in violence and clashes across the country.

"In Syria, it's not Boston every day, but many times per day," posted Jean Pierre Duthion, a French expatriate in Damascus who has Tweeted the war.

IRAQ

A bloody assault across Iraq began around an hour after sunrise Monday in the western city of Fallujah when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed car into a police checkpoint. Over the next several hours, attackers would detonate more than 20 sets of explosives, most of them car bombs. By the time it was all over — shortly before the Boston bombs struck — 55 people were dead and well over 200 were wounded. No one has claimed responsibility, but the highly coordinated attack bore the hallmarks of a resurgent al-Qaida in Iraq and appeared aimed at sowing fear days before the first elections since U.S. troops withdrew.

Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraq's prime minister, condemned the Boston attacks and said Iraq "calls on the world to unite and fight terrorism that targets innocents everywhere."

SOMALIA

A well-planned, complex assault involving two car bombs and nine attackers — including six suicide bombers — aimed primarily at Somalia's Supreme Court complex on Sunday killed more than 30 people. The attackers ran through the labyrinthine court complex, where they took court employees and civilians hostage while rescuers used ladders to help people escape from second-story rooms. Officials say al-Shabab militants carried out the assault but, because of its complexity and the sophisticated nature of the bombs, Western officials said it may have been aided by al-Qaida.

In a Facebook message Tuesday, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud wrote of the Boston attack: "America will awake today stronger than ever."

BAHRAIN

In Bahrain, a series of four small explosions occurred in rapid succession late Sunday, including a gas cylinder blast that set a car ablaze in the Gulf nation's financial district. The attacks suggest a rising influence of militant groups in Bahrain's more-than-two-year-old uprising. Majority Shiites seek a greater political voice in the Sunni-ruled kingdom, which also has high strategic value for Washington as the base for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. The blasts came amid a wave of protests seeking to embarrass officials before Sunday's Formula One auto race, the premier international event in the kingdom.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

A mortar shell killed four worshippers when it struck a church in the Central African Republic's capital on Sunday. They were among more than 20 people killed over the weekend amid ongoing violence since rebels took the city of Bangui and ousted the mineral-rich country's president. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, reported widespread and grave violations since the rebel coalition took Bangui on March 24, including targeted killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, recruitment of children, rapes, disappearances and kidnappings.

AFGHANISTAN

Eight members of the same family were killed Monday when a trailer towed by a tractor in which they were riding struck an explosive device in southern Afghanistan. They were among 14 killed across the country on the day the Boston blasts hit. Most roadside bombs planted by the Taliban are meant to target Afghan security forces or coalition troops, but civilians are often the victims. So far, April has been the deadliest month this year for Afghan and foreign civilians and security forces, an ominous sign as the annual fighting season gets underway with improved weather.

PAKISTAN

Pakistan has been hit by a spate of violence related to the country's upcoming election. On Monday, gunmen on a motorcycle killed supporters of an independent candidate running for election in the South Waziristan tribal region while his convoy was on the way to a campaign stop. A bomb Tuesday hit a convoy of vehicles carrying another candidate, killing three people and wounding seven others. Another bomb attack on a security vehicle killed one soldier and wounded four, intelligence officials said.

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Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Afghanistan, Michelle Faul in Johannesburg, Zeina Karam in Beirut, Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Rebecca Santana in Islamabad, Jason Straziuso in Nairobi, Kenya, and Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed reporting.

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Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck

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After violence, Egypt opposition presses Morsi

CAIRO (AP) — After Egypt's worst sectarian violence in months left seven dead the past two days, Egypt's leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei on Monday called on the Islamist president to make serious concessions to bring the opposition into decision-making, saying national reconciliation is the only way out of the country's myriad problems.

The violence, capped by an unprecedented mob attack on the main cathedral of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church, raised new alarm over the escalating turmoil in the country, which has been polarized over the administration of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and Islamists' political power.

The opposition has blamed months of unrest on attempts by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, from which he hails, to monopolize power, accusing them of squeezing out other voices and failing to find consensus on major national issues, such as the controversial, Islamist-backed constitution passed in a December referendum.

Morsi supporters say he has repeatedly invited all parties into dialogue in the past and have accused the opposition of fueling street unrest to undermine the Islamists' election victories, including that of Morsi.

Morsi denounced Sunday's violence at the Cathedral, saying he considered any attack on the cathedral as an attack against him personally. He also ordered an immediate investigation into the violence and spoke with the head of the Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II.

The Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, depicted the attack as a new part of the attempts to create chaos and destabilize Morsi.

On Monday, the party's secretary-general, Hussein Ibrahim, wrote on his Facebook page comments that whoever thinks that "igniting sectarian violence can bring down a ruling regime is mistaken. The fire of sedition if ignited in Egypt, God forbid, will burn all."

He too called for a serious dialogue, not by "staking out positions through satellite TV."

Senior opposition figure ElBaradei said Monday that the opposition is not ready to enter a dialogue with Morsi for show and that it first wants moves to indicate he is serious in seeking to heal rifts by meeting long-held opposition demands.

He said Morsi should appoint a new government, not packed with Islamists but instead based on merits and able to oversee upcoming parliamentary elections independently.

He said the opposition also demands an independent committee write the law governing the election without giving advantage to the Brotherhood, the country's most organized political force.

ElBaradei also said that a court order that annulled a Morsi decree appointing the country's top prosecutor must be respected and a new prosecutor installed to heal rifts in the judiciary and ensure trust in an independent prosecution.

Then, he said, the two sides could hold a dialogue on bigger national issues. "We are waiting for Morsi to understand that without national reconciliation, Egypt will not rise," ElBaradei told a gathering of opposition figures in a conference designed to offer solutions to Egypt's teetering economy.

"The state today is collapsing. It is a collapsing state politically, economically, socially and security-wise," said ElBaradei. "And I don't think we have long to fix this."

Attempts to seek comments from the presidency on ElBaradei's call were not immediately successful.

Despite an earlier round of talks between ElBaradei and members of the Brotherhood's party, the presidency has dismissed demands for appointing a new government and has so far stayed out of the dispute over the prosecutor. An election law is currently being reworked in the Shura Council, Egypt's current legislative body, which is dominated by Islamists.

The Muslim-Christian clashes that claimed the lives of seven since Friday were the country's deadliest sectarian violence since Morsi came to office in June. It began with sectarian violence in Khosoos, a town just north of Cairo, in which four Christians and a Muslim were killed.

Clashes erupted at the cathedral in Cairo — the seat of the Coptic pope — on Sunday during the funeral of the slain Christians.

During the funeral service, mourners chanted against Morsi, calling on him to step down. Witnesses say a street brawl broke out when Coptic activists tried to stop traffic to stage an anti-government march.

A mob, described by witnesses as residents of the area, pelted the Christians with rocks and firebombs and fired birdshot at them, forcing them back into the cathedral complex. The mob outside and the Christians barricaded inside then exchanged rocks and firebombs for hours into the night Sunday.

Many of the Christians denounced what they called a lack of protection for the funeral. When police did arrive in greater numbers, they fired tear gas, and gas canisters landed inside church grounds caused a panic among women and children, while people outside the church cheered. Some firebombs thrown from near the church landed at a nearby gas station, while witnesses said some in the church lobbed firebombs at the crowd outside.

Two people died during these clashes, one identified as a Christian. Police said they have arrested four implicated in the violence, but didn't provide details.

The pope was not in the cathedral at the time of the siege.

It is the second religious institution in Egypt to come under recent attack from civilians, with little police intervention. Last week, students from al-Azhar University stormed the offices of the grand sheik of al-Azhar, head of the country's most eminent Muslim institution, demanding he be held accountable for food poisoning at a dormitory that left hundreds of students hospitalized.

Hamdeen Sabahi, another leading opposition figure who came in third in Egypt's first presidential elections after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, said the attacks on the cathedral and al-Azhar are attempts by some "to spread fear and darkness." He spoke at the same conference as ElBaradei.

The U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell, speaking to reporters in Washington, called for restraint on all sides, welcoming Morsi's promise to investigate the violence.

"We think it's very important for them to expeditiously investigate all acts of violence regardless of the situation in which it came about."

Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's estimated 84 million people. Copts have complained for decades that the Christian minority suffers from discrimination, and recurrent localized violence over issues of building houses of worship or inter-religious love stories that ignite Muslim-Christian tension.

But attacks against Christians have increased since the ouster two years ago of autocrat Mubarak, including more attacks on houses of worships and at times brief evacuations of a whole population of Christians from their villages. Christians have also increasingly worried about their freedom of worship and belief with Islamists increasingly empowered in Egypt's politics.

In a sign of the anger in the community over the siege of the cathedral, considered the symbol of the Coptic Church, a Christian activist group, the Maspero Youth Union, called on Morsi to step down, accusing him of spreading division and failing to run the country.

"Has the contempt for the sanctity of the dead and the contempt for Copts reached this level?" it said in a statement said.

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Egyptian blogger accused of violence released

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian authorities released a prominent Egyptian blogger Tuesday after he refused to cooperate with prosecutors over allegations of instigating violence against the country's most powerful Islamist group in comments posted on social media.

The blogger, Alaa Abdel-Fattah, was freed following his demand that an investigative judge take over his case, according to one of his lawyers, Malek Adly. His attorneys are now awaiting a decision on the request, which amounts to a snub to the prosecutor's office by questioning its independence.

Abdel-Fattah handed himself in to authorities earlier Tuesday, a day after the country's prosecutor general ordered his arrest along with four other activists also accused of inciting violence. The arrest warrants stoked concerns among Egypt's opposition that Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was using the prosecutor's office to go after political opponents.

The allegations against the activists are rooted in clashes between supporters and opponents of Morsi outside the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in east Cairo last week that left 200 people injured in the worst bout of political violence here in months.

Activists say the arrest warrants, which closely followed a televised address by Morsi in which he warned that he would soon take exceptional measures in the face of violence, could herald a wave of arrests of opposition leaders.

Abdel-Fattah and the other activists questioned the independence of the prosecutor general, saying he is beholden to Morsi. The president appointed the prosecutor late last year despite an uproar from the judiciary.

Dressed in a prison jumpsuit to show his readiness to face jail, Abdel-Fattah arrived at the Cairo office of Prosecutor General Talaat Abdullah on Tuesday surrounded by several dozen protesters chanting slogans denouncing Morsi and his group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

From inside the prosecutor's office, the blogger posted messages on Twitter saying that most of the accusations against him were based on comments sent to his account by others, rather than anything he posted himself. He also said on Twitter that he refused to respond to the authorities' questions "because of partiality of the prosecutor general."

However, the prosecutor's office offered a different account. The prosecutor's spokesman posted a message on the office's official Facebook page that said Abdel-Fattah cooperated with officials during the questioning. It said he denied the accusations against him, and that the Twitter or Facebook accounts were his.

Abdel-Fattah and his lawyer dismissed the prosecutor's version of events, and said they will file complaints against them for allegedly forging official documents.

"I said only that I stick to my right to be silent," Abdel-Fattah told The Associated Press. He said his lawyers refused to admit the evidence to the case because they were photocopies of social media websites. "They did no investigative efforts at all."

This is not the first time Abdel-Fattah has butted heads with Egypt's authorities since the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak more than two years ago. He was detained for two months in late 2011 by the then-ruling military over allegations he attacked soldiers carrying out a bloody crackdown on protesters. He was later released without charge.

The Friday clashes outside the Brotherhood's Cairo headquarters were the worst violence between the Brotherhood and its opponents in three months.

The protest was called in response to earlier violence outside the building, in which Brotherhood supporters beat up several activists and attacked reporters. Both sides brought hundreds of supporters to the new demonstration, which devolved into street fighting with knives, fists, stones, sticks, and birdshot. Both sides beat the others followers. Police fired tear gas but did not try to separate the two sides.

Brotherhood officials accuse the protesters of attacking its offices and say its members were defending the building. Protesters, in turn, blame Brotherhood members for sparking the violence, saying they tried to encircle the rally from the back.

At least six anti-Morsi protesters were detained during the violence, and the prosecutors ordered them to be held for 15 days pending investigation.

Brotherhood offices have frequently been ransacked and torched in Egypt's recent turmoil.

The prosecutor's office says it is examining statements and video clips posted on activists' Facebook and Twitter accounts, which allegedly include calls to burn the offices of the Brotherhood and kill Brotherhood members. A wider inquiry will examine the contents of social networking sites in the run-up to Friday's clashes.

Abdel-Fattah and the other activists ordered detained were key figures in the 2011 anti-Mubarak uprising who later led demonstrations against the military generals who took power after Mubarak. Since Morsi took office in June as the country's first democratically elected president, they have protested what they see as the new leader's dictatorial style of rule.

The opposition accuses Morsi of acting like his predecessor, of not living up to his promises to have an inclusive political process and of acting in the Brotherhood's interests rather than in Egypt's national interest.

The Brotherhood, meanwhile, accuses the opposition of having no grassroots support, and says the president should be challenged through the ballot box, not street protests.

Meanwhile, Egypt's interim parliament, the Shura Council, said it is working on drafting a law to regulate protests. The law would give the authorities the right to deny permission to demonstrations that harm "citizens' interests," including by blocking traffic.

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Myanmar riots stoke fears of widening sectarian violence

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar has reduced neighborhoods to ashes and stoked fears that last year's sectarian bloodshed is spreading into the country's heartland in a test of Asia's newest democracy.

Buildings in Meikhtila were still burning early on Friday and agitated Buddhist crowds roamed the otherwise near-deserted streets after three days of turbulence, said Reuters reporters in the city 540 km (336 miles) north of the commercial capital Yangon.

Five people, including a Buddhist monk, have been killed and dozens wounded since Wednesday, state media reported. Other authorities put the death toll at 10 or higher.

The unleashing of ethnic hatred, suppressed during 49 years of military rule that ended in March 2011, is challenging the reformist government of one of Asia's most ethnically diverse countries.

Jailed dissidents have been released, a free election held and censorship lifted in Myanmar's historic democratic transition. But the government has faced mounting criticism over its failure to stop the bloodshed between Buddhists and Muslims.

"I am really sad over what happened here because this is not just happening to one person. It's affecting all of us," said Maung Maung, a Buddhist ward leader in Meikhtila.

Hundreds of Muslims have fled their homes to shelter at a sports stadium, said local officials. The unrest is a bloody reprise of last year's violence in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, which officially killed 110 people and left 120,000 people homeless, most of them stateless Rohingya Muslims.

BURNING MOSQUE, ARMED RESIDENTS

Locals complained there were too few police in this city of about 180,000 people to subdue the unrest. It erupted after an argument between a Buddhist couple and the Muslim owners of a gold shop spiraled into a riot involving hundreds of people, said police.

Reuters saw some Meikhtila residents arming themselves with knives and sticks in an eerie echo of the Rakhine violence in 2012, when pitched battles between the two communities later morphed into orchestrated attacks on Muslim communities by organized gangs of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

The United Nations warned the sectarian unrest could endanger a fragile reform program launched after Myanmar's quasi-civilian government replaced a decades-old military dictatorship in 2011.

"Religious leaders and other community leaders must also publicly call on their followers to abjure violence, respect the law and promote peace," Vijay Nambiar, U.N. special adviser of the secretary-general, said in a statement.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, but about 5 percent of its 60 million people are Muslims. There are large and long-established communities in Yangon and Mandalay, Myanmar's two largest cities, where tensions are simmering.

"Everyone is in shock here. We never expected this to happen," said a Muslim teacher in Mandalay, requesting anonymity.

Rumors that violent agitators were heading for the city had set its Muslim community on edge, he said. Buddhist monks known for their anti-Islamic views last year staged several street protests in Mandalay.

In Meikhtila, at least one mosque, an Islamic religious school, several shops and a government office were set alight, said a fire service official, who declined to be named. Reuters saw both Buddhist and Muslim homes burned.

Sectarian unrest is common in central Myanmar, although reports were stifled under the military dictatorship.

Three people died in Sinbyukyun in 2006 when Buddhists attacked homes and shops belonging to Muslims and ethnic Indians, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable.

"The incident reveals underlying tense inter-ethnic relations in the heartland," said the cable, which also referenced similar communal riots in Kyaukse, a town near Meikhtila, in 2003.

(Writing by Andrew R.C. Marshall; Editing by Jason Szep)

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