World in brief: Mumbai suspects’ names on list
Indian police Tuesday made public what they claimed were the names and hometowns in Pakistan of the suspects who terrorized Mumbai, stepping up the pressure on Islamabad to intensify a crackdown on Muslim militants.
In Washington, a senior State Department official said that a series of Pakistani raids on bases of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Islamic militant group that’s accused of mounting the Mumbai attacks, were the start of a “credible effort” by Pakistan’s fragile civilian government to crack down on those responsible for the Mumbai assault that left more than 170 people dead.
Mumbai police said nine of the 10 Mumbai attackers were from Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, which borders India, and the leader was from North West Frontier Province, close to the Afghan border. The men were all said to be in their 20s. Some of the names were aliases.
A 10th gunman, Ajmal Ameer Kasab, was captured alive, and McClatchy Newspapers established Saturday that he comes from Faridkot, a village in Punjab.
Jerusalem
Likud Party offers hard-line slate
Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu suffered a blow to his efforts to present a moderate face for his Likud Party after members elected a hard-line slate of candidates at the expense of more moderate names that the former prime minister had championed.
The primary results, which were announced Tuesday, set up an even starker-than-expected choice for Israeli voters in national elections scheduled for Feb 10.
Most polls show Likud leading the centrist Kadima Party, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. But Tuesday’s results could bolster Kadima’s claims that a Likud victory would doom any hope for negotiating peace with the Palestinians.
“This really opens the door for Kadima,” said Gideon Rahat, a political science professor at Hebrew University.
Athens, Greece
Unrest continues in Greek cities
Masked youths and looters marauded through Greek cities for a fourth night Tuesday, in an explosion of rage triggered by the police shooting of a teenager that has unleashed the most violent riots in a quarter century.
The nightly scenes of burning street barricades, looted stores and overturned cars have threatened to topple the country’s increasingly unpopular conservative government.
Police fired tear gas at protesters following the funeral of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, who was laid to rest in an Athens burial attended by about 6,000 people.
Violence calmed before dawn today, but police were braced for more trouble later in the day when labor unions planned rallies during a nationwide strike.