Bomb rips through Pakistan market, killing 65

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A bomb hidden in a water tank ripped through a crowded vegetable market in a mostly Shiite neighborhood in a southwestern Pakistani city Saturday, killing at least 65 people and wounding nearly 200, officials said.

Police said many of those wounded in the explosion in Quettaremain in critical condition. The blast, which police said targeted the country's minority Shiite Muslim sect, left many victims buried under rubble, but authorities did not know how many.

It was the deadliest incident since bombings targeting Shiites in the same city killed 86 people earlier this year, leading to days of protests that eventually toppled the local government.

Shiites have been increasingly attacked by militant groups who view them as heretics and non-Muslims in this Sunni Muslimdominated country. Many of the Shiites in Quetta, including those in the neighborhood attacked Saturday, are Hazaras, an ethnic group that migrated to Pakistan from Afghanistan more than a century ago.

Quetta police chief Zubair Mahmood told reporters that the bomb was hidden in a water tank and towed into the market by a tractor. He said the blast destroyed shops in the neighborhood and caused a two-story building to collapse.

"We fear some victims may be found buried there," he said.

Mahmood said police did not yet know who was behind the bombing but a local television station reported that Lashker-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni extremist group that has targeted Shiites in the past, had called to claim responsibility.

Senior police officer Wazir Khan Nasir said the bomb, set off in a residential suburb, was detonated by remote control.

Another officer, Samiullah Khan, said the bomb was detonated while dozens of women and children were buying produce for their evening meal. Local residents rushed the victims to three different area hospitals, often in private vehicles because there weren't enough ambulances to transport the victims.

A massive plume of white smoke rose over the area after the bomb blast. Television footage of the scene showed the streets littered with rubble from destroyed buildings, mixed with fruits and vegetables and shattered street carts.

Near one of the hospitals where the dead and wounded were taken, a man stood weeping as people were being taken in on stretchers.

"Look at our misery! We are helpless," he said.

Members of the minority Shiite sect took to the city's streets in angry protest, blocking roads with burning tires and throwing stones at passing vehicles.

Many also started firing into the air in an attempt to keep people away from the area in case there was a secondary explosion. Sometimes insurgents stagger the explosions as a way to target people who rush to the scene to help and thus increase the death toll.

Police cordoned off the area. Most of the Shiites in the area are Hazaras, and they were quick to blame Lashker-e-Jhangvi.

"This evil force is operating with the patronage of certain elements in the province," said Qayum Changezi, the chairman of a local Hazara organization.

Saturday's attack was the worst since a series of bombings on Jan. 10 killed 86 people in Quetta, almost all Hazara Shiites. Residents were so furious that they refused to bury their dead for days, instead camping out on the streets with the bodies in coffins in protest and demanding the government address the problem.

After days of protests, Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf flew to the city to meet with protesters and sacked the chief minister and his cabinet. But Saturday's attack showed the still potent power of the militant groups behind such incidents.

Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan province, where the Shiite minority has been attacked several times in recent months. Baluch nationalist groups are fighting an insurgency there to try to gain a greater share of income from the province's gas and mineral resources. Islamic militants are also active in the province.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi took their name after a firebrand Sunni cleric who gave virulently anti-Shiite sermons.

Pakistan's intelligence agencies helped nurture Sunni militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in the 1980s and 1990s to counter a perceived threat from neighboring Iran, which is mostly Shiite. Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in 2001, but the group continues to operate fairly freely.

Last year was particularly deadly for Shiites in Pakistan. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 400 were killed in targeted attacks across the country. The human rights group said over 125 were killed in Baluchistan province, most of whom belonged to the Hazara community.

Rights groups have accused the government of not doing enough to protect Shiites in the country.

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Russia cleans up after meteor blast injures more than 1,000

CHELYABINSK, Russia (Reuters) - Thousands of Russian emergency workers went out on Saturday to clear up the damage from a meteor that exploded over the Ural mountains, damaging buildings, shattering windows and showering people with broken glass.

Divers searched a lake near the city of Chelyabinsk, where a hole several feet wide had opened in the ice, but had so far failed to find any large fragments, officials said.

The scarcity of evidence on the ground fuelled scores of conspiracy theories over what caused the fireball and its huge shockwave on Friday in the area which plays host to many defense industry plants.

Nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky told reporters in Moscow it could have been "war-mongers" in the United States. "It's not meteors falling. It's a new weapon being tested by the Americans," he said.

A priest from near the explosion site called it an act of God. Social media sites were flooded with speculation about what might have caused the explosion, if not a meteorite.

"Honestly, I would be more inclined to believe that this was some military thing," said Oksana Trufanova, a local human rights activist.

Asked about the speculation, an official at the local branch of Russia's Emergencies Ministry simply replied: "Rubbish".

Residents of Chelyabinsk, an industrial city 1,500 km (950 miles) east of Moscow, heard an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a shockwave that blew out windows and damaged the wall and roof of a zinc plant.

A fireball traveling at a speed of 30 km (19 miles) per second according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail visible as far as 200 km (125 miles) away.

NASA estimated the meteor was 55 feet across before entering Earth's atmosphere and weighed about 10,000 tons.

It exploded miles above Earth, releasing nearly 500 kilotons of energy - about 30 times the size of the nuclear bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two, NASA added.

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."

DIVERS SEARCH LAKE

Search teams said they had found small objects up to about 1 cm (half-an-inch) wide that might be fragments of a meteorite, but no larger pieces.

The Chelyabinsk regional governor said the strike caused about 1 billion roubles ($33 million) worth of damage.

Life in the city had largely returned to normal by Saturday although 50 people were still in hospital. Officials said more than 1,200 people were injured, mostly by flying glass.

Repair work had to be done quickly because of the freezing temperatures, which sank close to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) at night.

Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov inspected the damage after President Vladimir Putin sent him to the region.

His ministry is under pressure to clean up fast following criticism over the failure to issue warnings in time before fatal flooding in southern Russia last summer and over its handling of forest fires in 2010.

Putin will also want to avoid a repeat of the criticism that he faced over his slow reaction to incidents early in his first term as president, such as the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000 which killed all 118 people on board.

($1 = 30.1365 Russian roubles)

(Additional reporting by Katya Golubkova, Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Iranian leader: Iran not seeking nuclear weapons

In this photo released by an official website of the Iranian supreme leader's office, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, waves to the crowd at the conclusion of his speech in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013. Iran's Supreme Leader said Saturday that his country is not seeking nuclear weapons, but that no world power could stop Tehran's access to an atomic bomb if it intended to build one. (AP Photo/Office of the Supreme Leader)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's Supreme Leader said Saturday that his country was not seeking nuclear weapons, but that if Tehranintended to build them, the U.S. couldn't stop it.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, also rejected direct talks with the U.S. over its nuclear program despite the pressure of sanctions.

"We believe nuclear weapons must be abolished and we have no intention of building" such weaponry, Khamenei said in remarks posted on his website, leader.ir. But he added: "If Iran had the intention to build nuclear weapons, the U.S. could in no way stop the Iranian nation."

He said Tehran would hold talks with the U.S. if Washington respects Iran's rights instead of resorting to bullying.

"They want to deny the Iranian nation of its definite and inalienable right to uranium enrichment and peaceful use of nuclear energy. Of course, they won't succeed," Khamenei said.

Addressing a group of Iranians at his home in the capital, Tehran, Khamenei also scolded President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his conservative rivals for factional fighting, saying they should unite rather than quarrel at a time when the West was stepping up sanctions on Iran.

Iran recently has highlighted a religious decree Khamenei issued more than seven years ago that bans nuclear weapons in an effort to back up its claim that Tehran's nuclear program is being used for peaceful purposes and medical research. Iran authorities often cite the decree to counter Western suspicions that Iran could ultimately move toward an atomic bomb.

Although Iran views Khamenei's 2005 fatwa as a binding declaration, the West and its allies have repeatedly accused Iran of using any tactic to prolong the standoff over its nuclear program, and possibly advance its nuclear capabilities. Iran denies such aspirations, insisting it is enriching only to make reactor fuel and to make isotopes for medical purposes.

Tehran, however, has left U.N. nuclear inspectors empty-handed when it comes to addressing Western suspicions that it's conducting tests related to nuclear weapons. Three rounds of talks last year made no headway on the West's main demand: That Iran halt its highest-level uranium enrichment.

Washington and others worry that this level of nuclear fuel, at 20 percent enrichment, could be turned into warhead-grade material much faster than the 3.5 percent enriched uranium needed for Iran's lone energy-producing reactor. Moreover, the U.S. has expressed concern that Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency had not agreed to let inspectors visit a military site, known as Parchin, where the U.N. agency suspects Iran might have carried out nuclear weapon trigger tests.

Moreover, Iran recently said it had begun installing a new generation of centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a move that will allow it to vastly increase its pace of uranium enrichment in defiance of U.N. calls to halt such activities.

Iran is living under stepped-up Western sanctions that include a total oil embargo and banking restrictions that make it increasingly difficult for Iran's Asian customers to pay for oil deliveries. Tehran insists the sanctions won't force it to give up its nuclear program.

"Sanctions hurt the people. But there are two options. One is to surrender and repent in the face of the bullying powers like weak nations," Khamenei said. "The other is to activate domestic resources and capabilities like a brave nation and triumphantly pass the danger zone. Undoubtedly, the Iranian nation has chosen the second option."

Khamenei also called on rival politicians to avoid quarrels, an apparent reference to a power struggle between Ahmadinejad and his conservative rivals in parliament ahead of the June presidential elections.

Khamenei was referring to a barely audible videotape showing Fazel Larijani, the brother of parliament speaker Ali Larijani, in a meeting where he allegedly sought a bribe in return for ensuring the support of the speaker and another brother, who is chief of the judiciary.

Ali Larijani denied the charge saying he had no business relation with his brother. He accused Ahmadinejad of having a "Mafia-type" attitude and said the president was disregarding the country's dignity, law and ethics.

Hezbollah warns Israel not to attack Lebanon

BEIRUT (AP) — The leader of Hezbollah has refused to comment on a Bulgarian report that said members of the Lebanese militant group carried out an attack that killed five Israeli tourists in the European nation.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah says the "issue is being followed calmly and carefully."

Speaking to hundreds of supporters via video link, Nasrallah warned Israel Saturday not to attack Lebanon, saying Hezbollah's response will be harsh.

The July 18 bombing killed the five Israelis as well as a Bulgarian bus driver and the suspected bomber at the airport in the Black Sea resort of Burgas.

Three men are suspected in the attack, including the bomber.