Suicide Bomber in Pakistan kills at least 26

Friday in Pakistan, a suicide bomber detonated his bomb that was strapped to his chest outside of a mosque in a Shiite neighborhood and killed himself and at least 26 other people. When police arrived, they shot at protesters and killed three more people. After the Taliban and al Qaeda’s virulent anti-Shiite ideology, there has been years of bloody fighting and similar incidents such as this one. Fazal Saeed, who is the leader of a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, took responsibility for the attack and stated, “We have targeted the Shiite community of Parachinar because they were involved in activities against us." The Shiite Muslims are a small section of Islam, arising from a dispute over the successor to the Prophet Mohammad 1,400 years ago. A lot of the Sunni Muslims consider the Shiite Muslims to be ones who abandon their own religion. Pakistan's army and air force have been conducting operations against militant groups in Kurram since January and many people have been killed in fighting just this month. Leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran were at a three-way meeting in Islamabad over the past two days to discuss steps Pakistan could take to help with the situation and other regional issues.

This is a global problem because there is fighting and people getting killed over something that happened over a thousand years ago. The biggest problem here is that people are going on these rampages and it is solving nothing. It sounds to me like Pakistan is taking the right steps to solving the problem by holding meetings with Iran and Afghanistan, who Pakistan has had troubles with especially after last year when a suicide bomber assassinated the former Afghan President in Kabul. Afghan officials accused Pakistan of helping with the killing of the President that had been serving as Afghanistan’s envoy to Taliban peace talks. All of the allegations were denied though. I believe if Pakistan and Afghanistan keeping coming together, they will come up with a solution and create peace.

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