On April 18, some 30 police agents accompanied by armed civilians detained and beat up five campesinos in the Paraguayan community of Paraguai Pyahu, in Guajayvi district of San Pedro department. Led by Menelio Orue, chief of the local police station, the agents also tied 11-year-old Blas Argana to a tree, slapped him and beat him on the soles of his feet to try to get him to reveal the location of his father, who was being sought by police. The agents kept Argana tied to the tree for a half hour. When they released him, they gave him 2,000 guaranies and demanded he keep quiet about the incident.

Abd al-Malik al-Houthi, the Shi'ite rebel leader in Yemen, speaking to reporters in the northern city of Saada, accused government forces of "genocide" in their campaign against the insurgents: "Cities and villages are being subjected nowadays to the most dreadful forms of annihilation by the corrupt authorities, and the citizens are the only damaged side because of this fierce bombing." Aid organizations say several Shi'ite villages near Saada have been almost destroyed by heavy fighting, estimating at least 5,000 people in the area have been forced from their homes.

Afghan and Pakistani presidents Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf met in Ankara [April 30] to publicly bury the hatchet under the supervision of Turkish president Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Karzai and Musharraf have engaged in a war of words in recent months, with Karzai accusing Islamabad of allowing the infiltration of Taliban militants into Afghanistan over its porous border, and with Musharraf suggesting that Kabul was "soft" on terror. [Reuters, April 28] Meanwhile, US officials claimed to have killed hundreds of Taliban fighters [in clashes and airstrikes] in western Afghanistan. [AP, April 30] Thousands of Afghans marched in Herat [April 30] to protest against the killing of civilians by US and NATO forces. The demonstration followed similar protests over the weekend in Jalalabad. [Reuters, April 30] And a suicide bomber struck a political rally in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar [April 28] killing 28 people and narrowly missing Pakistan's interior minister. [NYT, April 29].

Syria has built a secret fortified complex buried deep underground to manufacture and store ballistic missiles capable of striking Israel, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted "foreign experts" as saying April 30. The complex supposedly includes 30 reinforced concrete bunkers, production facilities, development laboratories and command posts. According to the report, Syria has been buying Scud missiles from North Korea, and Chinese C-802 missiles (the same used by Hezbollah to hit an Israeli warship in last year's war) from Iran, as well as building its own. It has also developed chemical warheads for its missiles, according to the report. The report failed to give the location of the supposed complex. (AFP, April 30)

Unknown assailants tossed a hand grenade and fired 17 rounds with a semi-automatic weapon into a police station in Athens April 30, damaging police cars and civilian vehicles but causing no casualties. A police official said: "It appears to be part of the anarchist attacks we have witnessed over the past few days, but we rule out nothing." (AlJazeera, April 30).

A memorandum issued over the weekend by the Turkish military has prompted words of caution and outrage inside Turkey. The memorandum, which threatened army intervention in defence of Turkish secularism, comes at a time of high tension in Turkey over the possibility of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a moderate Islamist, becoming the next president. [BBC, April 28] Turkish critics have lashed out against the "Jacobinism" of the hard-line secularists, stressed that "laicism" cannot be maintained at the expense of the rule of law, and lambasted the military for threatening a coup.

The April 28 suicide car blast in Karbala occurred at a checkpoint on an approach to the city's golden-domed Al-Abbas shrine, amid crowded shops and restaurants near the Shi'ite holy site. "Once again the dark forces and terrorists have targeted the city of Karbala," Abdulaal al-Yasiry, head of the Karbala Provincial Council, told state Iraqiya television. "Security forces do not have adequate training... The terrorists have started to come up with creative attacks so that it’s impossible for police to uncover them." Karbala is one of Iraq’s best protected cities because of its holy status. Nonetheless, a suicide car bomber killed 40 people at a crowded bus station in the same area on April 14 (prompting the Sadr faction to pull out of Iraq's government). (Gulf Times, April 29) Karbala and Shi'ite pilgrims were also massively targeted during the Ashura celebrations once again this year. In the wake of this latest atrocity, the various factions are once again blaming each other. How long before the government finally collapses—at which point we can start "officially" calling this a "civil war"? From The Star, South Africa, April 30:

We agree that there is something utterly perverse about the fact that the Darfur genocide is now entering its fifth year, as the world stands by and watches. And of course the vast majority of those participating in the Global Day for Darfur actions are well-intentioned. But a part of what makes the situation perverse is the increasingly surreal spectacle of celebrity and "Holocaust Industry" (TM Norman Finkelstein) exploitation of the genocide. That Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocuast memorial, can moralize about Darfur while remaining silent about the oppression of the Palestinians far closer to home only confirms our cynicism. From Haaretz, April 30: