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Residents carried their own signs Wednesday evening calling for "peace not hate" in response to a northwest Gainesville church that recently posted a sign with an anti-Islamic message. At least 80 people gathered on both sides of Northwest 37th Street in front of the Dove World Outreach Center for a prayer vigil organized after the church recently erected a sign proclaiming "Islam is of the devil." Participants held up their signs and listened to words from Eve MacMaster, pastor of the Emmanuel Mennonite Church, and Saeed R. Kahn, president of the Muslim Association of North Central Florida. The group maintained...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's president promised on Saturday to rid the country of terrorism and his prime minister said the military would not take action first in any face-off with India. Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have deteriorated after India blamed Islamist militants based in Pakistan for the last month's attacks on Mumbai that killed 179 people. In a sign of mounting tension, Pakistan has cancelled army leave and shifted some troops from its western border with Afghanistan to the eastern border with India. Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai attacks and has denied any state role, blaming "non-state actors." President...

It was often said after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that everything had changed. And for a few years afterwards, indeed it had. After decades of denial, America and its allies went on the offensive against Islamic terrorism, both militarily and morally. Most importantly, there was no hesitancy to name the enemy or to condemn his inhumanity. But if the lack of outrage over the Islamic terrorist assault on Mumbai, India last month was any indication, everything has changed back. The obfuscation that characterized much of the early reporting on Mumbai is partially to blame. Watching a number...

Thanks to the Indian media's inability to tell a coherent story, it is only now we understand how the top officers of the Anti-Terror Squad died. Earlier the impression given by the media was that they were killed at one of the hotels while leading the counterattack. Since two of the terrorists went to shoot up a hospital, and were killing randomly on the way, the two top Anti-Terror Squad officers plus the senior most officer responsible for South Bombay got into a van with three constables and a junior officer and rushed to the hospital. They were ambushed in...

Pakistan moves on Mumbai accused Hafiz Mohammad Saeed founded Lashkar-e-Taiba Pakistan has put the founder of an Islamic militant group accused of having links to the Mumbai attacks under house arrest.Cleric Hafiz Mohammad Saeed set up the group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India says planned and carried out the attacks. Pakistan is also closing offices of Mr Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity, after it was put on a UN blacklist. Pakistan has denied any involvement in the attacks, which killed at least 170 in Mumbai (Bombay) last month. Pakistan's Interior Ministry told the BBC that Jamaat-ud-Dawa buildings would be shut across the country immediately....

India has proof that the Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI was behind the deadly Mumbai attacks. Sources have told NDTV that ISI trained the attackers.The names of trainers and the places where meticulous training took place are also known to the government, the sources said. The United States is believed to have even more evidence some of which it has shared with India, they said. The US has told Pakistan that they have proof of terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba's role and sought the arrest of its chief Hafeez Sayeed. Sources added it is hard to imagine that Pakistan army was not aware...

India's has accused "elements inside Pakistan" of orchestrating the late November terrorist attacks on high-profile targets in Mumbai. While such accusations often follow attacks inside India, the scale of these attacks put them in a new category. Daniel Markey, a CFR Senior Fellow, was until last year a South Asia expert on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. He says India's accusations may be based on hard evidence, but cautions that Pakistan's government may be unable to control the "Frankenstein's monster" it created when it helped train terrorists to infiltrate and fight against Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region....

WASHINGTON: The United States has set the stage for punitive internationally-backed strikes by India against terrorist camps in Pakistan if Islamabad does not act first to dismantle them by rejecting President Zardari’s alibi that non-state actors were responsible for the last week’s carnage in Mumbai. The game-changer, outlined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, robs Islamabad of the fig leaf that Zardari used in his interview on Larry King Live that ''stateless actors'' are holding the whole world hostage and Pakistan was not to blame. Rice said in effect that the excuse does not absolve Pakistan responsibility for...

A senior police official said that, in all, the names and numbers of five members of the Pakistani group's leadership were contained in a satellite phone left behind by the terrorists on a fishing vessel they hijacked then abandoned before reaching Mumbai. Records from the phone show calls had been made from it to these five men. Among them: Yusuf Muzammil, head of Lashkar-e-Taiba's terrorism operations against India. The senior Indian police official said he was identified as the mastermind of the attacks by the only terrorist captured alive, Ajmal Kasab, or Qasab. The police official said two of Mr....

MUMBAI, India (AP) - The only gunman captured after a 60-hour terrorist siege of Mumbai said he belonged to a Pakistani militant group with links to the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, a senior police officer said Sunday. The gunman was one of 10 who paralyzed the city in an attack that killed at least 174 people and revealed the weakness of India's security apparatus. India's top law enforcement official resigned, bowing to growing criticism that the attackers appeared better trained, better coordinated and better armed than police. The announcement blaming militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, threatened to escalate tensions between India...

At least five terrorist gunmen have evaded capture in Mumbai and could make a secondary strike on India's financial capital, it was feared this morning. Indian security forces are officially claiming that just ten militants – nine of whom were killed and one caught alive – were behind a co-ordinated terror attack that claimed nearly 200 lives. However, the hijacked Indian fishing boat used by the gunmen to approach Mumbai, the crew of which were also slaughtered, had equipment for 15 men on board when it was discovered adrift off the city shore – suggesting that several gunmen could still...

BBC News, Islamabad Some Pakistanis have rallied against claims of links to the Mumbai attackers Indian media reports detailing Pakistani links to the audacious Mumbai attacks have been met with deep scepticism in Pakistan."Why do they always blame us?" said an airline worker in the port city of Karachi, from where some of the gunmen are alleged to have set off for Indian shores. "Any time something happens in India, they say Pakistan is behind it, but they don't come up with any proof." A boutique owner agreed. "Everybody's out to get us," he said as his customers expressed fear...

WASHINGTON: The United States and India face tactics bordering on blackmail from a militarized Pakistan - where civilian control is still very dodgy - as they coordinate efforts to eliminate terrorism in the region, according to analysts and officials on both sides. In what is turning out to be an elaborate chess game in the region, Islamabad on Saturday made its "Afghan move" to counter the US-India pincer, telling Washington that it will have to withdraw some 100,000 Pakistani troops posted on its western borders to fight the al-Qaida-Taliban and move them east to the Indian front if New Delhi...

NEW DELHI: Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Saturday promised to help India unearth the hand behind the Mumbai attack. Well, he will not have to work hard. For, Indian agencies have managed to lay their hands on evidence which has ripped apart Islamabad's perennial denial about the involvement of Pakistan's quasi-state actor in the terror campaign against India. Sources said a satellite phone recovered from one of the rafts that the 10 jihadi desperados used to enter Mumbai on that fateful Wednesday night has yielded tell-tale evidence of the direct involvement of top hierarchy of ISI-backed Lashkar-e-Toiba in...

RT Monitoring Desk ISLAMABAD: India has threatened of dire consequences to Pakistan after Mumbai terror attacks and the coming 48 hours are very important, military sources said on Saturday. According to the ARY report the war can not benefit any side but if India imposed war Pakistan will go to the last limit for its defence, the sources said. In case of war no weakness will be shown at the western border, the sources added. On the other hand President Asif Ali Zardari warned India Saturday against any ‘over-reaction’ after the militant attacks in Mumbai and vowed the ‘strictest’ action...

From Times OnlineNovember 30, 2008 Relations between India and Pakistan were on a knife edge today as Indian authorities combed through the wreckage of last week's attacks on Bombay and interrogated the one Pakistani militant captured. A senior Pakistani security official has warned that Pakistan would pull back troops fighting Islamist militants on the Afghan frontier if India builds up its forces on Pakistan's border, as it did after an attack by Pakistani militants on India's parliament in 2001. He said the next 48 hours would be crucial for the two nuclear-armed neighbours, which have fought three wars since winning...

Indian police have heard the first full account of what led up to the devastating attacks in Mumbai from the only terrorist captured alive, who told authorities that he was ordered to kill "until the last breath," the U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper reported Sunday. Azam Amir Kasab, 21, the only terrorist to survive a raid by Indian commandos, told authorities that the attacks included 10 terrorists in a heavily orchestrated plan devised six months ago, that hoped to kill 5,000 people — targeting mostly "whites, preferably Americans and British,"

THE Indian authorities yesterday claimed to have proof that the Mumbai terrorists were receiving instructions from Pakistan and discussing tactics with their handlers during the three days of attacks in which they killed at least 195 people. The claims threaten further to embitter relations between the two nuclear powers. Tensions have been high since confirmation that the only captured gunman was a 21-year-old Pakistani. It has also emerged that India had been warned that terrorists were planning an attack in Mumbai. Up to 22 foreigners were among those killed in raids by 10-15 terrorists on sites across the city, including...

MUMBAI, India (AP) - A 60-hour terror rampage across India's financial capital ended Saturday when commandos killed the last three gunmen holed up in a luxury hotel engulfed in flames. At least 195 people died. After the final siege ended, adoring crowds surrounded six buses near the hotel carrying weary, unshaven commandos, shaking their hands and giving them flowers. The commandos, dressed in black fatigues, said they had been ordered not to talk about the operation, but said they had not slept since the ordeal began. One sat sipping a bottle of water and holding a pink rose. "What happened...

Almost two days after terrorists attacked the Indian financial hub of Mumbai, the Indian military is still working to root out the remnants of the assault teams at two hotels and a Jewish center. More than 125 people, including six foreigners, have been killed and 327 more have been wounded. The number is expected to go up, as Indian commandos have recovered an additional 30 dead at the Taj Mahal hotel as fighting has resumed. The Mumbai attack is uniquely different from past terror strikes carried out by Islamic terrorists. Instead of one or more bombings at distinct sites, the...