A suspected suicide bombing today killed at least 11 people and wounded 43 others at a hotel near Islamabad’s Red Mosque, after religious students occupied the mosque and demanded the return of its pro-Taliban cleric.

Hundreds of religious students protested today at Islamabad’s Red Mosque and blocked Pakistan’s government-appointed cleric from leading prayers at its planned reopening, more than two weeks after a bloody army siege left more than 100 dead.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai today called child suicide bombers a “fearful and terrifying truth” after freeing a 14-year-old Pakistani boy arrested in eastern Afghanistan the night before he planned to kill a provincial governor.

Judges today sentenced an Islamic militant to eight years in prison for harbouring the alleged mastermind of last year’s suicide bombings on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali – the first verdict in the terrorist attack.

The British, US, Australian, French and Russian embassies in Malaysia today received suspicious packages by mail that created a minor security scare, but were deemed to be hoaxes, a day after six other foreign missions received similar items.

MUSLIM leaders and Saudi princes bade farewell to King Fahd yesterday, saying prayers in a jammed mosque and then burying him in an unmarked desert grave in keeping with the kingdom’s austere version of Islam.

Railway workers were clearing debris and repairing damaged train tracks in southern Pakistan today, a day after the country’s worst rail crash in more than a decade left at least 133 people dead and hundreds injured.

Three trains collided in a deadly chain-reaction after a conductor misread a signal in southern Pakistan, killing at least 107 people and wounding hundreds more in the country’s worst crash in more than a decade.

A senior Muslim today denounced claims that two young Scots had left Britain to fight alongside the Taliban.