AFP - Getty Images

Police investigators work at a blast site outside a building used by court officials in central Makhachkala, Russia, on Monday. At least eight people were killed and more than a dozen injured in twin car-bomb blasts.

MAKHACHKALA, Russia - Two car bombs killed at least two people on Monday in Dagestan, a turbulent province in Russia's North Caucasus region where armed groups are waging an Islamist insurgency. 

Car bombs, suicide bombings and firefights are common in Dagestan, at the centre of an insurgency rooted in two post-Soviet wars against separatist rebels in neighbouring Chechnya. 

Investigators initially said eight people had been killed by the successive blasts in the provincial capital Makhachkala, but law enforcement officials later put the death toll at two and said more than 20 people had been wounded.

Both explosions were near the headquarters of the court bailiffs' service and appeared to have been detonated by remote control, said the federal Investigative Committee, a Russian state agency.

Twisted wreckage of a car could be seen near the building, which was cordoned off by police.

The main suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in the United States, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lived in Dagestan with his family about a decade ago and visited the region last year.

The visit by Tsarnaev, who was shot dead by U.S. police after the April 15 bombings that killed three people and wounded 264 others, is being scrutinised by U.S. investigators for signs of ties with insurgents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered law enforcement authorities to ensure insurgents do not attack the 2014 Winter Olympics next February in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, which is close to the North Caucasus.

Most of the wounded and the two dead were caught by the second of Monday's explosions, a few minutes after the first, the investigators said.

Insurgents in the North Caucasus have often sought to increase casualties by setting off an initial blast to attract law enforcement officers and then detonating a second bomb.

Dagestan, an ethnically mixed, mostly Muslim region between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, has become the most violent province in the North Caucasus, where insurgents say they are fighting to carve out an Islamic state out of southern Russia.

At least 405 people were killed in Dagestan in violence linked to the insurgency last year, according to the Caucasian Knot website, which tracks developments in the region.

Putin launched the second war in Chechnya as prime minister in 1999 and likes to take credit for preventing the region from splitting from Russia. But his 13 years in power have been marred by deadly attacks claimed by or blamed on the insurgents.

Related: 

• Makhachkala: Dusty Russian city where Boston suspect felt he 'belonged'
• Video: Former Ambassador: We need to focus on the terrorist groups functioning in Dagestan
• Boston bombing suspects' father 'a good man,' neighbors in Dagestan say

This story was originally published on Mon May 20, 2013 9:06 AM EDT

The two suspects in the alleged al Qaeda-backed plot to blow up a rail line between the United States and Canada appeared in court on Tuesday, as revelations emerged that the Muslim community helped foil the potentially deadly plan.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Monday that it had arrested Chiheb Esseghaier, of Montreal, and Raed Jaser, of Toronto, over what sources said was a plan to derail a train from the United States after it had crossed the border.

Jaser, 35, appeared briefly in a Toronto court on Tuesday for a bail hearing. A long beard covered his face, and he wore a black shirt with no tie, and was accompanied by  his parents and brother, the Associated Press reported.

Jaser entered no plea and was ordered to appear again in court next month. His lawyer was granted a publication ban on future evidence and testimony.

In a Montreal courtroom, Esseghaier, 30, declined a court appointed lawyer and addressed the judge in French, according to the Montreal Gazette. “All the conclusions that have been made, I can describe them as conclusions that have been made from facts and things said that are nothing but appearances. We can’t make these conclusions because we are not in a backwards state,” the paper reports him telling the judge.

Neither of the men are Canadian citizens, but authorities have not revealed their nationalities.

Several sources told NBCNewYork.com that Amtrak trains out of New York City may have been scouted by the suspects.

Muhammad Robert Heft, a Muslim community leader in the Scarborough area of Canada's biggest city, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that he expected ordinary Muslims would experience problems because of the allegations.

But he said Muslims had helped the security services detain the suspects.

"There is going to be backlash," Heft told the Sun. "But I want to reiterate. Who was the one who tipped the RCMP off? It was our community."

"We have to be on the front lines," he said. "To either nip it in the bud in the very beginning or co-operate with authorities so they can be brought to justice."

"In our community we may look a little different, but in our hearts we love Canada. It's our country. It's our tribe," he added. "We want safety for all Canadians regardless of their religion."

Police also said a tip from the Muslim community had helped their year-long investigation, Reuters reported.

"Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in innocent people being killed or seriously injured," Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Assistant Commissioner James Malizia told reporters.

"The individuals were receiving support from al Qaeda elements located in Iran," he said.

Iran denied any involvement in the alleged attack plan. “Iran's position against this group is very clear and well known. Al Qaeda has no possibility to do any activity inside Iran or conduct any operation abroad from Iran territory,” the Iranian Mission to the U.N. said in a statement to NBC News. “We reject strongly and categorically any connection to this story.”

Malizia said the RCMP believed the two had the capacity and intent to carry out the attack, but there was no imminent threat to the public, passengers, or infrastructure, Reuters reported.

U.S. officials said the attack would have targeted a rail line between New York and Toronto, a route that travels along the Hudson Valley into New York wine country and enters Canada near Niagara Falls.

New York-area commuters like Jason Rivers told NBCNewYork.com that they took the threat seriously.

"I'm always concerned," Rivers said at Penn Station. "I live in New Jersey, but every day I come through here. You just never know."

"Unfortunately, the country's a little bit on edge about what's going on, so I think it's natural that everybody be concerned," another commuter Michael Milch said.

Some security experts were surprised by the alleged link to al Qaeda factions in Iran, whose Shiite rulers have a generally hostile attitude toward the Sunni militant movement. Reuters explained:

Iran did host some senior al Qaeda figures under a form of house arrest in the years following the September 11 attacks, but there has been little to no evidence to date of joint attempts to execute violence against the West.

However, a U.S. government source said Iran is home to a little-known network of alleged al Qaeda fixers and "facilitators" based in the Iranian city of Zahedan, very close to Iran's borders with both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The source said the operatives serve as go-betweens, travel agents and financial intermediaries for al Qaeda operatives and cells operating in Pakistan and moving through the area.

They do not operate under the protection of the Iranian government, which periodically launches crackdowns on the al Qaeda elements, though at other times appears to turn a blind eye to them.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

Canada thwarts plot to blow up U.S.-Canada rail line

This story was originally published on Tue Apr 23, 2013 5:08 AM EDT

The militant group responsible for the Chechen insurgency cast doubt Friday on allegations that the two known suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing – who are of Chechen origin – carried out the attacks.
 
The official media arm of the Chechen mujahedeen, the Kavkaz Center, published a blog post that suggested the investigation into Monday’s deadly attack is part of an anti-Chechnya “PR campaign.”  

The Kavkaz Center mocked the "lightning speed" at which the two known suspects in the attack on the Boston Marathon – Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was at large on Friday,  and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a firefight with law enforcement – were identified. The group called the investigation "completely muddled.”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Chechen fighters have waged a violent struggle against the Kremlin, leading to two bloody wars and the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.

In a translation of the blog provided by Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News security analyst, the Chechens questioned the logic that the Tsarnaev brothers could be terrorists because their actions seemed so ham-handed. 

“The news that the brothers attacked police officers, carjacked a man and did an array of other things, instead of going into hiding, looks strange at the very least,” the article said.

The blog also argued that the younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was “very far from your typical ‘Islamic terrorist.’ He named career and money as his main credo. What's more, he just logged onto his Russian social networking site a few hours ago.”

Chechen insurgents have claimed responsibility for a series of dramatic kidnappings and attacks, including on a hospital in southern Russia, a Moscow theater in 2002 (where all 40 insurgents and 130 out of some 800 hostages were killed by noxious gas pumped into the theater by Russian commandos), and a school in Beslan, Russia (where over 380 people, including several hundred children died in what critics called a heavy-handed “rescue attempt” by Russian police). 

If a connection between the marathon bombing suspects and Chechen separatists was established, it would mark the first time militants from the former Soviet republic have launched a deadly attack outside Russia.

The insurgency’s blog concluded that the campaign to implicate a Chechen connection was likely orchestrated by Russia’s President Vladamir Putin ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a Russian Black Sea resort which is located only a few hundred miles from the border with Chechnya.

Putin has long justified repression in the region as attacks on so-called “separatists” and “terrorists.”

The blog also noted that the spokesperson for Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic and a former rebel, wasn’t even taking phone calls because he didn’t want to talk about the events in Boston.

In a passionate interview with reporters Friday, the brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, also vehemently denied that there was any connection to the Chechen insurgency.

“This has nothing to do with Chechnya. Chechens are peaceful people,” he said.  

Tsarni insisted that the young men’s actions were apolitical and offered his own explanation for them. “Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves, these are the only reasons I can imagine of. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam – it’s a fraud, it’s a fake.” 

NBC News’ Jim Maceda and Petra Cahill contributed to this article.

Related links:

Suspects to carjack victim: We are the bombersWho are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing? 

What motivated bombing suspects? ‘Being losers,’ uncle says

An empty metropolis: Photos show deserted streets of Boston  

What we know: Timeline of terror hunt

‘Dedicated officer’ gunned down by Boston Marathon suspects at MIT

Slideshow: Bombings at Boston Marathon

Boston bombing spurs Senate debate on tighter immigration screening 

Photos from Bostonians locked down amid terror hunt 

Tweeting police chatter creates confusion over Boston suspect 

Jean-Philippe Arles / Reuters, file

A man comforts a school child as they leave the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, southwestern France, March 19, 2012 after a man on a scooter opened fire outside the school killing two children and one adult, a police source said. Five people were injured in the attack, which occurred as students were arriving for morning classes at the Ozar Hatorah school, a city official said.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli researchers and Jewish leaders on Sunday reported a 30 percent jump in anti-Semitic violence and vandalism last year, topped by a deadly school shooting in France, and expressed alarm about the rise of far-right parties in Hungary, Greece and other countries.

Following a two-year decline in the figures, the annual report on worldwide anti-Semitic incidents recorded 686 attacks in 34 countries, ranging from physical violence to vandalism of synagogues and cemeteries, compared to 526 in 2011. The report was issued at Tel Aviv University, in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress, an umbrella group representing Jewish communities across Europe.

The report linked the March 2012 shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, where an extremist Muslim gunman killed four, to a series of copycat attacks, particularly in France, where physical assaults on Jews almost doubled.

Researchers who presented the report at the university on Sunday said they had also found a direct correlation between the strengthening of extreme right-wing parties in some European countries and high levels of anti-Semitic incidents, as well as attacks on other minorities and immigrants.

They said Europe's economic crisis was fueling the success of parties like Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece and Svoboda in Ukraine.

Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, called for strong action by the European Union, charging that governments — particularly Hungary —were not doing enough to curb these parties' activities and protect minorities.

"Neo-Nazis have been once again legalized in Europe, they are openly sitting in parliaments," said Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress.

Golden Dawn swept into Greece's parliament for the first time in June on an anti-immigrant platform. The party rejects the neo-Nazi label but is fond of Nazi literature and references. In Hungary, a Jobbik lawmaker has called for Jews to be screened as potential security risks. The leader of Ukraine's Svoboda denies his party is anti-Semitic but has repeatedly used derogatory terms to refer to Jews.

The report by the university's Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry found little correlation between the increase of anti-Semitic attacks and Israel's military operation in Gaza in November. While there was a spike in incidents at the time, it was much smaller in number and intensity than the one that followed the Toulouse attack, said Roni Stauber, the chief researcher on the project.

"This shows that the desire to harm Jews is deeply rooted among extremist Muslims and right-wingers, regardless of events in the Middle East," he said.

The release of the report was timed to coincide with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was starting Sunday at sundown.

Bob Strong / Reuters file

A prisoner reads a newspaper in a communal cell block at Camp VI at Guantanamo Bay prison. The UN on Friday called on the US to close the prison, accusing the country of violating international law.

GENEVA -- The UN human rights chief called on the United States on Friday to close down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, saying the indefinite imprisonment of many detainees without charge or trial violated international law.

Navi Pillay said the hunger strike being staged by some inmates at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeastern Cuba was a "desperate act" but "scarcely surprising."

"We must be clear about this: The United States is in clear breach not just of its own commitments but also of international laws and standards that it is obliged to uphold," the UN high commissioner for human rights said in a statement.

About half of the 166 detainees there have been cleared for transfer either to home countries or third countries for resettlement, Pillay said. "As a first step, those who have been cleared for release must be released," she said.

"Others reportedly have been designated for further indefinite detention. Some of them have been festering in this detention center for more than a decade," she said.

Of the 166 detainees, only nine have been charged with or convicted of crimes.

Forty inmates are currently staging a hunger strike to protest against their indefinite detention, according to a U.S. military spokesman at Guantanamo. Some have lost so much weight that they are being force-fed liquid nutrients.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Armed militants killed seven people early Tuesday while attacking and burning a power station that is the largest in Pakistan's the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said.

Peshawar Police Chief Imtiaz Altaf said dozens of militants were involved in attacking the power station in the Sheikh Mohammadi area of Badhber, in northwest Pakistan.

AFP / Getty Images

The largest power station in the Khyber Pakhtunkwha province lies largely in ruin after Tuesday's attack.

He said the militants attacked the station with rockets and mortars, cutting off electricity to half of Peshawar, the major city that serves as the provincial capital, and adjoining areas.

"The militants first killed a police constable and security guard of the Water and Power Department deployed on the main entrance of the power house," the police chief said.

They then entered the station and set numerous fires before kidnapping nine people – later killing five of them and throwing their bodies in fields, he said.

Four Water and Power Department workers were still missing and believed to be in custody of the militants, he added.

Among the seven dead, four were employees of the Water and Power Department while three others were policemen.

A spokesman of the Peshawar Electric Supply Co., Shaukat Afzal, said the militants had destroyed the entire station.

"This 500-kilovolt grid station was the biggest power grid station of the province and has completely been damaged. People may face some extra power load shedding in the coming days," Afzal said.

Militants have recently stepped up attacks on security forces and government installations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and adjoining tribal areas and have threatened to disrupt May 11 general elections in the country.

Related:

Suicide blast kills 5 in Pakistan

UN envoy condemns attack on Pakistani teacher

Slideshow: Pakistan a nation in turmoil

Mohammed Ameen / Reuters

Iraqis examine damage inflicted on their house by a car-bomb attack in the Al-Mashtal district of Baghdad Tuesday. Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility and warned of more attacks to come.

BAGHDAD - Al Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings and suicide attacks on Tuesday that killed around 60 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.

Islamic State of Iraq, the country's al Qaeda wing, is regaining strength, invigorated by the Sunni Muslim rebellion in next door Syria and has carried out dozens of high-profile attacks since the start of the year.

"What has reached you on Tuesday is just the first drop of rain, and a first phase, for by God's will after this we will have our revenge," the al Qaeda statement posted on a jihadist website said.

Car bombs and suicide blasts hit mainly Shiite districts in Baghdad and other cities on Tuesday.

Suicide attackers have struck nearly two times a week since January, a rate Iraq has not seen for several years.

Sunni Islamists see Iraq's Shiite-led government as oppressors of the country's Sunni minority and target Shiites to try to provoke a sectarian confrontation like the inter-communal slaughter that killed thousands in 2006-7.

A decade after U.S. and Western troops swept into Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, the oil-producing country still struggles with sectarian tensions and political instability that test the fragile unity among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish ethnic groups.

Related:

Iraq, 10 years on: Did invasion bring 'hope and progress' to millions as Bush vowed?

'People turned on Christians': Persecuted Iraqi minority reflects on life after Saddam

Then and now: Revisiting Iraqi sites a decade later

Editor's note: This story includes a correction.

ISLAMABAD -- A suspect has been captured in connection with the 2002 murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, Pakistani officials said Tuesday.

A spokesman for Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations Directorate confirmed the arrest by a paramilitary unit known as the Sindh Rangers and said the suspect had been transferred to police custody. 

Qari Abdul Hayee, who is also known as Asadullah, had been sought in connection with terrorist activities dating back almost two decades, including his suspected involvement in Pearl's slaying. 

Saeed was apprehended in a "covert joint intelligence operation where street intelligence, signals intelligence, agents as well as his own associates spilling the beans led us to him," according to the Sindh Rangers' operational commander who led the raid.

Pearl, 38, was South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal and was researching a story about Islamist militants when he was abducted and beheaded in January 2002.

Saeed is notorious for being the former religious leader of the Karachi chapter of the feared Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (The Army of Jhang), a hardline-Sunni militant group that has targeted Pakistan's Shiite minority and become an ally of the Pakistani Taliban.

A military profile of Saeed shared with NBC News shows the alleged depth of his almost two decades of participation in organized militancy. It accuses him of organizing prison breakouts, attempting to kidnap former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's family, planning a foiled suicide attack on a hotel in Karachi where American soldiers were lodge as well as Pearl's murder.

Saeed had also been the subject of a manhunt launched because of his suspected involvement in a recent bombing in the Shiite-majority Abbas Town district of Karachi that killed almost 50 residents and destroyed entire blocks of apartments. 

Pearl's parents, Judea and Ruth Pearl, said in a statement released Monday: "We are gratified with this latest arrest and hope that justice will be served in a timely manner on all of those who were involved in the abduction and murder of our son, Danny."

Related:

Full Pakistan coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 19, 2013 2:29 AM EDT

GRAPHIC WARNING: Contains images which some viewers may find disturbing. 

Mohamed Abdiwahab / AFP - Getty Images

A member of the Somali security forces flees the site of a car bomb in central Mogadishu, Somalia, on March 18, 2013.

Mohamed Abdiwahab / AFP - Getty Images

A woman reacts near the site of a car bomb in central Mogadishu on March 18, 2013.

Reuters reports — A car bomb exploded near the presidential palace in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Monday, killing at least 10 people in a blast that appeared to target senior government officials, police said.

The suicide attacker detonated explosives while driving along a boulevard that runs between the palace and the national theatre, a route lined by tearooms that were engulfed in fire moments after the blast, senior police officer Abdiqadir Mohamud said. A public minibus driving along the road burst into flames.

"The suicide car bomber targeted a senior national security officer whose car was passing near the theatre," Mohamud told Reuters. "Most of the people who died were on board the minibus - civilians. This public vehicle coincidentally came between the government car and the car bomb when it was hit." Read the full story.

Feisal Omar / Reuters

An injured man sits on the road near the presidential palace in Mogadishu on March 18, 2013.