Updates from Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, & Bangladesh

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
A female suicide bomber killed 69 people and wounded 140 at
the al-Ghazl pet market in Baghdad on February 1, 2008–the fifth
attack on the market since June 2006. Half an hour later, a second
female suicide bomber killed 29 people and wounded 67 at the New
Baghdad pet market. Four of the al-Ghazl attacks appear to have been
the work of al-Qaida. A November 2007 attack was attributed to
Shiites, who feigned an al-Qaida attack to increase public support
for Shiite militias.

Assadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar, Afghanistan,
attributed to the Taliban a February 17, 2008 bombing that killed at
least 80 spectators at a dogfight and wounded 90 more. The Taliban
suppressed dogfighting, but it has regained popularity since the
U.S. ended Taliban rule in late 2001.

“Jewish settlers and Israeli and Palestinian activists have
joined forces” to try to prevent Israel from building a barrier that
will separate wildlife from water, Associated Press writer Laurie
Copans reported on March 2, 2008. “In the Wadi Fukin area of the
central West Bank,” Copans wrote, “the Israeli-Palestinian branch
of Friends of the Earth has persuaded Israel’s Supreme Court to halt
work on the barrier, arguing that natural springs would be
destroyed.” The campaign is supported on the Palestinian side by the
Palestine Wildlife Society.

“A five-member team of media persons from Kerala on a recent
visit noticed the absence of stray dogs in Aizawl,” in Mizoram
state, India, The Hindu reported on December 19, 2007, noting
that dogs are eaten in Mizoram. On January 13, 2008, the Daily
Telegraph reported, “a rampaging army of rats” had produced “fear of
famine” in Mizoram. Stimulating the rats was a once-in-50-years
bamboo forest flowering. The lack of dogs was by February 8 felt in
nearby parts of Bangladesh, as well, where rats “destroyed the
crops of tens of thousands of people” said BBC News correspondent
Mark Dummett. Dogs are rarely eaten in Bangladesh, but are
persecuted as allegedly unclean, and may be covertly exported for
consumption.