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Pakistan’s PM has urged better co-ordination between security agencies against terror, a day after a suicide bomb killed more than 70 in Lahore.

At a meeting of security officials, Nawaz Sharif said the nation’s resolve to deal with militants was growing. A number of arrests were made and weapons seized in five raids by security forces, the army said.

Taliban splinter group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said it carried out the attack against Christians celebrating Easter.

At least 300 people were injured, with officials saying they expected the death toll to rise. The area was more crowded than usual, as members of Lahore’s minority Christian community had gathered to celebrate Easter at a funfair in the park. However, most of those who died in the attack were Muslims.

At least one funeral, of 11-year-old Christian boy Sahil Pervez, was held on Monday.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said the target of its Easter Sunday attack was the Christian community but it appeared to be an indiscriminate act of mass murder. Christians were among the victims but many of the casualties were Muslims. In the end, those killed and wounded were simply Pakistani citizens spending a day out in the park with their children.

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Ten more suspects have been arrested in three European countries as police step up efforts to prevent further attacks after the Brussels bombings.

Seven were detained in Brussels, two reportedly in Germany and one in Paris. An investigation is continuing into Tuesday’s bomb attacks, which killed 31 people in Brussels and have been linked to November’s Paris attacks.

Explosions have been reported in the Schaerbeek suburb of Brussels as a police operation continues. Schaerbeek is one of the districts where arrests were carried out on Thursday. US Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Brussels, said that so-called Islamic State (IS) would be destroyed. Standing alongside Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, he expressed condolences for the victims and solidarity with Belgium, declaring «Je suis Bruxellois».

The Western alliance would continue its fight to destroy IS, Mr Kerry said. «We will not be intimidated. We will not be deterred.»

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Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has been convicted of genocide and war crimes over the 1992-95 war, and sentenced to 40 years in jail.

UN judges in The Hague found him guilty of 10 of 11 charges, including genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Karadzic, 70, is the most senior political figure to face judgement over the violent collapse of Yugoslavia. His case is being seen as one of the most important war crimes trials since World War Two. He had denied the charges, saying that any atrocities committed were the actions of rogue individuals, not the forces under his command. The trial, in which he represented himself, lasted eight years.

Karadzic faced two counts of genocide. He was found not guilty of the first, relating to killing in several Bosnian municipalities. But he was found guilty of the second count relating to Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb forces massacred more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. «Karadzic was in agreement with the plan of the killings,» Judge O-Gon Kwon said.

He was also found guilty of crimes against humanity relating to a campaign of terror in the city of Sarajevo which left nearly 12,000 people dead. At least 100,000 people in total died during fighting in the the Bosnian war. The conflict lasted nearly four years before a US-brokered peace deal brought it to an end in 1995. Gen Ratko Mladic, who commanded Bosnian Serb forces, is also awaiting his verdict at The Hague.

The US has charged seven Iranians for allegedly hacking nearly 50 financial companies and a New York dam.

The attacks, occurring from 2011 to 2013, are believed to have been co-ordinated from Iranian companies. The US Department of Justice revealed an indictment against the seven Iranians believed to be working for their government.

The indictment calls them «experienced computer hackers» and officials said the attacks were a «wake-up call». The attacks «threatened our economic well-being and our ability to compete fairly in the global marketplace — both of which are directly linked to our national security,» said US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. «And we believe that they were conducted with the sole purpose of undermining the targeted companies and damaging the online operation of America’s free market.»

Mrs Lynch said the attacks cost the victims tens of millions of dollars. The seven defendants face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for conspiracy to commit and aid and abet computer hacking.

Syrian government forces have entered the ancient town of Palmyra seized by Islamic State (IS) militants last year, state TV has said.

However, observers have said the main fighting is still outside the city, a Unesco World Heritage site.

Officials launched an offensive to retake the city earlier this month, backed by Russian air strikes. The city is situated in a strategically important area between Damascus and the contested eastern city of Deir al-Zour. IS seized the ruins of Palmyra and the adjoining modern town in May. It subsequently destroyed two 2,000-year-old temples, an arch and funerary towers, provoking global outrage.

The jihadist group, which has also demolished several world-renowned pre-Islamic sites in neighbouring Iraq, believes that such structures are idolatrous.
Unesco, the UN’s cultural agency, has condemned the destruction as a war crime. State media showed warplanes flying overhead, helicopters firing missiles, and soldiers and armoured vehicles approaching Palmyra. It said government fighters had taken over a hotel in the west of the city. There has been no independent confirmation of the reports.

The UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said civilians began fleeing after IS warned them via loudspeakers to leave the city centre as fighting was drawing closer, Reuters news agency reported.

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