Afghanistan’s president warned Wednesday that the whole world could suffer from the “wildfire” of terrorism engulfing his region, a grim message for a meeting of political and business leaders already fretting over the threat of global recession.

Hamid Karzai addresses the opening session of the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.

Formally opening the World Economic Forum, Hamid Karzai gave a sobering rundown of recent attacks attributed to Islamic extremists — among them the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan that have killed hundreds, including many children.

With militant violence still on the rise in the two nations six years after the ouster of the Taliban, “it seems like the mutant of extremism is dangerously unleashed across the region,” Karzai said. The trend “bodes terribly badly for the whole world,” he said.

In an apparent allusion to Pakistan — whose president, Pervez Musharraf, originally supported the Taliban — Karzai called terrorism “a venomous snake that some among us tried to nurture and befriend at the expense of others, which I hope we realize now was a mistake.”

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A three-judge panel in northern Afghanistan has sentenced a student journalist to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that allegedly blasphemed Islam, according to international media groups.

Moulvi Shamas-ul- Rehman Moomand, head of the court which sentenced Sayad Parwez Kambaksh to death gestures during a press conference.

But media groups in the country say the journalist is in fact being punished for investigative pieces his brother wrote.

Those articles exposed human rights abuses by political and paramilitary factions in northern Afghanistan.

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Security agencies in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province have arrested a teenaged boy on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto.

Aitezaz Shah, 15, was arrested on Thursday in Dera Ismail Khan town in the NWFP, 280 km southwest of Islamabad, security sources told Al Jazeera on Saturday.

Shah, who hails from Karachi, told investigators that he was part of a squad of five suicide bombers sent by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud to assassinate Bhutto in Rawalpindi, the sources said.

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CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida’s American spokesman urged fighters to meet President Bush with bombs when he visits the Middle East, according to a new video posted on the Internet Sunday.

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