[Quqnoos] Up to 35 Taliban militants have been killed in an air raid by NATO troops in northern Afghanistan, officials said Thursday
In the biggest single raid in weeks, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said two dozen insurgents were killed in Kunduz province overnight.
"An Afghan-international security force killed more than two dozen insurgents and captured several others while pursuing a senior Taliban commander in Kunduz last night," it said in a statement.
The rebels were killed in clashes which erupted after the troops came under fire from a mosque and nearby woods, the military said.
An operation to disrupt the militants' movement in the province was continuing, it added.
Kunduz governor Eng Mohamamd Omar said 35 Taliban militants were killed during the operation by Afghan and coalition forces.
He said six militants were captured and four suicide vests, which the Taliban often use in their attacks, were destroyed.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
In other news, the Taliban can now field combat formations of at least platoon strength in Kunduz province, which is way the hell to the north of their usual stomping grounds.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
05/14/2010 8:39 Comments ||
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[ADN Kronos] Militants from Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab group on Thursday claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt against the former governor of Mogadishu, Mohamed Omar Habeb. One person was killed and Habeb and four others with him were injured when a roadside bomb exploded as his car drove by in Mogadishu's Shangay district.
In a message posted to jihadist websites, Al-Shabab claimed to have killed Habeb's four bodyguards in Wednesday's attempted assassination. Habeb is an active opponent of Al-Shabab.
"We have struck at the apostate former governor of Mogadishu and have killed some of his body guards," the message said.
"Al-Shabab's explosives team has struck in the Shangay district and Habeb's car was destroyed in the resulting inferno - even if the apostate seems to have survived."
It is reportedly the second time Al-Shabab has tried to kill Habeb, who survived an assassination attempt against him earlier this year.
Al-Shabab fighters and other Islamist rebels are plotting a series of 10 suicide attacks in Mogadishu, a spokesman for the African Union Peacekeeping Mission to Somalia, told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat last week.
Al-Shabab, one of Somalia's two main rebel groups, announced in February it had 'merged' with Al-Qaeda to establish an Islamic state in the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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Don't forget Hughes. He's been amazing this year so far, with solid 2- and 4-seam fastballs, a cutter, a knuckle curveball and a developing changeup at age 23 as a starting pitcher.
[Bangla Daily Star] Mufti Abdul Hannan, the prime accused in the attempted murder of Sheikh Hasina in Kotalipara, Gopalganj, yesterday named two AL leaders for their alleged involvement in the plot.
The two leaders are AL's Religious Affairs Secretary Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Gopalganj District unit's Joint General Secretary Mahbub Ali Khan.
"Quiz the two leaders for truth. They know everything," Hannan was shouting at journalists who were waiting outside the courtroom of Gopalganj District and Sessions Judge's Court.
The Huji leader was brought to the court for his appearance in three cases involving the incident of planting bombs at the venue of a public rally of Hasina in Kotalipara in 2000.
He was brought to Gopalganj nine years after the proceedings of the cases started. But the hearing was not held as other co-accused could not be produced before the court.
Hannan said he was not involved in the incident, but rather had been made a scapegoat.
Many AL leaders of Kotalipara were involved in the incident, he said.
Hannan received life sentence in an arms case involving the same incident.
In reaction, the AL leaders denied the allegations at a press conference at Gopalganj Press Club.
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah said Hannan made the allegation to taint his image in the political arena and gain some advantages in court. He said he assisted the state lawyer in the arms case against Hannan.
Mahbub Ali Khan said he was in India during the incident and heard the news from some AL leaders.
During the press conference, a number of young people gathered outside Gopalganj Press Club and called the two leaders 'cohorts' of Mufti Hannan.
District AL Vice President Idris Ali and other leaders including Ahmed Nawsher Ali Mithu Sardar and Chowdhury Emdadul Haque were present at the press conference.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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Seven people died in violence likely related to the illegal drug business, according to Mexican press reports. The dead include a local politician in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
Three unidentified men were found in the beginning stages of decomposition in an arroyo near Juarez, according to Mexican news reports. The found at the breach of the Horcasitas station at kilometer marker 186 on the highway to Delicias.
CIPOL agents at the scene say the three men were shot to death. Two of them were decapitated from the shootings. Police agents also found 40 empty weapon casings at the scene, according to the report.
Two people were executed at a taqueria, El Güero, at 12:30 Thursday. Investigators at the scene were told men from a light truck pulled up and started shooting. One victim died inside the restaurant, while the other died while fleeing.
Investigators could not get a description of the shooters from people at the store, according to the news report.
The Partido Acción Nacional ( PAN ) politician and gubernatorial candidate for Chihuahua, Carlos Borruel, was at the same location just three hours before the attack.
A female agent of the Procuradurã General de Justicia Estado ( PGJE ) was shot several times and killed in a mid morning attack, according to Mexican press reports.
The attack took place near the PGJE offices in Chihuahua, Chihuahua. Zoel Lara, apparently a crime scene investigator, died an hour after the attack. Investigators said she was shot seven times with a 9mm weapon.
Differing press accounts say the woman was forcibly removed by an armed group from her vehicle, forced to her knees and then shot. The shooters were in a gray Chevrolet Surburban. Following the attack, the shooters escaped via Independence street in the direction of the Teofilo Borunda.
The PGJE is similar to an state attorney general.
PAN politician and mayoral candidate for Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas, Luis Mario Guajardo, was found shot to death today, according to Mexican press reports.
The businessman was found in a light truck along with his son, Jose Mario Guajardo Varela, and apparently a nephew at the agro company property Guajardo Industries. The company was owned by the victim.
#3
Is there ANYTHING up at US State Dept about this (or any other govt agency)? I dint see any with a cursory look.
If it were SE Asia, or equatorial Africa, there would be all kinds of travel warnings with this sort of sustained violence and number of fatalities.
If I read these semi-daily "Mexican Mayhem" reports correctly, there is more of this sort of violence on a daily basis in Mexico than there is in Iraq right now.
Why has the US Press been silent? Why is the government not pointing this out to protect its own citizens who liven on the border with Mexico or who travel there?
This is a political travesty. The editors deciding to 86 this story should be strung up and used as pinatas.
Three alleged organisers of the March suicide bombings on the Moscow metro have been killed after resisting arrest, Russian officials say. Funny, that seems to be happening a lot lately to people who mess with Mother Russia.
It was not immediately clear when or where the killings happened. "What happens in Moscow, stays in Moscow!"
All those involved in the bombings have now been identified, officials said.
Russian leaders previously warned that the masterminds of the attacks, which killed 40 people, would be "destroyed". Two young women from Dagestan were identified as carrying out the attacks. The 29 March bombings targeted two of the Moscow metro's commuter trains.
The three alleged planners died during "an attempt to detain three members of an illegal group", said the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov. "To our great regret, we were unable to detain them alive because they put up fierce armed resistance and were killed." Being Russian, he can say things like this with no fear of his lips falling off. Did the FSB recover any rounds of bullet?
Mr Bortnikov said the suspects included a man who had escorted the suicide bombers to Moscow and another who had accompanied one bomber to the station.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said there had been no option but to kill the "terrorists". "Those who put up resistance have to be eliminated - you cannot show pity," the Russian leader was reported as saying at a meeting with Mr Bortnikov. The FSB head said that efforts to find other identified planners of the attacks were continuing.
The suicide bombers were identified as a 17-year-old thought to be the widow of a Caucasus militants, and the 28-year-old wife of an Islamist rebel commander. A Chechen militant leader, Doku Umarov, said he ordered the bombings.
Shortly after the attacks, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Russian investigators should view catching the organisers of the bombings as a "matter of honour". He said the security services, who had been widely criticised in the media, should drag them "from the bottom of the sewers". And what Vlad wants, Vlad gets.
#4
I have no doubts the "terrorists" fought to their last breath. You do NOT want to be taken alive by the FSB! They like to do such things as taking the skin off your forehead, smearing the raw skin with horseradish, and then sewing the skin back in place - all without anesthetic or antiseptic. The Russians don't have a monopoly on brutality, but they do have a significant part of it.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/14/2010 18:39 Comments ||
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#5
I guess a little horse radish is cheaper than putting them on trial in New York.
[Dawn] Eight people were killed on Thursday in a bomb attack in Russia's southern region of Dagestan, the latest unrest in the troubled North Caucasus, officials said.
"At around 10:30, an explosive device went off as repair workers drove by in a vehicle," the investigative committee of Russian prosecutors said in a statement.
"As a result, eight people died and four police officers escorting the workers were wounded."
The victims were workers who were sent to fix a cell phone mast that had been blown up the previous day by unidentified attackers in the district of Sergokalinsk, investigators said.
"Police were sent to the scene and a shootout is currently in progress with the attackers," a spokesman for the local branch of the Federal Security Service told AFP.
A group of investigators had set off for the scene and information on the dead and wounded was being checked, the investigative committee said.
The workers from the republic's radio and television broadcasting centre may have been lured into an ambush by militants and blown up by a landmine, Russian NTV television reported.
The police wounded included the commander of the republic's riot police, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
The local pro-Kremlin authorities in Dagestan and other North Caucasus regions are battling to defeat an insurgency that has already left scores of civilians and police dead.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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[ADN Kronos] Two Moroccan terrorist suspects deported from Italy last month were allegedly plotting to kill Pope Benedict XVI, Italian weekly Panorama claims in its latest issue to be released on Friday. Mohammed Hlal and Errahmouni Ahmed were students at the University of Perugia until their repatriation to Morocco on 29 April.
"Hlal wanted to kill the Vatican's head of state (the pope), saying he was ready to assassinate him and gain his place in paradise," Italy's interior minister Roberto Maroni wrote in the expulsion order authorising Hlal and Ahmed's deportations, cited by Panorama.
Anti-terror police in Perugia intercepted Hlal discussing his plans to carry out attacks and readiness to obtain explosives for the attacks during a series of tapped telephone conversations, according to Panorama.
Moroccan authorities on 6 May released Hlal and Ahmed, who had been receiving legal assistance from a local human rights association.
The pair have denied any wrongdoing and said they intend to challenge their expulsions in the administrative tribunal in Italy's Lazio region surrounding Rome.
In a media statement issued at the time of their expulsion, the Italian interior ministry described the men as "dangerous" and a "threat to national security".
The interior ministry claimed they had links to an international network of Islamist miliists and were prepared to carry out "extremist acts".
Hlal and Ahmed's deportation followed a probe begun by anti-terrorism police in October 2009 into a group of radical Muslim foreign students in Italy, most of whom came from the Moroccan city of Fez. Several were studying at Perugia.
The interior ministry said Hlal and Ahmed belonged to this group.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Strongly worded denouncement from religious authorities to follow soon.
Despite crediting the Pakistani Taliban with fostering the recent failed car bombing in Times Square, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was reluctant Thursday to say radical Islam was part of the cause of that and other recent attacks.
Mr. Holder, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly balked at a half-dozen questions from Rep. Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican on the committee, about whether "radical Islam" was behind the attempted car bombing, last year's so-called "underpants bomber" or the killings at Fort Hood in Texas.
"There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious," Mr. Holder told the committee Thursday, though he would not go further than saying people who hold radical views may have "had an ability to have an impact" on Faisal Shahzad, the man the Justice Department says tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.
The exchange comes as President Obama and Republicans spar over whether the administration is taking a tough-enough approach to the war on terrorism. Critics want the president to hone his criticism, while he and his advisers have sought to avoid painting the conflict as a battle against a religious belief or its adherents.
"I don't know why the administration has such difficulty acknowledging the obvious, which is that radical Islam might have incited these individuals," Mr. Smith, Texas Republican, said after the hearing. "If you can't name the enemy, then you're going to have a hard time trying to respond to them."
#2
The video is painful to watch. This PC harness has to go. Stupid ostrich head in sand, backside presented. Terrorists have no problem at all naming their enemies and their motives. Very upfront about it.
Wouldn't it be hilarious if Holder's inability to answer a straight-forward question comes through fear that should he do so, islamists might target him?. Perhaps they have already done so.
#5
How is it possible that this testimony has not already led to numerous calls for his resignation or his being replaced by the Obama administration? Whether this would be successful is irrelevant. Repeated demands for his resignation should be a minimum response. This video should be used in campaigns all over the country this November.
#7
Even saying that Jihad is due to radical Islam is watering down the truth.
Normalistic understanding of Islam is that Jihad is mandatory. The question of what is the proper Jihad (when, where, against whom, methods, etc.) is debated within the world of Islam but there is no doubt that moslems are supposed to do Jihad.
Posted by: lord garth ||
05/14/2010 15:59 Comments ||
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#8
Geez, what a weasle. It's as if our leaders were afraid to utter the word "German" in 1942 out of fear of offending somebody.
#9
Perhaps Mr. Holder, being the second smartest guy on the planet after Barack, was waiting for Rep. Smith to remove the word "radical" from his blaming of "radical Islam"? Or not.
Posted by: ed ||
05/14/2010 18:12 Comments ||
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#10
Uber asshat. But then, I just described the entire administration.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/14/2010 22:43 Comments ||
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NEW YORK (AFP) New York police gave the "all clear" Friday after investigating a suspicious vehicle spotted in lower Manhattan near Union Square. "It's all clear," a New York Police Department spokesperson told AFP.
Two gas canisters were seen late Thursday in the back of an Oldsmobile Cutlass near the 14th Street and Irving Place intersection, close to the busy Union Square subway station, police said. Officers roped off large portions of the area with yellow police tape.
Dozens of police and firemen were at the scene with a bomb squad. A remotely-controlled robot moved in on the vehicle and popped its widows open, producing a large boom. A bomb squad team member approached the vehicle while wearing a heavy green protective suit.
Police said they were leaving the scene after the car's owner, who owns a landscaping business that provides lawn mowing and other services, explained why he had the gas canisters in the vehicle.
"It looks like we got two gasoline cans in the backseat of the car. But it looks like it's not going to be anything dangerous," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. "We contacted the owner and he gave an explanation."
Browne said police evacuated the area as a precaution because the suspicious vehicle was parked in front of the headquarters of Con Edison, a major energy company.
"It was freakin' intense," Bridget Gabbe told AFP about the scene she watched from the window of her apartment. "Seven police came to our door and they told us to leave. It wasn't 'take your time.' It was, 'you have to go,'" the 22-year-old actress said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/14/2010 08:16 ||
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Hat tip to Ed who posted a similar story for the rollover.
The Pakistani government has arrested a suspect with connections to a Pakistani militant group who said he acted as an accomplice to the man accused of trying to bomb Times Square, U.S. officials said. The suspect, whose arrest has not been previously disclosed, provided an "independent stream" of evidence that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the attempt and has admitted helping Faisal Shahzad, the main suspect, travel into Pakistan's tribal belt for bomb training.
Officials familiar with the investigation cautioned about inconsistencies in the two suspects' accounts. Federal authorities expanded their search for evidence Thursday, carrying out raids in four northeastern states, and arresting three people suspected of funneling money to Shahzad.
Indeed, the U.S. determination that the Pakistani Taliban directed the attempted attack is based largely on accounts given by the two men, several U.S. officials said. Authorities have been examining phone records, e-mail and other communication to see whether they contain firmer evidence of links between Shahzad and the Pakistani Taliban.
"What they said has been corroborated by other evidence,'' said a senior law enforcement source, who would not specify that evidence, saying it is classified.
The suspect in Pakistani custody "is believed to have a connection to the TTP," said a U.S. intelligence official, using an acronym for the Pakistani Taliban. Clues have added to authorities' understanding of the plot, the official said, but "what is definitely true is that a lot of this comes from the statements of people directly involved."
Assessing the role of the Pakistani Taliban carries significant stakes. A clear link would move the militant group onto an expanding list of al-Qaeda affiliates that pose a direct threat to the United States. It would also put new pressure on the U.S. relationship with Pakistan at a time when President Obama is pushing the country to expand its military campaign against insurgent groups.
In Islamabad, Pakistani security officials said Thursday that they had made no progress in finding concrete or credible evidence linking Shahzad to any Islamic militant activity in Pakistan or suggesting that he had traveled to the northwest and received training from the Pakistani Taliban.
U.S. officials declined to identify the suspect in Pakistan, but said American investigators have had direct access to him, and described him as a facilitator for the Pakistani Taliban.
U.S. investigators have pieced together their understanding of the Times Square plot largely by comparing the man's accounts with those of Shahzad. The broad outlines of their stories have been consistent, officials said, describing Shahzad's arrival in Karachi last year and his travel north to Waziristan for training with elements of the Pakistani Taliban.
But a second U.S. official briefed on the progress of the case said there are some "conflicts, disconnects" in their accounts. The discrepancies center mainly on the details and chronology of Shahzad's travel and training. Officials said the conflicts have raised some questions about the reliability of the suspects' information, but have not cast significant doubt on the overall understanding of the plot.
U.S. officials said they also think Shahzad and the man may have exaggerated their accounts. Both said they met Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud while being brought into the organization's inner core. But U.S. analysts are skeptical that Mehsud, who narrowly survived a Predator strike earlier this year, would risk meeting face-to-face with an unproved American recruit.
Although they acknowledged that the investigation is in its initial stages, Obama administration officials are describing an expansive Pakistani Taliban role. In a TV interview Sunday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that "they helped facilitate it . . . they helped direct it . . . and I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence that shows they helped finance it."
The certainty of Holder's comments prompted a pointed response from Sen. Christopher S. Bond (Mo.), the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, who questioned whether such conclusions are premature. After attending a closed-door hearing on the case Tuesday, Bond said, "I am not convinced by the information I've seen so far."
Other U.S. officials said that even as the emerging evidence points to the Pakistani Taliban, it remains unclear whether it was the militant organization or Shahzad who conceived the plot. "The question becomes: Precisely whose plan?" a U.S. intelligence official said.
Al-Qaeda affiliates have recently demonstrated a new ability to tailor a plot to a new recruit. The group's offshoot in Yemen allegedly used a Nigerian with a U.S. visa to attempt to take down a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. And the Pakistan Taliban was behind a suicide bombing several days later that killed seven CIA employees near the Afghan city of Khost.
Phone records show a series of calls between Shahzad and people in Pakistan in the weeks before the attempted bombing. Authorities have also uncovered other "circumstantial" evidence that links Shahzad to the Pakistani Taliban, according to the U.S. official briefed on the case. Asked whether phone records show contacts with Taliban figures, the official said: "Nothing conclusive, we have seen no conclusive tie."
Pakistani officials said Thursday that they detained for questioning five people from a mosque in Karachi affiliated with the extremist group Jaish-e-Muhammad. Shahzad, a U.S. citizen who made at least a dozen trips to Pakistan over the past decade, is thought to have visited the mosque during a long stay in the country this year.
Sources in the northwest tribal area said again that the Taliban were preparing to release a video but did not say whether they planned to claim any connection to Shahzad or the attempted bombing. The group originally claimed it carried out the plot but later said it had no link to Shahzad.
U.S. investigators have focused on how Shahzad -- who quit his job before leaving for Pakistan last year -- paid for the Nissan Pathfinder and explosives he is accused of using in the failed attempt. Officials have speculated that he used informal Middle East money-transfer networks known as hawala, which are difficult to trace.
The three people arrested Thursday -- two in the Boston area and a third in Maine -- were charged with immigration violations.
They "may have provided money to Shahzad but may not have known what they were doing," a federal law enforcement official said. "The question is: Did they provide money, did they facilitate and were they knowing?"
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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A policeman was killed and two others were injured when two people on a motorcycle opened fire at a police picket in Hyderabad Friday. The police suspect involvement of a terror operative Vikar Ahmed in the incident.
Eyewitnesses said two people on a motor cycle opened fire on the picket in Shahali Banda, about a kilometre from the historic Charminar and Mecca Masjid, in the Old City area. The policemen were deployed as part of the security arrangements ahead of the third anniversary of the blast at the Mecca Masjid (May 18). The assailants fled after the attack.
Constable Ramesh, of the Andhra Pradesh Special Police (APSP), died while being taken to Osmania Hospital while two other policemen were being treated for their injuries. Police chief A.K. Khan told reporters that involvement of Vikar Ahmed alias Viqaruddin alias Ali Khan is suspected. Police have put up barricades at several points in the city and started checking vehicles and frisking people.
The incident sent shock waves as it came despite the continuing search operations by police for over a fortnight amid intelligence warnings of possible terror attacks and close on the heels of the arrest of a terror suspect. On May 3, an alleged terror suspect of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, 34, was held for planning to cause explosions in the city. Last year, on the second anniversary of the blast, a policeman was killed and another injured in a similar attack when assailants opened fire on police at Falaknuma area of the old city.
The police commissioner said the incident appeared to be linked to the anniversary of bomb blast at the Mecca Masjid. "Yes. We do see similarities with last year's incident," he said. "We can't say for sure that he is behind today's incident, but we suspect his involvement and also of other suspects who are at large," Khan said.
Police had been on the lookout for Vikar after the Mecca Masjid blast. A resident of Old Malakpet area in the city, he was also associated with a city-based rightwing group Darsgah Jihad-O-Sahadath (DJS)
Police suspect that Vikar, who had gone to Gulf a few years ago for job, got training in the terror camps abroad. He reportedly visited Oman, Qatar and Bangladesh and developed links with some terror groups.
[Geo News] An anti-terrorism court on Thursday acquitted nine persons allegedly involved in the 2008 suicide attack on Lt. General Mushtaq Ahmed Baig due to lack of evidence.
Eight people were killed, including Surgeon Lt General Mushtaq Ahmed Baig, on February 25, 2008 when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the limit R A Bazaar Police Station in Rawalpindi.
The special court No II judge Raja Akhlaq acquitted nine men namely Dr Abdul Razzak, Muhammad Nadeem, Muhammad Naeem, Muhammad Rizwan, Muhammad Ilyas, Muhammad Sarfaraz, Zeshan Khalik, Faisal Ahmed and Osama Nazir as police failed to produce sufficient evidence against them.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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#2
I'm pretty much sure we all look like this at 0300 in the am.
Posted by: Mr. Bill ||
05/14/2010 10:34 Comments ||
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#3
Interesting. That's a 101st patch, a scoped AK, and Iraqi Army cammies. Scissors in front, presumably for undoing plastic ties, or perhaps the guy's a combat lifesaver and those are for cutting clothes off wounded.
And it's a raid in Baghdad where, if I hear right, Americans aren't being active.
???
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
05/14/2010 10:51 Comments ||
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#4
Actually, he looks like a pudge dirtbag.
I don't think it's a 101st patch.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 15:10 Comments ||
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#5
Put a wife beater t-shirt on the guy and he could be (probably is) a relative of the Khalid (abu Rico Suave) Sheik Mohammed.
Posted by: ed ||
05/14/2010 15:14 Comments ||
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BASRA / Aswat al-Iraq: Policemen captured 18 wanted persons and seized four unlicensed vehicles during search raids all over the province of Basra on Thursday, a local police source said.
Security forces conducted search raids in different areas of Basra, arresting 16 wanted on criminal charges and two others on involvement in terrorist activities,' the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. The raiding forces also seized four unlicensed vehicles,' he added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Dozens of journalists protested on Thursday to demand a probe into the murder of a young reporter who wrote highly critical articles about the rulers of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
The killing of Sardasht Osman, a final-year English student at Salaheddin University in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, earlier this month provoked widespread consternation and demands for the culprits to be caught.
"We are continuing to demonstrate to demand an inquiry to discover the murderers," Kamal Rauf, editor of the Kurdish newspaper Hawlati and one of the protesters in Sulaimaniyah, 270 kilometers (168 miles) north of Baghdad, said.
Osman, 22, worked as a journalist for the magazine Ashtiname ("Letter for Peace" in Kurdish) and as an English-Kurdish translator. His body was found 24 hours after he was kidnapped on his university campus in Arbil on May 4.
Rauf accused the Kurdistan Democratic Party, of regional president Massud Barzani, of involvement in the murder of Osman, who had criticized the KDP.
"We want the creation of an independent commission to look into the murder," Rauf said. "We also want the resignation of the minister of the interior (for the Kurdish region) Karim Sanjari, and those responsible for security in Arbil."
The Kurdish president has condemned the journalist's killing and in an official statement said an "investigation is in progress."
In its Press Freedom 2009 index published in October, Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq at a lowly 145th place for media freedom out of 175 countries.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Iraqi border guards exchanged fire with Iranian troops along the two countries' border Thursday, the first major incident between the two since Iran took over a disputed oil well in December.
An Iraqi officer was captured by the Islamic Republic's forces in the 90-minute gunfight on the border with Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, which was apparently sparked when Iranian troops mistook Iraqi soldiers for a Kurdish rebel group.
"Iranian forces thought that the border guards belonged to PJAK (the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan -- an Iranian Kurdish rebel group) and started to open fire," Brigadier General Ahmed Gharib Diskara, the head of Iraq's border guards in Sulaimaniyah province, told reporters.
"The border guards shot back and one officer of the Iraqi army has been captured. Negotiations are ongoing to free him."
There was no immediate comment from Iran.
Gharib said the shooting took place in a mountainous part of the two countries' border known as Shamiran, 90 kilometers (55 miles) southeast of Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan's second-biggest city.
PJAK is a Kurdish rebel group in Iran's northwest. It is closely allied with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which operates in Turkey and is listed as a "terrorist" group by Ankara and much of the international community.
The last incident along the Iran-Iraq border was in December, when Iranian forces took control of an Iraqi oil well on disputed territory, but there were no clashes and the Iranian forces eventually withdrew.
Under executed president Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime, Tehran and Baghdad fought a devastating 1980-1988 war in which around one million people were killed.
Relations between Baghdad and Tehran have warmed considerably since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam by U.S.-led forces, although many of Iraq's Sunni Arabs continue to eye Iran with suspicion.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] Seven people were killed and 22 wounded after a car bomb planted outside a cafe exploded on Wednesday in a Shia area of Baghdad, police and a source at the Iraqi Interior Ministry said.
The bomb late on a hot early summer evening came two days after suspected al-Qaeda insurgents launched assaults across the country that killed more than 125 people in what officials said was a message that the weakened group was still a threat.
It also came amid continued political wrangling following a March 7 election that produced no outright winner.
A cross-sectarian alliance heavily supported by minority Sunnis took a slim, two-seat lead in the parliamentary vote, but the main Shia-led alliances, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's bloc, have agreed to join forces to try to form a coalition government.
If they succeed, that could anger once-dominant Sunnis who supported the Iraqiya list of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia, and possibly fuel renewed bloodshed as US troops prepare for a sharp reduction in numbers by August.
The area in Sadr City where the bomb blew up on Wednesday evening was popular with young people, many of whom play dominoes into the evening.
Sadr City is a stronghold of fiery anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia battled US troops until a crackdown by the Iraqi military in 2008 throughout the Shia south and Baghdad ordered by Maliki.
Earlier on Wednesday, a bomb planted inside a grocery store in another mainly Shia area of Baghdad killed three people and wounded 23 others, police said.
Police said insurgents first killed the shop owner in front of his store in a popular market area in the Shula district of northwestern Baghdad and then detonated a bomb at the door of the shop when people crowded around the body.
The attacks bore the hallmark of Sunni insurgents such as al-Qaeda, who often target crowded, mostly Shia areas.
Gunmen and bombers killed about 125 people on Monday in a series of attacks across the country that included assaults on security checkpoints in Baghdad and car and suicide bombings in the southern oil hub of Basra and the southern town of Hilla.
The attacks showed that insurgents were still strong despite recent setbacks inflicted by US and Iraqi forces, including the death of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a raid in April.
Late on Tuesday, a roadside bomb blast killed five Iraqi police officers and wounded 14 others who were lured to a Baghdad market by the detonation of another improvised explosive.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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[Ma'an] Palestinian sources have yet to confirm Radio Israel reports announcing the capture of three Gaza residents who snuck into Israel early Thursday morning.
The early report said the three were unarmed and transferred to Israeli intelligence officials for investigations.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip have clashed with Israeli forces upon a fresh incursion into the north of the Palestinian coastal enclave.
The confrontation occurred on Wednesday when a number of Israeli armored vehicles and bulldozers briefly crossed into an area east of al-Shujaiyeh, Ma'an news agency quoted witnesses as saying.
They said Israeli artillery also shelled the area, which is close to the now defunct Nahal Oz fuel pipeline along the Gaza-Israel border.
The al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, said its fighters fired a rocket-propelled grenade toward the Israeli military convoy entering Gaza, the movement said in a statement.
The statement said the Israeli attack was a further proof of Israeli aggression towards the Palestinians and highlighted the significance of resistance against Israel's violations.
An Israeli military spokesman said he would look into the report.
Israeli artillery and tanks have been regularly shelling Palestinian residential areas and farmlands close to the border with the Gaza Strip.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Push them into Egypt and be done with the lot of them, lotsa tunnels to escape through, make it Egypt's problem.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/14/2010 16:15 Comments ||
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A man has been killed and two volunteer rangers injured in separate attacks by terrorists suspected militants in Pattani. Police identified the dead man as Nimare Baheh, 44, who was a temporary worker at the Irrigation Department bureau in Pattani's Yarang district.
Two assailants drove up on a motorcycle and a man, wielding a .38 pistol, who rode pillion, shot Nimare in the abdomen while he was walking home in tambon Maumawee yesterday. He died at the scene.
Earlier, just 300 metres from where Nimare was killed, a convoy of rangers and volunteer rangers was ambushed in a roadside bomb and shooting attack, leaving two officers wounded. The bomb was hidden in a basket which was left on the roadside and triggered by a radio signal. Police said after the bomb went off, terrorists insurgents opened fire on the rangers and fled the scene.
A 70-strong ranger and police force immediately sealed off the area in a 1km radius from the blast. The force found a piece of red cloth tied to a tree and a paint mark on the road near the bomb. The signs were thought to be the bomb locator and the meeting point for the terrorists insurgents. Police said at least six jihadis militants were involved in the ambush.
Meanwhile, a combined team of police and troops seized an M-16 rifle, a shotgun, ammunition and an amount of illegal drugs from a house in Panare district in Pattani after a tip-off from intelligence sources. Police arrested Armah Jehte, the house owner, on suspicion of being involved in the weapons or drug trade and the jihad insurgency in the area.
A health official was shot to death in Cho Airong district of Narathiwat province on Friday morning, police said. Pol Capt Mad-usen Mosani said Wae-using Doleh, 54, a health official of Pileng village of tambon Marubo-ok, while traveling on his motorcycle on Pileng - Marubo-ok road to work, was shot six times in his head, chest and back by the pillion rider of another motorcycle at a point-blank range. He was killed instantly. Police recovered six spent 9mm shells at the scene.
In another incident, two soldiers were injured in a bomb explosion while patrolling on foot on Highway 410 in tambon Yarang of Pattani's Yarang district on Friday morning. The home-made bomb, weighing about 5kg, which was placed under a roadside bench, was detonated when the patrol arrived at the scene.
[Straits Times] INDONESIAN police raided a vehicle battery service shop in Central Java yesterday, netting three suspected terrorists in a continuing crackdown on Islamic militants based in Aceh.
The arrests in the rented shop in a busy commercial area in Solo came a day after five suspected terrorists were shot and one arrested in two raids in East Jakarta and Cikampek.
Yesterday, the three men, who did not resist arrest, were found with firearms, including two assault rifles and a pistol disguised as a pen, thousands of bullets and bulletproof vests.
With the latest arrests, the Indonesian authorities believe they have rounded up the majority of those involved in paramilitary training in Aceh, where experts believe the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror network has made its new base.
Since police discovered and raided a training camp in the mountains of Indonesia's westernmost province in February, they have captured more than 60 suspected militants and shot 13 in follow-up raids and arrests.
'Those nabbed in Solo are linked to the Aceh training camp,' national police deputy spokesman Zainuri Lubis told reporters in Jakarta hours after yesterday's raid.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/14/2010 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
