[Dawn] Three Afghan coppers were killed and three US troops injured on Thursday when a team of Taliban suicide kaboomers stormed a government office in eastern Afghanistan, officials said.
It is thought the attack targeted a meeting between the governor of Chamkani district in Paktia province and local elders who were due to attend a government-organised loya jirga or traditional meeting in Kabul next week.
The NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization.... -led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it helped end the attack by destroying a mosque where gunnies had hidden, launching a Hellfire missile and rockets from an Apache helicopter.
Wait -- they destroyed a mosque? I thought we weren't allowed to do that.
Provincial government front man Rohullah Samoon said there were four attackers, one of whom detonated a car boom at the gates of the district centre, allowing three others to enter.
"They have all been killed," he told AFP. "Three of our coppers have also been killed and the district police chief has been injured but is in stable, pH balanced condition. The fighting is over now." Master Sergeant Nick Conner, a front man for ISAF in eastern Afghanistan, said three US troops were maimed in the initial car booming but could not give details of their condition.
He said ISAF received permission from the deputy provincial governor of Paktia before levelling the mosque where the attackers were firing from.
That's ok, then.
"We did have an air weapons team, an Apache," Conner said. "We were taking heavy machine gun fire from a mosque... (we) did fire a Hellfire along with rockets." But Paktia deputy governor Abdul Rahman Mangal denied giving permission for the mosque to be destroyed by ISAF and insisted it had been blown up by a jacket wallah.
It was not immediately clear where the mosque was located in relation to the district centre, which usually acts as the headquarters for local government and police.
The attack, which lasted around two hours, highlights the security challenges facing Afghanistan's loya jirga, which has been called by President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... and is due to take place in Kabul from November 16.
The rare meeting will bring together elders from around the warring country to discuss a strategy for trying to broker peace with the Taliban in the wake of the liquidation of peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani ... the gentlemanly murdered legitimate president of Afghanistan... in September.
Afghanistan's long-term relationship with the US is also on the meeting's agenda.
The Taliban grabbed credit for the attack in a text message sent to journalists.
"A large number of suicide attackers attacked and conquered Chamkani district of Paktia province," wrote Taliban front man Zabiullah Mujahid, claiming heavy casualties.
The Taliban are known regularly to exaggerate their claims in relation to attacks.
Meanwhile, ...back at the mall, Clarissa spent the day shopping for new underwear. Tonight was going to be a special occasion... in southern Afghanistan, two non-combatants were killed when a car boom targeting an ISAF military convoy detonated in Lashkar Gah, capital of troubled Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province.
Mohammad Ismail, coordinator of Afghan cops in Helmand, said no foreign troops were maimed in the kaboom.
There are around 140,000 international troops in Afghanistan helping pro-government forces fight a drawn-out 10-year Taliban-led insurgency that has cost thousands of lives, billions of dollars and wearied Western voters.
The Taliban were ousted from power in 2001 by a US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States.
All foreign combat troops are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but a sizeable troop mission to train and mentor national forces is set to remain beyond that date.
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11/11/2011 00:00 ||
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Sudan carried out a deadly air strike on a refugee camp in neighbouring South Sudan on Thursday, just hours after the south's president accused Khartoum of seeking a pretext for war, officials said.
"Twelve people were killed and more than 20 maimed", said Miabek Lang, commissioner of Pariang County in Upper Nile state where the attack took place.
"Around 2:45 pm (1145 GMT), the Sudan Armed Forces targeted Yida town, where the Nuba refugees [from South Kordofan] are and IDPs (internally displaced persons) from Jau [on the border], as well as civilians," Lang said.
There was no immediate confirmation of the casualty toll from UN or other sources.
"There are reports that we are receiving on the ground in Yida that bombs have been dropped," said Lise Grande, UN humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan.
"We are extremely concerned about the more than 20,000 refugees who have sought safety in Yida, fleeing the fighting in South Kordofan," Grande said.
"We are trying to ascertain the facts and based on these, we will move as quickly as possible to provide all necessary humanitarian assistance."
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11/11/2011 00:00 ||
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Aerial attacks on Al-Shabaab ... Harakat ash-Shabaab al-Mujahidin aka the Mujahideen Youth Movement. It was originally the youth movement of the Islamic Courts, now pretty much all of what's left of it. They are aligned with al-Qaeda but operate more like the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban. The organization's current leader is Ibrahim Haji Jama Mee'aad, also known as Ibrahim al-Afghani. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a Kenyan al-Qaeda member, is considered the group's military leader... positions will continue but Somali towns will not be deliberately targeted, the Kenya military said on Thursday.
Air Force jets and helicopter gunships will only target Al-Shabaab bases and not civilians as they mount the search for weapons suspected to have been flown in from Eritrea.
"We will continue engaging Al-Shabaab camps from the air, but we will not bomb towns," Kenya Defence Forces front man Major Emmanuel Chirchir said.
The new approach follows recent talks between Kenya and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Nairobi over the ongoing military operation in the war torn nation.
TFG's Minister for Defence Hussein Arab Issa said the Nairobi talks had resolved that Kenya's Defence Forces would not carry out air strikes in southern Somalia in order to flush out the rebels.
"We discussed with the Kenyan government and agreed that they will not raid Somali towns from the air," a local broadcaster quoted Mr Issa telling the press in Mogadishu on Thursday.
Last week, Kenyan troops fighting Al-Shabaab inside Somalia placed 10 towns under surveillance after the cut-throats apparently brought in a consignment of arms for retaliatory attacks.
Avoid contact with orcs
The military advised residents of the 10 towns -- Baidoa, Baadheere, Baydhabo, Dinsur, Afgooye, Bwale, Barawe, Jilib, Kismayu and Afmadow -- to avoid any contact with the cut-throats so that they are not endangered in case of attacks.
"In line with the Kenya Defence Forces strategy of diminishing Al-Shabaab's effectiveness and weapons use, the aforementioned towns will remain under imminent attack.
"Residents in the towns are advised to avoid contact with Al-Shabaab militia," Major Chirchir was quoted then.
On Thursday, Major Chirchir clarified that Kenyan forces would only target Al-Shabaab bases and not civilians and warned locals to keep away from militia camps.
"We ask local Somalis not to mix with the cut-throats because we will target them," he said.
Reports from southern Somalia said the cut-throats had turned to elders in the region to help them recruit fighters and amass weapons.
Local media reported that Al-Shabaab leaders in Juba region had held a closed-door meeting with more than 60 elders to plead with them to allow their youths to join the orc group as they regroup to counter a joint offensive from Kenyan and TFG troops.
The reports, quoting local Al-Shabaab leader Yakub Ali lend credence to information that the orc group was disintegrating in the face of the Kenyan offensive.
Scores of cut-throats have been killed in the operation with others defecting to the pro-government forces.
The reports quoted sources in the meeting saying that the elders had rejected the orcs' request, terming it a "hard decision" to make since they advocate for peace only.
On Tuesday, Al-Shabaab's senior most leader, Hassan Dahir Aweys admitted that his group was facing resistance from clan elders who had refused to release their youths to join the orcs.
Aweys reportedly told worshippers during prayers on the outskirts of Mogadishu that nearly all clans were beginning to shift allegiance to the TFG, which, with the support of troops from the Africa Mission in Somalia (Amisom) now controls 98 per cent of the capital.
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11/11/2011 00:00 ||
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NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania: A desert chief with Al-Qaedas North Africa branch has confirmed fears that his terror organization procured weapons from stockpiles left unguarded in Libya after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar was quoted by the private Mauritanian newspaper Nouakchott Infos and its online version Nouakchott Information Agency as saying that its totally natural we benefited from Libyan arms in such conditions.
If you can't trust an MSM outlet like Nouakchott Infos to get the straight dope, just who can you trust?
The interview published Wednesday did not specify the types or quantity of arms involved. The executive editor of the paper, Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Aboulmaaly, who carried out the interview, said he spoke with Belmokhtar by telephone, but refused to give his location.
Perhaps they were in the same room...
The report could not be independently confirmed.
Western leaders, joined by the UN Security Council, have expressed concern that vast supplies of now free-floating weaponry could end up in the hands of the Al-Qaeda franchise in North Africa, which roams in bands over the desert Sahel region stretching from Mauritania to Chad. Porous borders and weak governments make the area impossible to police.
They have called on Libyan transitional leaders to track down the arms and secure stockpiles and asked neighboring governments to do all they can to stop their proliferation. There is special concern over shoulder-fired missiles. US Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro said in October that Libya was believed to have about 20,000 shoulder-fired missiles in its arsenals before civil war began in March. He said terrorist groups have expressed interest in obtaining some of the missiles, which could pose a threat to civil aviation.
AQIM, once concentrated in Algeria, where it is based, has rendered huge swaths of Mauritania, Mali and Niger off-limits to foreigners. The southern warlords are best known for kidnapping Westerners for ransom and are currently holding four French hostages, kidnapped in Niger in September 2010.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/11/2011 00:00 ||
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Al Arabiya has reported that forces currently loyal to Yemen's President, Abdullah Saleh, shelled the country's second largest city Taez early on Friday, killing 10 people, among them three women and a child.
Earlier, reports from AFP quoted a medical source saying that "the bombing killed nine people this morning (Friday), all of them civilians."
Security forces began operations in the Freedom Square area shortly after midnight, where demonstrators had rallied to call for the regime to fall.
On Thursday, one man was killed and nine other people were injured in Taez. Witnesses said Republican Guard troops, commanded by Saleh's son Ahmed, fired artillery into the centre of Taez where tens of thousands of protesters were calling for Saleh's prosecution.
For a map, click here
This story will be updated as more information becomes available
Mexican interior minister Francisco Blake Mora died along with seven others in a helicopter crash in Xochimilco in southern Mexico City Friday morning, according to Mexican news accounts.
The Secretaria de Gobiernation (SEGOB) was travelling to from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, Morelos. He was scheduledto meet with some presecutors.
Blake Mora is Mexican president Felipe Calderon Hinojosa's second interior minister and the second to die in an air crash. Blake Mora's predecessor, Juan Camilo Mouriño, also died in an air crash in Mexico City on November 4th, 2008 only an hour after leaving an airport in San Luis Potosi state. A former drug prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, were amongst the nine individuals who died in the 2008 crash.
Military personnel killed in the crash included Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Facio Cortez, Lieutenant Pedro Ramon Escobar Becerra and Second Sergeant Jorge Luis Juarez Gomez. All were in the Mexican Air Force.
An unidentified person hijacked a municipal ferry in northwest Turkey on Friday.
Broadcaster NTV said the ferry, named Kartepe, was travelling to the city of Izmit. Over twenty people, passengers and personnel included, are reported to be on board.
The hijackers was reported to carry a bomb, and desiring to speak to the media. He is working with 4 other hijackers, the reports claimed.
Security forces have been following the seabus closely. Officials have stated that the hijackers demanded food and gas.
The cause behind the hijacking still remains unknown.
[Dawn] Two persons, including a girl and a suspected man, were killed while a hospital and dozens of medicine shops were destroyed during a clash between security forces and hard boyz in Miramshah Bazaar of North Wazoo Agency.
Locals said that hard boyz targeted Stadium checkpost and Amin post with heavy and light weapons from the roofs of high buildings in Miramshah Bazaar on Monday.
The security forces, backed by helicopter gunships and artillery, targeted the buildings where suspected hard boyz were taking shelter. The shootout continued for over 16 hours.
They said that security forces blew up the Medical Complex Plaza, destroying more than 50 medicine shops, costly machinery including ultrasound machines, X-ray plants and other valuable electronic equipment causing millions of rupees losses to the owners.
The shelling and bombing also destroyed a portion of district headquarters hospital Miramshah. A girl was buried alive under the rubble of the boundary wall of the hospital.
Three children were also injured as various blocks including dental block, Operation Theater and medical ward of the hospital were damaged. The fear-gripped patients including women and kiddies runaway from the hospital, locals said.
The local tribal people condemned the incident and demanded compensation for the affected shopkeepers.
In FR Kohat, at least five passengers were maimed when a bomb planted on Indus Highway went kaboom! in Darra Adamkhel on Eid day.
Militants also fired 14 rockets at different areas of Darra Adamkhel. However, today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... no loss of life or property was reported.
The passengers were coming to Kohat from Beautiful Downtown Peshawar to celebrate Eidul Azha with their relatives when their vehicle was targeted with a roadside remote controlled bomb.
The security forces targeted suspected locations of hard boyz with artillery but there was no report of casualties. In Kurram Agency ...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora... , hard boyz fired three rockets from Tangi Zaira Raisy mountain at Paywar village on Tuesday night. However, nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits... no casualty was reported.
It was the second attack on Paywar village within one week.
In Lakki Marwat, a police party was attacked by a group of outlaws in Abbass Khattak area in the limits of Dadiwala cop shoppe.
Sources said that police party signalled four suspected motorcyclists to stop near a watercourse.
"The motorcyclists including three proclaimed offenders, who were armed with weapons and hand grenades, opened firing on the coppers," they said.They said that the attackers also hurled two hand grenades at the police party. Police repulsed the attack and placed in long-term storage one of the attackers identified as Tasveer Khan.
Other attackers were identified as Naseebullah, Hukam Khan and Zaheer Khan, sources said, adding they managed to disappear in the mountainous area.
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11/11/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] At least six people were killed in a clash between faceless myrmidons and members of a local pro-government militia in Pakistain's Khyber tribal district on Thursday, officials said.
The area close to the border with Afghanistan has been plagued by fighting between armed forces and faceless myrmidons tied to the Pak Taliban, and fresh fears of unrest caused more than 18,000 people to flee the district last month.
Four members of a local peace committee, or pro-government militia, and two faceless myrmidons were killed during an exchange of fire, senior local administration official Rehan Gul Khattak told AFP.
"Militants with Lashkar-e-Islam (Army of Islam) attacked a patrol of the local peace committee, which triggered a shootout in Akakhel area," he said, adding that the more than 30 faceless myrmidons beat feet following the attack.
Local intelligence officials confirmed the incident and casualties.
Pakistain's army has previously launched a series of offensives targeting the Lashkar-e-Islam, a Taliban-allied thug group waging a local insurgency.
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11/11/2011 00:00 ||
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A Palestinian Authority official warned Thursday that the region could be headed toward "violence and anarchy" because of the failure of the Palestinian statehood bid.
It's a safe bet since they'll be instigating the violence themselves...
Security Council subcommittee expected to report Palestinian Authority does not have 9 votes needed to gain full membership.
PA officials in Ramallah refused to say what they were planning to do now that the bid at the UN Security Council seems to have failed.
Hundreds of activists took part in five separate "violent" riots in the West Bank, the IDF Spokesperson's Office said via its Twitter account.
Security forces detained two rioters in Kfar Qaddum, the smallest of the five protests.
According to the statement, 200 activists were near Beit Ummar, 60 near Bil'in, 50 near Dir Nizam, 50 near Kfar Qaddum and 30 near Ni'lin. Activists in Ni'lin were seen throwing a firebomb at security forces, and the IDF said that rocks were thrown at security forces, the statement said.
[An Nahar] Thirty people were killed Thursday in Syria, among them five children and an infant and six regular army soldiers who were rubbed out by suspected army defectors, the Local Coordination Committees announced.
Earlier on Thursday, a rights group said a young girl and six soldiers were among 12 Syrians killed during the day as security forces pressed a crackdown on protests and in festivities between troops and army deserters.
The girl, aged 8, as well as four other non-combatants were killed in the besieged city of Homs, a hotbed of dissent against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Lord of the Baath... 's regime, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.
In addition, "security forces placed in long-term storage three maimed people in a private hospital in the al-Waer district" of Homs.
Several people were also placed in long-term storage in Jassem, in the southern province of Daraa, the Britannia-based Observatory said.
In the northwestern province of Idlib, near the Turkish border, "one civilian was killed during a sweep by security forces in Kafruma town."
Also in Idlib, "at least four soldiers in the regular army were killed at dawn in an attack, headed by gunnies -- probably deserters -- on a military checkpoint in Has region, near Maaret al-Numan town," said the Observatory.
Early on Thursday, in Jabal al-Zawiya, local people began a general strike, responding to protesters there, while security forces tried to force them to open closed shops, said the same source.
In eastern Syria, two soldiers, one an officer, were killed and five soldiers were maimed in another attack on a military checkpoint, east of Deir al-Zour.
Another protest group, the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution, called for Thursday to be a "day of general strike in Syria to support Homs," where security forces have killed dozens of civilians in a few days.
In the Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... area of Barze, a huge deployment of security forces moved in and placed in long-term storage several people. The previous night six people were killed during an operation to crush protests.
"Hidden gunnies have been posted on high buildings in Barze where a major protest is underway," the Observatory said.
On Wednesday, efforts to crush anti-regime protests resulted in 16 new civilian deaths, the Observatory said.
According to the United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... , more than 3,500 people have now been killed in Syria since protests against Assad began in March.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2011 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.
[Dawn] Three Afghan 
l-Shabaab
Wazoo
Kurram Agency
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
