[Egypt Independent] Police placed in durance vile Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! prominent Salafi leader Gamal Saber on Tuesday in connection with a deadly family feud in Shubra district that left three people dead.
According to reports, members of the Assal and Saber families have been exchanging gunfire and Molotov cocktails
It's all fun and games until someone ends up in the hospital with 3rd degree burns over 90% of their body.
since Monday following the stabbing death of high school student Saad Dorra.
Central Security Forces had deployed three armored vehicles Tuesday evening in an attempt to stop the conflict, which had also injured dozens of people, including nine coppers.
Ten shops and 45 cars parked along the street were damaged in the fighting as well.
The Public Prosecution ordered the arrest of 30 others suspected of being involved Tuesday, including Ahmed Gamal Saber, Gamal's son. Seven suspects from both families are in jug.
State-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported earlier that the son had already been arrested on murder charges.
Meanwhile, ...back at the mall, Clarissa suddenly spied Mr. Bartlett at the checkout counter. He was buying Grecian Formula!... Salafi leader Gamal, the presidential campaign manager for Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, said the charges had been fabricated during an interview on the Sabah Al-Balad show. "My son was with me building a mosque," he said, denying they were involved in any fight. "I was told later that the residents destroyed the mosque."
Authorities say the conflict was rooted in a fight between Dorra, a member of the Assal family, and Ahmed during a football match near the Shubra Preparatory School for girls.
According to police, two men got into a fist fight, leading Ahmed to stab Dorra three times, killing him.
According to 10 eyewitnesses, Ahmed was the instigator.
On Monday, Public Prosecutor Talaat Abdallah ordered an immediate investigation into the bloody festivities.
Autopsies to determine the cause of death will be carried out shortly.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
According to police, two men got into a fist fight, leading Ahmed to stab Dorra three times, killing him
Change the names slightly, and you have the lovely California town of San Bernardino.
[An Nahar] Clashes erupted on Tuesday between gunmen and security forces in northwestern Tunisia, near the Algerian border, official media reported.
"Clashes are currently taking place in the Gam Halfaya area of Tajerouine (in the Kef region), between an armed group consisting of six members and units from the army and national guard," the TAP news agency quoted a security source in the region as saying.
"Security reinforcements have been deployed in the area, which has been surrounded in order to detain the members of this group," the source added, referring to the gunmen as "terrorists."
No details were given on casualties, and the interior ministry was not immediately available for comment.
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03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Fifteen Islamist fighters have been killed in recent days in the northern Mali region of Gao, the French army said Tuesday, announcing the seizure of a large cache of arms and ammunition.
The claim came two weeks after France said more than 150 Islamist rebels had been killed since the middle of February in Mali. French losses in the intervention have been limited to five casualties.
The French soldiers came under sporadic heavy- and medium-range fire in the area of Djebok, east of Gao, the joint staff said, adding that they "neutralized 15 terrorists" since Thursday.
They found eight vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft guns, landmines and a large horde of weapons and ammunition.
France has more than 4,000 troops on the ground in Mali, of whom about 1,200 are currently deployed in the northeast, carrying out clean-up operations after driving out most of the Islamist rebels from the area.
There are still pockets of resistance in areas such as Gao, which have witnessed stray attacks and suicide bombings since the Islamists fled.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Funny how Islamists wither and die when they do not have the necessary indigenous support system.
The AQ made a big mistake in Mali by pissing off all the locals with their crazy sharia crap and brutality.
AND since the French seem to love fighting Islamists in North Africa, this is not a fair fight, we should give the French a standing TKO on how thoroughly they are beating the AQ's butt.
Maybe Nigeria should talk to France about loaning them the Foreign Legion for a while to deal with Boko Haram.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
03/20/2013 10:21 Comments ||
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#2
Maybe Nigeria should talk to France about loaning them the Foreign Legion for a while to deal with Boko Haram.
France's only interest is with its former colonies.
[Guardian Ng] IT was a moment of outrage and shock yesterday as the survivors of the bomb explosion in Kano that claimed several lives relived their ordeal. The casualty figure rose to 22 Tuesday.
Witnesses told the Agence France Presse (AFP) that they heard multiple blasts and saw wounded victims in bloodied clothes fleeing the area as authorities cordoned the scene.
"I was boarding the bus to Lagos when I heard a huge explosion," Abdulaziz Baban-Lamma, a 47-year-old trader, told AFP from his hospital bed.
The blast left him with severe injuries to his abdomen and other survivors ran to assist him when they saw his condition, he said. He later underwent emergency surgery.
"May Allah curse whoever was behind the act," he said.
Magawata Goje, 45, was selling dried meat at the station when the bomb went off.
"Something sharp hit me under my right ear," he said.
"Blood gushed out and I was drenched in my blood."
When he regained consciousness, "I could see many people burnt to death," he said.
Emmanuel Bassey, a 37-year-old bus company employee with burns across his body, said the bombers slammed into one of the buses at high speed.
The bus station targeted on Monday primarily services passengers heading to the southern part of the country.
It was also attacked in January last year in a blast that wounded several people.
Authorities have not said who was behind the bombing and there has been no claim of responsibility, but it was similar to previous attacks by Boko Haram.
The worsening insecurity Tuesday, again, claimed the lives of two soldiers and a policeman in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
This development came a day after gunmen attacked three schools and killed three teachers in the same state.
Tuesday's tragedy occurred when suspected terrorists bombed the patrol vehicle of the Joint Task Force (JTF) at the Roundabout of Kashim Ibrahim Way at noon, killing two soldiers, a policeman and injuring four soldiers.
The blast, according to an eyewitness, Aisami Yerima, hit the patrol vehicle of JTF while driving at the roundabout before other soldiers and policemen rushed to the scene to evacuate the victims.
Yerima, however, told The Guardian that he could not say whether the occupants were killed or not, but the blast ripped the vehicle into pieces, while passersby scampered for safety into various directions.
Five minutes after the blast, the entire area wherein lie First Bank, United Bank of Africa (UBA) and Union Bank, was cordoned by the JTF.
Vehicles and pedestrians were forced and directed by soldiers to take the Post Office Area and Government Reservation Area (GRA) roads of Maiduguri.
In a telephone interview, the spokesman of JTF, Lt.-Col. Sagir Musa, said that the blast was targeted at the patrol vehicle of JTF at First Bank Roundabout by noon Tuesday.
He said the casualties of the blast could not be ascertained as the details on death and injuries were yet to be collated from the scene of the blast.
Musa said: "As soon as we collated all the details of the blast casualties, the media will be communicated through their respective e-mails."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] The Saudi authorities have arrested 18 suspected spies, including an Iranian and a Lebanese, on charges of espionage for a foreign country, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.
"Sixteen Saudis, an Iranian and a Lebanese were arrested in coordinated and simultaneous operations in four regions of the kingdom," including the capital Riyadh and the holy city of Mecca, the ministry said in a statement.
The suspects, some of whom were arrested in Eastern Province where the kingdom's Shiite minority is concentrated, were working for a foreign country which it did not name, the statement added.
Their arrest was made after the ministry had "received information concerning the involvement of Saudis and expats in espionage on behalf of a another country," said the statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
The suspects "gathered information on vital installations which they provided to the country" they had been working for, it added.
Although the ministry did not reveal the name of the country for which the suspects were allegedly working, the announcement that an Iranian is implicated could point to Iran.
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03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Police in Indian-administered Kashmir Tuesday said they had arrested four people including a Pakistani national from the Lashkar-e-Toiba militant group over an attack that left five policemen dead.
Abdul Gani Mir, Kashmir's top law enforcement officer, said investigators had concluded that the attack was planned by Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based group blamed for mass killings in Mumbai in 2008.
"The arrested include Zubair alias Talha Zarar of Lashkar-e-Toiba who came from Multan (in Pakistan)," inspector general of police Mir told reporters.
Two heavily armed militants attacked a group of Central Reserve Police Force personnel in the compound of a police-run school last week, killing five of them and injuring 10 others including four civilians.
In a call to local media after the assault, the deadliest attack on security forces in nearly five years, the Indian Kashmir-based but pro-Pakistan militant group Hizbul Mujahideen claimed responsibility.
Mir said the militants had infiltrated from the Pakistani side of the heavily militarized informal border of Kashmir in January and February to "cause disturbance" in Srinagar.
Three others arrested include Pradeep Singh and two "former militants", one of whom, Bashir Ahmad Mir, was released from prison in 2008.
"They provided logistical support for the attack," Mir said at a press conference.
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03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] A senior officer of the Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... Electric Supply Company (KESC) and six others were killed in different incidents of violence in Karachi on Tuesday.
According to police, KESC's Deputy General Manager Farhan Khalil was killed in a blast in his car near Landi Kotal Roundabout in North Nazimabad.
A pedestrian, identified as Umer, was also injured in the incident.
KESC officer's body was shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities.
Meanwhile, ...back at the pound, the little lost dog backed into the corner and showed its teeth. And what big teeth they were!... six people including a doctor, an official of an intelligence agency and a political activist were killed in separate incidents of violence and assassinations in the metropolis.
Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad Khan has expressed grief over the deaths of Abbasi Shaheed Hospital's doctor Asad Usman and KESC officer Farhan Kalil in terrorist incidents.
In a statement, the governor also strongly condemned the killing of Prof Sibte Jafar, who was bumped off on Monday.
The governor sought report of these terrorist incidents from the IG Police Sindh and directed him to take effective action against culprits.
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03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] Ten militants were killed and six others wounded when jetfighters pounded their hideouts in Mamozai area of Orakzai tribal region on Monday.
Sources said that jetfighters targeted militant positions in Chappar area in Mamozai tehsil of upper Orakzai Agency at 11am. They said that six militant hideouts were destroyed in the area.
Sources said that 10 militants were killed and six others sustained injuries in the action. Local people retrieved bodies and injured from the debris, they added.
Ismail Khan and Mirza Khan, two eyewitnesses, said that several vacated houses were destroyed during the bombing.
Sources said that militants cordoned off the area and restricted movement of local people.
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03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] An unidentified armed man rubbed out a lawyer and injured his assistant seriously on Dalazak Road here on Monday morning, police said.
They said that lawyer Zahir Abbas Naqvi was on his way to the district courts on a cycle of violence along with his assistant Syed Ghulam Nabi Shah when an unidentified man opened firing on them.
Both of them were maimed seriously in the attack. They were shifted to Lady Reading Hospital where the lawyer succumbed to his wounds. The dear departed lawyer and his injured assistant belong to Wadpaga, a village on the outskirts of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
"We were riding a cycle of violence and as soon as we reached Dalazak Road a man armed with a pistol fired at us," injured Mr Shah told police. He said that after firing at them, the assailant went to a motorcyclist, who was waiting for him at a short distance, and expeditiously departed at a goodly pace.
Mr Naqvi was the second lawyer, who was assassinated during the past few weeks. Another senior lawyer Malik Jarar was rubbed out at Gulbahar on Feb 8 when he was taking his children to a local private school.
A police official said that the dear departed had no enmity. It seemed a sectarian issue, he added. He said that efforts were made to get a clue about the attackers.
Imamia Students Organisation (ISO) has condemned the murder of the lawyer, saying government has failed to stop the murders of innocent people in Peshawar.
A front man of ISO told Dawn that several members of Shiite community were killed but no killer had been placed in durance vile Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! so far.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Shot a lawyer??
I guess that is one part of Islamic fanaticism I can understand and align myself with.
As the proud owner of two ex-wives, and the proud ex-owner of two houses, two cars, and two housefuls of furniture plus the requisite bankruptcy, I can definitely get on board with any group that wants to shoot lawyers.
After all even ole Will Shakespear himself said in Henry VI, Part 2: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
So, maybe when we throw ammo and weapons over the wall we should build around Pakistanarchy, we should include a requirement for a certain number of the ammo being reserved for barristers and holy men.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
03/20/2013 10:16 Comments ||
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[Dawn] Hundreds of members of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain overran on Monday the last bastion of their rival group, Ansaarul Islam, in Tirah valley of Khyber Agency.
Sources said that Ansaarul Islam chief Maulana Mehboobul Haq and his lieutenant Ezzatullah Hamkhayal also fled their headquarters in Bagh-Maidan and took refuge in Pir Mela locality of Arhanga near the border of Orakzai Agency ... crawling with holy men, home to Darra Adam Khel, the world's largest illegal arms bazaar. 14 distinct tribes of beturbanned primitives inhabit Orakzai agency's 1500 or so square kilometers...
They said that Taliban blew up the Muhammadi Markaz in Bagh-Maidan and torched a number of houses, vacated by the supporters of Ansaarul Islam (AI) in the area.
"Taliban are now in full control of entire Bar Qambarkhel area including Bhutan Sharif, Haidar Kandaw, Dray Stany and Dray Plara in Lar (eastern) Bagh along with Bar (western) Bagh that fell to them on Monday after fierce resistance by AI supporters," they added.
Sources said that with the fall of Bar Bagh, Taliban also took control of Angori, Kala Vuch, Arhanga Kandao and Shalobar Warsak heights.
The area is mostly inhabited by Malikdinkhel tribe that till recently was supporting AI in its fight against both Taliban and Lashkar-e-Islam.
Sources said that white flags were fluttering atop most of the houses in the entire Bar Qambarkhel and Malikdinkhel localities to show allegiance of local residents to Taliban.
Mr Hamkhayal, the deputy chief of AI, had only yesterday vowed in his radio broadcast that they would not surrender to Taliban and would fight till last man.
However, a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... it was learnt on good authority that he along with his elder brother and AI chief had moved out of Bagh-Maidan a day after Lar Bagh area of Bar Qambarkhel fell into the hands of Taliban.
There were also reports that an army helicopter airlifted the two AI leaders, however, a security official in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. denied such reports and said that security forces were carefully watching the situation in Tirah valley.
Control over the area, would provide Taliban with easy access to Orakzai and Kurram agencies and Afghanistan.
Taliban launched offensive against their one time ally AI in the third week of January after they accused the later of violating an agreement regarding free movement of the former in the region. However, a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all... AI denied that it had struck any such agreement with Taliban.
Taliban took control of the entire Kukikhel ...a tribe of primitives inhabiting Khyber Agency. They are a branch of the Afridi tribe. Traditionally they have been migratory, tromping between Jamrud and the Rajgal valley with the seasons. The tribe has had mustache-cursing relationships with several other tribes, including the Zakkakhel and Kambarkhel, and with the Mullagori. They make welcome most anyone with a turban and automatic weapons, but every once in awhile they get together a tribal lashkar to mollify the government... territory in May last year and had since been fortifying their position in Tirah valley.
Their control over AI strongholds in both Lar and Bar Maidan areas of Tirah forced hundreds of Bar Qambarkhel and Malikdinkhel families to shift to Sadda 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... and Sangrha and Meshthi in Orakzai Agency.
Yar Asghar Afridi, a Bar Qambarkhel rustics currently residing in Peshawar, told Dawn that nearly 1,200 of Bar Qambarkhel families reached Durrani camp in Sadda while 300 to 400 Malikdinkhel families were on their way to Kurram Agency via Hangu district ... Hangu is famous for its greenery, hills, beauty and water. Most of the people of this area are Bangash & Orakzai Pashtuns. Part of the Bangash are Shia. The Orakzai and the Sunni Bangash are determined to kill them...
He said that security forces established a registration point for the newly displaced families from Tirah in Dogar area while Orakzai political administration arranged free food and transportation for them.
Mr Afridi said that the displaced families were forced to walk for almost 20 kilometres to reach Orakzai Agency as they had no transport facility.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shia districts in Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to Al Qaeda have vowed to step up attacks on Shia targets since the start of the year in an attempt to provoke sectarian confrontation and undermine Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.
Tuesday's bombs exploded in a busy Baghdad market, near the heavily fortified Green Zone and in other districts across the capital. A suicide bomber also attacked a police base in a Shia town south of the capital, officials said.
"I was driving my taxi and suddenly I felt my car rocked. Smoke was all around. I saw two bodies on the ground. People were running and shouting everywhere," said Ali Radi, a taxi driver caught in one of the blasts in Baghdad's Sadr City. A decade after US and Western troops swept Saddam from power. Iraq still struggles with insurgents, sectarian friction and political feuds among Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions.
In a sign of concern over security, the cabinet on Tuesday postponed local elections in two provinces, Anbar and Nineveh, for up to six months because of threats to electoral workers and violence there, according to Maliki's media adviser Ali al-Moussawi. The polls will go ahead elsewhere on April 20.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Baghdad blasts, but Islamic State of Iraq, a wing of Al Qaeda, has vowed to regain ground lost in its war with U.S. troops. This year the group has carried out a string of high-profile attacks.
Violence is still below the height of the sectarian slaughter that killed tens of thousands after Sunni Islamists bombed the Shia Al Askari shrine in 2006, provoking a wave of retaliation by Shia militias.
But security officials say al Qaeda is regrouping in the vast western desert of Anbar province bordering Syria. Complicating security, thousands of Sunni protesters are rallying in Anbar against Maliki, whose government they accuse of marginalising their minority sect since the fall of Saddam.
Syria's war next door is also whipping up Iraq's volatile mix. Iraq is exposed to a regional tussle for influence between Turkey, which backs Sunni rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad, and Shia Iran, the Syrian leader's main ally.
Since the last election in 2010, Maliki's Sunni and Kurdish critics have accused him of consolidating his own authority, abusing his control of security forces to pressure foes and failing to live up to a power-sharing deal.
The political crisis has only worsened since American troops left Iraq in December 2011, removing the symbolic buffer of US military power and weakening Washington's influence.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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A suspect and member of a powerful and influential clan responsible for the massacre of 58 people in Mindanao in late 2009 was gunned down in an encounter with government security forces in Maguindanao province, a military spokesman said on Tuesday.
Army Colonel Edgar Gonzales said five policemen and a soldier were also injured in the shootout that killed Dayna Ampatuan in the town of Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao.
Gonzales said the encounter occurred Monday when a team of policemen and soldiers went to his hideout in a remote village in Shariff Aguak to serve him an arrest warrant for his alleged involvement in the carnage on Nov.23, 2009. Instead of surrendering, Ampatuan and his followers resisted which resulted in a gun battle.
Gonzales said, Initial intelligence reports indicated that Ampatuan resisted and engaged the policemen and soldiers in a firefight. His companions joined the foray."
Gonzales quoted witnesses as saying they saw Ampatuans followers dragging three of their injured comrades as they escaped to an area controlled by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), currently holding peace talks with the government.
Gonzales said they immediately reported the case to a committee formed by the government and the MILF in charge of law enforcement in the disputed areas.
Ampatuan was a suspect in the bloodbath whose victims included 32 Mindanao-based journalists as well as the wife and two sisters of Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu, the scion of a rival clan running for reelection in the May 13 midterm polls.
Also in Mindanao, the military reported that suspected members of the communist New Peoples Army (NPA) kidnapped a policeman in the town of Nabunturan, Compostela Valley province. The abduction of Police Officer 3 Ruben Nohapa happened at a checkpoint set up by the insurgents in a remote village of Nabunturan early Monday morning.
An assistant village leader was gunned down in Yarang district of Pattani province on Tuesday afternoon.
The attack occurred about 3:30 p.m. as Maming Dueramae, 56, assistant leader of Ban Jueraebongo was traveling on a motorcycle to visit his daughter. Two men, also on a motorcycle, followed him. The pillion rider opened fire with a 9 mm pistol, hitting Maming with four shots and killing him instantly.
[An Nahar] Damascus on Tuesday denied that its warplanes had bombed areas on the Lebanese-Syrian border, accusing "hostile" countries of circulating the media reports.
"The reports circulated by some Lebanese, Arab and international media outlets about Syrian warplanes dropping bombs inside Lebanese territory are false and baseless," Syria's state news agency SANA quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as saying.
On Monday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said "Syrian warplanes bombarded the outskirts of the towns of Khirbet Younin and Wadi al-Khayl in Arsal's barren mountains."
But the Syrian official said "some countries that have endorsed the approach of hostility against Syria, through arming and financing armed terrorist groups, are behind circulating this false report."
The Syrian foreign ministry "stresses that this report it totally false, and as it denies it in its entirety, it underlines its respect of Lebanese sovereignty and its keenness on the security and stability of brotherly Lebanon."
President Michel Suleiman tasked on Tuesday Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour with sending a letter of protest to Syria over air raids in the northeastern border area.
Suleiman said the air raids were "unacceptable" and "violated Lebanese sovereignty."
On Monday, a high-ranking Lebanese army official confirmed to Agence France Presse that Syrian air strikes took place along the border area, without saying whether they had struck inside Lebanese territory.
But a security services official on the ground told AFP that Syrian planes had fired four missiles at Arsal, where many residents back the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[Egypt Independent] Syria's main opposition National Coalition early Tuesday elected Ghassan Hitto, a former US-based IT executive with Islamist leanings, as prime minister for Syrian rebel-held territory.
In a new challenge to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the Coalition appointed Hitto after some 14 hours of closed-door consultations in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
Hitto arrived in the conference hall minutes after he won 35 out of 49 votes from the Coalition, and was met with a round of applause as he shook hands with Coalition members.
"We say to you (the Syrian people) that we are with you, and that, God willing, we are victorious" over Assad's regime, Hitto told reporters later, as he praised the "great" Syrian people.
"We will announce this government's programme soon," added the country's first rebel premier, voted in more than two years after the outbreak of an anti-Assad revolt that has turned into a civil war.
Coalition members say the prime minister's first task will be to form an interim government, which he should put to a vote to the Coalition's general assembly.
Hitto plans to be based inside rebel-held parts of Syria, from where he and his future government will help administer swathes of territory that are mired in poverty and insecurity.
Opposition members in Istanbul hoped the vote would attract much-needed weapons and humanitarian aid from the international community.
Some Coalition members described Hitto as a consensus candidate pleasing both the opposition's Islamist and liberal factions.
But some of the 70-odd Coalition members withdrew from the consultations before the vote could take place, reflecting divisions within Syria's opposition.
When the voting finally happened, the remaining Coalition members placed their ballots in a transparent box located at the front of a conference hall in an Istanbul hotel, where the much-awaited meeting took place.
"This is a transparent, democratic vote," said Coalition chief Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
So the new Premier of the FSA has "islamist" leanings. What does that mean? He either supports Sharia law or he doesn't.
A previously secret document found at Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan sets out a detailed al-Qaida strategy for attacking targets in Europe and the United States.
The document -- a letter written to bin Laden in March 2010 by a senior operational figure in the terror group -- reveals that tunnels, bridges, dams, undersea pipelines and Internet cables were among the targets.
It was written by Younis al-Mauretani, a senior al-Qaida planner thought to have been behind an ambitious plan to hit "soft" targets in Europe in the fall of 2010.
The U.S. Department of Justice passed the letter to German prosecutors last year for use in an ongoing trial in Dusseldorf because it possibly refers to one of the defendants, according to the German newspaper Die Zeit, which first broke the story.
CNN has obtained details of the document from sources briefed on its contents. The 17-page letter is in Arabic.
Al-Mauretani proposed that al-Qaida recruits take jobs with companies transporting gasoline and and other sensitive companies in the West, and await the right moment to strike.
He said targets should include tunnels, airports and even "Love Parades" -- gay and lesbian events held every summer in Germany. He said recruits should infiltrate university courses in the West in key subjects useful to the group including physics and chemistry, so that they could later be re-activated and help the group, according to Die Zeit.
He also suggested attaching mines to undersea pipelines using mini-submarines -- and appears to have researched ways to circumvent safety valves on such pipelines. Al Mauretani also proposed that al-Qaida attack financial centers and think-tanks -- specifically mentioning the RAND Corporation, whose headquarters are in California.
#1
If they were smart they'd target the media. Most bang for you buck at least. I mean who would really care (joe six-pack wise) if they hit the Rand corporation?
#5
"Take jobs wid Companies transporting gasoline" > 'Tis also good for manupulating World Gas-Energy Prices wwid or widout Jihad agz America = Amerika, + wid or widout the Saudis andor OPEC???
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.
[Egypt Independent] Police 
[An Nahar] The Saudi authorities have arrested 18 suspected spies, including an Iranian and a Lebanese, on charges of espionage for a foreign country, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.
[An Nahar] Police in Indian-administered Kashmir Tuesday said they had arrested four people including a Pakistani national from the Lashkar-e-Toiba militant group over an attack that left five policemen dead.
[Dawn] A senior officer of the 
Kurram Agency
[An Nahar] Damascus on Tuesday denied that its warplanes had bombed areas on the Lebanese-Syrian border, accusing "hostile" countries of circulating the media reports.
[Egypt Independent] Syria's main opposition National Coalition early Tuesday elected Ghassan Hitto, a former US-based IT executive with Islamist leanings, as prime minister for Syrian rebel-held territory.
