A man claiming to be an Al-Qaeda terrorist militant seized four hostages at a bank in the French city of Toulouse on Wednesday and wants to negotiate with an elite police unit. The man fired a gun and wants to talk to the Raid police unit that gunned down Al-Qaeda-inspired gunman Mohamed Merah in March following a siege of his apartment in the same city after he went on a killing spree.
#2
Exchange the hostages for Merah's dear ol' Dad and his attorney
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/20/2012 9:42 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Toulouse siege: 'al-Qaeda militant is schizophrenic' A gunman who has taken three hostages in a bank in the south western French city of Toulouse is mentally ill and has been named as Boumaza, police said.
The man, aged 26, has been described as a schizophrenic by the local authorities but has told police that he is a member of al-Qaeda.
After one hostage was released this afternoon, the armed man spoke to his sister during negotiations with the police but continues to hold three hostage.
The gunman insisted that he was motivated by "religious motivations" and had not carried out his attack with the motive of robbery or money.
The sister of the hostage taker told local media that my brother is enraged. He was placed in Ddass (care of the social services) when he was little, has the rage and is afraid of the outside world, she said.
European leaders are poised to announce a £600 billion deal to bail out Spain and Italy, it emerged at the G20 summit on Tuesday night.
Speaking before the meeting, François Hollande, the French president, said: 'Its not on growth. It will be more on mechanisms that allow us to fight speculation.' Photo: AP By Robert Winnett, Political
Two rescue funds are to be used to buy the debts of the troubled economies, the cost of which have reached record highs in recent weeks.
It is hoped that the move, which represents a substantial shift in policy for Germanys chancellor, Angela Merkel, will send a strong signal to financial markets that Europes biggest economy is finally prepared to back its weaker neighbours.
Mrs Merkel and other European leaders have come under intense pressure at this weeks G20 summit to take radical action to stem the growing euro crisis which has pushed up the cost of Spanish bonds to unsustainable levels. The communiqué issued at the end of the G20 summit, which finished in Mexico last night, said that European leaders had agreed to take action to bring down borrowing rates.
Under the proposed deal, two European rescue funds the £400 billion (500 billion) European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the £200 billion (250 billion) European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) will buy bonds issued by European countries.
Previously, money in these funds which has been provided by members of the single currency has been used to bail out smaller European countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Governments in these countries were offered money directly in return for agreeing to austerity programmes. Under the new plan, the money in these funds will not be given directly to governments but will instead be used to buy up debts on the financial markets.
[An Nahar] Unknown attackers threw two grenades at NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... barracks at the tense border between Kosovo and Serbia early Tuesday but there were no casualties, NATO troops said.
"At 4.00 am this morning (02:00 GMT Tuesday) two hand grenades were thrown at the KFOR Compound ... at the Brnjak crossing point," in northern Kosovo, the NATO-led KFOR mission said in a blurb.
"One went kaboom!, the other remained dead in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. One KFOR soldier has received slight hearing loss, no significant material damage has been reported," it added.
KFOR peacekeepers have shut the crossing "until further notice" and called in experts to remove the unwent kaboom! grenade.
Tension in northern Kosovo, almost exclusively populated by Serbs who do not recognize the government in Pristina, has flared again since KFOR moved in to remove Serb-erected roadblocks earlier this month.
KFOR forces have been maintaining the security at the border between Kosovo and Serbia and in ethnically mixed areas around the flashpoint city of Kosovska Mitrovica and small ethnic Albanian pockets in the Serb-majority north.
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.
A man claiming to be an Al-Qaeda 
