#7
Tried to submit an article. Post skipped the preview screen and loaded the Rantburg's front page. Post never showed up and I assume it never made it to the holding tank. This happened several times as I tried to post in several ways.
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 16:39 Comments ||
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#8
I just posted an article using guest poster and it worked.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2005 18:32 Comments ||
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#9
I found out the cause. The source field was: http://jewishtribune.ca/tribune/jt-050407-02.html
Does the script throw out certain keywords such as jewish?
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 18:37 Comments ||
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#10
Yep. That was courtesy of Boris. I can work around it, though. I'll save the link so I can allow for it, but that won't be until I get done with the current Orkin Man routine...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2005 18:39 Comments ||
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#11
Thanks Fred. But no need. I submitted the post w/o the link in the source field.
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 18:47 Comments ||
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#12
Fred, I'm getting an error message when trying to post a comment:
Warning: mysql_connect(): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in C:web
antburgwwwpoparticle.php on line 7
Unable to connect!
#13
That should fix it. There'll be lots of little things like that, most requiring just a change to a line of code.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2005 20:57 Comments ||
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#14
Posting newslink: Warning: mysql_connect(): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in C:web
antburgwwwlPosterHolder.php on line 8
Unable to connect!
Gosh. That's really too bad. I'm sure their Moms will miss them.
At least 40 rebels and 10 soldiers have been killed in fresh clashes in Yemen's mountainous northwest, military and tribal sources said Sunday, as government forces pursue followers of a slain rebel preacher. Yemeni forces have killed at least 40 rebels and captured 50 others since Friday, they said, adding that 10 government soldiers had also died in fierce fighting that has left close to 270 people dead in less than two weeks. Tribal sources had said insurgents had retreated north to the rugged Lawdiya area as the noose tightened around the members of Huthi's Faithful Youth movement.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Police were investigating multiple theories Monday in the assassination of a former top intelligence official and his wife, who were gunned down by unknown assailants in Moscow. Anatoly Trofimov, a 65-year-old former deputy chief of the Federal Security Service under President Boris Yeltsin, was shot in his sports utility vehicle around 7:30 p.m. Sunday on a street in the northern part of the Russian capital. He died at the scene. His 28-year-old wife died Monday morning, after being hospitalized in a critical condition, Interfax reported. Their daughter, who was also in the car, was reportedly unharmed. There were conflicting reports as to her age.
The car was fired on by assailants armed with automatic weapons, from a small car, news reports said. NTV cited witnesses as seeing a masked man in a leather jacket and black hair run up to Trofimov and fire several times. State-run Rossiya television, citing unnamed regional law enforcement officials, said the attack was a contract killing related to Trofimov's business dealings. However, Alexander Litvinenko, a former top official in the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said on Ekho Moskvy radio that the killing was political. "I don't believe that ... Trofimov was killed for commercial activities," Litvinenko said according to a transcript posted on Ekho Moskvyi's web site. "In today's Russia not one businessman under any circumstances would raise their hand against a general of the FSB." Trofimov "was against the war in Chechnya, although he never, of course, spoke openly on this question. He was also against naming Putin to the post of FSB head," Litvinenko said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/11/2005 4:12:25 PM ||
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#1
Politics is business is politics in today's Russia. The FSB (former KGB)'s top officials have their fingers in plenty of pies, including that of the mysterious company that won the rigged auction for Yukos's production assets
The Russian military says it killed three Chechen fighters and seized an antiaircraft missile system from the site of the clash.
Major General Ilya Shabalkin said two Chechen fighters were killed during the brief skirmish on 9 April, one was killed while helicopters were tracking him after he fled, and a fourth fighter escaped.
Shabalkin said today that the Russian forces found a large amount of ammunition and weaponry at the clash site in the eastern Nozhai-Yurt district along with the missile system.
Chechen rebels have used portable shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down military helicopters over Chechnya, including one crash that left more than 120 passengers and crew dead in 2002.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/11/2005 4:11:07 PM ||
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#1
What was the make and manufacture of said missle? I bet it was Russian or Chinese.
Police on Monday tackled and dragged away a man with two suitcases who stationed himself in front of the west side of the Capitol and asked to see the president.
The man refused to say anything else to an officer who tried to talk with him, authorities said.
"He was not very responsive," said U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer. "The officer felt it was a possible suicide bomber."
The man was tackled by a SWAT team and charged with disobeying a police officer. A three-hour investigation of the suitcases, including blasting them with a water cannon, revealed nothing threatening, Gainer said.
He refused to identify the man involved other than to say he was 33 years old, from China and carrying no identification.
The midday incident — which occurred at the peak of the cherry blossoms in one of Washington's busiest tourist seasons — led police to evacuate the West Lawn and briefly bar tourists from the Capitol.
An officer first saw the man standing near a fountain with a suitcase on either side of him, staring silently at the building around 12:40 p.m., Gainer said.
"He only would say at first that he wanted to speak to the president," the chief said.
Four officers crept up one of the walled pathways behind him. The man briefly turned and saw them as they crouched behind a wall. After he turned back to the building, they came over the wall. Two tackled him and dragged him away. A medic tended to what Gainer said were superficial injuries the man suffered when he was knocked down.
"He said that if we wanted to know what was in the suitcase, we would have to open it ourselves," Gainer said
Another 'spontaneous' protest like the ones against the Japanese back home?
Posted by: too true ||
04/11/2005 9:22:09 PM ||
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Bangladesh is trying to verify the identity of a teenage girl, said to be a Bangladeshi, who was arrested in New York, a senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in Dhaka yesterday. According to newspaper reports, two 16-year-old girls from New York City, one a Bangladeshi and the other a Guinean, were arrested in March and later charged with immigration violation after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asserted that they intended to become suicide bombers.
When his attention was drawn to newspaper reports, the Foreign Ministry official said they were trying to ascertain the facts. The girl arrested in New York might not be a true Bangladeshi, he added. Brought up in the US, she might be a Bangladesh-born American citizen. "The passport that she carries will be examined", the official said. Meanwhile, the hearing of the girl, now under US custody, has been adjourned to next Thursday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had discovered the suicide-bombing plot on a computer records of Internet chats between the girls. The family and friends of the Bangladeshi girl called the allegations absurd. Though a hearing in the Bangladeshi girl's case was due on Friday in York, Pennsylvania, the US government has asked that it be closed, based on a motion by Krista Stanton, supervisory special agent in the counter-terrorism section of the FBI's New York office.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
"If you or any member of your team are caught, we will disavow any knowledge..."
Unidentified gunmen yesterday seized a restaurant owner in Jolo island, where security forces are battling Abu Sayyaf militants, implicated in a series of terrorism and kidnappings-for-ransom in the southern Philippines, police and military said. Five gunmen snatched Renato Yanga, owner of the Topspot restaurant in downtown Jolo, and then fled on a jeep toward Patikul town, a stronghold of Abu Sayyaf militants, officials said. The victim was a relative of the police chief of Zamboanga City, Supt. Mario Yanga, Arab News learned. "We still don't know the motive of the kidnapping, but ransom money is one of the reasons behind the spate of kidnappings in Jolo. Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesman Lt. Col. Buenaventura Pascual said. No group claimed responsibility for the latest incident, but suspicion fell heavily on the Abu Sayyaf, which had been behind most of the kidnappings and beheadings in Jolo and nearby Basilan island in the past years.
Yanga's abduction was the third in the southern region of Mindanao during four days, raising fears of a new upsurge in kidnappings. On Friday, a Filipino-Chinese businessman was also kidnapped by four unidentified gunmen in the southern city of Cotabato. A day earlier, trader Jamael Rogong was seized in the nearby city of Marawi.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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(Debka, use salt)
Syrian president Bashar Assad is trying to turn his back on the fiasco of his exit from Lebanon and shore up his regime by a secret crash reform program — although one that is careful not to put the presidency on the block.
Stage one took place in total hush Saturday, April 9.
...Exclusive Middle East sources report that Assad wants his epic political and military revolution to be over and done in three months, unlike the Baath revolutions in Iraq and Syria which dragged on through the 1960s and 1970s.
This is a very tall order as well as a dangerous gamble, considering that Assad is proposing to roll back four decades of Syrian history by June and transform his Baath from a Marxist-socialist ideological movement to a rejuvenated, pragmatic ruling party.
Despite the heavy secrecy imposed on this radical program, a storm of opposition will be hard to avoid. It could go as far as a bid for his ouster.
He proposes to sever the reciprocal lifeline between army and party and shut down the movement's pan-Arab center, so withdrawing the mother party's support from the many Baath branches around the Arab world, especially in Lebanon and Jordan. He even seeks to rewrite the national constitution and introduce an open market economy.
But since he grasped Lebanon was a write-off, Assad is quoted by ...sources as dropping to confidants such remarks as: "I don't want to see foreign troops in Syria forcing us to accept the sort of reforms imposed on Iraq. We can carry out those reforms on our own." This tone recalls Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi's vein in 2003 after he was reconciled to meeting the Bush administration's demands and ceding his nuclear option and weapons of mass destruction programs.
Our Middle East sources have obtained exclusive access to the details of Assad's Damascus Spring blueprint from stage one:
1. Sunday, April 3, Baath party branches held meetings across the country to prepare the 10th national party convention in June. The last convention took place five years ago straight after the death of Bashar's father, President Hafez Assad.
2. Friday, April 1, prior to these meetings, registered Baath members received a memo asking them for input on a new Baath platform amended to adapt the party to modern-day requirements. Proposed amendments were to be forwarded to the following four drafting committees.
A. External Relations Committee
Unbeknownst to the rank and file, this panel was to chart the abolition of the Pan-Arab Commission of the Baath Party, the closure of its Damascus offices and dismissal of its staff.
B. Security Committee
This body worked on severing links between the army and the Baath party. This decision is extremely important because it pulls the rug of party membership from under armed forces appointments and leaves officers to be selected on merit and qualifications.
C. Administrative Committee
This panel was charged with drafting resolutions for the national convention. They were asked to approve a new name for the party, updated goals and a fresh motto. The current motto of Arab Unity, Liberty and Socialism recalled antiquated Marxist socialist values and is therefore to be erased from party literature. The new name proposed is the National Ruling Party of Syria.
After invading Iraq in 2003, the Americans banned Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath. Two years on, the Syrian ruler actuated by US-French pressures, became convinced that it is to his interest to rub out the Syrian Baath as well.
D. Economy Committee
This panel was assigned to restructure the Syrian economy and oversee its transition to a market economy.
3. A timeline was drawn up for the three critical stages of the Syrian reform program:
April 9 — elections for Baath party branch councils. The plan is to bring fresh blood to the branches to replaces veterans some of whom have been in place 40 years.
April 26 — the newly-elected local branch councils will pick new district bodies.
June — the national party convention will meet to approve the reform program.
The next three months will therefore be crucial for Syria and its ruler.
According to our Middle East sources, Assad's plan to jettison the old political structures and with them the old guard he inherited from his father exposes him to a fight to the death from such formidable figures as Abdullah al Ahmed, acting general secretary of the Syrian Baath, who took over on Hafez Assad's death and all three vice presidents Zuheir Masharka, Khalim Haddam and Muhammed Jaber Jabjush. They are all warning Assad that if he goes through with his plan he will be riding for a fall and risk the eclipse of the Assad dynasty in Syria.
Dissent is even broader and deeper among lower Baath echelons and the military officers who treat local Baath branches as their personal power bases.
There are some suggestions in Damascus that Assad cooked up his reform scheme as a decoy to throw off Washington's complaints on a great many sensitive issues and demonstrate that after leaving Lebanon he has turned his face inward. For one thing, he needs urgently to make up the revenue shortfall generated by the loss of his lucrative grip on Lebanon. Certainly he can afford economic sanctions less than ever before.
He may also be hoping to divert Washington's attention from the continuing Syrian-Iraqi border traffic he permits on behalf of Iraqi insurgents, the bases and havens he provides Saddam Hussein's ex-officials, the terrorist bases allowed to operate out of Damascus, the Syria-Iran military alliance, his links with Hizballah, or the Iranian intelligence teams imported to Lebanon and Syria to man early warning and radar stations. None of these issues is addressed in his program of reforms.
There is more than a suggestion that under cover of the Syrian troop withdrawal from Lebanon, Damascus will retain a clandestine presence through local agents or its own undercover operatives.
#1
Debka Alert: stable full of salt - Assad doesn't control the Syrian Baathist Old Guardâ¢. Their demise will come, but not at the hands of that pencil-necked geek
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2005 20:37 Comments ||
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Egyptian police have detained 30 people in last week's deadly bombing in a Cairo tourist bazaar, including the suspected bomber's mother, three brothers and 16 other relatives, prosecutors said.
Police arrested the family members after identifying the body of the bomber, who died in the blast that killed two French tourists and an American and wounded 18 others Thursday in Cairo's Khan al-Khalili bazaar. Among those arrested was an uncle who called authorities after seeing the suspected bomber's body in a newspaper photograph. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 7:06:38 PM ||
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#1
Hang the lot of those bastards. BTW R-Burgers, Katie is doing fine, she wasn't close to the boomer, it did shake her up (emotionally) a little bit though. This shit just isn't right dammit. I've been shot at and damn near blown up more than a few times in the Balkans, A-Stan, Congo, and Iraq twice, but that's my fucking job as a close protection agent. Katie is just a teenager for cripes sake.
#2
BG - sorry it took a moment to click, but I'm glad she's doing...ok. My prayers are with her and your family. If it was my daughter...and it was at Santana HS, ...I wouldn't be so nice. A Dad, pissed off, is something capable of anything...(oh, BTW, F&ck Andy Williams for the rest of his life)
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2005 22:44 Comments ||
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A U.S. contractor was kidnapped Monday in the Baghdad area, the latest in a string of abductions that have forced many foreigners to work here under armed guard. A pickup truck also exploded near a U.S. convoy as it patrolled a crowded market in the troubled city of Samarra, killing at least three people and injuring more than 20 others.
Three suicide bombers also hit a Marine outpost in western Iraq, wounding three Marines and three civilians in an attack claimed by Iraq's most feared terror groups.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman said the American contractor, who was working on a reconstruction project, had been abducted around noon. He refused to release an identity or other details, but said the contractor's family had been informed. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 6:29:58 PM ||
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#1
Sunday in the Anchorage Daily News...you would have thought the world was coming to an end and it was starting in Iraq...all stories from the LA Times.
Too bad if it happens, he would have hanged very nicely.
By Adrian Blomfield in Baghdad
Saddam Hussein could avoid the gallows under a secret proposal by insurgent leaders that Iraq's new administration is "seriously considering", a senior government source said yesterday.
A reprieve is understood to be among the central demands of Sunni nationalists and former members of Saddam's Ba'ath party who have reportedly begun negotiations with the government amid the backdrop of a bloody insurgency which claimed 30 lives during the weekend.
Officials say they are looking for a way of joining the political process after January's election, which was boycotted by most of the once-powerful Sunni minority.
"We are trying to reach out to the insurgents," the source said. "We don't expect them to stop fighting unconditionally. Sending Saddam to prison for the rest of his life is not a huge price for us to pay, but it will save them a lot of face."
The official said those involved in the negotiations included senior members of Saddam's Fedayeen militia and the Jaish Mohammed, a grouping of former army officers that operates under the guise of an Islamist organisation.
But it is unclear if those at the talks genuinely represent a majority of the deeply fragmented insurgency. While a deal could represent an important step towards ending the violence that has plagued postwar Iraq, a reprieve for Saddam would infuriate many in the country. He is unlikely to come to trial before the end of this year, but Jalal Talabani, Iraq's new president, has already begun to prepare his people for a possible reprieve.
Asked about the fate of Saddam in an interview yesterday in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, the president, who is a Kurd, stated his personal opposition to a death sentence.
"I am among the lawyers who signed an international petition against the death penalty around the world and it would be a problem for me if Iraqi courts issued death sentences," he said.
Though Mr Talabani's powers are largely ceremonial, he has the power, as the head of a three-man presidential council, to commute death sentences. The two vice presidents that make up the remainder of the council, Ghazi al Yawar, a Sunni, and Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shia, have not stated their positions.
Further demonstrating his determination for a political settlement to the insurgency, Mr Talabani proposed an amnesty for fighters last week. But al-Qa'eda's wing in Iraq, which is led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, yesterday rejected the offer and dismissed Mr Talabani as an American "agent".
Though they regard Mr Talabani as a hero, many Kurds said they opposed any plans not to execute Saddam.
"Anything but death for Saddam would be a travesty of justice," said Nawzad Othman, a greengrocer whose brother was among 5,000 Kurds killed in the notorious chemical weapon attack on Halabja in 1988. "A murderer like that cannot be allowed to live."
Iraq's new government, dominated by the majority Shia community and its Kurdish coalition partners, faces a tricky balancing act. Its attempts to reach out to all parties were boosted yesterday when the outgoing interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia, agreed to join the new government after weeks of negotiation. It was unclear if Mr Allawi or any of his bloc would take cabinet posts.
Shia MPs in the cleric-backed United Iraqi Alliance, which won 51 per cent of the vote in the election, are unhappy with the development and accuse Mr Allawi of corruption.
#3
Honestly, I think Saddam will be lucky to ONLY be hanged. I'm sure he would prefer that to say, being tied to a post and letting all his victim's family toss rocks at him or give him a nice lingering death by toothpicks.
#4
The only question is the method of his televised execution. Although I think being fed through a shredder or dropped into a vat of boiling lard are at the top of the list, poison gas is probably the most appropriate. He should not be shot or hung as death from those methods arrives too quickly and cleanly.
As to his buddies in the "insurgency" they should be told to go away lest their lives end in a similar fashion.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2005 17:25 Comments ||
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#8
The anthrax letters in late 2001 were not intended to be deadly. They were merely warnings. The stuff that went to the Senate was the real deal - grade A weaponized anthrax. Close to the theoretical maximum number of spores per gram very easily aerosolized.
If a little bit of that stuff inside the US, the implication is that a lot of it is inside the US. A lot meaning 10 KG, but that would be enough.
Saddam and his cronies were convinced that WMD saved them during the 1987 fighting. In 1991, Bush the Elder abruptly stopped the war the same morning that a CW SCUD full of concrete landed in southern Israel. And in 2001... "This is next. You can not stop us." In 2003, Bush the Younger and Saddam played a big game of chicken. Saddam flinched, but never let go of his ace-in-the-hole. That is why Saddam will live.
#10
Hey,mucky,what's up.Not necessarly,RW.Being gut shot ain't a nice way to die.Pesonally I favor life in prision,with pre-internment pre-frontal lobatomy.Leve him a droooling,diaper wearing idiot.
#11
This is bullshit - these people can't stop the insurgency. Do you think the Iranian terrorists 'pilgrims' will stop the bloodshed? Do they think they can stop the Al-Q terrorists from murdering innocent civilians?
Iran, Binnie, and Al-Z do *not* want success in Iraq at any cost.
#13
"We are trying to reach out to the insurgents," the source said.
Sounds like a tactic from the Abu Mazen School of Governing, Lesson Four: How To "Defeat" Criminals/Terrorists by Not Using Force.
"We donât expect them to stop fighting unconditionally. Sending Saddam to prison for the rest of his life is not a huge price for us to pay, but it will save them a lot of face."
Here's a better idea: Execute Saddam and blow the faces off any "insurgents" found. No face, no need to worry about "losing" it.
Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi forces launched their biggest Baghdad raid in recent weeks, moving on foot Monday through a central neighborhood and rounding up dozens of suspected insurgents, the military said.
About 500 members of Iraq's police and army and a "couple hundred" American soldiers swept through buildings in the Rashid neighborhood, detaining 65 suspected militants, said Lt. Col. Clifford Kent of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
One Iraqi soldier was wounded but no American casualties were reported in the largest U.S.-Iraqi joint raid in the capital since the Fort Stewart, Ga.-based division assumed responsibility for the city in February, Kent said. One suspected insurgent also was being treated for wounds, the military said in a statement.
At the Camp Gannon military base in western Iraq, insurgents targeted the gates with three suicide car bombs Monday, injuring three U.S. Marines, the military said. The drivers were stopped short of the camp by forces manning checkpoints, the military said.
At least three civilians also were injured, said Ammar Fuad, a doctor at the hospital where they were taken.
The terrorist group al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site. The statement's authenticity could not be verified.
A group claiming to have kidnapped a Pakistani Embassy official over the weekend demanded money for his release, a senior Pakistani government official said Monday.
Malik Mohammed Javed, a deputy counselor at the Pakistani mission in Baghdad, went missing late Saturday after leaving home for prayers at a nearby mosque.
The previously unknown Omar bin Khattab group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, and Javed called the embassy to say his abductors had not harmed him, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.
"They have made contact. They are asking for money," a Pakistani official said on condition of anonymity.
He would not specify the amount or say how the abductors made contact.
Ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani said he had no information about the group. There have been no reports of a group by that name existing in Iraq.
Javed's son appealed to his father's kidnappers to release him.
"Everyone is crying here," Bilal Malik, 20, told The Associated Press by telephone Sunday. "My father has done nothing wrong. He was only going to offer his prayers. They are Muslims. They should release our father who is also a Muslim."
The kidnapping comes nine months after insurgents abducted and killed two Pakistanis working for a Kuwaiti company in Iraq. Their abductors had demanded that Pakistan promise not to send any troops to Iraq. Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism, has refused to deploy peacekeepers and has urged its citizens to avoid coming here.
Possibly anticipating a demand for Islamabad to close its embassy in Baghdad, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said, "We will neither withdraw our embassy staff nor close the mission."
The 275 members of the National Assembly reconvened Monday to consider parliamentary rules.
Hussein al-Sadr, a lawmaker from the coalition of outgoing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, said the group would participate in the government, as long as its involvement was a "real and effective one and not a nominal one."
The coalition was demanding four ministerial posts or else "we will lead the opposition in the parliament," he said.
Ali al-Dabagh, a lawmaker from the Shiite-led United Iraq Alliance, said he believed those demands were too steep.
In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans, continuing three days of protests against U.S. forces. Tens of thousands of people gathered Saturday in Baghdad calling for coalition forces to leave, and more demonstrations were held Sunday.
A Defense Ministry official said Monday that Iraqi security forces had arrested a person who claimed to have kidnapped two French journalists last year.
Iraqi army soldiers detained Amer Hussein Sheikhan in the Mahmoudiya area on April 4, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were released in December after four months in captivity.
The Iraqi government announced Sunday that security forces had arrested Ibrahim Sabaawi, the son of Saddam Hussein's half brother, near Baghdad. The statement said Sabaawi was close to the former regime.
"Until his arrest, he had been supporting terrorists and providing them with finances," it said.
Also, al Qaeda in Iraq claimed to have kidnapped and killed Najaf police Brig. Gen. Bassem Mohammed Kadhim al-Jazaari while he was visiting Baghdad.
"After his confessions, God's verdict was carried out against him," said the statement, which could not be independently verified.
Iraqi Interior Ministry official Capt. Ahmed Isma'el said al-Jazaari was kidnapped in western Baghdad late Saturday, along with his nephew, but he had no other details.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/11/2005 3:54:33 PM ||
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Afghan officials say 12 suspected Taleban fighters have been killed by US-led coalition forces in south-eastern Afghanistan.
The forces called in air strikes after militants attacked a former Afghan military chief on the road between Kabul and Gardez, the officials said.
The aircraft pounded militant hideouts in the Shawak mountains east of Gardez.
Two coalition soldiers were wounded. The Afghan general, the former military chief of Khost province, was unhurt.
The police chief of Paktia province, Maj Gen Haygul Sulemankhil, said attackers had fired two rockets at the vehicle of Gen Khyaal Baz Sherzai on the Khost-Gardez highway on Monday.
Ground forces called in US helicopter gunships and A10 tank buster jets.
The security commander of Paktia province, Ghulam Nabi Salem, told the AFP news agency: "Afghan forces chased the attackers in the mountains and the fighting began. It lasted until late afternoon."
He added: "We recovered the bodies of 12 Taleban in the Shawak mountains."
The US military in Afghanistan confirmed the fighting but could not give casualty figures.
A spokesman for the Taleban, Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi, said the Taleban had lost "only one fighter".
This article starring:
MULLAH ABDUL LATIF HAKIMI
Taliban
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/11/2005 3:50:31 PM ||
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A bomb which killed three tourists in a Cairo bazaar last week exploded prematurely, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said on Monday, suggesting that it may not have been a deliberate suicide operation
The bomber was an engineering student who was born in 1987 and who recently began to take an interest in the ideas of militant Islamists, it said in a statement. It named him as Hassan Rafaat Ahmed Bishindi, who lived in the north Cairo suburb of Shubra el-Kheima and went to the Benha branch of Zagazig University in the east of the Nile Delta. Egyptian prosecution sources had named him on Sunday as Mohamed Sobhi Ali Jidan, 24. "All the evidence indicates that while the perpetrator was preparing the bomb for explosion, the explosion took place," the statement said. His badly damaged body was found in the street in the Moski area of old Cairo, where the bomb exploded.
The explosion on Thursday killed a French woman, a French man and an American man, as well as the bomber. Eighteen people were injured -- 11 Egyptians and seven foreigners. Rest at link.
This article starring:
HASAN RAFAAT AHMED BISHINDI
Islamic Brigades of Pride in Egypt
MOHAMED SOBHI ALI JIDAN
Islamic Brigades of Pride in Egypt
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 10:50:32 AM ||
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#1
"the bomber was an engineering student"
"and went to the Benha branch of Zagazig University"
worthless engineer... spent a little to much time studying reefer at the ZigZag U I'd say.
#3
That's what he gets for sleeping through Bombmaking 101.
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 16:07 Comments ||
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#4
It's understandable. He had a test in Bomb Design and one in Koranic Justification for Killing and only could study for one. The professor in bomb-making didn't chop off hands for getting a failing grade.
U.S. military aircraft killed five suspected Taliban guerrillas in strikes in southeastern Afghanistan on Monday, officials said.
A jet and helicopter gunships were called in after a Taliban group attempted to assassinate Kheyal Baaz Khan Sherzai, the top former military commander of the province of Khost, not far from the border with Pakistan. "Sherzai survived the ambush and as a result of the American air attacks, five Taliban were killed," Khost governor Mirajuddin Patan told Reuters.
Taliban officials could not be reached for comment and the U.S. military in Kabul said it had no immediate information.
Sherzai, a prominent ally of U.S.-led troops hunting the Taliban in Khost when he was provincial commander, was ambushed on a main road near the town of Gardez, Patan said. The attack came amid a rise in violence in parts of south and east where the militants have been most active since their overthrow by U.S.-led forces in late 2001.
The attacks have followed a lull over the winter after the guerrillas failed in a vow to derail an October presidential election. Last week, the guerrillas said they killed a senior provincial official after kidnapping him in the restive southern province of Zabul, the third such murder of a local official in the south in less than a week. The guerrillas also killed five policemen in a firefight in Zabul on Thursday.
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 10:43:12 AM ||
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Quagmire! The dreaded Afghani spring allows for accurate air drops...heh heh
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/11/2005 12:10 Comments ||
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Taliban officials could not be reached for comment and the U.S. military in Kabul said it had no immediate information.
"I keep calling Omar, but all I get is 'leave a message'. Do we send the story in or not?"
"(sigh)Yeah, send it in. We'll tell 'em he's changing caves or something. But another one like this and the home office is gomna think we aren't adhering to the 'Reuters standards'."
Abu Musab Zarqawi, the most-wanted terrorist in Iraq, is on the run in an undeveloped western border region where he was nearly caught in recent weeks, a U.S. Marine commander says. "He's going from brush pile to brush pile just like a wet rat," said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, whose 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is back home at Camp Pendleton, Calif., after months of intense combat in Anbar province. "I believe he possibly slid back into the Anbar area, possibly the hinterlands." Gen. Sattler, who commanded operations in the region, said in an interview with The Washington Times that the U.S.-led coalition has forced Zarqawi to work "independently" by killing or capturing his first- and second-string lieutenants.
Zarqawi fled the Anbar region before his base in Fallujah was captured by a Marine-Army force in November. He operated in northern Iraq until he was pressed back to western Iraq, but this time in isolated frontier country. "He can't use cell phones," Gen. Sattler said of the Jordanian-born terrorist, whose capture promises a $25 million reward. "He can't use any type of Internet. He doesn't know who he can trust."
Zarqawi's foreign jihadists have strapped themselves in bombs and blown up hundreds of Iraqi civilians as well as coalition troops. In recent months, they have targeted Iraqi security forces, the linchpin in the Bush administration's plan to bring permanent democracy to Iraq.
Gen. Sattler disclosed in the interview that his Marines and special operations troops came within a whisker of capturing the terror master "within the last six weeks" in western Iraq. While guarded on details, Gen. Sattler said that only poor visibility in bad weather allowed Zarqawi to escape. "The elements worked to his advantage," the three-star general said.
Gen. Sattler led the force of Marines, Army tank battalions and Iraqis that took Fallujah in the largest battle in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. In all, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force of 41,000 troops spent a year in western Iraq before being relieved last month. The MEF saw about 300 of its personnel killed and 3,000 wounded, a Marine spokesman said. Gen. Sattler, a Naval Academy graduate, assumed command in September.
Marines were ready to take Fallujah the previous April and had killed hundreds of insurgents before emerging politicians in Baghdad forced a halt. The summer standoff gave Zarqawi and other terrorists months to turn the city of 300,000 into a major base of operations, where bombs were made and suicide jihadists trained. Pentagon officials privately say it was a big mistake to bend to the wishes of the Iraqi politicians and allow Zarqawi seven months to export violence. But U.S. officials in Baghdad say that without the halt in fighting the interim Iraqi government likely would have collapsed, leading to further political chaos.
Gen. Sattler said that in the interval the Marines did learn from the Fallujah fight in April, and from a subsequent battle in Najaf. Those lessons were applied to the November battle. "I don't think we could have fought as successfully in Fallujah had the first battle not culminated" in the way it did, he said.
The Marines learned to urge civilians to leave the city to reduce casualties and to make sure political support existed in Baghdad beforehand. The interim also showed Gen. Sattler that he could not build an Iraqi security force in Anbar made up of local Sunni Muslims. Their loyalties were with family and tribe, not with the emerging democracy. As a result, the U.S. command took down the national guard and built up 10 battalions in Anbar of Iraqis from other regions. A "very small" percentage are Anbar Sunnis, Gen. Sattler said.
Gen. Sattler declared in November that the victory in Fallujah had "broken the back of the insurgency." He labeled as "cowards" those Zarqawi operatives who fled. Today, he said, the attacks in the province are less frequent and less effective.
Posted by: ed ||
04/11/2005 10:16:08 AM ||
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"Gen. Sattler said that in the interval the Marines did learn from the Fallujah fight in April, and from a subsequent battle in Najaf. Those lessons were applied to the November battle."
Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.
Posted by: Matt ||
04/11/2005 11:45 Comments ||
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AP, per their stylebook, called them insurgents and militants. Terrs works better.
Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi forces on Monday launched their biggest Baghdad raid in recent weeks, moving on foot through a central neighborhood and rounding up dozens of suspected insurgents, the military said.
About 500 members of Iraq's police and army swept through buildings in the Rashid neighborhood along with a "couple hundred" American soldiers, detaining 65 suspected militants, said Lt. Col. Clifford Kent of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
One Iraqi soldier was injured but no American casualties were reported in the largest joint raid in Iraq's capital by U.S. and Iraqi forces since the Fort Stewart, Ga.-based division assumed responsibility for the city on Feb. 27, Kent said. One suspected insurgent was also being treated for wounds, the military said in a statement. ...more - unrelated to the headline, of course. Hey, it's AP.
Posted by: .com ||
04/11/2005 5:00:04 AM ||
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The important thing here is that there were far more Iraqis than Americans on the raid.That is an important development on many levels.
#3
Ptah: Where are you at? Somewhere's in Alabama? Went to school at Auburn, so I'm familiar w/ the area (Columbus, LaGrange, Auburn, Birmingham).
Posted by: BA ||
04/11/2005 8:48 Comments ||
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I really don't understand the MSM continuing to call these murderers insurgents. They are not. They are terrorists plain and simple. I guess "insurgent" fits more with their seemingly pro- terrorist position. Ba, I also went to Auburn, School of Articture.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/11/2005 11:48 Comments ||
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Damn, Architecture. Dopey me. I always wanted to be a Arkeetec and now I are one.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/11/2005 11:49 Comments ||
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Excuse me, but the currently correct term is not "terrorists." It's "CBS stringers."
Posted by: Matt ||
04/11/2005 11:54 Comments ||
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Two groups claimed yesterday to have kidnapped a Pakistani Embassy employee and a senior Iraqi police official during separate abductions in Baghdad, while the country's most feared terrorist organization issued an Internet statement rejecting any efforts by the new government to make peace.
The previously unknown Omar ibn Khattab group claimed responsibility for kidnapping Malik Mohammed Javed, a consular and community affairs employee, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said. Javed went missing late Saturday after he left his Baghdad home to attend prayers at a nearby mosque.
In a statement, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said Javed called the embassy to tell them he had not been harmed. The kidnappers' demands weren't immediately clear.
The kidnapping comes nearly nine months after insurgents abducted and killed two Pakistanis working for a Kuwaiti company in Iraq. Their abductors had demanded that Pakistan — a predominantly Muslim nation — promise not to send any troops to Iraq.
Also yesterday, the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, claimed to have kidnapped and killed Najaf police Brig. Gen. Bassem Mohammed Kadhim Al-Jazaari while he was visiting Baghdad.
"He has been interrogated," said the statement, which could not be independently verified. "After his confessions, God's verdict was carried out against him."
Interior Ministry official Capt. Ahmed Ismael said Al-Jazaari was kidnapped late Saturday in western Baghdad, but he had no other details.
In a separate statement, the same group rejected interim President Jalal Talabani's attempts to reach out to Iraqi insurgents. Talabani's call was not directed at foreign fighters.
"Oh, you agents of the Jews and the Christians, we have nothing for you but the sword," the statement said. "We will not stop fighting."
In the ongoing battle against Saddam Hussein's former regime, the Iraqi government announced yesterday that security forces had arrested Ibrahim Sabaawi, the son of Saddam's half brother, near Baghdad. The statement said Sabaawi was close to the former regime. "Until his arrest, he had been supporting terrorists and providing them with finances," it said. It was unclear when the arrest took place.
Iraq's National Assembly also met and called for relaxing security measures that have snarled traffic and closed much of central Baghdad during their sessions. The government must still approve the request.
Many residents have complained about the increased security in a city already under tight control. Some lawmakers said yesterday they had been insulted and mistreated by Iraqi police at checkpoints, and one female lawmaker said weapons had been confiscated by police.
"These measures are highly exaggerated and they hinder the work of the employees and the movement of the citizens," Parliament Speaker Hajim Al-Hassani said. "We asked the security officials to relax these measures."
Qassim Dawoud, Iraq's minister of state for national security, said the measures were necessary as long as the assembly continued to convene at the same location. Officials have proposed moving to a new building being used by the Defense Ministry, but it was unclear when they would begin meeting there.
There next session was scheduled for today at the city's tightly controlled convention center.
Underscoring security concerns, a car bomb exploded yesterday near a US convoy in Baghdad, injuring four civilians, Iraqi police Lt. Ali Hussein said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/11/2005 12:22:45 AM ||
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Egyptian security forces have arrested three Islamists suspected of planning last week's suicide bombing in a Cairo bazaar which killed three foreigners, an Interior Ministry source said yesterday. The source added that the suicide bomber who carried out the attack in which two French nationals and an American died was identified as an Egyptian from the Nile Delta region of Qaliobya, north of Cairo. The suicide bomber — whose name is to be revealed at a news conference at an unspecified date — planned the attack along with the three accomplices, it said. The trio, who are said to have "Islamist tendencies and motivations" have already appeared before an investigating magistrate. Police are still examining the remains of the suicide bomber's body.
A preliminary report into the blast showed that the crude bomb had been made from gunpowder and nails. Prosecutors have described the attack as an "isolated act". The blast was widely condemned and revived old fears of a fresh wave of terror attacks in Egypt, whose economy is heavily reliant on tourism. An Internet statement whose authenticity could not be verified issued on Friday by a previously unknown group called the Islamic Brigades of Pride in Egypt said it carried out the attack. Egyptian fundamentalist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which was behind a string of deadly attacks against foreigners in the 1990s, has condemned the attack as irresponsible.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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For what it's worth, the report at least didn't say the attack was carried out by somebody who was "mentally deranged", the 90's description of an unemployed Egyptian musician who killed and wounded several foreigners in a Cairo hotel restaurant. The term has been used on other occasions, as well. I hope all of you see the irony I'm trying to convey. What's better? An isolated act by a sane person or an unisolated act by a nut?
Posted by: chicago mike ||
04/11/2005 16:56 Comments ||
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Israeli police prevented right-wing Jewish extremists from staging a rally at Jerusalem's disputed mosque compound on Sunday after thousands of Muslims massed to defend the flashpoint site. Some 3,000 officers threw a ring of steel around the Al-Aqsa compound, a site sacred to Jews and Muslims, after the ultra-nationalist Revava group called for mass prayers to denounce the planned evacuation this summer of the 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Jordan's King Abdullah II on Sunday warned that any attack by Jewish extremists on the mosque compound would undermine regional stability. "Any attack or attempt to harm this site which is sacred for Arabs and Muslims will undermine security and stability in the region," the king said in a statement to state-run Petra news agency. Twenty-two Jewish Israelis, including Revava leader Israel Cohen, were briefly detained as they tried to hold their protest which soon fizzled out amid the overwhelming police presence. However while the prospect of clashes between Jews and Muslims was averted, minor scuffles did break out between Palestinians and the Israeli security forces that left three policemen and nine Palestinians slightly or moderately injured.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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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.
At least 40 rebels and 10 soldiers have been killed in fresh clashes in Yemen's mountainous northwest, military and tribal sources said Sunday, as government forces pursue followers of a slain rebel preacher. Yemeni forces have killed at least 40 rebels and captured 50 others since Friday, they said, adding that 10 government soldiers had also died in fierce fighting that has left close to 270 people dead in less than two weeks. Tribal sources had said insurgents had retreated north to the rugged Lawdiya area as the noose tightened around the members of Huthi's Faithful Youth movement.
Police were investigating multiple theories Monday in the assassination of a former top intelligence official and his wife, who were gunned down by unknown assailants in Moscow. Anatoly Trofimov, a 65-year-old former deputy chief of the Federal Security Service under President Boris Yeltsin, was shot in his sports utility vehicle around 7:30 p.m. Sunday on a street in the northern part of the Russian capital. He died at the scene. His 28-year-old wife died Monday morning, after being hospitalized in a critical condition, Interfax reported. Their daughter, who was also in the car, was reportedly unharmed. There were conflicting reports as to her age.
Bangladesh is trying to verify the identity of a teenage girl, said to be a Bangladeshi, who was arrested in New York, a senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in Dhaka yesterday. According to newspaper reports, two 16-year-old girls from New York City, one a Bangladeshi and the other a Guinean, were arrested in March and later charged with immigration violation after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asserted that they intended to become suicide bombers.
Unidentified gunmen yesterday seized a restaurant owner in Jolo island, where security forces are battling Abu Sayyaf militants, implicated in a series of terrorism and kidnappings-for-ransom in the southern Philippines, police and military said. Five gunmen snatched Renato Yanga, owner of the Topspot restaurant in downtown Jolo, and then fled on a jeep toward Patikul town, a stronghold of Abu Sayyaf militants, officials said. The victim was a relative of the police chief of Zamboanga City, Supt. Mario Yanga, Arab News learned. "We still don't know the motive of the kidnapping, but ransom money is one of the reasons behind the spate of kidnappings in Jolo. Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesman Lt. Col. Buenaventura Pascual said. No group claimed responsibility for the latest incident, but suspicion fell heavily on the Abu Sayyaf, which had been behind most of the kidnappings and beheadings in Jolo and nearby Basilan island in the past years. 
Egyptian security forces have arrested three Islamists suspected of planning last week's suicide bombing in a Cairo bazaar which killed three foreigners, an Interior Ministry source said yesterday. The source added that the suicide bomber who carried out the attack in which two French nationals and an American died was identified as an Egyptian from the Nile Delta region of Qaliobya, north of Cairo. The suicide bomber — whose name is to be revealed at a news conference at an unspecified date — planned the attack along with the three accomplices, it said. The trio, who are said to have "Islamist tendencies and motivations" have already appeared before an investigating magistrate. Police are still examining the remains of the suicide bomber's body.
