According to news reports from Fafahdun in the Gedo region, Al-Shabaab Islamist militants launched numerous mortar shells in the town attacking Somali National Army and African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) bases.
Witnesses described to Shabelle that the shellings brought severe fatalities including death and casualties. The Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) under AMISOM suffered losses in the attack on the Gedo region.
Currently, the situation is peaceful in the town after AMISOM and government soldiers conducted search sweeps immediately after.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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Mandera County Police Commander Noah Mwavanda says over 30 terrorists militants attacked a Kenya Power plant and threw explosives but police accosted them killing the two, recovering a gun, 145 bullets, 5 magazines and a number of explosive devices.
Meanwhile Wajir County, police are investigating an incident in which suspected Al Shabaab terrorists militants attacked another Kenya power station and blew up a diesel tank on Thursday night.
The terrorists militants also threw explosives at the offices of a non-governmental organization injuring a security guard.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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According to witnesses, mortar shells were flung at numerous neighborhoods in the Dharkeynley district of Mogadishu resulting in casualties and death.
Just how far does the average 'Boob fling a mortar shell?
Shabelle was told that several mortars hit neighborhoods in the district last night directly impacting homes.
Somali government troops rushed to the scene, and conducted search crackdowns to determine who was behind the barrage of mortars.
âWeâre not sure where the first one dropped, but the second destroyed a home killing a man and his family. Another hit a religious school injuring two students and the last hit another home wounding peopleâ Said the district commissioner of Dharkeynley.
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05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[Beirut Daily Star] Nine people were killed in festivities in northern Mali this week between suspected Islamists and Tuareg separatist forces, separatist and military sources said on Friday.
The festivities north of the city of Timbuktu involved separatists and suspected members of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), a group linked to al Qaeda, said a separatist front man and two military sources who declined to be identified.
"The fighting is over," said Akay Ag Mohammed, a front man in the northern town of Kidal for the separatist National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). "The MNLA fighters have returned to Kidal. We took seven prisoners and killed nine of the enemy."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[The Peninsula] Two suicide kabooms in Egypt's South Sinai killed a soldier and maimed at least seven people yesterday, less than four weeks before a presidential election is due to be held, official sources said.
In other violence, a policeman was killed in a Cairo kaboom while in the port city of Alexandria, two people were rubbed out when supporters of deposed president Mohammed Mursi clashed with residents.
Militant attacks and other political violence have spiralled since the army overthrew Mursi, a leader of the Moslem Brüderbund, last July after mass protests against his rule.
Former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who led the action, is expected to win the presidential election on May 26 and 27.
Yesterday's suicide kaboom in El-Tur, a town on the main road between Cairo and the tourist resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, killed a soldier as well as the bomber. Three coppers and another soldier were maimed, an Interior Ministry statement said.
Four Egyptians were maimed in the second attack, further south on the road between El-Tur and Sharm El-Sheikh, the Interior Ministry and security sources said. A front man for the governorate of South Sinai province, speaking to CBC television, identified the maimed as employees of a tourism company. The Interior Ministry said they were factory workers.
A third bomb killed one policeman at a traffic security post near a courthouse in Cairo, security sources said. At least four other coppers were maimed, the Interior Ministry said.
The army has been waging a campaign against armed Islamist groups in North Sinai. The influence of such groups expanded in the area after the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... from the presidency. Last month the Egyptian military said it had gained complete control of the Sinai Peninsula.
In the Alexandra festivities, two people were shot, the Interior Ministry said. Fortytwo Mursi supporters were enjugged You have the right to remain silent... in protests across Egypt, it added. The Brotherhood, on its website, blamed the death on security forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[MAGHAREBIA] A Sale court placed two minors in a juvenile detention centre on terrorism-related charges, MAP reported on Thursday (May 1st). The young Moroccans are charged with "constitution of criminal gang to prepare and commit terrorist acts, and with belonging to a banned religious organization".
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05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[MAGHAREBIA] Heavy fighting ... as opposed to the more usual name-calling or slapsy... broke out across Benghazi early Friday (May 2nd) between Saiqa Special Forces and Ansar Al-Sharia, Libya Herald reported.
At least eight Libyan security officers were killed and 24 maimed, AFP reported. At least four other troops were missing as of press time.
The battle reportedly erupted when the radical Islamist militia stormed the Benghazi security headquarters in the pre-dawn hours. The gunnies were trying to seize a vehicle packed with weapons and ammunition that the police had taken from them, a security source said.
The Friday festivities with Ansar al-Sharia ...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, with the Libyan and Tunisian versions currently most active... came just three days after a jacket wallah attacked the Libyan army's Saiqa Special Forces 21 Battalion. At least two soldiers were killed and a number of others injured in the early morning kaboom.
"Islamist groups and Ansar al-Sharia are behind these bombings and after the target because of the activities of Saiqa to secure Benghazi these days," said Colonel Salim Nayli, the commander of 21 Battalion.
Nayli, also known as Arafeet, said the situation required "a serious pause and to confront these groups".
"The series of suicide bombers in Benghazi has begun. The first toll was two dead in the ranks of Saiqa and it is possible that the number of victims increases," 34-year-old engineer Mohammed Tariq told Magharebia.
Meanwhile, ...back at the alley, Bugs Moroni was holding Slats from behind while his brother Greasy Thumb was pounding his face into paste ... Justice Minister Salah al-Marghani met with the Benghazi Joint Security Room, headed by Colonel Abdullah Al-Saiti, on April 28th. The meeting addressed the situation in the city and the obstacles faced in the implementation of the security plan.
"The issues discussed were the activation of courts and public prosecution offices in the city," Colonel Hassan al-Aqori explained. "The Benghazi Joint Security Room will receive moral and materiel support and will follow up on all matters and developments taking place in the city."
Ayman Elourfi, a 27-year-old vendor in the al-Kuwayfiyah area, said, "Unidentified persons blew up on Tuesday morning three shops in al-Kuwayfiyah area on the outskirts of Benghazi. Thank God the kabooms caused no injuries and resulted in material losses only."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
was there an internet video involved?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/03/2014 7:13 Comments ||
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A suicide bomber killed an Egyptian soldier in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday, as a second blast hit a bus wounding five civilians on a nearby road, security officials said.
The five wounded in the attack in the Al Tur district of South Sinai province were all Egyptians, the officials said.
Security forces have deployed in strength to protect the resorts along the South Sinai coast that are a major plank of the countryâs battered tourism sector.
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05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[The Peninsula] Gunmen killed about 15 people, including children, in an attack on a town in Central African Republic near the border with Chad, a local official and aid workers said on Friday.
The raid in the town of Markounda on Thursday was about 30 km (18 miles) from the site of an attack on a health clinic run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres last week which killed 16 people.
It coincided with a visit by U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who is in the country for three days ahead of the deployment of a 12,000-strong mission in mid-September.
Despite the presence of French and African peacekeepers, thousands have died in inter-communal violence in the vast, former French colony and close to a million have been displaced.
Explosions were reported in eastern Markounda mid-afternoon and shortly afterwards a group of gunnies wearing both military and civilian clothes entered the town and began looting and attacking residents, said the local official.
"We estimate at around 15 the number of people killed, including men, women and kiddies. Markounda is now empty as the inhabitants have fled into the bush, the fields and neighbouring villages," Lucien Mbaigoto, deputy prefect for the town, told Rooters by telephone on Friday.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attacks. Mbaigoto said the killers were speaking in Arabic and Fulani, the language of local herdsmen.
Peter Bouckaert, emergency director of Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... , said on Twitter on Friday that 13 had been killed, including eight children.
The mainly Mohammedan Seleka forces seized the capital Bangui in March 2013, setting off a wave of killing and looting that prompted the Christian majority to form self-defence militia, known as "anti-balaka".
The number of Dire Revenge™ attacks on Mohammedans has increased since January when Seleka was forced to step down under international pressure for failing to establish authority over the poor, landlocked country.
The northern region close to the border with Chad has received thousands of displaced Mohammedans from the south as part of a segregation policy that aid workers say is designed to protect them.
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05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[PREMIUMTIMESNG] Two suspected members of Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... were killed on Thursday during an attack on a secondary school in Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State, government officials said.
The suspects were nabbed and killed at about 3 p.m. on Thursday, during the attack, officials said.
An officer with the Department State Security, SSS, in Borno State confirmed the incident to journalists but asked that his identity be protected.
"We recorded an attack on the School there in Ville village near Gwoza, but our operatives were able to effectively repel it, and two of the attackers were killed during the incident", the source said.
The gunnies reportedly arrived behind the perimeter fence of Government Secondary School, GSS, Ville, and packed their car hidden in the bush.
"But some vigilant students in the school spotted them and immediately raised alarm for others to take to their heels, while the soldiers stationed in the school began to engage them in a shoot-out", said one Mr. Amos, a local government official in Ville.
"The angry mob, who went out of the control of the security operatives, mobbed them and set them ablaze using used vehicle tyres."
Mr. Amos added that "the gunnies would have succeeded in ambushing and maiming the soldiers as well as the students because they had already divided themselves around all the four sides of the school, before they were spotted by the students.
"Two of the placed in durance vile Boko Haram members were arrested, and the two appeared lanky and fair-skinned; they look more of Chadians than Nigerians.
"The angry mob, who went out of the control of the security operatives, mobbed them and set them ablaze using used vehicle tyres."
He said the other members of the sect, seeing that they could not face the soldiers, "escaped with their vehicles heading towards the forest around Izge."
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05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[Beirut Daily Star] Yemeni government forces killed five Al-Qaeda snuffies and maimed dozens of others in south Yemen, the Defense Ministry said on Friday, in the fourth day of an offensive against Islamist bad boys.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has hampered the U.S.-allied state's efforts to restore stability since a popular revolt in 2011 that forced out longtime autocrat President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... but left widespread disorder that continues.
Yemeni troops launched their offensive into an expanse of south Yemen spanning 20,000 square km (7,700 square miles) - the size of the U.S. state of New Jersey - on Tuesday, backed by air force jets and hundreds of loyalist militiamen.
On Friday, troops killed five snuffies and destroyed three vehicles, one of which mounted with anti-aircraft machineguns, used by the turbans in the southern province of Shabwa, a defence ministry website quoted a military source as saying.
The website, 26 September, said the military was chasing turbans who had fled into mountains.
In nearby Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... , the military launched an onslaught with tanks and rockets and backed by the air force on locations used by snuffies in the southern province, it said. It said there were "killed and maimed" turbans but provided no figure.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[The Peninsula] Tribal separatists killed at least 12 Moslems in the northeastern state of Assam yesterday, taking the toll to 23 following two days of deadly carnage, police said.
"Some 10 heavily armed gunnies went on a rampage, torching about 20 houses and killing at least 12 people," police inspector general S N Singh said.
The attack was reported in Narayanguri village in Baksa district, some 200 kilometres west of Assam's main city of Guwahati.
On Thursday night rebels had killed three villagers in the same district and eight more in neighbouring Kokrajhar, opening fire on the victims as they slept in their homes.
The attacks prompted security forces to launch a massive hunt for the guerillas.
An indefinite curfew has been imposed in the violence-torn districts, with shoot-at-sight orders given to police, Singh said.
India's Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde spoke to Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi over phone, assuring him of every kind of help to deal with the situation.
The victims of the attacks were Moslem migrants who have been locked in staggered land disputes with indigenous Bodo tribes in the tea-growing state that borders Bhutan and Bangladesh.
The attacks come as India votes in a multi-phased general election that began on April 7. Voting in Assam has ended, with April 24 the last day of polling.
Police blamed the attacks on the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which has been demanding a separate homeland for decades.
Survivors of Thursday's attack in Kokrajhar district described how a group of around 20 masked gunnies had carried out the killings late on Thursday night.
"We were asleep when gunnies barged into our home and sprayed bullets, killing my elderly mother, my wife and my four-year-old daughter," Siraj Ali told a local TV channel.
"I don't have anyone left in my family now," Ali added.
Seventeen people were killed in festivities in the same region in January and thousands of others fled their homes for fear of further attacks.
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05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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Suspected tribal terrorists rebels shot dead 11 Muslim settlers, including two women, in attacks in tea-growing Assam, where tension is running high in election time, officials said on Friday.
Police said they suspected the terrorists militants behind the overnight killings were members of the Bodo tribe, Reuters reported.
Within hours of the attacks, Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi sought army and paramilitary help to contain the situation. No efforts would be spared to arrest the terrorists perpetrators of the crime, he said.
Union Home Ministry in Delhi has assured all help to the State Government.
Bodo people have frequently clashed with Muslims, who, they say, have illegally entered from neighbouring Bangladesh and encroached on their ancestral lands in the hills.
"The authorities will take firm action against those involved in this crime," said state government spokesman Nilamoni Sen Deka.
Police reinforcements were sent to the two districts where the attacks took place. They have a history of sectarian violence.
Candidates in India's general election, including opposition front runner Narendra Modi, have contributed to anti-Bangladeshi feeling in Assam. Modi last week said immigrants from Bangladesh in a nearby state should have their "bags packed" in case he came to power.
Election results are due on May 16.
In the first incident, the terrorists militants shot dead three members of a family, including two women, while wounding a baby, police said.
"The terrorists gunmen entered the house and shot them dead on the spot," a senior police officer in the state capital with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters.
In the second incident, eight people were killed by a group of terrorists guerrillas, he said.
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05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[The Peninsula] Attacks north of Storied Baghdad, including a boom-mobile set off by a suicide kaboomer, killed six people yesterday, just days after Iraq's parliamentary election. The bloodshed comes with officials counting votes from Wednesday's polls. In yesterday's attack, a jacket wallah set off a vehicle rigged with explosives on a highway connecting Storied Baghdad to the town of Dujail, in Salaheddin province, killing four soldiers and wounding two others, officials said. Elsewhere, gunnies killed two members of the Yazidi sect in the town of Rabiyah, near Iraq's border with Syria in northern Nineveh province.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[Beirut Daily Star] Syria's government and rebels agreed to a cease-fire Friday in the city of Homs aimed at allowing hundreds of fighters holed up in its old quarters to evacuate, a move that would surrender almost total control of the city once known as the "capital of the revolution" to Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Light of the Alawites... 's forces.
If rebel fighters do leave, the capture of Homs, Syria's third largest city, would be a significant victory for Assad, weeks before presidential elections set for June 3.
The 48-hour cease-fire deal, reported by opposition activists and a pro-government TV, came after weeks of unprecedented pounding of rebel-held districts by regime forces. In a sign the truce came into effect, an News Agency that Dare Not be Named team in Homs Friday said it was unusually quiet, with no shots fired from either side.
Still, the deal could potentially collapse if there are last-minute disputes over the terms of evacuation and some rebels decide to hold out.
One Homs-based opposition activist said it was a bitter moment for the rebels who have been barricaded in 13 neighborhoods around Homs' historic center.
"This isn't what we wanted, but it's all we could get," Beibars Tilawi told the AP in a Skype interview. "The regime wanted to take control of the heart of the revolution." Evacuations may start Saturday.
Residents of Homs were among the first to rise fiercely against Assad's rule three years ago. After waves of anti-Assad protests by its residents, rebels seized control of much of the city and Homs quickly became the focus of the worst violence of the uprising.
Homs, 130 km north of Damascus with a prewar population of around 1.2 million, is particularly important for its centrality. It links the capital with Aleppo in the north -- the country's largest city and another key battleground.
Blocks of Homs have been blasted to rubble in the grueling battles as Assad's forces fought to wrest it back. For more than a year, government troops have blockaded rebels inside a string of districts spread over some 13 km, causing widespread hunger and weakening the fighters.
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05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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[Beirut Daily Star] The Syrian army shelled the outskirts of a remote border village in east Leb Friday, Tfail's mukhtar told The Daily Star.
The official said Syrian artillery and tanks bombarded the outskirts of the village a day after a barrel bomb dropped by Syrian aircraft killed a Syrian refugee and maimed four others in the village.
Tfail could only be accessed via a road that passes through Syria, currently cut off by Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah, leaving 3,000 Lebanese and an estimated 5,000 Syrian refugees residing in the village isolated and without basic supplies.
Last month, an aid convoy was able to reach the village after passing through an unpaved, mountainous road east of the Baalbek town of Brital after Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk held security meetings attended by high-ranking Hezbollah officials.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2014 00:00 ||
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Suicide bombers blew up two vehicles in central Syria on Friday, killing at least 18 people, including 11 children, state media reported.
The bombers hit the Hama province towns of Jibrin and Al Humeiri, state television and official news agency SANA said, blaming âterroristsâ for the attacks.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/03/2014 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.
[The Peninsula] Two 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
