Right now we know a little, but we don't know his up to date status.
We do know Fred will back back soonish.
The heart bypass was a success. Fred historically has lurked until ready to reveal improvement by doing one of his delightful fisks. Abwarten und Tee trinken, as the Germans say, is our job until then (a saying I assume predates their discovery of coffee, which rivals beer in their consumption, in my experience).
At least two turbans were killed in violent mostly peacefulfestivities that erupted between the Libyan National Army (LNA), and IS turbans on Wednesday evening in the southern city of al-Qatrun.
In press statements, Major General Khaled al-Mahjoub, Director of the LNA’s Moral Guidance Department stated that two turbans were killed, and several others maimed.
Al-Mahjoub explained that the ongoing festivities are part of a security operation targeting an IS hotbed, east of al-Qatrun. He indicated that the military operation will "continue and will not stop until the elimination of all terrorist organizations in the southern region of the country."
Last week, an LNA member was killed and two others were maimed in a kaboom, south of Sebha. This attack was claimed by IS forces in the region.
Military sources had previously reported that a fire broke out inside the Garnada Military Prison in Benghazi, which led to the escape of five IS-affiliated prisoners.
Sebha is about 130 kilometers from Taraghin, where IS turbans carried out a kaboom last year that caused no casualties.
A political crisis in the wake of Muammer Qadaffy’s overthrow saw the oil-rich country split between rival authorities in the east and west, and the disintegration of security apparatuses. This created fertile ground for jihadist groups like IS to take root.
A myriad of gangs and human traffickers have taken advantage of the chaos to gain a foothold in the North African country.
Two members of a syndicate that killed two coppers in Jigawa State have been apprehended, the police have said.
The Jigawa state police command, announced the arrest of members of a suspected kidnap gang, believed to have murdered two coppers in the state.
The gang also reportedly kidnapped the son-in-law to a popular businessman, Haruna Maifata and carried out other criminal activities around the north-west axis of the state.
The police informed that the feat was achieved following raids of three criminal hideouts in Dajin Maizuwo, Dan Gwanki and Yandamo villages in the Sule Tankarkar Local Government Area of the state.
The Commissioner of Police (CP), Aliyu Sale Tafida, paraded the suspects at the Headquarters in Dutse on Thursday, saying "the feat was accomplished following intelligence report".
Recall on Sunday 23, 2022, two coppers, a Superintendent Police, Anas Useini and Inspector Sunisi Alhassan were killed while trying to rescue Maifata's son-in-law from the hoodlums. The bandidos also set their patrol van ablaze.
The CP paraded a total of 14 suspects comprising 10 males and four females, including a suspect from Kaduna, alongside six children.
Items recovered from the suspects are three AK-47s, nine Magazines, 308 live ammunition of 7.6mm, one General Purpose Machine Gun, (GPMC), N2m cash, Cutlass, six phone sets with nine batteries, 12 sim cards, five SD card memories, as well as one 28-seater Toyota Hiace Bus.
Two of the rifles recovered from the bandidos were confirmed by the CP to have been carted away from the two coppers killed at Kwalam village in the Taura local government area on Sunday while responding to a distress call.
Tafida also disclosed that a cycle of violence recovered belongs to one Abdu Isa Sajo, a Commander of a local security outfit called Yanbulala, who was also shot and killed by yet-to-be-identified persons in the Kirikasamma local government area on Tuesday.
Fourteen students out of those kidnapped alongside their teachers from the Federal Government College, Birnin Yauri,Kebbi State, since June 17, 2021 are yet to regain their freedom from their abductors.
The continued detention of the students was made known on Thursday by Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, while presenting his keynote address at the national campaign on out of school children in Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State.
Recall that button men had at the time kidnapped over 100 students and eight teachers from the school.
However, there's more than one way to stuff a chicken... some of the students beat feet from the button men during the abduction while others were rescued by security operatives.
Also, on October 21, 2021, the bandidos released 30 of the students.
The Arab Coalition has conducted a combined 44 targeted strikes in #Marib, al-Bayda, and Taiz to combat the #Iran-backed #Houthi militia, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).https://t.co/oMMCRIY5Uj
[Dawn] Ten soldiers were martyred after Death Eaters attacked a security forces' checkpost in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... 's Kech district, the military's media affairs wing said on Thursday.
According to a statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the "fire raid" by Death Eaters occurred on the night of Jan 25-26.
"During intense exchange of fire, one terrorist was killed and several injured. While repulsing terrorists' fire raid, 10 soldiers embraced martyrdom," the statement said.
It added that three Death Eaters had been apprehended in the follow-up clearance operation, which it said was still in progress to hunt down the perpetrators of the incident.
"The armed forces are determined to eliminate Death Eaters from our soil no matter what the cost," the ISPR statement said.
Earlier this month, a Pakistain Army soldier was martyred after Death Eaters attacked a military post in Bannu's Janikhel.
On January 5, two soldiers were martyred and as many Death Eaters killed in two separate intelligence-based operations (IBOs) conducted by security forces in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Last month, four soldiers of the Pakistain Army embraced martyrdom in an exchange of fire with Death Eaters during an IBO in the Mir Ali area of North Wazoo tribal district.
No group or individual claimed responsibility for the attack.
The latest violence comes days after a Baluchistan-based separatist group claimed responsibility for a bombing in the city of Lahore that killed three people.
Pakistan has recently seen a flurry of attacks across the country, including in urban areas.
Kurdish-led forces on Thursday found dozens of jihadists holed up in a Syrian prison as they carried out mop-up operations after recapturing the facility from Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group jihadists.
An IS assault on the sprawling Ghwayran prison complex near the city of Hasakeh on January 20 sparked six days of fighting, in violence that claimed more than 200 lives.
It was the most high-profile attack launched by the jihadists since the loss of their "caliphate" nearly three years ago.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they had retaken full control of Ghwayran prison on Wednesday, ending battles that turned the largest city in northeastern Syria into a war zone.
But search operations the next day found around 60-90 jihadists still holed up in one wing of the prison, the SDF said, adding that 3,500 IS inmates had so far surrendered to its forces.
"Our forces have made a call for safe surrender... and in case they did not surrender, we will deal with them firmly," it said in a statement.
Hasakeh, meanwhile, entered it's fourth day in lockdown with US-backed Kurdish forces blocking all entrances to the city to keep fleeing jihadists from crossing into other areas.
Around 45,000 people had fled their homes in Hasakeh to escape the violence, according to the United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... , with many taking shelter in mosques or wedding halls inside the city.
"Our forces uncovered camouflaged terrorist enclaves in the prison’s northern dormitories where between 60 and 90- estimated bandidosDeath Eaters barricaded themselves and maintain a distance for the clash," a statement from the SDF read.
"Following regaining control of the al-Sina’a prison and imposing surrender on about 3,500 terrorist detainees involved in the last mutiny to support the terrorist attackers coming from outside, our forces began thorough sweep operations and security and military clearing operations," the statement read.
Fighting continued for the seven days in and around the surrounding area of the prison, officially named al-Sina’a prison, and known to locals as Ghweran prison, in Hasaka province, northeast Syria, following an attempted jail-break by ISIS on the building housing thousands of its affiliates. Footage circulated by the Syrian North Press Agency on Wednesday depicted an Apache helicopter and sound of fierce gunfire.
According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, fighting in and around the prison since last Thursday had killed 181 people, including 124 ISIS jihadists, 50 Kurdish fighters and seven civilians.
The SDF said about 3,000 inmates have surrendered since its operation to retake the prison's northern wing began three days ago.
Kurdish officials said a large number of children were freed Wednesday but their fate remained unclear. Rights groups and at least one child detainee from inside the prison say many children were killed and injured in the clashes. Rights groups have criticized the SDF for keeping the children in adult facilities or holding them without trials in the first place.
In a statement, SDF said the children had been kept in separate dormitories from the adults, and were detained as an ``interim measure'' for their safety and the safety of the community until a solution for them is found.
At least 300 foreign child detainees are believed to be held in the Gweiran facility. Thousands more, mostly under the age of 12, are held with their mothers in locked camps in other parts of northeastern Syria on suspicion of being families of IS members. Most countries have refused to repatriate them, with only 25 out of 60 countries taking back their children, some without their mothers.
In the week of fighting, dozens of fighters from both sides have been killed, the U.S.-led coalition has carried out nearly a dozen airstrikes and thousands of civilians living nearby have been displaced.
Siamand Ali, a spokesman for SDF, said the militants were hiding in the basement of the northern section.
A coalition official said Thursday that detainees of the prison known as Gweiran or al-Sinaa are being secured in a ``new, hardened facility'' nearby where biometrics will be used by the SDF to enroll them. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said the coalition continues to advise and assist the SDF in the operation. The militants had also targeted the new facility in their initial assault but failed.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll from the struggle at over 200, including over 150 militants and more than 50 fighters from the Kurdish-led force. At least seven civilians were killed in the fighting, the Observatory said. The SDF said preliminary information put the force's death toll at 35.
The SDF, backed by U.S.-led coalition Bradley Fighting Vehicles and air support, had been closing in on the prison wing still controlled by the militants for a few days. Fighters from the SDF and other security teams used loudspeakers to call on the militants to surrender.
Kurdish officials said about 200 militants attacked the prison with car bombs and suicide belts while activating sleeper cells hiding in residential areas around the prison. In one video released by IS, the militants rammed vehicles against the prison walls. At one point, a car bomb was detonated in a petroleum warehouse near the prison, sparking a fire that lasted a couple of days.
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.