#3
I just hope these commandos aren't tried for murder when they get home. Shooting those poor defenseless fishermen for no reason. The UK should pay compensation to their families.
/sarcasm
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/12/2008 19:45 Comments ||
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(SomaliNet) In what brings the total number of attacks in waters off the African nation this year to 83, pirates hijacked a Philippines chemical tanker with 23 crew near Somalia, a maritime official said Tuesday.
Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur said the tanker was heading to Asia when it was seized Monday in the Gulf of Aden by pirates armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Choong said there was an attempted attack the same day on a refrigerated cargo ship in eastern Somalia, but the vessel managed to escape with evasive maneuvering. The ship flies a Saudi flag but is operated out of Britain.
The bureau has issued an urgent warning to ships to take extra measures to deter pirates even while sailing in a corridor of the gulf patrolled by a multinational naval force. "The corridor is protected, but safe passage is not 100 percent guaranteed. The patrol boats cannot be everywhere at the same time. The ship master must maintain a strict radar watch for pirates," Choong said.
Many ships have managed to fend off pirate attacks after seeking help from the coalition forces, he added.
NATO has sent three ships to the Gulf of Aden - one of the world's busiest shipping lanes - to help the U.S. Navy in anti-piracy patrols and to escort cargo vessels. The European Union has said at least four warships backed by aircraft will begin policing the dangerous waters in December. The EU flotilla will eventually take over the NATO patrols.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008 00:00 ||
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(SomaliNet) Kenyan security forces confirmed the two nuns abducted in Mandera district Monday by armed bandits are in Somalia. The forces say that they were pursuing the kidnappers but said no progress had been made. A top police official told AFP that they were collaborating with village elders in Somalia to negotiate with the bandits to release them.
The nuns were captured in Elwak in an early morning attack that saw the bandits make away with three vehicles, two of them belonging to the government and the other belonging to a school.
The nuns now confirmed as members of the little sisters of Jesus order were Identified as Caterina Giruado, 67, and Maria Teresa Oliviero, 61, both natives of Italy.
Elwak is one of the several frontier hotspots where two rival Somali clans have been fighting for years over access to water and pasture prompting the government to launch a crackdown.
In recent months, armed Somali gangs have carried out scores of kidnappings, targeting either foreigners or Somalis working with international organizations to demand ransom. At least 24 aid workers, 20 of them Somalis had been killed so far in Somalia, with more than 100 attacks against Aid agencies, aid groups said.
Tension is reported to be high in the area following the attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008 00:00 ||
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(SomaliNet) A pro-government Libyan newspaper said in a rare report of a security breach in the country that gunbattles broke out between two tribes in southeastern Libya last week and six people were killed. Libyan government officials have made no comment on the incident in the remote oasis town of Kufrah, the subject of varying accounts in some Arab newspapers in recent days.
Libyan newspaper al Watan said in its online edition monitored from Rabat: "Skirmishes between youths from al Toubou and Zawia tribes evolved into bigger battles in which several cars and houses were burned."
The al Watan article, dated November 7 and not subsequently updated, added that five young members of the Zawia tribe were killed and a young man from the Toubou tribe was shot dead.
Government security forces in Kufrah about 1,400 km (875 miles) southeast of Tripoli only intervened when authorities rushed reinforcements from the Libyan capital to end what al Watan called the "battles and confrontations".
Al Watan said fighters from both sides used illegally owned weapons but gave no further details.
Toubous, dark-skinned non-Arab Libyans, are estimated to account for a fifth of the oil-producing nation's more than 5 million people. Toubou rights activists accuse the Tripoli government of marginalising the population, including reportedly depriving many of identity papers and education. The Libyan government denies the accusations.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Sounds like they need an Abe Lincoln. The carrier, I mean.
Gunmen shot and killed an American aid worker as he traveled to work Wednesday in northwestern Pakistan, the latest in a spate of attacks on foreigners in the militancy-wracked country.
Police did not speculate on the identity of the assailants, who also killed the man's driver. But similar attacks against Pakistani security forces and foreigners have been blamed on al-Qaida- and Taliban-linked fighters, who are increasingly active in the region, which borders Afghanistan.
The shooting occurred in University Town, an upscale area of the main northwestern city of Peshawar where a top U.S. diplomat was attacked just a few months ago, police official Arshad Khan said.
Police identified the dead American as Stephen Vance, and officials said he was involved in U.S.-government funded development projects in the tribal areas next to the border.
(AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - A senior minister from Pakistan's North West Frontier Province's government, Bashir Ahmed Bilour, is believed to have been the main target in a suicide bombing that killed at least three people on Tuesday. Several others were wounded in the attack in which a suicide bomber blew himself up outside Qayyum Stadium after the closing ceremony of the inter-provincial games in Peshawar.
Bilour, the senior leader of the Pushtun sub-national Awami National Party, had left the stadium minutes before the powerful blast struck the stadium.
NWFP Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani, who also attended the closing ceremony, had also left the stadium minutes before the attack.
Although the Senior Provincial Minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour left the Stadium, the main target being the senior leader of Pushtun sub-national Awami National Party, a powerful blast rocked the Qayyum Stadium, Peshawar at the closing ceremony of the Inter-provincial games on Tuesday evening.
"Two main reasons could be behind the blast. One the attendance of high level government officials in the event and second the participation of women athletes in the event in Peshawar," a source said.
"This is a suicide attack. We ensured foolproof security arrangements but given it was a sports event we could not restrict the movement of people," said NWFP's Inspector General Malik Naveed.
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack on Tuesday in Peshawar but several attacks in recent months have been blamed on Al-Qaeda or Taliban factions. "It will be premature to put the blame on any group," Malik Naveed told Adnkronos International (AKI).
Earlier, three-day 3rd Inter Provincial Games started with a colourful ceremony at the Qayyum Stadium Peshawar on Sunday. More than 1200 athletes and officials, under the banner of the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA), participated in 18 different events at the games that included eight women's events.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Denied outward expression, the crazies turn inward.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An individual in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on U.S. troops in Nineveh province Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding six others, a U.S. military spokesman said.
The U.S. military has not confirmed the identity of the shooter, but initial reports indicate the shooter was an Iraqi soldier, the military said in a statement. The gunman was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire.
An Interior Ministry official said an Iraqi soldier in a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol opened fire on a group of U.S. soldiers in the same convoy after one of the American troops slapped an Iraqi soldier.
The shooting occurred in the al-Zanjili area of Mosul, about 261 miles (420 kilometers) north of Baghdad, the ministry official said. The incident occurred about 5:30 p.m., officials said. The ministry official said four U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded.
The incident is under investigation, the U.S. military said, but did not confirm any details of a reported altercation.
Earlier Wednesday, a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in central Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 14 others, an Interior Ministry official said. The attack took place in Naser Square around 9:40 a.m.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb exploded near a car in a Shiite section of northeastern Baghdad, wounding seven civilians. A car bomb also exploded in the al-Shaab neighborhood of northeastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 10, an Interior Ministry official said.
IRAQI and US forces have arrested the "number one butcher" responsible for beheadings in the volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad.
"Iraqi forces received intelligence on a very dangerous terrorist known as the number one butcher who was responsible for a beheading squad that slaughtered innocent people," Major General Mohammed al-Askari said. The suspect, Riyad Wahab Hassan Falih, "also supervised the training of terrorists specialising in beheading Iraqis", he said.
The arrest came amid a series of operations across the province in which Iraqi army troops backed by local tribes apprehended 65 people in 72 hours. In an operation early today, troops arrested nine local al-Qaeda leaders who had been hiding in an underground bunker used for torturing and beheading captives.
In another raid in the north of Diyala, Iraqi security forces shot dead five fighters when they raided a weapons cache, the ministry said.
#2
Falih: That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me.
al-Askari: It won't be the last. To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose.
Falih: And then my tongue I suppose, I killed you too quickly the last time. A mistake I don't mean to duplicate tonight.
al-Askari: I wasn't finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right.
Falih: And then my ears, I understand let's get on with it.
al-Askari: WRONG. Your ears you keep and I'll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, "Dear God! What is that thing," will echo in your perfect ears. That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.
Palestinians fired two Kassam rockets at Israeli communities in the Western Negev on Wednesday evening, several hours after clashes between IDF troops and Hamas gunnies in the Gaza Strip killed four Paleostinians. No one was hurt in the attack and the rockets did not cause damage.
Earlier, six mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel. The Islamic Jihad terrorist group claimed responsibility for firing the shells, which landed in open areas and did not cause any injuries or damage.
Must have been trained by Hekmatyer ...
On Wednesday afternoon, IDF troops gunned down four Gaza terrorists as fresh clashes raised new concerns that the increasingly shaky five-month-old truce could collapse.
Troops spotted a group of Palestinian gunmen some 300 meters from the Gaza border, near the Kissufim crossing, the army said. The gunnies were apparently planning to plant a bomb near the fence. The soldiers crossed the border and entered the Strip in pursuit of the gunnies, the IDF said. In the ensuing firefight, four terrorists were killed and an IDF soldier was shot in the feet hand. The soldier was evacuated in light condition to Sokora Hospital in Beersheba.
The army said that an explosive device was detonated by the terrorists during the incident and that AK-47s and grenades were found on the bodies after they were killed.
Shortly after the firefight, a number of mortar shells were fired by Paleostinians at Israel, landing on the Israeli side of Kissufim. The IAF carried out two air strikes in the Khan Yunis area, the IDF added.
The army said there has been a significant rise in recent days in attempts by terrorists to plant explosives along the border in an effort to attack army patrols.
Hamas's military wing threatened retaliation. "The anger of our people and our Resistance will reach everybody, God willing, and our response to the enemy will be painful, and will spill the Zionists' blood," the wing's spokesman, Abu Obeida, said in a statement.
"We shall have Dire Revenge!!!"
Hamas stopped short of saying the truce was over but said gunmnies would fight any entry of IDF troops into Gaza. "This is a clear violation of the truce, and the Resistance has every right to respond to an attack," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas mouthpiece.
The latest clash came one day after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited the IDF's Southern Command, where he was briefed on the preparations being made by a Hamas-led coalition of terror groups. Israel and Hamas were on an inevitable collision course, Olmert said following the briefing. "It is merely a question of when and not a question of if," Olmert warned.
Defense Minster Ehud Barak, who accompanied Olmert on the visit, added, "The IDF is prepared, alert, and ready for any possibility. We are looking at this relative calm around and we know that many things are happening under the surface."
Last week, IDF special forces raided a tunnel dug by Hamas near the Israeli border, which the army said was to be used in an imminent kidnap attempt. The raid, which involved an armed clash with Hamas gunnies, killing a number of them, led to over 60 rockets being fired on southern Israel in the following days, and a number of Israeli air strikes on rocket launching crews.
(AKI) - Israel's Defence Minister, Ehud Barak has agreed to partially lift Israel's suspension of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip's sole power plant, Israel Radio reported on Tuesday.
The move followed an appeal by Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair. Most of Gaza City was plunged into darkness late on Monday.
Israeli authorities blocked the shipment of food, fuel and gas supplies to Gaza after renewed clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces over the past week broke an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire in place since June.
Gaza's border crossing will remain sealed for all other purposes, the Israeli authorities said.
The Gaza City plant provides about a quarter of the Gaza Strip's electricity and more than half the electricity used by the city itself.
The rest of the territory's power supplies come directly from Israel via power lines. The United Nations has described the fuel shortages as "real and serious".
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008 00:00 ||
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(AKI) - The Islamist Hamas movement on Tuesday stopped Fatah supporters from staging marches to mark the fourth anniversary of the death of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Hamas banned the marches by declaring a state of alert and thus effectively preventing Fatah supporters from commemorating his death.
Meanwhile in the Fatah-ruled West Bank, several thousand Palestinians were planning to march in memory of Arafat.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Arafat and other important Palestinian 'martyrs' should be remembered regardless of their faction.
"We must work with honesty to preserve all that Yasser Arafat and all Palestinian martyrs such as Ahmed Yassin have done, and we will remember them even though they do not want us to," said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas referring to Hamas.
In March 2004, Hamas leader Abdelaziz al-Rantisi and Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin were assassinated by Israeli Air Forces.
Arafat, (photo) the former head of the Palestine Liberation Organization died in Paris on 11 November 2004 of unknown causes.
His tomb is located in the West Bank's administrative capital of Ramallah, inside the Presidential compound known as the Muqata. The Palestinian Authority has held several memorial services in the West Bank for Arafat in the past few days.
In 2007, hundreds of thousands of supporters took to the streets of Gaza to commemorate Arafat's death. Five people were killed and another 100 wounded after gunfire was exchanged between Fatah and Hamas supporters.
Since his death Palestinian politics has been divided with the most dramatic and often violent differences between the secular nationalist Fatah party and the radical Islamist group Hamas.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
"unknown cause". Heh. All marchers in the Arafat parade will wear just a keffiyeh, buttless leather chaps, and carrying a red binder and babywipes
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/12/2008 7:15 Comments ||
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#2
I celebrated the 4th anniversary of that Bastard's demise, too.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/12/2008 7:29 Comments ||
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#3
I completely forgot about him. He's worm food - he can't screw Israel any more. The sooner the memory of this POS disappears from the minds of men and is TOTALLY forgotten, the better the world will be. There's nothing quite as devastating as being totally forgotten by your own "people".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/12/2008 11:35 Comments ||
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#4
So what happened to all the unaccounted money flowing through Arafish during his prime? We are talking millions if not billions. Gotta be more than Souee the widow got herself.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/12/2008 14:34 Comments ||
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#5
My guess is that money is sitting unclaimed in a Swiss bank. If that's the case I'm sure the Swiss don't mind at all.
Suspected terrorists militants have shot and killed four civilians including an elderly woman in Thailand's south, police said, as an analyst warned violence in the region was intensifying.
The 79-year-old woman and her 49-year-old son were shot dead in Pattani province on Tuesday evening while returning home from work, police said. The same evening a 33-year-old rubber tapper died in a drive-by shooting in Yala province, while elsewhere in the province a 28-year-old man was shot and killed, they said.
Srisompob Jitpiromsri, director of the Pattani-based group Deep South Watch, said although the violence had fallen to its lowest level in five years in early October, it was now intensifying. On November 4 suspected militants detonated two bombs in a busy marketplace in Yala, wounding 74 people in one of the biggest assaults on civilians since early 2004, police said.
"In the past the government has focused on its military operation and managed to suppress the terrorists militants. So now they (the terrorists militants) have tried to adopt new tactics to achieve large-scale destruction," Mr Srisompob said.
(SomaliNet) Philippine officials said on Tuesday, citing radio intercepts that troops killed at least 10 Muslim rebels in six hours of intense fighting in the troubled south of the country. I've noticed over the years that they never seem to kill anybody in the placid west, or the untroubled north, or even in the blissful east. It's always the troubled south that gets it. I dunno why that is.
15 rogue members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) were also wounded in the clash on Monday in mountains near Wao town in the Mindanao region, army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Romeo Brawner Jr said.
"We did not suffer any casualty in this encounter," Brawner told reporters, adding the rebels suffered heavy losses due to air strikes and artillery fire.
"We could not confirm the actual casualty count, but, based on communications intercepts and our own intelligence, the rebels lost 10 fighters and 15 others were seriously wounded in air and ground attacks."
Last week, the military ordered troops to scale down offensives against rogue MILF units to help hundreds of thousands of displaced people return to their homes and farms before the Christmas holidays.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008 00:00 ||
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Unsure if this was photoshopped
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said it test-fired a new generation of surface-to-surface missile Wednesday and that the Islamic Republic was ready to defend itself against any attacker.
Iran's latest missile test followed persistent speculation in recent months of possible U.S. or Israeli strikes against its nuclear facilities, which the West suspects form part of a covert weapons program, a charge Tehran denies. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, like outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush, has not ruled out military action although he has criticized the Bush administration for not pursuing more diplomacy and engagement with Tehran.
Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the Iranian-made surface-to-surface Sejil missile had "extremely high capabilities" and was only intended for defensive purposes. He said it had a range of close to 2,000 km (1,200 miles), almost as much as another Iranian missile called Shahab 3. That would enable it to reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf.
"This missile test is in the framework of Iran's deterrent doctrine," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. "It will only land on the heads of those enemies ... who want to make an aggression and invade the Islamic Republic," said Najjar, who did not mention any country by name.
Iran's English-language Press TV said the Sejil missile had two stages and was of a type that used combined solid fuel. A missile was shown soaring from a platform in desert-like terrain, leaving a long vapour trail.
It came a day after media said the Revolutionary Guards had test-fired another missile called Samen near the Iraqi border. "They do it all the time. It's Iranian machismo," said Tim Ripley, an analyst at Jane's Defense Weekly.
Two stages could increase a missile's range, he said, noting that Iran had in the past borrowed technology from North Korea although he said he could not say if that was true this time.
#3
ION WORLD MIL FORUM Poster > IFF RUSSIA IS UNABLE TO STOP HER DEMOGRAPHIC/POPULATION DECLINE, SOONER OR LATER SHE WILL BE DISMEMBERED AS A NATION. Pervasive, perennial, unchecked loss of identity + socio-cultural beliefs will inevitably result in loss of physical territories.
* IIRC, ARISTOTLE? or twas it HERODOTUS > TOLERANCE/DIVERSITY IS THE BELIEF OF A WEAK AND DYING NATION, or words to that effect.
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.
(SomaliNet) In what brings the total number of attacks in waters off the African nation this year to 83, pirates hijacked a Philippines chemical tanker with 23 crew near Somalia, a maritime official said Tuesday. 
(SomaliNet) A pro-government Libyan newspaper said in a rare report of a security breach in the country that gunbattles broke out between two tribes in southeastern Libya last week and six people were killed. Libyan government officials have made no comment on the incident in the remote oasis town of Kufrah, the subject of varying accounts in some Arab newspapers in recent days. 
(AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - A senior minister from Pakistan's North West Frontier Province's government, Bashir Ahmed Bilour, is believed to have been the main target in a suicide bombing that killed at least three people on Tuesday. Several others were wounded in the attack in which a suicide bomber blew himself up outside Qayyum Stadium after the closing ceremony of the inter-provincial games in Peshawar.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An individual in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on U.S. troops in Nineveh province Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding six others, a U.S. military spokesman said.
Palestinians fired two Kassam rockets at Israeli communities in the Western Negev on Wednesday evening, several hours after clashes between IDF troops and Hamas gunnies in the Gaza Strip killed four Paleostinians. No one was hurt in the attack and the rockets did not cause damage. 
(AKI) - The Islamist Hamas movement on Tuesday stopped Fatah supporters from staging marches to mark the fourth anniversary of the death of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Hamas banned the marches by declaring a state of alert and thus effectively preventing Fatah supporters from commemorating his death.
(SomaliNet) Philippine officials said on Tuesday, citing radio intercepts that troops killed at least 10 Muslim rebels in six hours of intense fighting in the troubled south of the country. 
