The State Department has acknowledged that five U.S. personnel killed in Afghanistan, including 25-year-old diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, were on foot when they were attacked by a suicide bomber, and not in an armored vehicle, as officials had told bereaved relatives earlier this week.
The violent deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel and the State Departments changing account of how they died harken back to the debacle in Benghazi, Libya, where Islamist extremists killed four Americans in assaults on the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11.
We are able to clarify at this point that they were in a walking movement from the [Provincial Reconstruction Teams base] down to the school down the road, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters Wednesday.
Mr. Ventrell said the school was a short distance away reports on the ground say 200 yards and that all the U.S. civilians in the group were wearing personal protective gear.
The five killed Ms. Smedinghoff; a civilian U.S. government contractor who has not been named; and soldiers Staff Sgt. Christopher M. Ward, 24, of Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Spc. Wilbel A. Robles-Santa, 25, of Juncos, Puerto Rico; and Spc. Delfin M. Santos Jr., 24, of San Jose, Calif. were all members of a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) who were taking a U.S. donation of books to the local school in Qalat.
#1
One report indicated the explosion also killed two Afghan civilians and narrowly missed the Zabul governor, Mohammad Ashraf Nasert. Perhaps Nasert or the event at the school were the actual targets. These types of attacks are investigated immediately by the Army. It is a mystery to me how, or for what reason the State Department got it wrong.
#5
Everyone has to remember the Taliban is opposed to anything except reading the Queeran. Classes in chemistry, physics, math, language, reading, and economics are opposed by the Taliban.
When the empty suit pulls us out of Afghanistan, the Taliban will systematically, blow up or burn all of the schools and books, murder the teachers, and slap the students around for being apostates going to a real school.
Welcome to the new dark ages Afghanistan, I hope you enjoy the Stone Age.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/12/2013 16:42 Comments ||
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[Jpost] Police fired on Islamists attacking a cop shoppe in a southern Tunisian town, killing one person, a security source said, in the latest incident to raise religious tensions in the North African country.
Hundreds of Salafists ...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them... - followers of a puritanical interpretation of Islam - protested in front of the cop shoppe in Hergla on Thursday after officers tossed in the calaboose Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! some of their comrades who had attacked alcohol sellers in the city, police and witnesses said.
"Police fired bullets on the Salafists who attacked a cop shoppe in Hergla town and tried to burn it down, killing one person and wounding others," a security source said.
Salafist websites posted a photograph of a young man they said was killed by a bullet to the chest. Medical sources in Sahloul hospital in the nearby city of Sousse declined to comment. Interior Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.
Since secular dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was toppled in the first "Arab Spring" uprising two years ago, Tunisia has seen mounting strife between secularists, who long held power, and Islamists, whose influence is increasing.
[Ynet] Armed Bedouin rustics briefly kidnapped a Hungarian member of the multinational observer force in Sinai, releasing him around two hours later after tribal elders intervened, a security official said Thursday.
An official with the force confirmed the kidnapping of the Hungarian who was traveling Thursday in a bus from el-Arish in north Sinai to Cairo, a regular trip members of the force make to the capital.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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Gunmen abducted an American tourist Thursday in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, a security official said, DPA reported.
Didn't get the State Department security memo, did he...
"The kidnappers have relatives in prisons and want them to be released in exchange for the US tourist," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Police was negotiating with tribal chiefs in Sinai to secure his release, the official added.
The incident is the latest in the area, which has in recent months seen a series of kidnappings carried out by tribesmen demanding the release of detained relatives. All the abductees were released unharmed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
you're on your own, idiot
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2013 7:54 Comments ||
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SANAA - Yemens president removed his predecessors son and nephews from powerful security posts on Wednesday in the most dramatic step yet in sidelining old regime figures, according to the nations state-run media.
Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in early 2012 after more than a year of protests against his rule, placed relatives and loyalists in top military and government posts over his 33-year rule. They have been accused of obstructing the US-backed government as it tries to reform and fight an active Al Qaeda branch in the country.
Fireworks went off in the capital, Sanaa, and Yemens second largest city, Taiz, after the announcement. Restructuring the army was a top demand by Yemenis after Salehs ouster.
His vice-president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, took over in a power transfer deal brokered by Yemens powerful Gulf neighbours and backed by the United States. Hadi has since been trying to remove former regime loyalists over concerns that Saleh was using them to further destabilise the turmoil-wracked country.
Washington has expressed concern that some in the military have been taking advantage of their positions for personal gain to interfere in the countrys transition, since regime change threatens their personal interests. The UN Security Council warned Saleh directly that he could face sanctions if attempts to undermine the new national unity government persist.
In his latest move, Hadi not only removed Salehs son and two nephews from their posts, but also effectively ordered them to leave the country by posting them abroad.
Nice touch. They can be the military liasion for their legation in Mauritania...
He removed Salehs son Ahmed as head of the Republican Guard and appointed him ambassador. The force is an elite
'elite' is not used here in the western military sense of the word...
army unit that was once the backbone of Salehs rule. It was supposed to be reorganised and brought under the control of the Defence Ministry according to Hadis orders last year, but those changes had not materialised on the ground.
In a sign of how challenging the overhaul has been, Republican Guard troops earlier this week forced businesses closed and clashed with police and residents in the city of Radda, about 160km south of the capital.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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There's plenty more at the B-desh news sites, but this will give you the flavor of the pointlessness of it all.
Three persons were killed and more than 100 people injured as Hefajat-e Islam and Jamaat-e-Islami activists joined in by locals clashed with Awami League men in Fatikchhari upazila of Chittagong during the countrywide dawn-to-dusk hartal yesterday.
Around 100 vehicles including motorcycles, jeeps, pick-ups, a police van and a fire truck were torched during the incident. Besides, around 20 shops were set ablaze, said police.
Meanwhile, a Jamaat activist died in Khulna in fighting between police and Shibir men. The victim was identified as Mansur Ali Gazi, 40, an activist of Jamaat-e-Islami.
Of the dead in Chittagong, two were primarily identified as Forkan and Biplob, but the other could not yet be named, Superintendent of Police in Chittagong AKM Hafiz Akhter told The Daily Star around 1:00am today.
Quoting local AL leaders, the SP said that two of the dead were ruling party activists.
The clashes broke out around 1:30pm when an anti-hartal procession by AL activists in Kazirhat area in Fatikchhari upazila came under attack. The attack followed an announcement over loudspeakers from Kazirhat Bazar Jame Mosque that a procession was coming to attack the mosque, said Shubash Barua, assistant sub-inspector of Bhujpur Police Station.
Police said more than 500 AL leaders and workers brought out a vehicle procession from Fatikchhari around 11:30am. As the processionists were returning after parading through Bhujpur, they came under attack in Kazirhat Bazar area. Locals of Kazirhat, students of Kazirhat madrasa and activists of Jamaat and Hefajat, came out in their hundreds following the announcement from the mosque and attacked the procession with sharp weapons and sticks.
The fighting continued for nearly four hours, leaving at least 100 people including 15 policemen and five firefighters wounded. Of the three killed, two died on the spot and the other at a local hospital.
Police said they could not take the injured to hospitals soon enough as the attackers blocked the road for around two hours. Police fired several rounds to disperse the AL and Hefajat men but to little avail. Later, two platoons of Border Guard Bangladesh personnel were deployed to calm the situation.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Forkan and Biplob were named but the other could not be named. I'll name him! Noqlok.
#4
From what I've been told by numerous folks in the know, Postal inspectors are probably to be feared more than any other domestic investigatory agencies.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
04/12/2013 21:20 Comments ||
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KARACHI: Eleven people including an activist of MQM and three city wardens were gunned down in different incidents of violence in the metropolis on Thursday.
The worker of MQM was shot dead and another wounded, as unidentified gunmen opened fire at them near Piyala Hotel within the remits of Gulberg Police Station. The police informed that victim Sheraz, 38, was killed when unidentified armed men riding a motorbike resorted to indiscriminate fire on a trader shop situated at the said place.
In another incident, three city wardens were killed in targeted attacked in Soldier Bazar, police and eyewitnesses said. The wardens were performing their duty when four unidentified armed motorcyclist came and sprayed them with bullets. The bodies were shifted to Civil Hospital where they were identified as Rao Shahid, Farooq and Sadiq.
A man was shot dead at Super Highway within the limits of Sohrab Goth Police Station. The police said that unidentified culprits shot him dead and escaped from the scene. The body was moved to morgue for identification after completion of medico-legal formalities at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC).
In another incident, a man identified as Akram, 30, was killed within the premises of Mominabad Police Station. He was on the way to home when unidentified armed riders intercepted him and opened fire, thus killing him on the spot.
Two men were gunned down in Khamiso Goth, Basheer Chowk within the precincts of New Karachi Industrial area Police Station.
Bodies found
A body of a man was found in a gunny bag within the jurisdiction of Kharadar police station. Police said that the identification of the victim was yet to be ascertained. Another strangled body of a man was found from Nusrat Bhutto Colony. Police said that unidentified culprits kidnapped and later dumped his body after torture.
While a man identified as Farooq Shah was found dead near Shah Faisal within the limits of Awami Colony Police Station.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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PESHAWAR: Former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa agriculture minister and ANP candidate Arbab Ayub Jan escaped a remote-controlled bomb attack in Peshawar on Thursday night. Police officials said the former provincial minister was returning from an election rally when his car was targeted near Tarnab farms. His driver has been injured in the attack, they added.
Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Liaqat Ali Khan told the media that the bomb was planted on a bicycle, which destroyed the car. He said the minister remained safe, however his driver Nawaz was injured. Abdul Haq, a bomb disposal squad official, said that about two to three kilogrammes of explosives had been used to carry out the explosion.
"The blast only damaged the car because no ball-bearing were used in the bomb, he added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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PESHAWAR: At least five people, including a station house officer, were killed and seven others injured after a brawl between two groups during a wedding ceremony in Bannu on Thursday.
According to sources, the incident occurred during the wedding ceremony of City SHO Zeenatullahs brother where two groups opened fire at each other after an exchange of hot words. The bodies and injured have been shifted to a local hospital in the city.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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LANDIKOTAL: Two volunteers of Tawheedul Islam (TI) were killed and seven others injured in a blast in the Zakha Khel area on Thursday. The TI also claimed to have captured three strategic posts of Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) and arrested three of its members from different posts in the Bokhar area near Tirrah Valley, sources said. They said that the volunteers injured in the blast had been shifted to hospitals in Peshawar. Sources said that the explosives planted in a checkpost went off as soon as the TI volunteers entered it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
copyright infringement on Texas Instruments (TI)?
Posted by: Water Modem ||
04/12/2013 9:48 Comments ||
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PESHAWAR: Fifteen militants and one soldier were killed on Thursday when the Pakistani military mounted another operation in a week of fighting designed to seize control of a remote but strategic valley in the northwest, the army said.
The military has faced fierce resistance from the Taliban and its allies in the Tirah Valley in the Khyber region since troops set out to dislodge insurgents from strategically important heights above the valley six days ago. Military officials say insurgents use the valley as a base camp that enables them to carry out raids in other semi-autonomous tribal areas near the Afghan border.
Fresh clashes started early Thursday when the security forces launched another operation to secure control of the valley, said a military official in Peshawar, adding that 15 militants and a soldier had been killed.
On Tuesday, the military said 23 Pakistani soldiers and 110 militants had been killed in four days of fierce fighting in the area.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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KARACHI: Two armed men shot dead Fakhrul Islam, a Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) candidate for NA-221 and PS-47, on Thursday.
Guess he's a write-out candidate...
Fakhrul Islam was shot dead in a drive-by killing in Hyderabad, the first candidate to die in the election campaign. Islam, 46, was a candidate for the MQM, a coalition partner in the outgoing government which has been threatened by the Taliban. He was killed by gunmen on motorcycles when he left the shop he owned with his father, police said. Interim Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso ordered an immediate tightening of security for all candidates.
We carried out this attack and shot dead Islam, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP from an undisclosed location.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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Israeli authorities on Thursday closed the Kerem Shalom crossing for the fourth day in a row, an official said Maan reported.
Raed Fattouh, a border official, told Ma'an that Israeli authorities informed the Palestinian side that the crossing would be closed for security reasons.
Israel sealed its border with the Gaza Strip on Monday after militants fired a rocket into the Negev desert on Sunday evening.
Oh, the whole 'cause and effect' thing again...
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP the rocket landed in an uninhabited sector of the Negev desert.
It's the principle...
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon warned on Wednesday that his country would respond to any attacks on its territory and not allow its people to come under fire.
MP Jamal al-Khodri condemned the border closure as an attempt to tighten the siege and collapse the Palestinian economy.
Not that it would be that hard...
Rights groups have criticized Israeli restrictions on civilian travel and goods transfer in response to rocket fire as collective punishment.
The Paleo people could fix that by punishing the rocket launcher boyz themselves, or offering them up to the Israelis, but somehow that never seems to happen...
After Israel closed the Gaza border in March following rocket fire, Gisha, an Israeli organization that campaigns for Palestinian freedom of movement, wrote to the defense minister.
"In the last month, there appears to be a new policy toward the Gaza Strip, in which Israel is openly restricting civilian movement to and from Gaza, not because of a concrete security necessity, but rather as a punitive step taken against the civilian population in direct response to fire by combatants," wrote Gisha director Sari Bashi.
Brilliant, Sari, brilliant -- you figured it out! Nice going!
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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#2
a punitive step taken against the civilian population in direct response to fire by combatants
One of the subtleties of being a nation-state, I'm afraid. Not only do you not get to write off cross-border violence as "Oh, that's just the armed wing of the Librarians and Clerical Workers Union. It wasn't us!", but you have to actively stop it. Otherwise, you neighbors get pissed and you know how *that* turns out.
#3
Wonder how the successful fun-loving Egyptians would enjoy an influx of whiney and disruptive Gazooks if Teh Juice get really cranky and bomb the bastards out? Might feel like hammer and anvil
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2013 10:28 Comments ||
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[Ynet] Syrian government forces launched a counteroffensive in the south, capturing a town and killing at least 45 people including women and kiddies, opposition activists said Thursday.
The attack on the town of Sanamein followed a rebel advance in the area in recent weeks. They opposition fighters captured army bases and a major town in the strategic province of Daraa along the border with Jordan.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/12/2013 00:00 ||
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Syria on Thursday accused foreign organisations of being biased in favour of opposition fighters, after Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged government forces with deliberately conducting airstrikes against civilians, DPA reported.
There can't be any other reason why the world would be recoiling in horror about airstrikes, rocket launches and the use of chemical weapons, is there...
The New York-based rights group said in a report that regime airstrikes had on eight occasions targeted civilians queuing for bread outside bakeries in rebel-held areas and repeatedly struck hospitals. Some 152 civilians were killed in the attacks.
"These attacks are serious violations of international humanitarian law," it said. "People who commit such violations with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes." It added that its report was based on 140 interviews and visits to some 50 sites.
"We have been saying and showing pictures of targeted bakeries, hospitals and whole neighbourhoods where there was no presence of the revolutionary fighters," said Samir al-Nashaar of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, adding the report was "a bit late."
Local activists claim that more than 4,300 people have been killed in government airstrikes since July 2012, the HRW report said
Without naming HRW, Syrian state television said foreign organizations rely only on accounts by opposition activists when reporting about the war in Syria. Syria's official news agency SANA said that Damascus had asked the United Nations Security Council to list the rebel al-Nusra Front as linked to al-Qaeda, a day after the group pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Syria has repeatedly blamed the two year-conflict on what it calls "terrorist gangs" allegedly financed by foreign powers.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 55 people were killed by government troops and pro-regime militias in two separate attacks on Thursday. At least 45, including five children and seven women, were killed in the southern province of Daraa.
The dead also included 16 insurgents killed in clashes with government troops.
At least 10 civilians of the same family were reportedly killed by paramilitaries known as Shabiha in the central province of Homs, added the Britain-based observatory.
Meanwhile, Syrian jets raided east Lebanon, wounding at least six people, Lebanese security sources said, the second such incident in one week. The attack took place on the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Arsal,a mainly Sunni Muslim village whose residents back Syrian rebels.
Syria warned last month that its troops would fire into Lebanon if what it called "terrorist gangs" continued to infiltrate Syrian territories to fight alongside the rebels.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2013 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.
[Ynet] Armed Bedouin 
Gunmen abducted an American tourist Thursday in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, a security official said, DPA reported.
SANAA - Yemens president removed his predecessors son and nephews from powerful security posts on Wednesday in the most dramatic step yet in sidelining old regime figures, according to the nations state-run media.
KARACHI: Eleven people including an activist of MQM and three city wardens were gunned down in different incidents of violence in the metropolis on Thursday.
LANDIKOTAL: Two volunteers of Tawheedul Islam (TI) were killed and seven others injured in a blast in the Zakha Khel area on Thursday. The TI also claimed to have captured three strategic posts of Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) and arrested three of its members from different posts in the Bokhar area near Tirrah Valley, sources said. They said that the volunteers injured in the blast had been shifted to hospitals in Peshawar. Sources said that the explosives planted in a checkpost went off as soon as the TI volunteers entered it.
PESHAWAR: Fifteen militants and one soldier were killed on Thursday when the Pakistani military mounted another operation in a week of fighting designed to seize control of a remote but strategic valley in the northwest, the army said. 
Israeli authorities on Thursday closed the Kerem Shalom crossing for the fourth day in a row, an official said Maan reported.
