Rival pirates and militia groups have fought for control over a British couple held hostage for more than a week, an Islamic militia commander and a local elder said Monday. The couple were not injured in the fighting.
Meanwhile, an American-flagged cargo vessel came under gunfire from suspected Somali pirates but managed to escape, a U.S. Navy spokesman said.
In a just world those pirates have just signed their own death warrant ...
Elders sent local fighters to thwart an attempt by some of the pirates holding the couple to take them to an extremist Islamic group, said a commander of a rival moderate Islamic militia who gave his name only as Ilka'ase.
Posted by: ed ||
11/02/2009 10:18 ||
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[Asharq al-Aswat] A defense official in Somalia says a roadside bomb in the country's semiautonomous northern region has killed two people, including an infantry division commander. Somaliland defense minister Saleban Warsame Guled says two remote-controlled bombs were used in the attack that killed Osman Yusuf.
After the first blast, Yusuf went to the attack site to investigate. Guled says a second explosion then went off, killing Yusuf.
The attack comes only days after the powerful militant group al-Shabab, which is concentrated in southern Somalia, threatened to attack the northern region of Somaliland and other countries in the Horn of Africa, including Uganda and Kenya.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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[Maghrebia] A would-be al-Qaeda suicide bomber surrendered to Algerian authorities last week in Batna, Liberte reported on Friday (October 30th). Abu abd El-Samih, 29, of the "El-Mawt" brigade, was wanted in connection with a 2007 Batna suicide bombing that targeted Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The failed assassination attempt killed 22 people and injured more than 100 others.
Mr. abd El-Samih only just figured out it wasn't going to explode after two years? Epic FAIL.
Also on Friday, pan-Arab daily Asharq Alawsat quoted Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni as saying that many terrorists "have been forced into a corner and have had no choice but to surrender". According to the minister, "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is living its final moments".
In related news, some 20 terrorists on Friday (October 30th) kidnapped a business owner at his workplace in Tigzirt, Tizi Ouzou province. The assailants, members of al-Qaeda's El-Ansar brigade, reportedly hijacked a van and its driver to make their escape.
Once again demonstrating that terrorists=criminals.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Saudi authorities have discovered an arms cache near the capital linked to an al-Qaeda cell dismantled in August, an interior ministry spokesman said on Sunday.
The spokesman, quoted by the SPA state news agency, said the weapons were found in a house after interrogations of 44 people allegedly linked Qaeda whose arrests were announced on Aug. 19.
The arms haul comprised 281 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 250 magazines and 35 cases containing 41,250 rounds of ammunition, the spokesman said.
That seems like rather a lot.
When 43 Saudis and one foreigner were arrested in August, police also seized around 70 machine-guns, 376 electronic detonation devices and more than 31,000 rounds of ammunition in three caches in a Riyadh residence and desert hideouts.
Good lord -- how many things/people did they plan to blow up or shoot?
"These people have links to the original Qaeda organization," interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki told AFP in August. "I would describe them like a base. They actually work in the area, recruiting young people, giving young people the ideology of Al-Qaeda and financing terrorism in the kingdom."
Saudi Arabia has battled violent extremists who launched a terror campaign against government and foreign targets in the Kingdom since 2003.
The violence has subsided since 2006 but security concerns were revived when Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef survived an assassination bid inside his palace in August.
The government has arrested hundreds of suspects this year on suspicion of trying to revive militant cells and in February issued a list of 85 wanted militants believed to be abroad.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
like these AQ weapons in boneyards waiting for skyscrapers?
#2
PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > SAUDI AIR DEFENSE PREPARES FOR BALLISTIC MISSLE ATTACKS IN NORTHERN REGIONS [Israel or Iran]. Sausi procurement of various types of International ADS including "dual-use" utility.
* SAME > TEHRAN HITTING AT THE SANCTITY OF ISLAM [Geopol-based perversion by Iran of religious or spiritual purposes of Muslim pilgrimage to Holy Mosque]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted a North Korean bank on Friday, saying it was involved in North Korea's arms dealing. Treasury said in a statement that Amroggang Development Bank was being added to a list of proliferators of mass destruction because it was owned or controlled by North Korea's Tanchon Commercial Bank.
Tanchon was previously hit with sanctions by both the United States and the United Nations Security Council for its involvement in Pyongyang's proliferation activities.
Treasury said assets of Tanchon under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and Americans are banned from any dealing with it. It said that Tanchon's president, Kim Tong Myong, also was being added to the list of weapons proliferators.
Treasury described Amroggang as a Tanchon-related company run by Tanchon officials. It said Tanchon helps finance Korea Mining Development Corp's sales of ballistic missiles and has been involved in Komid's ballistic missile transactions with an Iranian industrial group.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
The Nork banks have been less of a threat to the US and more stable than all the institutions the Fed has had to bailout in the US that played 'Las Vegas' with derivatives and the fronts they constructed to hide the gambling behind the appearance of legitimate markets. You'd think the Fed would at least 'blacklist' some organizations and people in this country [or are they more afraid of their sponsors in Congress].
A group of prominent North Korean defectors has told the U.S. Congress that North Korea's human rights situation has worsened in recent years. They say tens of thousands of North Koreans held in political prison camps have little food or water and face torture and abuse.
A recent U.S. State Department report on human rights in North Korea estimated that the government is holding 150,000 to 200,000 people in political prison camps. It said prison conditions were harsh, prisoners were tortured and some women underwent forced abortions.
Former North Korean prisoner Kim Tae Jin, who spent four years in such a camp before escaping to South Korea in 2001 is now a leading pro-democracy activist. "I am actually a living testimony to the horror and pain they [prisoners] have to go through," he said. Kim told a congressional hearing in Washington Thursday most political prisoners in North Korea are jailed for having a religion or because family members were accused of crimes. He says that from day one, he and other prisoners got a minimum amount of food and did not have water fit for human consumption. Kim says he only was allowed to drink water dripping from a toilet and had to use the same water to wash his dishes.
U.S.-based human rights groups say North Korea's government also deprives its people of almost all political and civil liberties. Choi Zoo Hwal is a former North Korean military colonel who defected to South Korea in 1995. He told U.S. lawmakers that few North Koreans dare to oppose the government because they see it as a divine authority. "There is no freedom to choose jobs, the place to live in or the freedom of religion whatsoever in North Korea," he said. "And North Korean residents have to live under horrendous supervision and control."
The United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution on North Korea last month deploring what it called widespread rights abuses in the reclusive country. North Korea's delegation rejected the accusation.
Another North Korean defector, Kim Seung-min said the United States could improve the situation by supporting a radio station like his, that informs North Koreans about conditions in and outside the country. He says North Korea has tried to jam signals from his station, Free North Korea Radio, since it began broadcasting from Seoul five years ago. He says the station is undaunted, because it believes North Koreans should have access not only to food, but also freedom of thought, or "mental food" as he calls it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Things go from bad to worse, then the cycle repeats...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/02/2009 0:30 Comments ||
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#2
Sounds like Kimmie-boy is looking for a seat on the United Nations [in]Human Rights Council.
An imam is due back in court to faces charges he lied to FBI agents investigating an Afghan immigrant who was later charged with plotting a bomb attack in New York City.
Ahmad Afzali (AKH'-mahd ahf-ZAH'-lee) is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Brooklyn federal court. He was arrested in September amid an investigation of Colorado airport van driver Najibullah Zazi (nah-jee-BOO'-lah ZAH'-zee).
Posted by: ed ||
11/02/2009 10:16 ||
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#1
Unless he's in Jail, you'll never see him again, until he's caught by accident at some airplane trminal tryig to board.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/02/2009 14:08 Comments ||
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#2
Well I hope he is caught at the terminal, because if he gets onto a plane to the UK, and he gets past immigration, we will never get rid of the scummer due to the European Human Rights act, which our stupid Government thought was a fantastic idea to sign up to, thus giving terrorists " Rights "
Posted by: Dave UK ||
11/02/2009 15:41 Comments ||
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A SUICIDE bomber on a motorbike ripped through workers queuing for their salaries near a Pakistan hotel today, killing 20 people as the UN pulled expatriate staff from the northwest of the country.
The force of the explosion outside a bank near the four-star Shalimar Hotel in the garrison city of Rawalpindi showered the area with body parts.
"We were sitting on the second floor of our office. It was a huge blast,'' Raja Sher Ali, a marketing manager in a local company, said.
"Our building shook as if in an earthquake and when we came out there was smoke everywhere and body parts were thrown into our office,'' she said.
A surge in militant attacks left more than 300 people dead last month as the military presses a major offensive against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) movement in the tribal belt, infested with Al-0aeda-linked operatives.
A senior police official said the suicide bomber drove a motorbike towards the queue of people waiting for their salaries at a bank when he blew up.
"The suicide bomber came on a motorcycle and blew up close to people gathered to get salaries. We found parts of a suicide vest and some body parts of the suicide attacker,'' senior police official Aslam Tarin said.
"At least 20 people were killed and more than 20 were wounded,'' he added.
Posted by: tipper ||
11/02/2009 04:02 ||
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#1
35 now dead, many old pensioners. Monday's blast came as the Pakistan government announced rewards worth $5 million for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of Pakistan Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud and more than a dozen other militant leaders.
A reward of more than $600,000 each was announced for Hakimullah, who is regarded as violent and brutal, and his top aide Wali-ur-Rehman, believed to be more thoughtful and canny. The same amount was offered for Qari Hussain Mehsud, Hakimullah's cousin who is known as "the mentor of suicide bombers."
Posted by: ed ||
11/02/2009 10:29 Comments ||
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[Dawn] Pakistan said troops fought deadly street battles in a Taliban centre and den of Uzbek fighters on Sunday, pressing a major offensive into a third week and killing nine militants.
Although the military provides the only regular information coming from the frontlines, none of the details can be verified because communication lines are down and journalists and aid workers are barred from the area.
The latest casualties reported in a military statement bring to 306 the number of insurgents and 36 the number of soldiers reported killed since the operation was launched in South Waziristan on October 17.
The district is part of the lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border where US officials say Al-Qaeda and their allies are plotting attacks on the West.
'Search and clearance operation of Kanigurram has commenced and 50 per cent of the town has been cleared,' the military said in a statement.
Troops were fighting street by street in what commanders have described as a major Tehreek-e-Taliban 'operational centre' and base for Uzbek fighters, one military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Uzbeks are the largest group among foreign militants backing Taliban fighters in Pakistan.
On Saturday, the military reported stiff resistance from Taliban holed up in bunkers and sniper men hunkered down in towers in what is one of the largest towns in South Waziristan.
Advancing troops have massed on three sides outside Taliban strongholds Sararogha and Makin, and impounded weapons at Karama, described as an Uzbek stronghold, the military said. At Patok Narai, two soldiers and five militants were killed.
Around 30,000 troops are taking part in the offensive against an estimated 10,000-12,000 militants in the semi-autonomous region. Relief workers say more than 200,000 people have been displaced by the fighting.
Numerous previous offensives in the tribal belt have had limited success, costing the lives of 2,000 troops and ending generally with peace agreements that critics say gave the insurgents a chance to re-arm.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: TTP
[Geo News] At least 101 suspected people including Uzbeks and Afghans have been arrested with huge cache of arms recovered from them during a crackdown on the foreigners unlawfully staying in Pakistan, Geo News reported Sunday.
According to Border Military Police, two suspected foreigners were arrested from Rakhigaj area of Dera Ghazi Khan; the arrested Abdus Samad and Ayub bin Yousuf are said to belong to South Africa.
"You ain't from around here, air yew?"
Meantime, Chaman police arrested 27 Uzbek and Afghan nationals by conducting a raid on a passenger bus en route to Quetta.
District Kohat police arrested 42 suspected people including 12 Afghan natives during a search operation in the area.
According to District Police Officer Kohat Dilawar Bangash, 6 Kalashnikovs, 8 rifles, 12 guns, 25 pistols and 2000 bullets have been recovered from the possession of these suspects.
District Rahimyar Khan police apprehended at least 6 Afghan nationals in a raid on the coach heading for Karachi from Sadiqabad; while, 24 suspected people have been arrested from District Khairpur.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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[6 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
#1
sounds like a headline from my hometown (Tucson) daily newspaper - The Arizona Daily Star.
[Asharq al-Aswat] An Iraqi police spokesman says a bomb attached to a bicycle has killed five people and wounded 37 near the southern city of Hillah. Maj. Muthana Khalid says the booby trapped bicycle exploded at a popular fruit and vegetable market on Sunday morning near Hillah. Khalid says the bicycle had been abandoned at busy intersection near Hillah, the capital of Babil province 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Baghdad.
Last week, twin suicide attacks in downtown Baghdad killed 155 people, the worst attacks in Iraq in two years.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] A spate of violence across Iraq killed nine people on Sunday as officials said that repairs to government offices struck by massive bombings last week will cost around 16 million dollars.
A good thing they've got all that oil to sell.
A UN special envoy also arrived in Baghdad to make a preliminary report on security in the Iraqi capital after last week's bombings and similar attacks in August killed a combined 250 people.
In Sunday's deadliest attack, five people were killed and 37 wounded when a bomb hidden in a cooler on the back of a bicycle exploded in the Shia city of Mussayib in Babil province at around 0630 GMT.
Police said the bicycle had been left at the market in Mussayib, 60 kilometres south of Baghdad.
The western Iraqi city of Ramadi, capital of the predominantly Sunni province of Al-Anbar, a former rebel stronghold, was targeted by two suicide bombings, police said.
One of the attackers detonated a car bomb at the city's western entrance, killing two people and wounding four others, according to Colonel Jabbar Ajaj.
Ajaj added that another suicide attacker blew himself up near a police station outside Ramadi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Baghdad, but killed only himself. No one was wounded.
Terror FAIL.
In the Shia holy city of Karbala, 110 kilometres south of the capital, a magnetic bomb affixed to a bus went off as the vehicle was approaching a security checkpoint, killing a woman.
The 'sticky bomb' attack also wounded 12 people, including five women, medical and security officials said.
Meanwhile, a government employee was killed and two civilians were wounded in two attacks in the restive northern city of Mosul.
The civil servant was shot dead by gunmen as he was driving his car in the west of the city, 350 kilometres north of the capital, a police officer said.
The officer added that two civilians were wounded when a parked car bomb exploded, also in western Mosul, apparently targeting an Iraqi army patrol.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, authorities have decided to allocate around 16 million dollars to rebuild the ministries of justice and public works and the Baghdad provincial government building, all damaged in October 25's huge blasts.
More than 150 people were killed that day in near-simultaneous vehicle suicide attacks targeting the government buildings at busy Baghdad intersections, in Iraq's deadliest day of violence in more than two years.
The decision to repair the government buildings was taken at a cabinet meeting, during which ministers allocated 16 billion dinars (13.7 million dollars) for the justice and public works ministries.
'The cabinet agreed that the ministry of finance should transfer the money... to fix and renovate the ministries of justice and municipalities,' a government statement said.
Nine billion dinars will be set aside for the ministry of justice while the remainder would be devoted to the ministry of public works.
Baghdad Governor Salah Abdul Razzaq told AFP that the provincial government had earmarked three billion dinars to repair its offices.
He criticised the central government, however, for not funding those renovations, noting that 'even though we are a local government, it was the same attack, the same damage, the same disaster.'
UN Assistant Secretary General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco arrived in Baghdad Sunday, and will meet with Iraqi officials on Monday, Said Arikat, the spokesman for the UN mission, said. A UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Fernandez-Taranco would meet cabinet ministers and foreign ministry officials. The envoy's trip follows intense lobbying by Iraq for an independent probe into the massive attacks in central Baghdad.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State of Iraq
[Ma'an] Ma'an -- Two Palestinian workers were killed in smuggling tunnels underneath the Gaza-Egypt border in the city of Rafah on Sunday, medics said, marking an uptick in fatalities.
Medics at Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah said Ghasan Barakeh, 25, was electrocuted in a tunnel.
Earlier, officials said an unidentified man arrived at the same hospital after suffocating to death when a tunnel collapsed on him in the As-Salam neighborhood of Rafah.
Sixteen people were injured by collapsing tunnels in the past week. Egyptian security forces also discovered and shut down five such tunnels.
The tunnel trade is the only reliable means of importing many goods made scarce in Gaza by an Israeli-led blockade that began in 2007. Hundred of such tunnels are now known to exist.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2009 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
Scarce goods? Like rocket tubes and propellant?
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
11/02/2009 0:16 Comments ||
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A former village head and his friend, both Muslims, were killed a drive-by shooting here Monday, police said.
Zakariya Azu, 43, a former village head of Jarohpae village, and his friend, Doroh Sehyeng, 40, were killed while driving their pikc-up truck on the Yala-Betong Road in Thanto village of Tambon Thanto in Thanto district. Eyewitnesses told police that an assailant, who was dressed like a Muslim woman, opened fire from the back of a pick-up truck, which overtook Zakariya's truck.
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.
Rival pirates and militia groups have fought for control over a British couple held hostage for more than a week, an Islamic militia commander and a local elder said Monday. The couple were not injured in the fighting.
[Asharq al-Aswat] A defense official in Somalia says a roadside bomb in the country's semiautonomous northern region has killed two people, including an infantry division commander. Somaliland defense minister Saleban Warsame Guled says two remote-controlled bombs were used in the attack that killed Osman Yusuf.
[Maghrebia] A would-be al-Qaeda suicide bomber surrendered to Algerian authorities last week in Batna, Liberte reported on Friday (October 30th). Abu abd El-Samih, 29, of the "El-Mawt" brigade, was wanted in connection with a 2007 Batna suicide bombing that targeted Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The failed assassination attempt killed 22 people and injured more than 100 others.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Saudi authorities have discovered an arms cache near the capital linked to an al-Qaeda cell dismantled in August, an interior ministry spokesman said on Sunday.
A group of prominent North Korean defectors has told the U.S. Congress that North Korea's human rights situation has worsened in recent years. They say tens of thousands of North Koreans held in political prison camps have little food or water and face torture and abuse. 
[Dawn] Pakistan said troops fought deadly street battles in a Taliban centre and den of Uzbek fighters on Sunday, pressing a major offensive into a third week and killing nine militants.
[Geo News] At least 101 suspected people including Uzbeks and Afghans have been arrested with huge cache of arms recovered from them during a crackdown on the foreigners unlawfully staying in Pakistan, Geo News reported Sunday.
[Asharq al-Aswat] An Iraqi police spokesman says a bomb attached to a bicycle has killed five people and wounded 37 near the southern city of Hillah. Maj. Muthana Khalid says the booby trapped bicycle exploded at a popular fruit and vegetable market on Sunday morning near Hillah. Khalid says the bicycle had been abandoned at busy intersection near Hillah, the capital of Babil province 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Baghdad.
[Dawn] A spate of violence across Iraq killed nine people on Sunday as officials said that repairs to government offices struck by massive bombings last week will cost around 16 million dollars.
[Ma'an] Ma'an -- Two Palestinian workers were killed in smuggling tunnels underneath the Gaza-Egypt border in the city of Rafah on Sunday, medics said, marking an uptick in fatalities.
