[France24] A jihadist attack in the Malian capital targeting a military police training camp and airport left more than 70 people dead and 200 wounded, one of the highest tolls suffered by the security forces in recent years.
A security source speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that 77 people had been killed and 255 wounded in Tuesday's attacks in Bamako.
An authenticated confidential official document put the toll at around 100, naming 81 victims.
Thursday's edition of Le Soir daily reported that the funerals of around 50 military police students would take place that day.
Mali's military-led authorities have so far not released a precise death toll from the attacks, claimed by the al Qaeda-linked Group to Support Islam and Muslims (JNIM).
GSIM, actually. JNIM is the Arabic acronym for the group.
The operation was the first of its kind in years and dealt a forceful blow to the ruling junta, experts say.
The Malian capital is normally spared the sort of attacks that occur almost daily in some parts of the West African country.
The general staff admitted late Tuesday that "some human lives were lost", notably personnel at the military police centre.
JNIM claimed that a few dozen of its fighters had killed and wounded "hundreds" from the opposing ranks, including members of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner.
The attack came a day after junta-led Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso marked a year since the creation of their breakaway grouping, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
The trio, which have been under military rule following a string of coups since 2020, have broken ties with former colonial ruler France and turned militarily and politically towards other partners including Russia.
The Sahel states in January said they were turning their backs on regional bloc the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Mali has since 2012 been ravaged by different factions affiliated to al Qaeda and the Islamic State group.
Volleys of gunfire interspersed with explosions broke out in Bamako at around 5:00 am (0500 GMT) Tuesday. JNIM fighters attacked a military police school and stormed part of the nearby airport complex, where a military facility adjoins the civilian one. The jihadist group broadcast images showing fighters strolling around and firing randomly into the windows of the presidential hangar and destroying aircraft.
Bamako has not seen such an operation since 2016, when gunmen attacked a hotel housing the former European training mission of the Malian army, with no casualties reported among the mission staff.
The flow of information is restricted under the ruling junta and details on how Tuesday's attack was carried out and its impact are sketchy.
Wow - Rep @mattgaetz drops 2 major bombshells on Trump’s assassination attempts
1. DHS knows of 5 separate assassination teams, 3 foreign and 2 domestic, who are actively targeting Trump and informed Secret Service well before July 13
[Washington Examiner] A legal group aligned with Donald Trump sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service on Thursday, arguing the agencies were not honoring records requests related to the July assassination attempt on the former president in Butler, Pennsylvania.
America First Legal, a nonprofit organization founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, said it submitted expedited public records requests within hours and days of the incident, seeking details about Secret Service’s hiring standards, possible staffing shortages, and various communications and calendars of leadership.
The group said it had not yet received any of the requested documents.
America First Legal was among several entities to launch investigations into the assassination attempt, during which a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally on July 13, leaving one person dead, two people injured, and the former president with a minor injury.
#2
If they are as good as current administration I have low concern. Poorly educated leadership disrespected throughout the world. Scraping the bottom of the barrel. What have they managed to do to fix anything?. They just spend money. Our current governor of Maryland couldn't get a loan prior to election because of his poor credit rating.
ROME (AP) — The woman whose company was linked to thousands of pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria this week is under the protection of the Hungarian secret services, her mother told The Associated Press on Friday.
Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono has not appeared publicly since the deadly simultaneous attack that targeted Hezbollah on Tuesday and that has been widely blamed on Israel. She is listed as the CEO of Budapest-based BAC Consulting, which the Taiwanese trademark holder of the pagers said was responsible for the manufacture of the devices.
Her mother, Beatrix Bársony-Arcidiacono, told the AP that her daughter had received unspecified threats and “is currently in a safe place protected by the Hungarian secret services.”
The “Hungarian secret services advised her not to talk to media,” she said by phone from Sicily.
Hungary’s national security authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the AP could not independently verify the claim.
[JustTheNews] The militant group said that Friday's attack was a response to the strikes Israel launched on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon on Thursday
Hezbollah said it had targeted "multiple air defense bases as well as the headquarters of an Israeli armored brigade," according to the Associated Press.
The linked Ay Pee article adds:
Israel launched a rare Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... that killed a senior Hezbollah military official in a densely populated southern Beirut neighborhood on Friday. It was the deadliest such strike on Leb ...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... ’s capital in decades, with Lebanese authorities reporting at least 14 people killed and dozens more maimed in the attack.
The Israeli military’s chief front man, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the strike on Beirut’s southern Dahiya district killed Ibrahim Akil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, as well as 10 other Hezbollah operatives.
"We will continue pursuing our enemies in order to defend our citizens, even in Dahiya, in Beirut," said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, describing the Israeli strike that targeted Akil as part of "a new phase of war."
Several hours later, Hezbollah confirmed Akil’s death. In a statement, the Lebanese bully boy group described Akil as "a great jihadist leader" and said he had "joined the procession of his brothers, the great martyr leaders, after a blessed life full of jihad, work, wounds, sacrifices, dangers, challenges, achievements, and victories."
Akil served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council. He was sanctioned by the United States for his alleged involvement in the 1983 bombing that killed more than 300 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks.
[GEO.TV] Bulgaria and Norway became new focal points on Thursday of a global hunt for who supplied Hezbollah with the thousands of pagers that exploded in Lebanon this week in a deadly blow to the group.
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09/20/2024 01:29 ||
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[GEO.TV] Gaza's Civil Defence agency Friday said Israeli forces have carried out ground and air assaults across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 28 Palestinians since early Thursday.
The agency says six members of a family were killed in an assault on a home in Jabalia, whereas 12 other Palestinians have been killed in two Israeli strikes on Gaza City, Al Jazeera reported.
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09/20/2024 01:26 ||
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[Jpost] Iran plotted to assassinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet, in cooperation with the police, announced on Thursday. In addition, the Islamic Republic, at a somewhat more vague level, explored assassinating former prime minister Naftali Bennett and other top Israeli defense officials.
Its efforts were particularly intense following the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, which most of the world has attributed to Mossad. However, Israel has been careful not to take any credit for it.
The plot was to use an Israeli businessman named Moti Maman – a 73-year-old man from Ashkelon who spent extensive time living in Turkey and had financial dealings with both Turkish and Iranian people – to develop assassination plans in Israel.
To effectuate the plan, in April of this year, Turkish citizens Andrei Farouk Aslan and Guneid Aslan contacted Maman to conduct financial transactions, inviting him to the Turkish city of Samandag to meet with two representatives of a rich Iranian named Edi. In May, the meeting was held.
ISRAELI BUSINESS IN IRAN
But when Maman was told that Edi could not leave Iran for Turkey, he agreed to have himself smuggled by car from Turkey into Iran, where he met Edi and a member of the Iranian security establishment named Haj.
Maman initially had requested one million dollars before undertaking any activities.
The Israeli businessman later visited Iran a second time in August and received 5,000 Euros as part of the start of his undertaking financial, logistics, and weapons-related actions for accomplishing the plot, including potentially converting a Mossad agent into a double agent.
During the second visit to Iran in August, he was smuggled again into Iran from Turkey, this time in a truck, and met again with Edi, though this time also with multiple other unidentified Iranian security officials. During this meeting, they asked him to assist with the assassination plots.
The Israeli businessman was also requested to take videos of certain Israeli sites for surveillance and intelligence gathering purposes as well as to deliver threats to Israeli citizens who Iran had contacted to carry out missions that were not complying with Iranian directives.
During the second visit to Iran in August, he was smuggled again into Iran from Turkey, this time in a truck, and met again with Edi, though this time also with multiple other unidentified Iranian security officials. During this meeting, they asked him to assist with the assassination plots.
Maman initially had requested one million dollars before undertaking any activities.
TWO BIRDS, ONE ISRAELI
Also, during the second visit to Iran, the Iranians asked the businessman if he would be able to recruit Russians and Americans who could be used to kill Iranian figures opposed to the regime who live in Europe and the US.
The Shin Bet did not provide any indications that the Israeli businessman made any significant progress toward any of the terror activities. Still, it did stress that any involvement with hostile Iranians during a time of war, let alone on Iranian territory itself, was viewed as a very serious security crime. Further, the Shin Bet said that Iran appeared to be continuing a hard push for such terror activities, such that uncovering this one plot did not bring an end to the danger.
The businessman was indicted on Thursday.
SHIN BET OPAQUE TIMING
It was unclear why the Shin Bet published the disclosure on Thursday, two days after it published the attempt by Hezbollah to assassinate former defense minister Moshe Yaalon.
In addition, it was unclear if there was any coordination between Iran and Hezbollah regarding the various plots or a delineation of who would target whom.
Questioned about the timing, the security agency initially responded that the cases were published based on when the indictments were being filed and when the relevant courts lifted the gag order relating to them.
The Jerusalem Post noted that the Shin Bet and law enforcement have significant control over the timing of filing indictments and requesting lifting gag orders, and as such the initial answer did not really answer the question.
In a second response, the agency noted that the Yaalon case was a year old and that this, along with the revelation that the same cell had attempted a second terror attack near Park Hayarkon in Tel Aviv had been part of the process for the lifting of gag order on the whole history of the terror group, including regarding Yaalon.
Further, the Shin Bet indicated that there are a much larger number of terror threats regularly being considered for publication as well as others which are never published for national security reasons.
TURKISH CO-OPERATION
Questioned as to whether Turkish authorities are cooperating with Israel against its citizens involved in the plot - which it has sometimes done in the past - the Shin Bet had not yet responded.
Issues of cooperation between Israel and Turkish authorities are extremely sensitive, though Ankara has publicized some such cooperation in the past when Iran tried to kill Jews inside Turkey, and the Mossad helped Turkish authorities thwart the plot.
A lawyer for Maman, Eyal Besserglick, did not deny the allegations, but maintained that his client had made a temporary faulty judgment with no real world consequences and that he should be dealt with leniently.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The death toll in Lebanon as a result of the second series of explosions of communication devices has risen to 25. This was announced on September 19 by Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abyad at a press conference.
It is noted that at least 608 people were injured.
As reported by Regnum News Agency, radios, mobile phones and other means of communication began to explode in Lebanon on September 18. According to the Al-Nahar TV channel, the radios were purchased together with pagers, which detonated en masse in the country on September 17.
According to a source for Reuters, Israel's Mossad national intelligence service planted a small amount of explosives in 5,000 devices ordered by Hezbollah members several months before the latest events. The NYT newspaper reported that Israeli intelligence services paged Lebanese residents with Arabic-language messages with a sound signal before the explosion, similar to a message from the Lebanese movement's top leadership.
The Hezbollah movement promised Israel a harsh response to the massacre of the Lebanese people that same day. The movement also called retribution for the sabotage inevitable for Tel Aviv.
Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov emphasized that the explosions of communication devices in Lebanon are leading to an escalation of tensions in the Middle East, and such events could become a trigger for the situation to spiral out of control.
[IsraelTimes] Several explosive-laden drones launched from Lebanon struck northern Israel a short while ago.
…around noon local time.
According to the IDF, one of the drones impacted outside of the northern community of Ya’ara in the Western Galilee. Several people were reportedly wounded by the impact.
Several more drones struck outside the northern community of Beit Hillel near Kiryat Shmona, the IDF says.
The IDF says the drone impacts near Beit Hillel sparked fires but caused no injuries.
[LI] While Lebanon reported only 32 deaths from two days of pager and walkie-talkie explosions, the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group was hiding the actual death toll, media reports suggest.
Consecutive waves of exploding devices have incurred heavy losses on Hezbollah’s leadership and terrorist fighting forces. The command structure of Hezbollah’s elite terrorist Radwan force has been ’decimated’ by the well-coordinate strike, Israeli sources confirm.
Officially, around 3,000 Hezbollah terrorists were wounded in Tuesday’s pager explosions. The walkie-talkie blasts on Wednesday reportedly injured 450 terror operatives. The actual figures are much higher, reports suggest.
“According to Israeli reports, the pager attack alone would have caused “dozens of deaths, if not more” among Hezbollah members,” Israel’s i24NEWS TV reported. “Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force is reported to have suffered significant losses, losing “a large part of its command structure” that was either killed or maimed.”
[GEO.TV] Components used in thousands of pagers that detonated on Tuesday in Lebanon were not made in Taiwan, Taiwan's economy minister said on Friday.
Taiwan-based Gold Apollo said this week it did not manufacture the devices used in the attack, and that they were made by a Budapest-based company BAC which has a license to use its brand.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2024 01:27 ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Russian military in the Syrian province of Idlib repelled an attempted attack by militants and killed one terrorist, Captain First Rank Oleg Ignasyuk, deputy head of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria (CRPS), told reporters.
The contents of the briefing are published on the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense. The deputy head of the center specified that the terrorist sabotage and reconnaissance group intended to penetrate the positions of the government forces of the republic in the Maaret El-Ulia region.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, in early June, Russian military personnel eliminated terrorist bases in hard-to-reach areas of the Al-Amur mountain range in the province of Homs and Al-Bishri in the province of Deir Ezzor. The targets were struck by the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS).
On August 23, the Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed three locations in Syria where militants had left the At-Tanf zone and taken refuge in hard-to-reach areas of the Syrian White Desert.
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.
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
[LI] While Lebanon reported only 32 deaths from two days of pager and walkie-talkie explosions, the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group was hiding the actual death toll, media reports suggest.
