[Al Arabiya] Afghan and foreign troops have seized nearly 24 tons of ammonium nitrate, a key ingredient in homemade bombs used by gunnies against government and international forces, the NATO-led force said on Monday.
While the discovery of caches of materials used to make bombs is not unusual, this was the largest such find since the chemical was banned earlier this year. In August, Afghan police uncovered 17 tons of ammonium nitrate.
Homemade roadside kabooms are among the most effective weapons used by the Taliban and other bully boys.
According to iCasualties.org, an independent website that monitors foreign troop casualties, roadside kabooms, or improvised bombs, have accounted for about 60 percent of fatalities among foreign troops over the past three years.
The total number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001 stands at 2,180. This year has been by far the deadliest with 620 deaths, more than half of those as a result of homemade bomb attacks.
The cache was uncovered in a bomb factory by Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops as they cleared a bazaar used by gunnies as a logistics hub in southern Helmand province at the weekend, ISAF said.
More than 15 gunnies were killed during shootouts that lasted throughout Saturday night and into Sunday in the town of Khan Neshin in Helmand's Reg district.
Along with the ammonium nitrate, which would have been enough to make up to 2,000 bombs, ISAF said, troops also discovered 40 kg of opium and 2,000 kg of precursor chemicals used to process opium into heroin.
Afghanistan produces around 90 percent of the world's opium, around two-thirds of which comes from Helmand alone. The caches were all destroyed on site, ISAF said.
President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai's government banned the use, production, storage or sale of ammonium nitrate -- commonly used as fertiliser -- early this year.
The use of ammonium nitrate in roadside kabooms has spread as a resurgent Taliban moved out of the strongholds in the south and east in recent years, especially into the once-calm north where pockets of resistance have sprung up.
Finding and clearing such bombs is one of the most painstaking and time-consuming tasks for foreign and Afghan troops, with bombs often cleverly hidden on dirt tracks, dry river beds or even under tarmac roads.
Civilians are also often victims of such bombs.
A mid-year U.N. report said civilian casualties had risen 31 percent in the first six months of this year compared with same period last year, including 1,271 killed. Of those, the Taliban and other gunnies were blamed for 76 percent of casualties.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Are we starting to get a handle on their supply lines?
#2
Are we starting to get a handle on their supply lines?
Gorb,
That is an interesting question. The article doesn't say when those 24 tons arrived. The ammonium nitrate is manufactured outside Afghanistan and brought in. One would think that intelligence agents could start working the trail backwards to its source. Who purchased the original lots? Who did they sell it to? All interesting questions.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
11/02/2010 6:04 Comments ||
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Reports say a new wave of violence in the Somali capital has taken several civilian lives as the security situation continues to tank in the African putative nation.
Press TV has learned that at least 27 non-combatants were killed in overnight festivities between al-Shaboobs and government troops backed by the African Union forces.
Dozens more were maimed during the violence in southern Mogadishu. Witnesses said most non-combatants were killed by artillery shells falling on their homes.
The developments come as Somalia's new Prime Minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has promised to bring peace and stability to the country either through talks or by taking the fight to opposition militias. And after that he's gonna teach the world to sing in perfect harmoneeee... Begin boilerplate...
Somalia has been grappling with a deadly civil war that began after the collapse of its central government and the ouster of its former dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] A district magistrate in Bossaso town, 1500 kilometres northeast of Mogadishu, the commercial capital of Puntland, a self-made semi-autonomous state, has sentenced two Islamist cut-throats to capital punishment.
The men who served in the Islamist militia of Sheikh Mohamed Said Atam, a hardliner holy man fighting the Puntland State, were executed by a firing squad in Bossaso on Sunday.
Was captured
They were reportedly seized when Gal-gala, a settlement at the edge of Golis mountain range near Bossaso, was captured by Puntland forces on September 10. The death sentence on the men named as Ahmed Farah Darod alias Muhsin, 22, and Said Osman Said, 31, is the first of its kind against Islamists nabbed since the anti-Islamist war started last July.
On October 31, the Puntland president, Abdurahman Mohamed Farole, stated that he will severely deal with radical groups.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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Puntland rocks. Dr Farole, who spent years in Australia studying for a PhD, really will run that state well
now if only he could get some funding... instead the useless TFG gets it all, thanks to the lazy bureaucratically bound UN
U.S. intelligence officials intercepted a dry run shipment to Chicago in mid-September. The shipment contained books, religious literature, and a computer disk, but no explosives, so it was allowed to go through. The shipment came from Yemen under the name of a known associate of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Intelligence that helped crack the ink bomb plot may have come from a leading member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who turned himself in, accordning to American sources. Jabir Jubran al-Fayfi surrendered to Saudi authorities last month, and he is believed to have changed sides at least twice.
Because it's necessary to reveal such things, lest others be tempted to help us in the future... or because Saudi Arabia wants him killed.
One of the Afghan Arabs with Al Qaeda before 9/11, he fled via Tora Bora to Pakistan, which naturally sold him to the Americans and sent to Guantanamo Bay. By 2006 he'd tired of the lazy life, and was sent home to Saudi Arabia, where he graduated from their de-radicalization program. Not long thereafter, he fled to Yemen and Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. Only two weeks ago he contacted the Saudis to surrender and return home again.`
[Yemen Post] After authorities released a female suspect, 'Security authorities have resumed their search for a woman who mailed two parcels containing explosives to the United States, official media reported Monday.
If it was a Moving Black Object (MBO), how do they know it was really a female woman?
Computer science student Hanan Mohamed Al-Samawi, 22, has been released after investigations showed that she was the wrong person.
If she was an MBO, how do they know it was someone else?
The investigation briefed that Al-Samawi was not allowed to leave the country for the duration of further questioning, Yemeni official who spoke in anonymity said, adding that Al-Samawi was not the person who signed the shipping manifesto.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
tw: That would be an "Unidentified" MBO as in the "Unidentified" in UFO. The Yemen suspect thus becomes a "UMBO".
Henceforth should all MOBs be known as UMBOs until proof of gender is offerred? Or am I being too pedantic?
[Al Arabiya] Fourteen suspected al-Qaeda members, including senior figures, have surrendered in the restive southern province of Abyan, Yemen's defense ministry and a source close to the governor said on Tuesday.
"Fourteen al-Qaeda members have surrendered to Abyan's governor Ahmed al-Mayassari," said the ministry's website, 26sep.net, citing a security official. Five of them are leaders of the network's local branch in Abyan, a source close to Mayassari told AFP.
Last month, another 15 suspected members of al-Qaeda surrendered to Abyan's governor.
Yemen is under renewed pressure to eliminate al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a local franchise, after explosives were found in air parcels headed for the United States sent from its territory by suspected al-Qaeda Islamic exemplars.
Abyan and adjacent Shabwa province have become major fields of operation for Al-Qaeda as the central government in Sanaa struggles to impose its control on the region's heavily armed tribes
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/02/2010 13:27 ||
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Spanish last names so more than likely these people had family members over the border. I dunno about anyone else, but there is no way in hell I would be going to Juarez to visit family members right now.
[Iran Press TV] The Republic of Azerbaijan bans several Islamic parties from running in the upcoming parliamentary elections in another sign of the Baku government's religious discrimination. Or of its instinct toward self-preservation...
Media reports say hundreds of candidates have been refused registration by the election commissions either due to improper documentation or for their religious commitment. What part of "secular state" don't they understand?
Some 719 candidates have registered to compete for 125 seats in the highest legislative body of the country, the Milli Majlis, The Georgian Daily reported.
This comes months after the Baku government ordered all state employees to remove Islamic symbols from their offices in Baku and other major towns. The order came after violent security forces clashed with hundreds of Islamic muscle which resulted in several injuries.
However, The infamous However... sources say candidates are increasingly using religious symbols to gain voter support.
Many believe the slow delivery of social services in the predominantly Mohammedan country by the so-called secular government has led to the growing popularity of religious figures.
Shias constitute more than 80 percent of the overall Mohammedan population in Azerbaijan.
Polls show approval rating of the Baku government has dropped due to its proximity to the Israeli regime over the past months.
The Baku government has on many occasions ordered the closure of mosques and religious centers, resulting in massive demonstration.
In September, Azerbaijan security forces jugged dozens of people participating in Quds Day demonstrations -- which are held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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Bombs went kaboom! at the Swiss and Russian embassies in Athens on Tuesday and police found suspect packages at two other embassies in the latest wave of parcel bomb attacks to hit the Greek capital.
Police linked the attacks to Greek leftist guerrillas. Small bomb and gas canister attacks have been frequent in Greece since 2008 when the police killing of a teenager sparked the country's worst riots in decades.
"A package was handed in at the entrance of the Swiss embassy in Athens today. Checks by our local employees revealed traces of metal," said Swiss foreign ministry front man Georg Farago. "When the external packaging was removed, the contents burst into flames," he said, adding that there were no injuries.
Tuesday's parcel bombs included one outside parliament, addressed to the Chilean embassy. Bombs were also found at the Chilean and Bulgarian embassies and one was intercepted at the offices of a courier company addressed to the German embassy.
"It seems that this is a continuation of yesterday's attacks and that Greek guerrillas are behind it, but we are still investigating," police front man Thanassis Kokkalakis told Rooters.
Another suspect package addressed to the Chilean embassy was found to contain no explosives.
"Such deplorable actions terrorize neither the members of parliament nor parliament (itself)," the semi-official Athens News Agency quoted parliament president Filippos Petsalnikos as saying in parliament. "Such actions are unacceptable, contemptible and condemnable."
On Monday a parcel bomb detonated at a courier office in Athens, slightly wounding an employee. Greek police then jugged two suspects carrying two more bombs, addressed to French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Belgian embassy.
Police on Monday intercepted a third bomb found at another delivery company and destined for the Dutch embassy.
"The prime suspects would have to be the anarchists or far left as usual. If this is it, the story will fade but if there's another flurry tomorrow it's a different matter," said Control Risks Western Europe analyst, David Lea.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 10:16 ||
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WAFF > BOMBS TARGET [Foreign] EMBASSIES IN GREECE CAPITAL [Athens].
and
* SAME > CAMOUFLAGED BOMB SENT TO [German Chancellor] MERKEL FROM GREECE.
(Xinhua) Former Pakistain Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud's brother was bumped off in North Wazoo tribal area, northwest Pakistain, local TV channels reported Monday.
Local residents have identified the dead as Yaqoob Mehsud, a brother of Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, according to the private TV channel Express.
However, The infamous However... the official sources have confirmed the liquidation but not his identification as Mehsud's brother yet.
According to the details, Yaqoob was rubbed out by unidentified Orcs and similar vermin in sub district Mir Ali, an administrative town in the troubled North Wazoo that borders Afghanistan.
Baitullah, the top leader of disbanded Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) in Pak tribal areas bordering Afghanistan was killed in August 2009 along with his wife and bodyguard in a United States drone strike.
He was succeeded by Hakimullah Mehsud who is leading the insurgency in the area. Hakimullah had survived a drone strike in January 2010 and resurfaced in May in a video release promising more attacks on U.S. interests in the region.
#1
Bombay (Mumbai) is a wonderful dirty corrupt beautiful smelly place.
I lived there for almost 2 years in the late 80's. They tell me it's still all those things, but even more better worse.
(KUNA) -- At least five people were maimed in a remote-controlled bomb kaboom Monday in a northern Pak town, said a local official.
A small passenger van hit a roadside remote-controlled bomb near a security forces checkpost in Kohat town, about 150 kilometers from Islamabad, said Gul Jamal, a senior political officer, while talking to media.
The kaboommaimed five passengers, he said, adding, at least three of them are said to be at death's door.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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(KUNA) -- A suicide kaboom on a cop shoppe Monday morning killed a policeman and maimed six others in a northern Pak district of Sawabi, said police. A boomer along with a group of armed gun-hung tough guys attacked Police Lines in Sawabi, said Aijaz Khan, District Police Officer (DPO), while talking to newsmen. He said at the time of attack, about 20-25 coppers were on duty.
The DPO said that the boomerwent kaboom! himself up at the entrance of the station that killed one policeman and maimed about six others. After the blast, he said further, armed gun-hung tough guys exchanged fire with coppers. The DPO said that the gun-hung tough guys managed to escape, adding, the police has recovered the head and other body-parts of the bomber. At least two of the maimed were at death's door.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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(KUNA) -- Indian security forces killed two beturbanned goons belonging to an unidentified group on Monday in the countrys northern most state of Jammu and Kashmire, reported the Press Trust of India (PTI).
The encounter between the security forces and slain beturbanned goons took place in the forest area of Kupwara district.
The report quoted a district police front man as saying that the identity and group affiliation of the slain beturbanned goons could not be ascertained as the search operation in the area was still in progress.
Meanwhile, ...back at the ranch... some parts in north Kashmire have been kept under curfew even as a separatist-sponsored strike disrupted normal life in Srinagar and other major towns.
Curfew has been clamped in Sopore town and Baramulla and Bandipora districts as a precautionary measure.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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(KUNA) -- At least eight people were killed and three others maimed in a US missile strike on Monday in Pak tribal region of Wazoo, said officials.
About three missiles were fired at a suspected hideout in Haider Khel village of Mir Ali district in North Wazoo tribal agency, bordering Afghanistan, security officials told KUNA.
They said the strike killed eight bully boyz and maimed about three others. According to tribal sources, the killed and the maimed are suspected bully boyz of foreign origin.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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ELEVEN car bombs rocked Shiite neighbourhoods in Baghad overnight, killing at least 63 people amid growing concern that Sunni militants are taking advantage of a persistent power vacuum seven months after an inconclusive general election.
Another 285 people were wounded in the bombings, which came just two days after al-Qaeda gunmen stormed a church in the heart of the capital and took dozens of worshipers hostage. Forty-six died, along with seven security personnel in the drama that ended with a raid by Iraqi special forces.
"Sixty-three people were killed and 285 wounded in 11 car bombings. All of the explosions happened at the same time," an interior ministry official said today.
The bombs targeted Shiite districts of the capital, and some exploded near cafes or restaurants.
The biggest were in the northern Kadhimiyah and eastern Husseiniyah districts. The first killed six people and wounded 26. The second killed four and wounded 34, a ministry official said.
BASRA / Aswat al-Iraq: A total of 28 wanted men were arrested and light weapons were seized in separate areas of Basra, according to a police source.
Policemen waged on Monday (Nov. 1) several raids in different parts of Basra, where 28 wanted men were apprehended and light weapons were seized, the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: The gunmen who implemented the attack on on Sayidat al-Nejat (Our Lady of Salvation) Catholic Church were wearing security companies uniform, spokesman of the Baghdad Operations Command (BOC) said on Monday.
The gunmen attacked the church carrying hand grenades, Qassem Atta told Aswat al-Iraq news agency, noting that the forces arrested five gunmen, one of them has an Arab nationality. The forces defused four bombs, eight hand grenades and two explosive belts, he added.
Investigation underway with the attackers, Atta said, noting that five of them committed suicide during the operation.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya] Iraq's dwindling Christian community was grieving and afraid on Monday after beturbanned goons seized a Storied Baghdad church during evening Mass, held the congregation hostage and triggered a raid by Iraqi security forces. The bloodbath left at least 52 people killed and 67 maimed - nearly everyone inside.
The attack, claimed by an al-Qaeda-linked organization, was believed to be the deadliest ever recorded against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has decamped to other countries.
Outside Our Lady of Deliverance church, Raed Hadi leaned against the car carrying his cousin's coffin, waiting for the police to let him bury him on church grounds.
"It was a massacre in there and now they are cleaning it up," he said Monday morning. "We Christians don't have enough protection ... What shall I do now? Leave and ask for asylum?"
"Now they make a show," said Jamal Jaju, who watched as Iraqi forces set up a chain link fence around the church and pushed back observers. "What can I say? I lost at least 20 friends in there."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 00:00 ||
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The Saudi education ministry's website was shut down on Monday after hackers posted a picture of Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and later of a youth with a syringe. This sounds like a dry run. See the related article on Hezbollah's exercise to simulate knocking over the govt...
Hackers calling themselves the "True Promise Team" posted Nasrallah's picture and blasted Saudi treatment of the kingdom's minority Shiites in the first hack, according to a cached version of the page published on the Sabq.org news website.
They signed it with the name of Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite holy man. But it wasn't his picture they put up... Soddy Arabia is predominantly Sunni Mohammedan.
The first page was subsequently replaced by another hack, carrying a photo of a syringe-wielding young man or woman, the cache of which could be accessed through Google. That page appeared to give the pseudonyms of several hackers.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2010 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.
A district magistrate in Bossaso town, 1500 kilometres northeast of Mogadishu, the commercial capital of Puntland, a self-made semi-autonomous state, has sentenced two Islamist 
