[An Nahar] Dozens of people were killed during heavy fighting ... as opposed to the more usual light or sporadic fighting... on Thursday in Sudan's war-torn border state of South Kordofan, the army and the rebels they are battling both said.
A front man for rebel group the SPLM-North said around 60 soldiers were killed in the attack on an army position in the state's Rashad district, in the early morning, while semi-official Sudanese media claimed that more than 30 rebels were killed.
"The SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) launched a heavy attack in the Rashad area early this morning. They killed 60 SAF troops and destroyed 13 mounted land cruisers," rebel front man Arnu Ngutulu Lodi told Agence La Belle France Presse, referring to the Sudanese armed forces.
He said a number of rebels were also killed, but was unable to say how many.
The commissioner of Rashad district in the eastern part of South Kordofan, was quoted by the Sudan Media Center (SMC) confirming that the SPLA had launched a surprise attack on the army, near the border with newly-independent South Sudan.
But he claimed the rebels had suffered heavy losses.
"More than 30 of them were killed, among them an officer, and two fighters were taken prisoner," said Khaled Mukhtar, adding that the army had also captured a large amount of weapons.
It has been virtually impossible to get independent information on the border conflict, with the U.N. peacekeeping mission disbanded in July and international NGOs denied access to the region.
Khartoum has sought to reassert its authority within its new borders since South Sudan's recognition as the world's newest nation on July 9, moving to disarm troops outside its control.
The South Kordofan conflict between the Sudanese army and snuffies who fought with the SPLA, the former rebel army of the south, during their decades-long war with Khartoum, erupted just one month before southern independence.
The fighting was apparently triggered by the army's insistence on disarming SPLA elements.
South Kordofan and Blue Nile, where a similar conflict broke out on September 2, are located just north of Sudan's new international border.
But they both have large numbers of SPLM-North supporters and troops, who have historic political ties to Khartoum's former civil war enemies, now the ruling party in Juba.
Earlier this week, the U.N. human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... envoy for Sudan warned that the violence in the border region, which shows no sign of being resolved, could jeopardize peace between north and south.
"Sudan and South Sudan cannot be at peace if the border areas between the two countries remain mired in armed conflict," Mohamed Chande Othman told the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, Libya's former prime minister under Moammar Qadaffy, ...a proud Arab institution for 42 years... was tossed in the clink in Tunisia and placed in durance vile Thursday for six months for illegal entry, a Tunisian justice ministry front man told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Baghdadi, who was tossed in the clink on Wednesday, "appeared before the state prosecutor in Tozeur (430 kilometers south of Tunis) and sentenced to six months in prison with immediate effect," Kadhem Zine el Abidine said.
The former premier was tossed in the clink overnight in the southern Tunisian town of Tameghza, near Tunisia's border with Algeria, according to interior ministry front man Hichem Meddeb.
Meddeb said Thursday two others were jugged along with Mahmoudi after Tunisian officials found none had visas.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[Emirates 24/7] Libya's interim rulers said they had captured one of Muammar Qadaffy's ...a reminder that a single man with an idea can screw up an entire nation... last strongholds deep in the Sahara desert, finding chemical weapons, and largely taken control of another.
In another boost, the National Transitional Council (NTC) had an unexpected windfall when it found $23 billion worth of assets left unspent by Qadaffy in Libya's central bank, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing officials in London and Tripoli.
The NTC is under pressure to assert its control over the country and also to revive Libya's economy and finance government institutions, hit by the long struggle to overthrow Qadaffy.
The NTC's military spokesmen said its forces had seized the outpost of Jufra about 700 km (435 miles) southeast of Tripoli, and most of Sabha.
"The whole of the Jufra area - we have been told it has been liberated," front man Fathi Bashaagha told news hounds in the city of Misrata on Wednesday. "There was a depot of chemical weapons and now it is under the control of our fighters."
His comments could not be confirmed independently. Under Qadaffy, Libya was supposed to have destroyed its stockpile of chemical weapons in early 2004 as part of a rapprochement with the West under which it also abandoned a nuclear programme.
However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says Libya kept 9.5 tonnes of mustard gas at a secret desert location.
Qadaffy loyalists have been holding out in Jufra and Sabha along with the bigger strongholds of Bani Walid, southeast of Tripoli, and Qadaffy's hometown of Sirte since the fall of the capital in August.
"We control most of Sabha apart from the al-Manshiya district. This is still resisting, but it will fall," said another NTC military front man, Ahmed Bani.
CNN, citing a correspondent in Sabha, reported that NTC fighters had occupied its centre on Wednesday after taking the airport and a fort the day before.
NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... countries extended for three more months the air cover that helped anti-Qadaffy fighters to victory.
However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... chaos prevailed among fighters besieging Qadaffy's other two remaining major strongholds. Several attempts by NTC fighters to take Bani Walid and Sirte in the past week have ended in disarray and panicked retreat.
BORED MILITIAMEN
At Bani Walid, bored Islamic fascistifired weapons at camels and sheep while awaiting orders on Wednesday, as much a danger to themselves as to Qadaffy fighters holed up in the town.
One man shot his own head off and killed another fighter while handling a rocket-propelled grenade in full view of a Rooters team. In another incident, a fighter maimed himself and another fighter after losing control of his machinegun.
Seven NTC fighters were also killed in an ambush by pro-Qadaffy soldiers inside Bani Walid, NTC officials said.
At Bani Walid, troops from other areas have been arguing with local fighters, and there has been talk of traitors infiltrating the ranks and sabotaging the assault.
NTC official Abdullah Kenshil told Rooters that pro-Qadaffy forces in Bani Walid had killed at least 16 civilians there in the last two days after suspecting they supported the NTC.
"They were killed in cold blood. They were all civilians and they were killed execution-style," he said. His account could not be independently verified.
Sporadic fighting also continued outside Sirte, where an NTC push from the east toward Qadaffy's birthplace has been blocked for days by heavy artillery fire from loyalist soldiers.
Fighters making their way back from the front line said they were meeting fierce resistance at Khamseen, 50 km (30 miles) east of Sirte, and that they lacked the firepower to respond.
"I'm 100 percent sure that there is someone important in Sirte, either Qadaffy himself or one of his sons, because his forces have become suicidal in the Khamseen area," NTC fighter Hamed al-Hachy told Rooters.
$23BN WINDFALL
NTC officials found $23 billion worth of assets in the Central Bank of Libya this month, boosting efforts to fund the country's recovery, the Financial Times reported.
Wafik Shater, a finance official in the NTC's stabilisation team, told news hounds in Dubai the central bank had "several billion Libyan dinars". One billion Libyan dinars is worth about $820 million.
Shater said the NTC had enough money to run the country for up to six months. "We're in better shape than we anticipated initially," he added.
Libya has been pressing the international community to lift sanctions to release around $170 billion of frozen Libyan assets to the country's new leaders.
Libya's frozen assets have been held by various governments over the last half year in compliance with a U.N. sanctions regime imposed in February and March.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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One man shot his own head off and killed another fighter while handling a rocket-propelled grenade in full view of a Rooters team.
"Paging Dr. Darwin! Dr. Charles Darwin to the white courtesy phone, please!"
[Tripoli Post] Fleeing residents from Sirte, which is still controlled by deposed Libyan leader Muammar Al Qadaffy ...whose instability has been an inspiration to dictators everywhere... loyalists, have alleged that his forces have been executing residents suspected of sympathising with Libya's National Transitional Council, NTC forces and backing the country's interim government, Rooters reports.
NTC forces have surrounded the city on the Mediterranean coast about 450km east of Tripoli for a week, but say their progress has been stymied largely because there are many civilians still inside the city, where residents report shortages of basic goods. Sirte is Al Qadaffy's hometown and one of the last two remaining bastions in Libya still held by his loyalists.
As hundreds of civilians continued to pour out of the city in cars and pickups loaded with mattresses and food, claiming that the Al Qadaffy forces were moving around through the streets "like gangs," the NTC forces kept firing their machine guns while and trying to avoid the incoming rockets that have been crashing on the city's outskirts.
On of the fleeing residents told Rooters that there have been executions. He reportedly named two men who he said had been executed on Thursday. He had also witnessed executions in front of the house of a local family, whose name he gave as Safruny.
An NTC commander on the outskirts of Sirte, separately showed Rooters a handwritten list of families whose members were said to have been executed in Sirte. The list, which he said he compiled with information from people inside the city, included the Safruny family.
He said other attacks on suspected NTC sympathisers had been carried out. They include families linked to Misrata. The fleeing resident said they had been targeted particularly by the Al Qadaffy loyalists.
The port city of Misrata west of Sirte withstood a devastating siege earlier in the Libyan civil war that killed more than 1,000 residents. Most of the fighters now surrounding Sirte have come from Misrata, some of them among the NTC forces also saying they had family stuck inside but had no way of communicating with them..
Humanitarian groups have expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... about the situation in Sirte, and the fears have been compounded by reports from NTC fighters who say their family members inside have been prevented from leaving. Some of the families still inside the city wanting to escape are afraid of coming out and being detected by the enemy and executed by them, reports say.
Al Qadaffy's front man Moussa Ibrahim, reportedly told Rooters that it was the anti-Al Qadaffy forces, and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... warplanes, which were killing people in Sirte, not the other way around.
In a satellite phone call to Rooters he said that "between yesterday (Wednesday) and this morning (Thursday), 151 non-combatants were killed inside their homes as the Grad rockets ...Soviet-developed 122-mm rockets, usually launched from trucks. Newer versions are reported to have a range of up to 30 km.... and other explosives fell upon their heads." He added that the city hospital stopped functioning altogether, and that, "patients died simply because nothing can be done to help them."
With journalists not allowed inside Sirte, accounts from inside the city cannot be independently verified.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Deadly festivities spread across Yemen's capital on Thursday as rustics joined battles between rival military units, raising fears among frightened residents of a descent into civil war.
Soaring tensions between troops loyal to Yemeni President President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower... and his opponents torpedoed efforts on Wednesday by international mediators to promote a Gulf-initiated deal aimed at ending the political impasse that has gripped the country for months.
At least 10 people were killed in separate battles that rocked the capital on Thursday.
Four civilians died when they were caught in the crossfire of fighting that erupted between Republican Guard troops commanded by Saleh's son Ahmed and dissidents loyal to General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, witnesses and medics said.
Nine people were also maimed when a mortar round slammed into Sanaa's Change Square and several tents put up by protesters caught fire, witnesses said.
The defense ministry website, 26sep.net, reported that 15 soldiers were killed when Ahmar's troops attacked their camp.
Fighting which had been concentrated since Sunday in the city center and Change Square spread on Thursday to the al-Hasaba district, where gunnies loyal to powerful dissident tribal chief Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar shot it out with followers of Saghir bin Aziz, a primitive loyal to Saleh, witnesses said.
Four people were killed and six were maimed in shelling that targeted Bin Aziz's home, according to 26sep.net.
The office of Sadiq's brother Sheikh Hemyar al-Ahmar, whose loyalists also joined in the fighting, announced two guards dead and five maimed in counter shelling.
Tribal sources said that Ahmar's forces hit Bin Aziz's home with "13 shells," adding that the fate of the man who belongs to Yemen's most influential tribe the Bakil, and who is an MP as well as a Elite Republican Guards officer, "is unknown."
Witnesses said shells were fired from the interior ministry building at the homes of two Ahmar brothers, Hemyar and Hussein.
Thursday's deaths bring the toll since Sunday to 95. Medics said hundreds more had been maimed, adding that most of the casualties were civilians.
"I can no longer open my store for fear of stray bullets, whether from the opposition or government forces. Every day there are many casualties due to the stray bullets," said Mohammed al-Jabiri, 25, owner of a mobile phone shop.
"The city is empty. Schools, banks and businesses are shut as the ghost of war looms over Sanaa," one resident told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Another, who has been holed up in his home for days, said life had become unbearable.
"My children haven't slept in a week. They have nightmares every night from the shooting and the kabooms," said Amin al-Faqih, 42, a father of three.
"My children beg me every day to take them to a place far far away from here, away from the nightly kabooms and gunfire."
Commuters said government forces have closed all entrances to the capital, with no cars allowed in or out.
The soaring violence has raised long-standing fears that Yemen, which faces a Shiite Zaidi rebellion in the north and the growing influence of al-Qaeda in the south in addition to a southern separatist movement, is heading for full-blown civil war.
U.N. envoy Jamal Benomar told AFP late Wednesday that the deteriorating security situation, and the reluctance of both sides to reach a political resolution, raises "the risk of civil war breaking out."
Benomar arrived on Tuesday in Yemen where he and Gulf Cooperation Council chief Abdul Latif al-Zayani have been working to broker a peace deal between the warring parties.
Zayani left on Wednesday after efforts to reach a political consensus failed, saying the parties were not ready to negotiate.
He is expected in New York on Friday to discuss the crisis with GCC foreign ministers and international diplomats gathered at the U.N. for the annual General Assembly, a Yemeni diplomat said, requesting anonymity.
Protesters who had camped in their thousands in Al-Zubairi Road since Sunday decamped after the main boulevard in Sanaa city center became a battlefield, an AFP correspondent said.
However, Switzerland makes more than cheese... thousands remained camped out at Change Square to the north of Al-Zubairi, guarded by Ahmar's dissidents.
To the south, Saleh's security forces and the Republican Guard are mostly in control, largely dividing the capital in two with Al-Zubairi serving as an increasingly bloodied demarcation line.
The latest fighting broke out on Sunday when swarms of protesters marching from Change Square towards the city center in a bid to extend their sit-in came under fire from Saleh's forces, prompting intervention by Ahmar's troops.
Zayani and Benomar had been hoping to convince the opposition and Saleh's government to sign the initiative, which calls on Saleh to step down and hand over all constitutional authorities to his deputy.
In return, Saleh and his family would be granted immunity from prosecution.
Saleh has been in Riyadh since being maimed in a June kaboom at his palace compound in Sanaa.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[Yemen Post] As Yemenis prepared to bury yet more of their "fallen soldiers of the revolution" as some protesters already dubbed the victims of the past few days' massacres, the Opposition was calling for more demonstrations across the nation.
Despite the danger, a reported million people turned up today in the capital, Sana'a, all gathered under the tricolor flag, brandishing proudly the symbols of their revolution. Heads high and determined to honor their dead, Yemenis once again marched against Saleh's regime.
When asked if he feared the bullets, a young man answered that "only he feared God, not Ali [president Saleh]"
As they advanced through 60 Street, protesters chanted the fall of the regime, calling for Saleh to be held responsible for his crimes against the nation.
Several youths were screaming for the deaths of both president Saleh and his son, Ahmed, the head of the Elite Republican Guards. "We want Ali's head, we want Ahmed's head," they told the Yemen Post.
Across Yemen, in Ibb, Aden, Dhamar and many more cities and villages, there too, people responded positively to the calls for escalation of the revolution. Unprecedented numbers were recorded, as everywhere Yemenis stood as one in the defense of their democratic quest.
Tonight, as the nation is awaiting its president' speech, protesters in "change Square" announced they would never stop "no matter what".
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[Yemen Post] Residents in Hasaba this Thursday reported violent festivities between rustics loyal to Sheikh Sadeeq al-Ahmar and followers of Sheikh Saghir bin Aziz.
Hasaba, a northern district of the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, is one of al-Ahmar's tribe main strongholds and has been on several occasions the scene of heavy shelling as the government tried to dislodge the tribal dissidents. Sheikh Sadeeq al-Ahmar, who is Yemen's most influential tribal leader, and supreme commander of the powerful Hasheed confederation of tribes, vowed in March to defend the revolutionaries and to bring down the regime.
Since then, the regime has declared war on Yemen's "blue blood" family, shelling their houses, targeting their businesses, accusing them of collaboration with terror elements within the country and so on...
Under attack today, Sheikh al-Ahmar retaliated by mortar rounds, machine guns shots and RPGs attacks, forcing back Saghir bin Aziz's men. Hemyar al-Ahmar, the Sheikh's younger brother and deputy parliament speaker, flew to his brother's aid, throwing his own men onto the midst of the battle.
With every passing day, more districts of the capital are swallowed by violence, leaving many to fear that no home or family will be spared.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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North Korea's worst concentration camp is a reeducation center where women who escaped to China are subjected to the most brutal treatment, NGO Good Friends said Monday.
The Jeungsan Reeducation Center in South Pyongan Province has a reputation for cruelty and the saying goes that even healthy people leave as cripples. The facility was turned into a reeducation center after the regime revised the criminal law in 2004.
Before the law was revised, North Korea had four kinds of detention centers -- reeducation, education, confinement and labor training camps in descending order of severity.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il himself is said to have turned the center into a kind of "Papillon" prison island, giving instructions that every prisoner's year there should feel like 10.
Perhaps we can jug his sons in this camp after the liberation...
The camp has since 1999 been used to detain female defectors. The North tightened controls for fear of regime collapse amid the famine of the 1990s, which sent many fleeing hunger and starvation. China regularly cooperated in the atrocity by sending refugees back to the North. Short of space at political camps, the regime started to put women in the Jeungsan camp.
Hundreds of female inmates reportedly suffer malnutrition there, and two or three die every day. Their bodies are wrapped in plastic and buried in mass graves. One former inmate who was detained there in 2004 said that other inmates who saw mass graves with piles of human bones and bodies came away with permanent psychological scars.
A former official of the Ministry of Public Security who defected said, "The Jeungsan Reeducation Center is notorious because many more inmates die there than at any other concentration camp due to the unbearably hard labor and malnutrition."
Jeungsan consists of 10 divisions, each of which is made up of seven to 10 groups. Each group normally has 40 to 50 inmates. A relatively healthy inmate is chosen as a capo who controls other inmates under the supervision of security guards. Those caught attempting to escape or committing infractions there are not publicly executed as at other political prison camps but are tortured or killed out of sight.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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Nice news.
Thought the Helsinki accord allowed for sanctioned intervention.
#6
I wonder what's going on. This is about the third article I've read about North Korea's concentration camps in the past three days. Anyone have any idea why this is percolating to the top these days? It's been going on for 60 years.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/24/2011 20:52 Comments ||
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North Korea recently moved dozens of abduction victims from South Korea to an internment camp in South Pyongan Province, South Korean intelligence agencies believe.
Choi Sung-yong, of the activist group Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea, said, "Some of them were cooperating with the North Korean regime, but many of them now live under surveillance since they retired." He said there are intelligence reports that Korean Japanese who moved to North Korea and Japanese abduction victims were also moved to the camp. "It seems North Korea will try to use them as leverage against South Korea and Japan in future negotiations."
The people who were moved to the internment camp fell victim to the North's bizarre abduction policy in the 1970s and 80s.
According to a North Korean defector who served as a lieutenant colonel in the notorious People's Security Department, the camp in Wonhwa-ri was originally used as a training facility for spies that were sent to South Korea. But as the North sent fewer spies in the 1990s, the facility was turned into a camp for abduction victims.
The former North Korean agent visited the camp in the 1980s and 90s, and said it was "ideal for espionage training because there were different types of landscape such as river and lakes around. There are many valleys and houses are far apart, so it must be difficult for the abduction victims to communicate with each other." He added there was a training camp for the North Korean national football team nearby as well as a big hospital for exclusive use of party cadres and their families. "I remember seeing buses with visitors from Pyongyang coming and going on Sundays."
The regime apparently runs another facility to monitor abductees just outside of Pyongyang. The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea in May claimed it has identified a residential area in northeastern Pyongyang where South Korean abduction victims are held in semi-confinement.
The group said former partisans in the Japanese Red Army and some Japanese abduction victims also live near Pyongyang.
Japanese abduction victims were typically forced to teach Japanese to North Korean spies at a university there, HRNK said. But since the plight of the abduction victims became a regular issue in the global human rights debate, the regime moved them to Wonhwa-ri in South Pyongan Province.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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When this type of crap starts to reproduce, you know something is in the works.
#2
"North Korea recently moved dozens of abduction victims from South Koreaslaves captured in slave raids in South Korea to an internment camp in South Pyongan Province, South Korean intelligence agencies believe."
At least 480 prisons and detention facilities are scattered around North Korea, an NGO claimed Tuesday. Based on testimony of about 13,000 North Korean defectors, North Korean Human Rights Archives said the regime operates 210 detention centers and 210 labor camps, 23 prisons, 5 indoctrination camps, 27 holding facilities, and 6 political prison camps including in Yodok, Pukchang and Hoeryong.
Detention centers are similar to police holding cells, but holding facilities and indoctrination camps are clandestine operations that have been used to hold repatriated defectors without trial since the early years of the millennium.
Prisons house convicts, who are subjected to forced labor, but the worst human rights abuses occur in political prison camps.
A defector who was detained at a prison in Hamhung in the late 1990s said security forces "took about 500 people to a barren wilderness, where they threw shovels at them and told them to dig tunnels to live. Many died later."
Almost no detention facilities provide inmates with foods, but they eke out a meager existence by tending vegetable gardens. In some facilities, guards turned livestock sheds into detention cells.
"They built walls around pigsties and used them as holding pens," said another defector who was held in a camp in the late 2000s. "More than 100 inmates were put into a cell that can accommodate only about 30."
The State Security Department routinely used violence in interrogations. A female defector testified, "I was raped by a guard at a holding center, and was forced to have an abortion later."
The regime has either hidden the concentration camps from the outside world or given out false information about them, NKHRA said. It officially admitted the existence of only three of the 23 prisons, using Sariwon Prison in North Hwanghae Province and Chonnae Prison in Gangwon Province as display showcases.
"The North is operating numerous detention facilities across the country," said Yoon Yeo-sang of NKHRA. "It seems the regime significantly increased the number of facilities to tighten controls on the people when the economic situation worsened after the 1990s."
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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But if they closed down some facilities, unemployment would go up.
It's all about jobs!
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/24/2011 8:48 Comments ||
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Rooters summarized: PM Erdogan announced action to reporters in New York City late on Friday after the meeting of the UN General Assembly. No word on whether the ship actually was carrying arms.
Turkish authorities in August intercepted an arms shipment from Iran to Syria. In March, Turkey told a UN Security Council panel it seized a cache of weapons Iran was attempting to export in breach of a UN arms embargo.
Bilateral trade between Turkey and Syria was $2.5 billion in 2010, up from $500 million in 2004. Investments of Turkish firms in Syria reached $260 million, Turkish data show. Turkey has been Syria's main trading partner.
Update:
He's a busy man. In the same press conference, PM Erdogan announced the U.S. has agreed in principle to provide Turkey with drones, which will be used to hunt the PKK in northern Iraq.
duplicitous bastards at the ISI/Haqqani handler HQ As Walter Russell Mead notes in his article today, the ISI was heavily involved. As the Instapundit notes, that's an act of war.
I agree with Glenn: time to drone-zap some ISI generals.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2011 15:59 ||
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That is the Pak OWG version. They really do have to kick the hard drugs.
[Dawn] A US drone strike in Pakistain's northwestern tribal belt on Friday killed at least three suspected bad turbans, security officials said.
Two missiles fired by the unmanned aircraft hit a house in the village of Khushali Turikhel, 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of Miramshah, the main town in the lawless North Wazoo tribal district, security officials told AFP.
"The US drone fired two missiles which hit a house. At least three snuffies have been killed," a Pak security official said.
The identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately clear but security officials said they were all local Talibs.
A security official and a local intelligence official confirmed the attack and the number of casualties.
Another intelligence official in Miramshah said there were reports that foreigners were among the dead, adding that the corpse count could rise.
Although the United States does not publicly confirm drone attacks, its military and the CIA in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy the unmanned Predator aircraft in the region.
North Waziristan is the headquarters of the Haqqani leadership and the main bad turban bastion in the semi-autonomous tribal belt.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] Four people were killed and one injured on Friday when unknown men opened fire on a passenger van at Quetta's Sariab road, DawnNews reported.
Police officials said that the passenger van was parked next to a petrol station on the Sariab road when unidentified gunnies opened fire killing four passengers on the spot.
The injured passenger, who survived the shooting spree, was rushed to a nearby civil hospital for treatment.
The FC and police officials arrived at the scene and took control of the area. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... the culprits had managed to flee.
The officials are now investigating the incident.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] Sources claimed on Friday that the real target in the attack on SSP CID Chaudhry Aslam's house in Karachi was his son, DawnNews reported.
A suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into the home of a senior anti-terror police officer in Defence area on September 19, killing eight people, including a woman and her eight-year-old son.
Intelligence agencies recorded a phone call on September 18 which mentioned targeting a Saudi's son, sources told DawnNews.
Upon investigation it was found that the son of the Saudi consul general was not in Pakistan.
After which, the security was beefed up for all the places whose name started with the letter 'S' or the letter 'C'. These included the Saudi consulate, the Supreme Court, the Sindh High Court, the City court and the Central Police Office.
Sources said that police officers including Chaudhry Aslam carried out raids and search operations to find the terrorists and the explosives-laden car all night.
"Police has found an eyewitness who had seen the suicide bomber's face while riding in a car," said sources.
Investigators agree that the code word "Saudi's son" was used for Chaudhry Aslam's son.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] Five persons including three members of a peace committee were killed and eight others injured in a roadside blast in Bajaur tribal region on Thursday.
Locals said that a passenger vehicle, on way to Nawagai from Chamarkand, was targeted by a remote-controlled bomb at Nawapass, resulting in killing of five passengers including three volunteers of Chamakand Peace Committee.
The volunteers were identified as Malak Khushal, Malak Qasim Khan and Malak Nasar Khan. The driver of the vehicle and a child were also among the killed.
Eight other passengers including children and volunteers of peace committee were maimed in the blast. The injured were taken to agency headquarters hospital in Khar, some of them in precarious condition.
Officials said that the vehicle was destroyed completely in the blast. They said that another vehicle was also partially damaged in the incident. No group has grabbed credit for the attack.
Security forces soon after the incident reached the spot and started rescue work.
In Mohmand ... Named for the Mohmand clan of the Sarban Pahstuns, a truculent, quarrelsome lot. In Pakistain, the Mohmands infest their eponymous Agency, metastasizing as far as the plains of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, Charsadda, and Mardan. Mohmands are also scattered throughout Pakistan in urban areas including Karachi, Lahore, and Quetta. In Afghanistan they are mainly found in Nangarhar and Kunar... Agency, three Islamic fascistiwere maimed when security forces pounded their hideouts with artillery shelling during a search operation in Haleemzai tehsil on Thursday.
Sources said that security forces backed by tanks continued search operation in Prang Darra area of Haleemzai tehsil. They said that three Islamic fascistireceived injuries in the shelling.
Meanwhile, ...back at the cheese factory, all the pieces finally fell together in Fluffy's mind... Basic Education and Employable Skills Training (Best), a non-governmental organization, in collaboration with WFP distributed food items among 550 returning displaced families in Alingar, Chamarkand and Sheikh Baba areas of Baizai tehsil of Mohmand Agency.
The WFP has set up a food distribution point at Lakaro for the displaced persons, who are retuning to their hometowns.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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SULAIMANIYA / Aswat al-Iraq: Turkish warplanes have resumed their raids against northern Iraqs Kurdistan border areas on the villages of Qandil Mountain late Thursday night, causing terror among their inhabitants and material damage to their properties, eyewitnesses said on Friday.
We heard the noise of strong bombardment that forced people awake at midnight, whilst children began to cry and shout, a citizen of Bukriskan village of Rawanduz township in Arbil Province, called Mohammed Khider told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
The Turkish warplanes continued bombarding the area till early Friday, but did not cause human casualties, though they destroyed all the orchards and agricultural fields, he said.
On his part, the Mayor of Nowdashty township of Qala-Diza area, Hayman Abdullah, said that the Turkish warplanes fired 4 rockets on Qandil Mountain, causing fear among its villages, causing no human casualties.
Noteworthy is that Turkish warplanes have continued bombarding northern Kurdistans border areas since Aug. 17th last, killing 7 members of one family in Kortiq village of Qala-Diza area, whilst other attacks had injured other people and caused severe material damage for agricultural fields and natural forests, forcing a large number of inhabitants to desert their villages.
Kurdistan Region had witnessed several protests and demonstrations against the bombardment of Kurdistan border areas by Turkish and Iranian warplanes and artillery.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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[Emirates 24/7] Iraqi officials say five people have been killed in a series of blasts in western Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... Police officials say five bombs were planted early Friday near three houses and two parking lots in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah.
The pre-dawn blasts also maimed 12 people, including three children and two women.
A doctor at al-Yarmouk hospital confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to release the information.
Violence has ebbed across Iraq, but deadly bombings and shootings still occur almost daily as U.S. troops prepare to leave by the end of the year.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State of Iraq
[Dawn] Paleostinian president the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... made history in his people's long quest for statehood as he formally asked the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... on Friday to admit Paleostine as a full member state.
Snubbing fierce opposition from Israel and its regional ally the United States, Abbas handed the application letter to UN chief the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... at 1535 GMT buoyed by more than 120 nations which have already recognized a Paleostinian state.
He made the request in a letter, handed to Ban in a white folder adorned with a Paleostinian eagle logo.
"The American administration did everything in its power to disrupt our project, but we are going through with it despite the obstacles and the pressure because we are asking for our rights," Abbas said late Thursday.
"There are small countries in the world that have gained their freedom and independence, but we still haven't got ours," he told the Paleostinian community in New York.
Reaction from Israel was swift, with a front man for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling AFP, "We regret the step."
Ban will now pass the landmark request to the UN Security Council, but a vote on admitting the Paleostinians as a full member state could take weeks, leaving time for more diplomatic wrangling.
Paleostinians were seized by the historic nature of the moment, which comes more than six decades after the creation of Israel in 1948.
Across city centers in the West Bank giant television screens has been set up so residents could watch Abbas deliver his historic address to the 193 member states of the UN General Assembly.
In Ramallah, the political capital of the West Bank, many cars were flying the Paleostinian flag, and posters of Abbas and his late predecessor Yasser Arafat festooned the streets.
But fearing a spurt of violence, some 22,000 Israeli police and border police were on high alert with forces deployed along the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, in annexed east Jerusalem, and around Arab Israeli towns.
In a sign of the tensions, a Paleostinian was rubbed out in festivities with Israeli troops that erupted after settlers attacked a village near Nablus on the West Bank.
Besides dealing a blow to Israel's position in future peace negotiations, UN recognition of a Paleostinian state could allow increased international rights, which some fear the Paleostinians may use to launch legal action against Israeli military action.
Israeli officials have warned of harsh retaliatory measures if the Paleostinians succeed in their bid, including a halt to funding for the Paleostinian Authority. Right-wing members of the government have gone so far as to call for annexation of the West Bank.
Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were due to make almost back-to-back addresses to the UN General Assembly around midday (1600 GMT) to set out their opposing visions of how to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Last-minute bargaining to divert the Paleostinians from their course resumed Friday with a meeting of negotiators from the Middle East Quartet ... The Quartet are the UN (xylophone), the United States (alto), the European Union (soprano), and Russia (shortstop). The group was established in Madrid in 2002 by former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar, as a result of the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Tony Blair is the Quartet's current Special Envoy.... , the United States, Russia, the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... and United Nations.
Middle East envoy Tony Blair said Thursday's talks ended around 530 GMT, and a senior US official confirmed "quartet envoys are meeting this morning (Friday)."
They are trying to hammer out a possible statement which could bring the two sides back to direct talks which have stalled since September 2010.
The United States has vowed to veto the bid at the UN Security Council, with the Paleostinians needing to win the backing of nine of the 15 council members.
If that bid fails, they may well seek to be admitted as a non-member observer state by the General Assembly.
A French suggestion that Paleostine be given an intermediate status as a United Nations observer nation remained on the table, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe's front man said Friday despite what he said were "Israeli reservations".
US President Barack B.O. Obama insisted to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that only new Israeli-Paleostinian talks could bring lasting peace.
His speech sparked angry demonstrations in the West Bank and Gazoo, with Paleostinians accusing Obama of a double standard for praising the Arab Spring protests while seeking to block Paleostinian dreams of statehood.
Abbas was to leave New York after giving his UN speech to return to the Paleostinian territories for consultations on the next step forward.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Palestinian Authority
#1
Be careful what one asks for - you might just get it.
To wit,
* TOPIX > PA BIGGEST LOSER IN STATEHOOD BID.
Once again, iff Arab-Muslim histoire' = "past is prologue", the future sovereign Paleos larger Muslim neighbors are more likely to attempt to dominate, iff not de facto takeover, the new Paleo State.
NET = its not even a formal State yet + already the USoA is expected to be a major or top donor of aid to it.
A rubber taper was shot and seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting in Narathiwat province on Saturday morning.
Kudeng Rayeekae, 33, was riding his motorcycle on the rural road at heading to his rubber plantation when a gunman riding pillion on another motorcycle fired on him. Kudeng took two bullets to his left hand and shoulder and was taken to Rangae hospital.
There are no guarantees in Asias bloodiest Islamic insurgency, a jihad in southern Thailand that has cost nearly 5,000 lives. But there are a ground rules. In their self-proclaimed holy war to carve out the worlds newest Muslim state on the Thai-Malaysia border, jihadis consider soldiers, cops, Buddhist monks, government teachers and their Muslim collaborators as fair game. Backpackers partying just a short distance up the coast are usually left alone.
Less mercy is offered to a different sort of tourist: Malaysian men, many fellow Muslims, border-hopping into insurgents territory for paid sex. Now, after a bloody bombing spree in their favored brothel town, Malaysias government is warning its men to stay away.
Shortly after sunset on Sept. 18, in the gritty Thai border town of Su-Ngai Golok, a series of explosions erupted on a busy street with hotels, food stalls and karaoke bars. Five were killed in the bombings, four of them Malaysian. Roughly 110 were injured, some severely. A 3-year-old Malaysian boy was among the dead, as well.
The attack was a shock, even from insurgents known for beheading Buddhist monks and torching village leaders in the street. Though Malaysian tourists have been targeted before, such strikes are rare and have never caused so many foreign deaths in one night. Worse yet, the attacks demonstrate the jihadis heightened brazenness and have ended the possibility of peace talks.
Good investigative report. Please read the whole thing.
#2
Now, after a bloody bombing spree in their favored brothel town, Malaysias government is warning its men to stay away.
No doubt that entire section of Malaysia will be the healthier for it, but yet another source of independence for those not bound to the jihadis will be lost.
the attacks demonstrate the jihadis heightened brazenness and have ended the possibility of peace talks
Peace talks never would have accomplished peace. The jihadis' goal for peace talks was stepwise surrender of the population's legal rights to Sharia law, and the stepwise surrender of the territory to their rule. That,s how jihad is traditionally done.
At least nine deaths were reported in Syria on Friday, a traditional day for protests, as the EU and Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... both said they were widening sanctions against the regime of President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement that nine civilians were rubbed out by security forces in the Homs area in the center of the country.
"Nine non-combatants were killed in the Homs region: six in three districts of the city itself, a girl in Qusseir, a young man in Talbisseh and another in the village of Zaafaraniya," the rights group said.
In Zabadani, some 45 kilometers northwest of the capital Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... , a passer-by shot as security forces chased demonstrators late on Thursday died of his wounds, it said.
The Local Coordination Committees (LCC) group reported Friday's corpse count as 12 -- eight in Homs including a five-year-old child, two in Douma, one in Zabadani and one in Damascus.
The Observatory also said nearly 2,000 people staged a demonstration in the eastern oil hub of Deir al-Zour, calling for Assad's downfall.
State television said "six security agents were maimed in Deir al-Zour by armed terrorist groups."
More than 10,000 demonstrators also gathered in four locations in the predominantly Kurdish province of Hassakeh in the northeast, and protests were also reported in the southern Daraa region.
The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva has said the corpse count from the crackdown on dissent since March 15 has risen to more than 2,700.
Human rights group Amnesia Amnesty International said it had uncovered evidence that an 18-year-old girl, whose mutilated body was discovered in a Homs mortuary last week two months after her arrest, was the first woman among more than 100 Syrians to have died in jug since the protests erupted.
The London-based watchdog said the family of Zainab al-Hosni discovered her body "by chance" and "in horrific circumstances," while collecting the body of her activist elder brother Mohammad Dib, who was also apparently tortured and killed in detention.
Her body had been decapitated and its arms and skin removed, Amnesty said.
The latest deaths come as both the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... and Switzerland announced they were widening sanctions against Damascus.
The European Union banned new investments in the oil sector and prohibited the delivery of banknotes to Syria's central bank.
"The EU restrictive measures are designed to have maximum impact on the Syrian regime, while minimizing any potential negative impacts on the Syrian population," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in Brussels.
The 27-member EU also added two individuals and six companies to a list of people and entities facing an assets freeze and travel ban, a diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
The new measures, the seventh set of EU sanctions imposed to punish Assad's regime for its relentless crackdown, come into force on Saturday.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement "they show again that we will not stand by while President Assad and his regime violently suppress the legitimate demands of the Syrian people."
Earlier this month, the EU adopted a ban on crude oil imports expected to hit Damascus hard, as the EU buys 95 percent of Syrian oil exports, providing a third of the regime's hard currency earnings.
Switzerland's economy ministry also announced on Friday it was imposing an embargo on the import, sales and transport of Syrian oil and oil products "due to the relentless repression imposed by the Syrian security forces."
Its sanctions too take effect on Saturday.
Switzerland had already targeted the Assad regime with travel embargoes and asset freezes on 54 individuals. Some 12 companies were also hit by the restrictions.
Syrian assets frozen in Switzerland currently stand at 45 million francs (37 million euros, $50 million).
Damascus does not accept that popular opposition to the authorities exists, instead blaming "armed gangs" and "terrorists" for trying to sow chaos.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
[An Nahar] A Hizbullah member beat feet to Israel last June after the Shiite party's leader His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb... unveiled that the group had captured three spies among its members, two of whom were allegedly recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, An Nahar daily reported Friday.
Nasrallah said at the time that CIA members at the U.S. embassy had recruited at least two Hizbullah members and the group was investigating whether the intelligence agency or another foreign agency recruited a third.
On Thursday, Hizbullah denied media reports about the arrest of new members on charges of spying for the Mossad and said a man named Abou Abed Salim has never been a party official.
But An Nahar quoted informed sources as saying that the third member of the spying network that Nasrallah had talked about is Salim who beat feet to Israel a few days after the Hizbullah leader's speech.
Media reports said Thursday that five Hizbullah members had beat feet to the Jewish state.
A party member told the newspaper that Salim had participated in the battles between Hizbullah and Amal Movement in Iqlim al-Tuffah in 1990 and had successfully targeted a top Amal official in the southern town of Baysariyyeh with an bomb. The movement had at the time incarcerated his accomplices but he managed to escape.
An Nahar's report came as informed sources told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat that Hizbullah had incarcerated four of its members on charges of spying while a fifth had beat feet.
Other sources said that a top Hizbullah official had gone missing "for allegedly collaborating with the Mossad."
The man who was identified by his initials as M.S. was allegedly a top official in Hizbullah's military operations and was questioned in April 2010 by the U.N. commission investigating ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's liquidation.
The sources said the man's parents and wife don't know his whereabouts since he disappeared from the family home in the Ghobeiri district of Beirut's southern suburbs.
According to rumors, the man is an Israeli spy and was involved in the liquidation of Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh. Other rumors say that the party distanced him for unknown reasons.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2011 00:00 ||
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Defendants face up to 6 months in prison and a fine for disrupting a speech by ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine.
An Orange County jury on Friday found 10 Mohammedan students guilty of misdemeanors for disrupting a 2010 speech by Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.
In a case that drew national attention, 11 Mohammedan students had stood one by one and interrupted a February 2010 speech by Oren at the University of Caliphornia - Irvine. Oren twice walked off the stage as students shouted "Mass murderer!" and "War criminal!" before being hauled out of the room by campus police. A planned Q&A session after the address was dropped.
The Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine, which organized the heckling, was suspended for a year by the school for violating the school's code of conduct, but four months later got the suspension changed to probation on appeal.
About a year afterward, charges were brought against the students for the disruptions. One later got the charges dismissed for pledging to perform community service.
The charges created a fierce debate on campuses over the line between student activism and uncivil behavior. Arguments at the trial largely revolved around two differing views of freedom of speech. District Attorney Dan Wagner describing the students as "censors" who utilized the "heckler's veto."
"This is about freedom of speech," Wagner said in his closing statement. "That's why we're all here."
Defense attorneys described the charges as an attempt to chill free political speech on campus.
Which only their clients were allowed to do...
The jury began deliberations at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, and the verdict was reached Friday morning. The defendants face up to 6 months in prison and a fine. Charges have been tentatively dismissed against the 11th defendant.
After more than two days of deliberation, an Orange County jury on Friday found 10 Mohammedan students guilty of two misdemeanors to conspire and then disrupt a February 2010 speech at UC Irvine last year by the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
There was crying as the verdict was read in Superior Court Judge Peter J. Wilson's courtroom. The students showed no visible emotion, although they hugged each afterward. Some also stormed out.
In a case that garnered national attention over free-speech rights, the trial centered on conflicting views of who was being censored. Prosecutors argued that Ambassador Michael Oren was "shut down" when his speech was interrupted by students who took turns shouting preplanned phrases in a crowded UC Irvine ballroom.
Six defense attorneys argued that the students, seven from UC Irvine and three from UC Riverside, were only following the norm of other college protests and were being singled out. A guilty verdict, the defense had said during the trial, could chill student activism and the free exchange of ideas at colleges nationwide.
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Irvine's Law School, has said that although freedom of speech is not an absolute right, university sanctions were enough for the students. But he also added that he believes criminal sanctions go too far. He told The Times last week that "it makes no sense" to use such resources. "It's so minor."
Free speech is just that, free speech. It does not include the ability to block others' speech. To liberals, this is completely justified when the speaker is guilty of any 'isms'...which every non-liberal is.
#3
...all they have to do is turn in their student visas and just proclaim themselves 'illegals'. In California and in the White House that makes them a 'protected' group.
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.
Dozens of people were killed during 
[An Nahar] Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, Libya's former prime minister under Moammar 
[An Nahar] Deadly 
Rooters summarized: PM Erdogan announced action to reporters in New York City late on Friday after the meeting of the UN General Assembly. No word on whether the ship actually was carrying arms.
A US drone strike in Pakistain's northwestern tribal belt on Friday killed at least three suspected
[Dawn] Four people were killed and one injured on Friday when unknown men opened fire on a passenger van at Quetta's Sariab road, DawnNews reported.
Sources claimed on Friday that the real target in the attack on SSP CID Chaudhry Aslam's house in Karachi was his son, DawnNews reported.
Mohmand
SULAIMANIYA / Aswat al-Iraq: Turkish warplanes have resumed their raids against northern Iraqs Kurdistan border areas on the villages of Qandil Mountain late Thursday night, causing terror among their inhabitants and material damage to their properties, eyewitnesses said on Friday.
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
Quartet
President-for-Life Bashir 
[An Nahar] A Hizbullah member 
Defendants face up to 6 months in prison and a fine for disrupting a speech by ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine.
