[The Peninsula] A Taliban suicide boom-mobile killed at least 13 people, including six coppers, on Thursday in a normally peaceful region of eastern Afghanistan, officials said, nearly one month after elections.
"A suicide kaboomer detonated his vehicle-loaded explosive after been identified by security forces," Abdul Aziz Ghairat, police chief of Panjshir province, told AFP.
"Six police were killed, and seven civilians. A number of other civilians and security forces were maimed."
The ministry of interior confirmed the incident at the highly-guarded checkpoint where vehicles enter the Panjshir valley.
"Around 5:00 pm, a jacket wallah in a Toyota Sedan vehicle detonated his explosives-loaded vehicle," it said in a statement. "As a result of this attack, six coppers were killed and a number of civilians were maimed."
Panjshir province, north of Kabul, was a bastion of anti-Taliban resistance during the hard boys' 1996-2001 regime, and has been relatively stable since they were ousted.
The steep valley in the Hindu Kush mountain range is also famous for its residents' dogged resistance against the Soviet occupation of the 1980s.
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According to Shabelleâs correspondent in Mudug, a man alleged to be a high-ranking official in Puntlandâs state authority raided a Minister of the Galmudug state administration.
The Minister of Information for the Galmudug administration Hassan Abdikadir Hassan, reported to Shabelle after the attack on his life that the man that tried to kill him was a Puntland state official and raided him with an AK-47.
âOne of my guards was injured as he tried to protect me, but the man whose name we do not know, immediately escaped.â
The Galmudug stateâs Ministerial cabinet was only announced on the 28th April 2014. It was the first time an incident has been reported since the appointing of the Ministers.
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KISMAYO, Somalia -- Unidentified assailants separately killed four Jubaland soldiers in the latest deadly incident in the southern port city of Kismayo, Garowe Online reports. Jubaland's Minister of Interior Gen. Mohamed Warsame Darwiish said that security forces have taken new measures after gunmen targeted soldiers and traditional leaders with planned assassinations.
"Security operations are underway and I urge the locals to closely work with the security agencies," Gen. Darwish told reporters in Kismayo.
According to officials on Sunday, armed men shot and killed a soldiers followed by another gun attack that last Sunday left three Jubaland soldiers dead in Kismayo's Via Afmadow neighborhood.
Angry crowds yesterday seethed held rallies in Kismayo in support of peace , with participants making faces calling for political lenience and cooperation.
Jubaland is a new administration that was established in 2013 as a state in the Federal Republic of Somalia.
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BOSSASO, Somalia -- Puntland Police Forces have captured 12 alleged Al Shabaab members including three women in a security sweep in the gulf of adan port city of Bossaso in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Garowe Online reports.
Bari region police commander Abdirahman Ali Hussein (Muslim) told reporters that botched blast led to the massive security operation: "We on Monday evening heard explosion, police presence was immediately maintained in the area where the explosion took place and we seized the perpetrator".
"A mobile phone was mounted on a bomb but it went off during the bomb-making exercise. The assailant was caught red-handed after he traversed a short distance from the scene of the explosion," said Muslim.
Residents spotted Security forces in armored personnel carriers in Bossaso neighborhoods on Tuesday morning and the soldiers manning security checkpoints have been put on high alert for the security sweep according to Bari Police commander.
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#1
"The assailant was caught red-handed after he traversed a short distance from the scene of the explosion"
[AnNahar] Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) grabbed credit Thursday for an April ambush in Algeria's restive Kabylie region that killed 11 soldiers.
"On the night of April 19, mujahedeen ambushed an army convoy in the Iboudrarene region... The toll was around 30 soldiers killed or maimed, some of them seriously," said a statement posted online.
At the time, a security source said gunnies in the AQIM bastion of Iboudrarene, east of Algiers, had ambushed the convoy and killed 11 soldiers and maimed five others.
The attack was the deadliest on the military in years and came two days after ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika ... 10th president of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and is currently on his third or fourth term. Maybe it's the fifth. He'll likely die in office of old age... was reelected for a fourth term.
The 77-year-old, who had cast his vote from a wheelchair, has long been seen as the leader who helped restore stability to Algeria after the devastating civil war of the 1990s.
The convoy was returning to barracks after helping to secure the election, during which festivities broke out in Kabylie between police and anti-Bouteflika youths.
The AQIM statement said only one myrmidon was killed in the attack, identifying him as Abu Anas. Algerian officials said three died.
Islamist-linked violence rocked Algeria in the 1990s but has declined considerably in recent years, although jihadists still operate in the mountainous Kabylie region.
The previously biggest attack there by Islamist groups was in April 2011, when 10 soldiers were killed at a military post in Azazga, east of the regional capital blood-stained Tizi Ouzou.
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[ALLAFRICA] Worshippers at the Maria Assumpta Cathedral Church Owerri which situates on the popular Control Post roundabout were on Sunday thrown into confusion following the alarm raised by a member of the public outside the church premises of a suspected Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... sect member who allegedly attempted to set a tanker laden fuel that fell very close to the church on fire. According to eyewitness, who refused to mention his name, a cripple known as Destiny Abraham, was seen climbing a fence near the scene where a fuel tanker fell with a lighter in his hand, but as he (the cripple) attempted to ignite the tanker that was still gushing with fuel, he was held by mob which had gathered to rescue the tanker from perceived danger.
Daily Independent reliably gathered that following the failed attempt Curses! Foiled again! by the cripple who is said to be a beggar to inflame the tanker, security has been beefed up around churches and other public places in the Owerri capital city. "When the tanker fell, fuel started pouring on the ground and people started running in different directions and this caused heavy commotion and traffic gridlock at that the scene, the casualty figure would have been very high. But thank God the suspect was apprehended before he carried out his evil plan," said the witness.
The Archbishop of the Owerri Ecclesiastical Province, Archbishop Anthony Obinna, who is the presiding bishop of the Asumpta Cathedral, expressed worry over the spate of petroleum tanker accidents at the Control junction. He narrated that the incident occurred while he was holding the mass and perceived the smell of the fuel.
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[USATODAY] boom-mobilewent kaboom! on a busy road in Nigeria's capital late Thursday, killing at least 12 people days before the city is to host a major international economic forum.
The bomb went kaboom! near a checkpoint across the road from a busy bus station where a massive kaboom on April 14 killed at least 75 people. That blast was claimed by the Islamic bad boy Boko Hararm terrorist network.
Thursday's bomb comes days before Abuja is to host the World Economic Forum on Africa, with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang as an honored guest. The government is deploying 6,000 police to protect the May 7-9 event, which attracts world leaders, policymakers, philanthropists and business leaders to discuss Africa's economic growth prospects.
Civil Defense Corps front man Emmanuel Okeh said rescuers with ambulances and fire engines rushed to the scene of the blast on May Day, a public holiday in the West African nation.
Twelve people have been killed and 19 maimed are in the hospitals, according to Superintendent Frank Mba, the national police front man. He said six cars were burnt up.
Witnesses said a car laden with explosives drove close to the checkpoint and a man jumped out and ran as it blew up. A deafening kaboom was followed by smaller ones as other cars caught fire and fuel ignited, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... because of fears for their safety. Mba said six cars were burnt up.
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[AnNahar] Yemeni troops backed by aircraft killed seven suspected al-Qaeda Death Eaters, including a local leader, as they pressed a ground offensive in the south, the defense ministry and the army said Thursday.
The assault that began overnight focused on the Shabwa province towns of Maifaa and Azzan, the ministry's 26sep.net news website said.
Three vehicles were destroyed and six suspected gunnies traveling in them killed, it added.
Residents of the two towns said fierce fighting was continuing on Thursday.
In neighboring Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... province, troops Thursday killed a local leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), state news agency Saba reported, identifying him as Abu Moslem al-Uzbeki.
The jihadist "was probably killed in festivities that erupted when army forces advanced into al-Mahfad," an army officer told Agence La Belle France Presse, referring to an al-Qaeda stronghold in Abyan.
A security official said Uzbeki traveled in 2011 from Uzbekistan to Yemen, where he was named an AQAP leader in Abyan.
The army launched a major offensive on Tuesday aimed at clearing the jihadists from their remaining strongholds in villages and smaller towns in Shabwa and Abyan.
The operation began with a setback for the army when a convoy fell into an al-Qaeda ambush in which 15 soldiers were killed and 15 more taken prisoner, three of whom were later executed.
So far, a total of 21 soldiers and 22 suspected gunnies have been reported killed in the ground offensive, which followed intense U.S. and Yemeni air strikes last week.
AQAP -- a merger of the network's Yemeni and Saudi branches -- is regarded by Washington as its most dangerous franchise and has been subjected to an intensifying drone war this year.
The jihadists took advantage of a 2011 uprising that forced veteran strongman President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... from power to seize large swathes of southern and eastern Yemen.
The army recaptured several major towns in 2012 but has struggled to reassert control in rural areas, despite backing from militia recruited among the local tribes.
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[MAGHAREBIA] A young Algerian national was tossed in the calaboose Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! on terrorism charges Wednesday (April 30th) in Almeria, Spain.
Abdelmalik Tanem, 25, also has French citizenship. He recently returned from Syria, where he is fought for al-Qaeda affiliates Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, the Spanish interior ministry said in a statement.
Tanem worked as a "controller" on the Turkey-Syria border, helping integrate European jihadists into the gangs, the ministry said.
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[Ynet] La Belle France said it had deported on Thursday an Algerian national suspected of recruiting young French Moslems to join the Syrian civil war, the first such case since Gay Paree unveiled a raft of policies to stop its citizens from becoming radicalized.
That was fast...
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement that a 37-year-old man who had been a resident in La Belle France since 1980 had been sent back to Algeria on Thursday morning.
The man had been close to radical Islamist groups implicated in the recruitment of individuals to join jihadist networks in Afghanistan and Syria, Cazeneuve said.
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#1
Hopefully into the welcoming arms of the Algerian government.
[The Nation (Pak)] Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... - Tension prevailed in the metropolitan after four bodies, recovered from Memon Goth a day earlier were identified as workers of MQM today.
MQM workers gathered outside Edhi morgue while police used tear gas shells to control situation. Tension was seen across the city where markets were shut down soon after news breakout in the city. Transport was disappeared from the roads while petrol pumps and gas stations were also closed. Similar situation was seen in Hyderabad, where markets and transport was forced to shut down. The bodies have been identified as Sameed, Ali Haider, Faizan and Salman Qureshi. Muttahida Qaumi Movement ...English: United National Movement, generally known as MQM, is the 3rd largest political party and the largest secular political party in Pakistain with particular strength in Sindh. From 1992 to 1999, the MQM was the target of the Pak Army's Operation Cleanup leaving thousands of urdu speaking civilians dead... (MQM) front man has claimed that all the four were party's workers.
The MQM front man further claimed that all four deceased were nabbed Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! by Rangers and police from Country tower and Gulshan-e-Maymar on April 13, 2014 and were brutally tortured to death. Police on Wednesday recovered four bodies from Link Road in Memon Goth. Police said the hands and legs of the dear departed were tied up with rope while shells of 9MM and TT pistols were recovered near the bodies.
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[DAWN] Six hard boys, among them a Taliban leader, were killed when their vehicle hit a roadside kaboom in Ladha sub-division of South Wazoo Agency, official sources said on Wednesday.
Initial reports said that Amir Hamza, a leader of the Khan Said Sajna group, an offshoot of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP), was among the dead.
Taliban sources neither confirmed nor denied reports about the killing of Amir Hamza and his five associates in the incident that took place in Zangara area on Tuesday.
No group grabbed credit for the attack.
An official source said the bomb might have been planted by a rival group of the Sajna group as differences among various factions of the TTP further widened.
The attack occurred five days after a ceasefire had supposedly ended the feud between supporters of Sajna and followers of the late Hakeemullah Mehsud, according to AFP.
On the other hand, TTP leaders claimed that security forces had suffered heavy casualties in festivities with forces of Evil which continued in Bobar area for the third day on Wednesday.
Talking to this correspondent from an undisclosed place, they said five helicopter gunships pounded Taliban locations on Wednesday.
But there were no casualties because the locations had been abandoned by forces of Evil before the attacks, they said.
They claimed that about 30 soldiers had been killed and 12 nomads injured in the three-day skirmishes.
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[DAWN] CHARSADDA: Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam ...Assembly of Islamic Clergy, or JUI, is a Pak Deobandi (Hanafi) political party. There are two main branches, one led by Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and one led by Maulana Samiul Haq. Fazl is active in Pak politix and Sami spends more time running his madrassah. Both branches sponsor branches of the Taliban, though with plausible deniability... -Fazl Bajaur Agency, aka Turban Central ...Smallest of the agencies in FATA. The Agency administration is located in Khar. Bajaur is inhabited almost exclusively by Tarkani Pashtuns, which are divided into multiple bickering subtribes. Its 52 km border border with Afghanistan's Kunar Province makes it of strategic importance to Pakistain's strategic depth... general secretary Maulana Mohammad Fazil was killed while his driver received critical injuries when unknown assailants on a cycle of violence opened fire on them here on Wednesday evening.
Maulana Fazil was coming from Islamabad to Charsadda in his car when he was attacked at Saeed Khan Bagh area in Charsadda city. As a result, he died o the spot while his driver, Sabir, suffered critical wounds. Mr Sabir was taken to the district headquarters hospital, Charsadda, where his condition was listed to be critical.
Maulana Fazil was the administrator of a seminary, Jamia Darul Addab Kula Dher, in Charsadda. He had lost the 2008 general elections to former governor Eng Shaukatullah from NA-43 Bajaur by only 500 votes. He had also escaped a life attempt in 2009 in Bajaur. He left Bajaur and shifted to Charsadda after that incident and started teaching at the seminary.
His body was sent to his hometown in Bajaur for burial.
Later, disciples of the Maulana and JUI-F leaders and workers blocked Farooq Azam Chowk at Charsadda bazaar in protest against the attack and demanded arrest of the attackers. They protesters led by JUI Charsadda convener Maulana Shaukat Ali set Friday deadline for the arrest of the killers.
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[DAWN] PESHAWAR: Unidentified armed persons rubbed out a trader in Akhtunabad area while an improvised bomb was defused in Shad Bagh Colony here on Wednesday.
An official of Pando cop shoppe said that the killed trader was identified as Syed Athar Abbas Zaidi, a resident of Kochi Bazaar. He was on way to his home when unidentified gunnies targeted him with a pistol, he added.
Quoting Syed Asghar Ali Shah, a relative of the dear departed, the official said that the trader was injured in the attack and departed this vale of tears in Lady Reading Hospital.
"He was a businessman and had no enmity," the complainant said. He added that the attackers would be nominated in the case whenever a clue was found in that regard.
Police also foiled a sabotage bid by defusing an improvised bomb (IED) planted outside a house at Shad Bagh Colony.
An official of Yakatoot cop shoppe said that the device was planted outside residence of Daud Khan, who worked abroad. He said that the device was packed in a ghee canister but personnel of bomb disposal unit defused it timely.
AIG Shafqat Malik said that the explosive weighed about two kilograms. A case against unidentified gunnies was registered at Yakatoot cop shoppe.
ARMS SEIZED: Police seized a cache of arms and ammunitions and placed in durance vile Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! an alleged smuggler and impounded a motorcar in Mattani area.
Police said that they stopped a motorcar, coming from tribal area to Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. city, and recovered eight Kalashnikovs, 80 pistols, two repeaters and 4,600 cartridges from its secret cavities.
Police said that an arms smuggler Irshad, a resident of Jhagra, was arrested on the spot while his two accomplices managed to escape.
Meanwhile, ...back at the precinct house, Sergeant Maloney wasn't buying it. It was just too pat. The whole thing smelled phony, kind of like a dead mackeral but without the scales... several suspected persons were arrested in the limits of Khan Raziq cop shoppe.
Sources said that names of the arrested persons could not be ascertained. They were travelling in a motorcar having registration number of Islamabad and police took them into custody for interrogation, they added.
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[TIMESOFINDIA.INDIATIMES] In the absence of any concrete leads, investigations into the Chennai blasts have zeroed in on two passengers who boarded the affected coaches of Bangalore-Guwahati Express in Bangalore without tickets and alighted before the train reached Chennai.
However, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... central agencies also suspect the bombs could have been kept in the train in Chennai itself with their timers set for a short span. "The bombs went kaboom! 12 minutes after the train reached Chennai," said an officer privy to investigation details.
Sources said the two are being viewed as suspects based on the testimony of passengers who said two young men boarded the train's S4 and S5 coaches without tickets, slept on the floor and were nowhere to be found in the morning.
Though Tamil Nadu police has also detained a passenger in connection with the blasts that claimed one life and left 14 injured, sources in central agencies said it was unlikely the man would be involved. "The man was hiding in the toilet after the blasts. Though he is being questioned, it is unlikely he is involved. Terrorists don't plant bombs and stay on," the officer said.
Sources said the circumstances of the blasts are such that no particular group is being suspected yet. Preliminary analysis of the bombs shows it was a concoction of explosives with ball bearings and timer device. The nature of timer device or the container in which the explosives were kept has not been ascertained. "Perhaps, post-mortem of the girl who died will reveal what kind of container may have been used as its shards may have entered her body," said another officer.
Agencies assume that if the bomb was planted in Bangalore or a few stations before Chennai, then it was supposed to explode in Gudur in Andhra Pradesh. However, a woman is only as old as she admits... since the train was running late by two hours, it went kaboom! at Chennai station itself.
The fact that the bombs were not of very high intensity points to the fact that inexperienced hands were behind the blasts, said sources. This is the third incidence of terror that Tamil Nadu is witnessing in a span of barely three months.
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[Ynet] Former Jordanian FM Abu Jaber lashes out at 'the Zionist big lie about Paleostine - a land without a people,' in article quoting Hitler.
Israel summoned Jordan's ambassador Thursday to protest an "anti-Israeli" article by a former Jordanian foreign minister, in which he based his argument on a Hitler quote, the foreign ministry said.
Spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel's embassy in Amman also sent the Foreign Ministry there an official protest over an article published on Monday by Kamel Abu Jaber in The Jordan Times.
In the second paragraph of the article titled "The big Zionist lie and the task ahead," Abu Jaber, foreign minister from 1991 to 1993, uses a quote from Adolf Hitler ...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days as a politician somebody doesn't like... 's "Mein Kampf" to make a point about lying - in "the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility".
"The Zionist big lie about Paleostine - 'a land without a people' - that the entire Western world adopted, and the biblical, Talmudic myth of the 'chosen people' have been the most important factors behind all the tragedies and atrocities that Paleostine and the Paleostinians have been subjected to since ... l897," Abu Jaber wrote.
"We Arabs, Jordanians and Paleostinians especially, are victims of a torrent of lies by a few international media magnates that every day enter every room of every household, propagating not only sex and violence but also, above all, the Zionist ideas of the extreme right," he wrote.
Palmor said Foreign Ministry deputy director general Aviva Raz called in ambassador Walid Obeidat to protest about the piece, "which was in essence anti-Israeli, but basing it on 'Mein Kampf' is definitely a red line, which brought an anti-Semitic spirit to some of the remarks."
In the letter to the Jordanian Foreign Ministry, Israel says of Abu Jaber that "constructing his arguments on Hitler's racist and anti-Semitic philosophy is outrageous and offensive not only for Jews, but also for any human being who believes in the basic values of humanity."
Publishing Abu Jaber's piece on Monday, the day Israel remembered the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, was "not by coincidence," the protest letter read, calling for "firm actions against the writer and the newspaper."
Tensions between Israel and Jordan, which signed a peace treaty in 1994, have risen following a series of festivities between Paleostinians and Israeli security at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
Under the treaty, Jordan is the custodian of Moslem holy sites in Jerusalem.
IDF soldiers in March killed a Jordanian judge at a border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, with the army saying it was investigating the circumstances.
Gotta let the boys burn off some steam, and gotta use up the inventory to make room for the New! And Improved!! missiles coming in from Hezb'allah via the Sinai lads.
[Ynet] A rocket fired from the Gazoo Strip fell in an open field in the Eshkol Regional Council on Thursday.
Congratulations! This time they didn't entirely miss the country they were aiming for.
Code Red siren was not activated prior to the rocket's fall, but no injuries or damages were reported.
[AnNahar] A total of 24 Syrians have registered to run in next month's presidential election, including incumbent Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Horror of Homs... , the Supreme Constitutional Court announced Thursday as the application deadline expired.
The vote, scheduled for June 3, is expected to return to power Assad, the embattled president who has faced a three-year-old armed revolt. But there has been no shortage of would-be challengers.
The court will now spend five days examining the 24 hopefuls to see if they meet electoral criteria to run for office in Syria's first multi-candidate presidential vote.
A maximum of three candidates are expected to figure on the final list.
"At 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) on Thursday May 1, 2014, the period for submitting presidential candidacy ended," court head Adnan Zureiq said, quoted on state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
.
"Twenty-four requests for candidacy for the post of Syrian president" had been submitted and the court would begin work Friday to examine which candidates met electoral criteria.
The results, he said, would be announced within five days.
To add their name on the ballot, candidates must win approval from at least 35 of parliament's 250 politicians, as well as meet criteria including having lived in Syria for the past decade.
The rules effectively ruled out the participation of the country's leading opposition figures, who are in exile.
The Baath party headed by Assad has 161 deputies, all of whom are expected to give him their support, meaning no more than two other candidates are likely to make the cut.
Assad's would-be challengers are all largely unknown and include two women and one Christian man.
Syria's constitution requires that candidates for the presidency be Moslem, but a source in the court said this week that all applications would be received and then examined in line with the rules.
The constitution contains no explicit prohibition on female candidates, but its phrasing implies only male candidates are permitted.
The election will be the first since a constitutional amendment scrapped a system of presidential referendums.
Assad, who succeeded his father in office in 2000, after his death, is expected to sweep to victory despite the brutal civil war ravaging the country.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Syrian warplanes hit a popular market in a rebel-held district of Aleppo, killing at least 33 civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Several people were also maimed in the attack that targeted the market in the Halak neighborhood in northeastern Aleppo, the Britannia-based monitor said.
Rebel-held areas of Aleppo have come under massive air assault since mid-December as government forces try to regain full control of Syria's second city and one-time commercial hub.
"A Syrian fighter jet fired a missile at the (Halak) neighborhood, and within minutes it fired another," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence La Belle France Presse.
The Aleppo Media Center run by local activists said that "two residential buildings were destroyed and several shops set ablaze."
Activists posted a YouTube video showing an ambulance trying to make its way across rubble to the site and the facades of buildings badly damaged.
Youths are seen carrying the body of a man in a rug as others dig through rubble for victims.
A man is heard crying "holy shit! Allahu akbar" (God is the greatest) as he picks up body parts and wraps them in clothing.
The authenticity of the video could not be immediately verified.
Thursday's air raids come a day after the Observatory reported that twin air strikes on a school in the Ansari neighborhood controlled by faceless myrmidons killed 18 people, 10 of them children.
Aleppo-based citizen journalist Mohammed al-Khatib told AFP by Skype that the children were "holding a drawing exhibition when two air strikes, 10 minutes apart, struck the school."
The Observatory, which relies on activists and medics on the ground for its reports on the three-year war in Syria, said that at least one teacher was also among the dead in Wednesday's strikes.
Rebel bombardments of regime-held areas of Aleppo have also intensified in the past few weeks.
On Sunday, rebels fired mortar rounds into parts of the Old City where government forces are entrenched and into other areas of Aleppo, killing more than 20 people.
The rebels have been trying to advance into the Old City.
Regime forces have also stepped up the use of barrel bombs dropped by helicopter on rebel positions in recent weeks, according to the Observatory.
More than 150,000 people have been killed, and nearly half the population has been displaced by the fighting.
The conflict has left large swathes of Syria beyond the control of the government, which has not explained how it will organize voting nationwide.
[AnNahar] Syria's air force killed at least 20 people, including 17 children, on Wednesday in the latest strike on battered Aleppo city, as civilians bear the brunt of the civil war.
The air strikes came a day after at least 100 people, including some 80 civilians, died in a twin car kaboom on a pro-regime area of Homs claimed by the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front.
Despite the ongoing conflict, the regime of Bashir al-Assad is preparing for a presidential election slammed as a farce by the opposition and by the United States as a "parody of democracy".
In Aleppo, Syria's second city, twin air strikes hit a school in the rebel-held Ansari neighbourhood Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Amateur video distributed by activists showed rows of bodies of children, some of them bloodied, wrapped in grey body bags on the ground.
Aleppo-based citizen journalist Mohammed al-Khatieb told Agence La Belle France Presse by Internet that the children were "holding a drawing exhibition when two air strikes, 10 minutes apart, struck the school."
Aleppo province's opposition council condemned the attack in a statement, and appealed to the "world's conscience" for action over Syria, "for the sake of the values and principles you defend, because your silence is killing us".
Rebel-held areas of Aleppo have come under massive assault from the air since mid-December.
The government's use of barrel bombs -- unguided munitions usually dropped from altitude to avoid ground fire -- has come in for particular criticism from human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... watchdogs because of their indiscriminate toll on civilians.
Hours later, Al-Nusra Front carried out two suicide kabooms in the Aleppo countryside, killing and wounding "dozens of troops and pro-regime militiamen", said the Observatory.
Al-Nusra Front had earlier claimed an attack on Tuesday against Homs' Abbasiyeh neighbourhood, mainly inhabited by members of Assad's Alawite minority community.
"God allowed the Al-Nusra Front's fighters to achieve a feat despite draconian security measures. It is so that they (residents of pro-regime areas) taste the hell that our brothers have tasted," a statement said.
According to Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman, the attacks come amid a major government offensive aimed at reclaiming a handful of rebel areas in the heart of Homs.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of families displaced from Homs by violence since the anti-Assad revolt broke out in March 2011.
The attacks come just weeks away from a presidential election that will be held in regime-controlled territory.
According to Abdel Rahman, the escalation in attacks is a message from the armed opposition to the regime to say there will be no safe zones during the election.
Meanwhile, ...back at the hanging, Butch continued with his last words, trying not to repeat himself too often...... the number of presidential hopefuls shot up to 17, all of whom except Assad are unknown to the Syrian public.
The election has been mocked as a "farce" mainly because of a series of constraints that make it effectively impossible for a genuine regime opponent to run.
'Aid not working' Meanwhile, ...back at the hanging, Butch continued with his last words, trying not to repeat himself too often...... another massive camp was established in neighbouring Jordan to offer shelter to tens of thousands of refugees.
Azraq camp "is probably the biggest refugee camp in the world," said UNHCR representative Andrew Harper.
Jordan has taken in nearly 600,000 refugees since the war broke out.
In New York, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said a Security Council resolution aimed at ensuring aid access to millions of desperate Syrians is "not working."
"Far from getting better the situation is getting worse," Amos said.
Less than 10 percent of 242,000 people living in besieged areas had received assistance in the past four weeks, she said.
Meanwhile, ...back at the hanging, Butch continued with his last words, trying not to repeat himself too often...... British Foreign Secretary William Hague pressed the world's chemical weapons watchdog to finish its probe into the alleged use of chlorine gas in Syria as urgently as possible.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... are already destroying Syria's chemical weapons as part of a disarmament deal agreed last August in the wake of deadly sarin nerve agent attacks outside Damascus.
La Belle France and the United States first highlighted the allegations this month that Assad's regime was using the chemical chlorine against civilians despite the deal.
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.
Bouteflika
[The Nation (Pak)] 
Wazoo
...Smallest of the agencies in FATA. The Agency administration is located in Khar. Bajaur is inhabited almost exclusively by Tarkani Pashtuns, which are divided into multiple bickering subtribes. Its 52 km border border with Afghanistan's Kunar Province makes it of strategic importance to Pakistain's strategic depth...
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
