[Libya Herald] The head of Misrata’s Third Force based in Sebha, Jamal Treiki, has spurned a demand from the Khalifa Hafter’s Libyan National Army (LNA) that it withdraw from the south.
Earlier this week, the LNA’s Colonel Mohammed Ben Nayel said that the Third Force, first sent to Sebha to try and keep the peace there three years ago, had to evacuate the entire region.
The demand followed Nayel’s peaceful takeover three weeks ago of the Brak al-Shatti airbase from the Third Force, which had effectively given it up.
Just two days ago, however, there was fighting at the Gwirat al-Maal checkpoint 17 kilometres north of Sebha as Nayel’s men, said to be a mix of Magarha and Qaddadfa members plus Tebus and members of Sudan’s Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement, tried to seize it from the Third Force.
Both sides currently claim to hold it.
The checkpoint is important as it is just a few kilometres from Tamenhint airbase.
There are fears of an impending LNA operation to smash the Third Force in the south carried out in tandem with an attack on the strategically important Jufra airbase, 330 kilometres to the north and also held by the Misratans.
For many years during the Qadaffy era Jufra was the country’s main military base. It can control all movement east, south and west.
Following Monday’s Arclight airstrike on the airbase by LNA planes, the head of the Petroleum Facilities Guard loyal to Hafter in Sidra reportedly then warned that there would be a fresh attack on it, but that locals in nearby Hun and Waddan need not be afraid; the land offensive would target only "terrorists". This was seen as referring to the members of the Benghazi Defence Brigades and Benghazi Revolutionaries Shoura Council, stationed at the base.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/30/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11122 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.LB] Tunisia’s Prime Minister Youssef Chahed on Thursday said all murderous Moslems returning from foreign battlefields would be immediately tossed in the calaboose Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! and judged according to the country’s counter-terrorism law.
"The Tunisian state has not signed any deal on the return of murderous Moslems and the government’s position on the matter is clear: it does not support the return from areas of tension," Chahed told state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
El Wataniya.
"Those who do return will be immediately arrested on their arrival to Tunisian territory and will be judged. And the counter-terrorism law will be applied against them," said the premier, who met President Beji Caid Essebsi on Thursday afternoon.
Concern about the return of murderous Moslems has risen since Tunisian Anis Amri, 24, was identified as the suspected attacker who mowed down 11 people with a truck at a Berlin Christmas market last week and also killed the driver.
Chahed said Tunisia "has lists of all (Tunisian) murderous Moslems who are in areas of tension and who have been part of terrorist organizations. We know each and every one of them and have all the data on them."
His comments came after a ministerial meeting to decide on an action plan to tackle the issue did not take place on Thursday as planned.
Last week, Interior Minister Hedi Majdoub told parliament that 800 murderous Moslems had already returned from the front lines, stressing however that the authorities have them on their radar.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/30/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
Be sure and disarm them before you arrest them.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
12/30/2016 11:13 Comments ||
Top||
[AlAhram] French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Thursday warned troops stationed in Africa's Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... that they should "prepare for a long war" against Islamist bully boys. He also promised Chad, where French troops have been stationed since 2014 under Operation Barkhane, his nation's financial support.
"Our country must continue to make clear and ambitious budgetary decisions in support of our armies," Cazeneuve said on his first overseas visit as prime minister.
The Barkhane forces' mission is to target Islamist bully boy groups that are active in the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert. The operation was launched after French military interventions in Mali and Chad.
"We must prepare for a long war in an environment that has undergone dramatic shifts," Cazeneuve said.
The French military is currently battling Islamist bully boy in two regions -- in the Middle East against the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) bully boys, and in the Sahel where it has deployed 4,000 soldiers as part of the Barkhane force.
Operation Barkhane covers five nations: Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... and Chad.
Cazeneuve hailed troops fighting on fronts "thousands of kilometres away from their homes".
"You risk your lives to save others'," he said.
Four French troops have been killed in Mali this year. Barkhane forces are working alongside Malian troops in the search for Sophie Petronin, a French aid worker who was kidnapped last weekend.
The prime minister also pledged La Belle France's help for poverty-stricken Chad.
"La Belle France will always help Chad surmount its difficulties," said Cazeneuve after a meeting with President Idriss Deby.
Like its neighbour, oil giant Nigeria, Chad has been undergoing a severe financial crisis as a result of a several months-long slump in the price of crude.
[Dhaka Tribune] Investigators have said that the grenades they found from the raid in a terrorist den in city's Ashkona area earlier this week were all handmade, as were the boom jackets.
Militants at this New JMB den were using the same sort of materials and techniques used by JMB for making the bombs, but they were connecting several bombs together in boom jackets to make them deadlier.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) Counter Terrorism and Transnational (CTTC) Unit recovered and defused 19 grenades from that den, 10 of them tied inside two boom jackets and two unwent kaboom! grenades from the body of the female bully boy Shakira.
A CTTC bomb disposal unit official told the Dhaka Tribune that the grenades recovered from the den were similar to the ones found in Mirpur last year. The bombs were made using old JMB techniques using local materials.
However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... unlike the old group, New JMB bomb makers put the grenades in vests.
The three vests found in Ashkona, one on the body of Shakira, who blew herself up during the police raid, were crudely sewn by hand.
On the other hand, the two found in Mirpur last year were manufactured belts with shoulder straps, the official said.
The official said Death Eaters were using four to six individual bombs to make a single vest.
The grenades manufactured by JMB usually contained pins to release the pressure, but the grenades on the Ashokona vests were connected through wires so that the bombs could be went kaboom! at the same time.
To generate required power within the vest, the Death Eaters had increased the number of batteries in the grenades.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/30/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under: Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (IS)
[AnNahar] Russian officials probing the crash of a Syria-bound military plane said Thursday that there was no kaboom on board, but equipment was functioning abnormally when it plunged into the Black Sea.
"There was no kaboom on board, I can say that for certain," said Sergei Bainetov, head of flight safety for the Russian airforce. "But an act of terror is not necessarily an kaboom, so we are not discarding this version."
Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said the probe has established that the plane was not working normally but will not issue any conclusions before January, cautioning journalists not to jump on any theories.
"It is obvious that the equipment was functioning abnormally. Why that happened is up to experts to work out," he said at a joint presser on the crash which killed all 92 on board, including scores of performers from a feted Red Army Choir troupe.
The Soviet-era Tu-154 plane went down shortly after takeoff from the Sochi airport Sunday morning, after stopping to refuel on its way to Syria.
The military ensemble was due to give a concert to Russian soldiers at the Hmeimim base, Moscow's main outpost for its bombing campaign in support of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now... Bainetov said that the Tu-154, which is not used by commercial airlines, has been grounded by the air force "until the first conclusions" are made about the crash.
Sokolov said that the "main phase" of the major search operation for plane debris mounted off the coast of the southern city has finished.
"At this time, everything that has to do with the plane's crash has been brought to surface," he said.
So far only 19 bodies and some 230 body parts have been discovered, Sokolov said.
#2
...if you had deep pockets, maybe Israel could sponsor some refugee settlements in Europe, fund some refugee committees, and sponsor their voices at the UN. Or, maybe, get the incoming Administration to fund it through Israel.
[DeutscheWelle] The 40-year-old was allowed to walk free on Thursday, after German authorities determined that he was not a "possible contact person for Anis Amri," front man Frauke Köhler told news hounds on Thursday.
The man was detained a day before, after the authorities found his phone number stored in Amri's cell phone, which had been found at the scene of the Berlin attack.
On December 19, the 24-year-old Tunisian citizen Amri drove a truck through a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 48. He is also believed to have killed the Polish driver of the truck he used. Contrary to some reports, the authorities discovered no knife wounds on the body. Preliminary info suggests that the 37-year-old Polish national died close to the time of the attack. However, corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds... the full autopsy results are expected only in January.
Investigators also retrieved a .22 caliber bullet from the cab of the truck. The caliber matches the weapon Amri used in the shootout with the police in Milan. The ballistic experts are currently performing tests to confirm the same gun was used in both incidents, Köhler said.
The spokesperson also confirmed that a video in which Amri is seen pledging allegiance to Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... was authentic.
"We are coming to slaughter you, you pigs," Amri says in the apparently self-made video.
German authorities are continuing their search for other suspects and accomplices.
Also on Thursday, Italian police searched three houses in and around Rome where Amri may have spent time, a judicial source said.
"Five years ago he was not a jihadist ... In desperation, in isolation, in alienation, he found the conviction to follow the path of radicalisation," Italy's anti-terrorism chief Franco Roberti was also quoted as saying in an interview with la Repubblica newspaper on Thursday.
Roberti said lone-wolf attackers like Amri needed the help of small-scale criminal networks, such as those in Italy and Spain, for logistical support including acquiring false documents.
"From this point of view, Italy and Spain are the cradles," Roberti said.
Amri's undetected passage to Italy, via France, from Germany after the attack, has prompted eurosceptic parties to call for the reintroduction of border controls that were removed by the continent's open-border Schengen pact.
Italy tried to deport him to Tunisia after he completed a four-year jail term for attempting to set fire to a building, but Tunisian authorities refused to take him, so he was released from the centre.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/30/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11122 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] The presence of the PKK in the Sinjar region of Iraq is a "major obstacle to reconciliation" and the return of displaced people, the U.S. said Tuesday.
"We believe that the PKK which is a U.S. designated terrorist organization should have no role in Sinjar," State Department front man Mark Toner said.
Toner’s comments comes after Iraqi Kurdish regional government Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani threatened to use military force to remove the PKK from the predominantly Kurdish Yezidi city of Sinjar.
The PKK has sought to establish a foothold in the region that falls to the northeastern mountainous outskirts of Nineveh province, since ISIS was driven out last year by Peshmerga and local forces with the help of the U.S.-led coalition.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/30/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11122 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
#1
Now war in ME is complete without Kurds getting back stabbed.
[Daily Caller] Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is ecstatic about passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policy, and its own incitement to violence.
Hamas issued a statement supporting the resolution Saturday, one day after its passage. The Obama administration abstained from voting on the measure, allowing it to pass. The move infuriated Israeli officials who saw it as an abandonment of the historical U.S. policy of vetoing such resolutions.
"We value the position of states that voted in favor of the resolution and welcome this significant transformation in international positions that support the Palestinian people’s rights," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum in a press release.
The terrorist group’s keen support is surprising, given the resolution supposedly also condemns groups like Hamas for engaging in terrorism against Israelis. What’s more, Barhoum goes on to say his group supports further resolutions "backing the Palestinian people’s just cause."
[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] Paleostinian president the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... said Wednesday he was ready to resume peace efforts with Israel if it stopped settlement building, reacting to a major speech by US Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, unsuccessful presidential candidate, and utterly failed Secretary of State... "The minute the Israeli government agrees to cease all settlement activities... and agrees to implement the signed agreements on the basis of mutual reciprocity, the Paleostinian leadership stands ready to resume permanent status negotiations on the basis of international law and relevant international legality resolutions... under a specified timeframe," he said in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/30/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Palestinian Authority
#1
Eventually, we'll give you "Peace" - in the only way you understand.
[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... to recruit Syrian young refugees as police and security units in ISIS-freed areas near the Turkish borders, sources said Tuesday.
Sources from the camps of Islahiya1 and Islahiya 2, in Gaziantep city said Turkish government announced via the camps’ microphone that voluntary recruitment is open for young men aged between 20 and 35 years to join the security and police forces are intended to be founded in Syrian areas in Jarablus city which were recently liberated from the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... by the military operation of Euphrates Shield.
A young man live in Islahiya2 confirmed that recruitment is voluntary, not mandatory like what was claimed over social media. He mentioned that many young men intended to join the police and security forces and they contacted the designated body for that.
General Abdul-Razaq Aslan, head of Security and Police forces in Jarablus city reported that police and security system in the Jarablus is part of a wider already prepared plan, which follow specific programme determined to found security force within Euphrates Shield area.
In a phone call with Zaman al-Wasl, General Aslan added that main task of security forces would be establishing stability and security to the area and eradicate the state of lawlessness in cities and towns have recently been liberated by the help of Turkish friends.
Abdul-Razaq confirmed that forming security and police forces will be founded according to international regulations and law specified to police system. He revealed that training sessions have started already for 500 volunteers, with possibility to increase the number according to the need.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/30/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
how will anyone know whether the volunteers are not ISIS symps
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/30/2016 1:03 Comments ||
Top||
[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] Syrian Kurdish groups and their allies said on Thursday they approved a blueprint for a system of federal government in northern Syria, reaffirming their plans for autonomy in areas they have controlled during the civil war.
The blueprint amounts to a constitution, known as the social contract, an official told Rooters this week.
It aims to cement the autonomy of areas of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have already carved out self-governing regions since the start of the war in 2011, though Kurdish leaders say an independent state is not the goal.
"The social contract draft was ratified," Mansour al-Salloum, joint head of the Founding Council of the Federal System, told Rooters in Rmeilan in northeast Syria.
"The executive committee will prepare for elections" first to regional administrations and later to a central body, he said, without giving a date for the votes.
Salloum said that for areas currently outside the control of the Kurds and their allies, such as Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... -held Raqqa, the local population would ultimately decide whether they wanted to be part of the federal system.
Separate forces are fighting against IS Death Eaters around Raqqa including the Kurdish YPG and its allies backed by the United States, and the Syrian army backed by Russian air strikes. Turkish-backed rebels are fighting the jihadist group further northwest.
Syrian Kurdish groups and their allies have made their moves towards regional autonomy in the absence of any international deal for a political settlement to the nearly six-year Syrian war.
[RUDAW.NET] The founding members of the self-declared Kurdish enclave in northern Syria have dropped the word Rojava -- a Kurdish word for Western Kurdistan -- from the official name of the federation of northern Syria.
The ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the main group in Syria’s Kurdistan and rules over an area also known as Rojava, and a number of other parties in northern Syria have discussed the draft constitution of the federation for the second day on Wednesday in a meeting held in the Kurdish city of Rmelan, the Kurdish Hawar News Agency reported.
The official name, which received the majority of the votes, is the Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria.
Rojava officials are saying that it is a move to include other ethnic and religious components in northern Syria.
Kurdish authorities declared in mid-March the Democratic Federal System of Rojava-Northern Syria, a federal entity within Syria which was declared unlawful by the Syrian regime.
The federation includes three predominantly Kurdish territories, namely the cantons of Kobane, Cizre, and Afrin.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/30/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
[ARA News] Damascus – More than four million people in the Syrian capital Damascus suffer deteriorating living conditions amid acute shortage of drinking water, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Thursday.
Damascus and surrounding areas have been cut off from the main water supply since 22 December.
“Two primary sources of clean and safe drinking water that serve 70 per cent of the population in and around Damascus are not functioning, due to deliberate targeting resulting in the damaged infrastructure,” OCHA reported.
The UN expressed deep concerns about the fate of millions of Syrians for lack of drinking water, stressing that the crisis could lead to waterborne diseases, particularly among children, beside the financial strain this is having on families.
Throughout Syria, close to 15 million people are in need of water assistance and households spend up to 25 per cent of their income to meet their daily water needs, according to the UN.
“The United Nations calls on all parties to reach peaceful agreements to alleviate the suffering of civilians, and that basic services, essential for survival, such as water supply, must be safeguarded and protected at all times,” it emphasized.
As the Syria crisis enters its sixth year, civilians continue to bear the brunt of a conflict marked by unparalleled suffering, destruction and disregard for human life.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 13.5 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 4.9 million people in need trapped in besieged and hard-to-reach areas, where they are exposed to grave protection threats.
#3
The UN expressed deep concerns about the fate of millions between courses at the popular 4 star restaurant while waiting for the next service of 1999 Burgundy.
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.