[ToloNews] At least 14 security forces were killed in a Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... attack on Monday in Jawzjan province, local officials said.
Marouf Azar, a front man for the governor, said the Taliban attacked a checkpoint in Fayzabad district around 3:30 am.
Five other soldiers were maimed in the attack, Azar said.
[ToloNews] Four Taliban ...Arabic for students... commanders were killed during separate Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province on Sunday, the Ministry of Defense said Monday.
According to the ministry, Nabi Jan, Aqa Wali and Sayed Shah were killed in Pashtun Zarghun district.
The ministry said that Hafizulah, another Taliban commander in Herat province, was killed during an airstrike in Gulran district of Herat on Sunday.
The Taliban has not commented.
Security forces have intensified their operations in western provinces against the Taliban.
The 207 Zafar Army Corps said Sunday that security forces conducted operations along the Herat-Ghor highway and in eastern districts of the province, clearing the areas of bully boy fighters.
A commander said the Herat-Ghor highway has long been under Taliban control.
According to the military official, winter operations will continue in other areas as well.
Herat officials said that besides clearing operations along the Herat-Ghor highway, other eastern districts lacking security will also be cleared of bully boys.
[Al Jazeera] The al-Shabaab ...... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... gang has grabbed credit for Saturday's enormous boom-mobileing in Somalia's capital Mogadishu that killed at least 81 people, while the national security agency said the attack "was planned by a foreign country."
The attack hit a busy checkpoint in the southwest of the city, leaving vehicles charred and twisted at a crossroads in the deadliest assault in two years in the Horn of Africa country.
Dozens more were maimed in an area clogged with traffic because of the security checkpoint and a tax office collecting fees from trucks and buses.
"... the mujahideen carried (out) an attack ... targeting a convoy of Ottoman Turkish mercenaries and apostate militia who were escorting them," al-Shabaab front man Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage said in an audio message.
Among the dead were 16 students from the private Benadir University whose bus was passing through the crossroads as the bomb detonated.
Mogadishu is regularly hit by attacks by al-Shabab, which has fought for more than 10 years to topple the Somali government.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/31/2019 00:00 ||
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[11122 views]
Top|| File under: al-Shabaab (AQ)
[Al Jazeera] At least 23 people were killed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... (DRC) in what officials described as an attack by rebel fighters. ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) is an Islamist group that started out in Uganda. They don't appear to be affiliated with al-Qaeda or Islamic State. They just like killing infidels.
Police and local officials said on Monday that the overnight raid on Apetina-Sana in the restive eastern region of Beni was carried out by ADF rebels, who operate in both DRC and neighbouring Uganda.
Beni administrator Donat Kibwana told AFP news agency that the ADF hacked civilians to death in the settlement, which lies 16 kilometres (10 miles) west of Oicha, the chief administrative town in Beni.
The rebels also reportedly torched the victims' homes.
Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, said the corpse count was expected to rise as the attack had lasted hours and many people were yet to be accounted for.
"They say when the rebels entered the village, they went from house to house burning everything in their path. Anyone they came across, including women and kiddies, they killed."
Mutasa said some people were now making the hours-long walk to Beni city to stay in churches or with family members.
"You get a sense that people are terrified," she said, adding that many in the area have long felt abandoned by the government.
"They feel that all the resources go to the capital ... The roads are in a bad state, there's no infrastructure, they feel let down. So a lot of people say that when these attacks happen - and they do happen often - they feel alone."
While the ADF originated in Uganda, its rebels have been attacking and killing people in eastern DRC for more than 20 years.
Apetina-Sana is a point on the so-called Triangle of Death, along with Mbau and Eringeti - the worst-hit area by attacks.
ADF fighters have killed more than 200 people since the DRC army launched an offensive against the gang on October 30, according to civil society groups.
Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen claim to have shot down a Saudi-operated Vestel Karayel drone aircraft with a surface-to-air missile near Hodeidah, Yemen.
First there were Salafist jamaats scattered across the North Caucasus, then the amalgamated Caucasian Emirate, pledged to Al Qaeda for the notoriety of the thing, and finally they transferred allegiance to ISIS, calling themselves Caucasus Province. Thousands made hijra to the ISIS caliphate in Syria, others were adopted by Turkey — that whole Turkic peoples thingy. Most famously, the Tsarnaev brothers blew up the Boston Marathon for them.
[AnNahar] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...Qatar's satrapy in Asia Minor... has arrested 100 suspected members of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group (IS) in raids across the country, state news agency Anadolu reported on Monday.
More than 40 Iraqis, around 20 Syrians and a Moroccan were among those detained across six provinces in recent days, including Ankara, Bursa and Batman, Anadolu said.
Turkey has stepped up raids on IS bully boyz in recent months and pushed to repatriate them to their countries of origin.
It announced 20 arrests in Istanbul last week.
Turkey was accused of allowing foreign jihadists to pass easily across its border in the early years of the Syrian conflict.
But it took a much tougher response after a spate of IS attacks in 2015 and 2016 that decimated its tourism industry, culminating in a massacre at an Istanbul nightclub celebrating the 2017 New Year in which 39 people died.
At least 33 foreign nationals were detained in the capital Ankara in a joint operation by anti-terrorism police and the national intelligence agency, according to the Anadolu Agency.
Police conducted simultaneous, pre-dawn raids in the city of Batman, in southeast Turkey, where 22 suspects were detained, it said in a separate report.
Raids were also conducted in the cities of Adana and Kayseri where 15 people, including six foreign nationals were detained.
Police have rounded up jihadist militants in late December in the last two years, since New Year's Day in 2017 when a gunman killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub in an attack claimed by the militant group.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/31/2019 00:46 ||
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[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
BREAKING: An armed Iraqi militia has stormed the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, after breaking down the embassy walls and starting fires around the compound.pic.twitter.com/aj9qmluxLi
Dozens of Iraqi Shiite militia supporters ‐ many in uniforms
...in uniforms? A bold choice...
‐ gained entry to the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday after they smashed down a gate and stormed inside, the Associated Press reported.
An AP reporter at the scene saw flames rising from inside the compound and at least three U.S. soldiers on the roof of the embassy. The embassy was evacuated but it was not immediately clear if there were staffers holed up inside.
Hundreds of Iraqis had attempted to storm the compound earlier in the day, following the funerals for 25 fighters from an Iran-backed Shiite militia killed in U.S. airstrikes on Sunday, the Associated Press reported.
Reporters for the AP described a chaotic scene on the ground and reported that the crowd shouted, "Down, down USA!"
Two Iraqi foreign ministry officials told Reuters that the U.S. ambassador and staff have been evacuated. A man on a loudspeaker urged the mob not to enter the compound, saying: "The message was delivered."
The gate that was smashed was a side entrance. Protesters had pushed about 16 feet into a corridor that leads to the main building but the protesters were still about 200 yards away from it. They raised yellow militia flags and taunted the embassy's security staff. Graffiti in red, in support of the Kataeb Hezbollah, read: "Closed in the name of the resistance."
Sen. Marco Rubio took to Twitter early Tuesday and said Iran was directly responsible for orchestrating the breach. There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon and the State Department.
Security guards were seen retreating to the inside of the embassy as the protesters hurled water bottles and smashed security cameras outside the embassies, the report said.
The U.S. military carried out airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Sunday ‐ days after a U.S. defense contractor was killed in a rocket attack. Military jet fighters conducted "precision defensive strikes" on five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, Jonathan Hoffman, a spokesperson for the Pentagon told Fox News. Two defense officials added that Air Force F-15 jet fighters carried out the strikes.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strikes send the message that the U.S. will not tolerate actions by Iran that jeopardize American lives.
Update from the article at 9:30 a.m. ET
“Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible,” President Trump tweeted. “In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!”
Update at 11:00 a.m. ET:
Yassine al-Yasseri, Iraq's interior minister, appeared outside the embassy at one point and walked around to inspect the scene. He told the AP that the prime minister had warned the U.S. strikes on the Shiite militiamen would have serious consequences.
"This is one of the implications," al-Yasseri said. "This is a problem and is embarrassing to the government."
The U.S. conducts 'offensive' airstrikes in Iraq and Syria after a U.S. defense contractor is killed in a rocket attack.
He said more security will be deployed to separate the protesters from the embassy, an indication the Iraqi troops would not move in to break up the crowd by force.
Seven armored vehicles with about 30 Iraqi soldiers arrived near the embassy hours after the violence erupted, deploying near the embassy walls but not close to the breached area. Four vehicles carrying riot police approached the embassy later but were forced back by the protesters who blocked their path.
#4
Updated, moved to Iraq — yes, this is an action of the Iran network, but the actions are Iraq-centric — and set as today’s headline. Thank you for being on top of this for us, Seeking Cure.
#9
Maybe some militia in the US should storm the Iranian UN embassy.
Yes, I know what would actually happen. The US government, as required by international law, would clear out and arrest any (surviving) occupiers.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/31/2019 13:29 Comments ||
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#10
The Iraqis: They're assholes but they're our assholes...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/31/2019 14:02 Comments ||
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Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/31/2019 16:36 Comments ||
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#16
why were they not mowed down.
Posted by: Chris ||
12/31/2019 16:45 Comments ||
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#17
Chris, because everybody in the world would condemn the US for murdering "poor, innocent, peaceful protesters".
This would include US Democrats, of course.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/31/2019 17:23 Comments ||
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#18
They aren't "protesting." They're not students or civilians (or "austere religious scholars"). These are military cadres. They're wearing uniforms. They're storming a strategic US government installation.
Why is this assault not treated like any other military attack?
#19
Lex, it doesn't matter. To many in the world, any action the US takes to defend itself and its territory is wrong. If one civilian human shield is killed, everyone will be condemning the US.
Democrats would probably add that to the articles of impeachment.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/31/2019 17:37 Comments ||
Top||
#20
If Qais Khazali is spotted in the crowd he should be given a bit of attention from a marine sniper. Same goes for any 'known' Iranians.
They also need to build embassies so you can open and close the gates automatically. Open them, let rioters in, close them. Gun fire. Open them again. I think they'd find the rioters disperse after a few cycles.
#23
B, Maybe too, the sanctions have dried up some of the Mad Mullahs discretionary money. I think Trump's threats should be taken seriously by the Iranians.
#24
Given the Sunni/Shiite split in Iraq, I wonder how reasonable it is to consider it a single country. True, they had a little set-to with Iran within my lifetime, but would the Iraqi shiites rally round again if there were a conflict, or ally with Iran, or sit it out?
BTW, the other james isn't me. I should have picked a better nym back in the day.
Posted by: James ||
12/31/2019 23:40 Comments ||
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[Rudaw] On December 29, US Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s struck the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah group in five locations, three in Iraq and two in Syria, in retaliation for a rocket attack against US troops in the K1 military base in Kirkuk two days earlier that killed one American civilian contractor and maimed US and Iraqi troops.
The Kirkuk attack was the latest in a series of rocket attacks targeting US personnel in Iraq in recent weeks but the first to result in casualties. According to The Wall Street Journal, that attack was the 11th time in a mere two months that American troops in Iraq were targeted by rocket fire.
Continued on Page 49
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.
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
...
...... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka 
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
Dozens of Iraqi Shiite militia supporters ‐ many in uniforms
...
