[KhaamaPress] The Ministry of Interior (MoI) said the Talibs set the bodies of five people on fire after shooting them dead in South-eastern Ghazni province.
According to a statement released by MoI, the Talibs killed the five people including three civilians and two coppers in Qayaq Valley of Jaghatoo district.
The statement further added that the victims were travelling in a vehicle when they were targeted by Talibs and their dead bodies were set on fire inside the car.
The interior ministry condemned the act as extremely brutal and against the humanity.
The Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... group has not commented regarding the incident so far.
[ToloNews] A group of Faryab residents in a public uprising against the Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... cleared five villages under the control of the bad boy group in Shirin Tagab district.
The residents said the move was made because they were tired of the Taliban's causing disturbances. They claimed that the Taliban were taking people’s food and vehicles under different pretexts.
The villages cleared are Koh-e-Sayyad, Tapa Qala, Shah Tapa and Islam Qala.
"The Taliban were taking food from the people instead of helping them during Ramadhan. They forced people to give money, and their car or cycle of violence," said Zainullah Zaki, the Shirin Tagab district governor.
The residents used any tool in the fight against the Taliban. Local officials said a young man from the district was killed and four others were maimed in the festivities.
A commander of the public uprising forces, Mir Hatam, said they were helped by the Afghan Air Force as they targeted key Taliban hideouts.
Faryab governor Rahmatullah Turkistani said this is the first time the people are making such an attempt against the Taliban.
"This is a very good move against oppression and injustice," the governor said. "I want to pass on the message to Faryab residents that they should stand against any type of oppression and injustice."
He said that one woman was killed and seven children were maimed in a mortar attack by the Taliban in the province on Saturday.
This comes as the Taliban started their spring offensive and the government forces have also switched from "active defense" to "offense" mode against the turbans.
[KhaamaPress] A car kaboom killed or maimed at least 47 people in South-eastern Ghazni province of Afghanistan, the provincial government said.
According to a statement released by Provincial Governor’s Office, the holy warriors detonated a Humvee Armored Personnel Carrier in Saqafat area of Ghazni city at around 4:40 am local time.
The statement further added that the attack which targeted the 703 Special Unit of the Afghan intelligence, killed 7 people and maimed at least 40 others.
The explosion also damaged many homes as far as 2 kilometres away from the site of the earth-shattering kaboom, the statement said, adding that 8 of the maimed individuals are at death's door.
The Taliban ...Arabic for students... group grabbed credit for the attack.
[KhaamaPress] The acting chief of the Afghan intelligence, National Directorate of Security ...the Afghan national intel agency... (NDS), said the orchestrators of recent attacks have links with ISIS and Haqqani terrorist network.
Ahmad Zia Saraj told news hounds that the Afghan intelligence has a system in place to exchange information with the United States and that the documents regarding the recent attacks would be shared with the U.S. side.
He also added that the Al Qaeda terrorist network and other groups have further strengthened their ties with the Taliban ...Arabic for students... group following the signing of peace deal with the United States.
According to Siraj, the Taliban group has carried out at least 3,700 attacks following the signing of the peace deal with the United States.
This comes as the Taliban group rejected their involvement in the recent attacks, particularly the raid on maternity ward in Kabul and the funeral bombing in Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. The Taliban group on Friday issued a statement demanding a transparent and impartial investigations into the deadly attacks in Kabul and Nangarhar provinces.
The group condemned the two attacks in strong words and blamed the ’criminal and malicious elements affiliated with the Afghan government’ for being involved in the two attacks.
"The Islamic Emirate strongly condemned both attacks and clarified that these attacks were the work of criminal and malicious elements who are seeking to attain their malicious objectives by killing defenseless human beings," the group said in a statement.
The statement further added "The Islamic Emirate once again clarifies that it had no hand in the Dashti Barchi incident, considers it a vile, inhumane and an un-Islamic act and shares the grief of the families of deaders and maimed of this tragedy."
Heads of Afghan security agencies at a press conference on Monday justified the change from "active defense mode" -- which was intended as a means of reducing violence following the signing of the US-Taliban deal--to "offense mode," which President Ghani called for days ago in the wake of shocking attacks that took dozens of civilian lives.
The deadly attacks in Kabul and Nangarhar, and a rise in violence by the Taliban in many parts of the country, led President Ghani to call for the military's switch to an aggressive approach, and the officials at the press conference gave supporting evidence for the change.
Speaking at the conference, acting Interior Affairs Minister Gen. Massoud Andarabi said the Taliban has conducted “over 3,800 attacks against the Afghan people and the Afghan government,” and that the group cannot avoid blame for its “crimes” simply by not claiming attacks.
Their conference was held hours after a vehicle-borne bomb exploded at a National Directorate of Security (NDS) facility in the central province of Ghazni, killing eight security force members. The Taliban claimed the attack.
Andarabi said that historical sites were damaged in the attack.
Defending the government’s offensive operations against the Taliban, Andarabi said the Taliban "provides opportunities for other militant groups to operate in Afghanistan."
He added that the Afghan forces are fighting for peace, while "the Taliban is continuing the war on behalf of strangers."
Ahmad Zia Saraj, the acting head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), provided figures on the Taliban’s links with terrorist groups in the region.
He said the Taliban has increased violence and has been seeking to recruit new members. He added that "the Taliban is not thinking about peace, but war."
Saraj briefed the reporters on a recent operation by NDS forces to arrest a key Daesh member, Aslam Farooqi, and other operations to destroy Daesh hideouts around Kabul.
The Taliban’s ties with foreign terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba “have improved” and intense conflicts are ongoing in various parts of the country, Saraj said.
According to him, one of those arrested from a Daesh hideout in the north of Kabul “was a Haqqani network member.”
The acting NDS chief said the Taliban attacked Afghans’ culture by targeting the security forces in Ghazni, who were deployed to safeguard historical sites.
Saraj said Daesh’s main command centers have been destroyed and that attacks in some parts are carried out by small groups of Daesh that have four to five members.
Another official at the press conference was Army Chief of Staff Gen. Bismillah Waziri, who said the people expect the Afghan forces to defend them; therefore, they started ground and air operations and will continue until new orders are given.
[ALMASDARNEWS] According to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), the incident happened at 12:30 GMT. The organization advised extreme caution to any vessels transiting the area.
The company Stolt Tankers, which operates chemical and parcel tankers, said Sunday that one of its vessels had been attacked by pirates off Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... ’s coast. The vessel Stolt Apal, sailing under a UK flag, was approached by two speedboats.
"After multiple warning shots were fired by the armed guard team aboard Stolt Apal, the skiffs opened fire on the ship. The armed guard team returned fire, disabling one skiff and ending the pursuit", Stolt Tankers said.
The company said that the attack resulted in a minor damage to the bridge area from the bullets, with no casualties or injuries among crew members. The ship continued its voyage after the incident.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said earlier on Sunday that a vessel came under attack in the Gulf of Aden without providing further details.
"Vessels transiting the area are advised to exercise extreme caution", UKMTO said in a warning notice on its website. The attack happened at 1230 GMT, it said.
According to the coordinates given by the agency, the incident occurred offshore of Yemen’s port of Mukalla.
The UKMTO provided no further details regarding the incident.
According to maritime security firm Dryad Global, this was the ninth reported incident in the Gulf of Aden this year.
If anyone is following the battle for southern Yemen, the Saudi-backed Yemeni Army is closing in on Abyan’s administrative capital, Zinjibar. Heavy clashes reported between them and the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] ...with his sister and her husband just a week after he failed to report to his probation officer in California and fled to Mexico
José Rodrigo 'Chino Ántrax' Arechiga Gamboa was found executed with his sister, Ada Jimena Arechiga Gamboa, and her husband, Juan García Espinoza
Two of the bodies were located Saturday morning inside a BMW SUV and the third was lying next to it on a road in the Culiacán municipality of Arroyo Seco
Chino Ántrax was reported missing May 9 by a probation officer who visited a California home where he was staying after he was released from jail March 3
The 40-year-old co-founded Los Ántrax, a hit squad tied to Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán's old Sinaloa Cartel
Chino Ántrax was arrested in Amsterdam in December 2013 and later extradited to the United States
In December 2019, he was sentenced to seven years and three months but had served most of the time
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A 17-year-old girl was beheaded by her ex-boyfriend after breaking up with him in Sweden, it is alleged. Wilma Andersson vanished on November 14 last year and police found a 'body part' two weeks later - which was later revealed to be her head.
Her ex-boyfriend Tishko Ahmed Shabaz was arrested at the time and has now been charged with her murder, which he denies.
Shabaz is accused of decapitating Wilma when she went to collect her belongings before wrapping her head in foil and hiding it at his home.
Charges against the 23-year-old suspect were announced last week in a case that has shocked Sweden, which has long held a reputation as one of the world's safest countries.
...except when it comes to Sweden’s very unsafe Muslim colonists, but nice people carefully avoid noticing that...
According to human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... monitor HRS, the suspect was born in Iraq and took up Swedish citizenship in 2014.
Hundreds of volunteers had joined the search for Wilma after she was reported missing in Uddevalla on November 17, three days after she was last seen.
The 'body part' was found on November 28 in a grim discovery which was announced the following day, bringing the search to an end.
Wilma's boyfriend had already been arrested by then, and has been in jug ever since.
The indictment claims that Wilma was killed on November 14, the day she went missing, and alleges that her ex-boyfriend cut up her body.
According to Expressen, Shabaz is accused of hiding Wilma's head in a travel bag where it was wrapped in tape and aluminium foil.
Police also found blood on the floor of his apartment and 'traces of Wilma' on a large kitchen knife, it is alleged.
'The suspect has retained a body part for an unknown reason and got rid of the rest of the body,' the police chief said.
Prosecutors claim that he murdered Wilma by subjecting her to 'repeated violence'.
The rest of Wilma's body has never been found, and relatives have urged people to continue their search.
'We want to find our daughter and sister. It is completely inhumane that we go through so please do not stop looking for Wilma,' her mother Linda told Swedish media.
#13
Who said I support everything the Swedes do? Their moral posturing about foreign policy is repellent, and their immigration policy's stupid and self-destructive. I just said that it was sensible of them to avoid the stupidity of an extreme and draconian lockdown policy, that's all.
[AA.TR] A mayor in eastern The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... was remanded into custody on Monday over terrorism charges, according to judicial sources.
Yasar Akkus, the mayor of Igdir from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested on Friday as part of a terror probe and he was suspended from his position.
A local court remanded Akkus over the charges of the PKK terror group membership, said the sources on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media.
On Friday, several local officials from the HDP, a political party accused by the government of links to the PKK, were detained as part of a terror probe in eastern and southeastern Turkey.
A large number of local HDP mayors have been suspended from office, facing terrorism charges.
Almost one-year, dozens of families have been staging a sit-in protest outside the HDP office in the southeastern Diyarbakir province, accusing party officials of helping the PKK terror group forcibly recruit their children.
In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU -- has been responsible for the deaths of some 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants.
US Department of Homeland Security seizes web domain for Lebanon-based EKT Katrangi electronics stores, which offered online shopping; the US sanctioned the firm in 2018 for allegedly supplying Syria's SSRC advanced weapons program (hat tip - @thawramap Instagram account) pic.twitter.com/iYa48tSaPl
[Rudaw] With air support from the US-led coalition, the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (ICTS) said it launched a ground operation south of Kirkuk on Monday against remnants 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 (ISIS), killing an unspecified number of holy warriors.
"A number of bad boyz were potted in 11 Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s" during the operation on Mount Ghurra, south of Dibis, the ICTS said in a statement.
"Eight caves used by the remnants of the ISIS bully boyz were destroyed, including an IED manufacturing factory," the statement added.
Rudaw English has contacted the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve for confirmation of coalition involvement in Monday’s operation. It is yet to receive a response.
In an effort to purge the group from isolated regions of Anbar, Nineveh, and Saladin, the Iraqi army on Sunday launched operation Lions of al-Jazeera.
The operation, spread over several days, is being conducted by Iraqi army units, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, and Sunni tribal fighters known as Hashd al-Ahsairi. They are accompanied by Iraqi warplanes.
[JPost] An alleged Israeli airstrike targeted a site belonging to the Fifth Division of the Assad regime in the city of Izra in the Daraa Governorate in southern Syria early Tuesday morning, according to a report quoted by the opposition-affiliated Halab Today TV.
A correspondent for Halab Today later denied that there had been an airstrike on the site.
This would mark the first alleged Israeli airstrike reported in Syria since Defense Minister Benny Gantz took over from former defense minister Naftali Bennett.
The last airstrikes blamed on Israel in the Daraa area were reported at the beginning of May, when multiple sites in the Quneitra region and Daraa in southern Syria were targeted by alleged Israeli airstrikes.
#2
According to Strategypage, the Israelis wait until a new ammo dump or missile assembly facility is completed and stocked so that its destruction is maximally expensive. Outstanding.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/19/2020 18:58 Comments ||
Top||
#3
They're Joooish and smart: "Buy low, sell high" applies to war impact as well
Let it crew up/secondaries up
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/19/2020 20:43 Comments ||
Top||
[ArutzSheva] US and foreign government officials say May 9 attack on an Iranian port facility appears to have originated with Israel.
US and foreign government officials say that an attack last week on an Iranian port facility appears to have originated with Israel, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
The attack on May 9 targeted the shipping traffic at Iran’s Shahid Rajaee port terminal. Computers that regulate the flow of vessels, trucks and goods all crashed at once, creating massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility.
Iranian officials later acknowledged that an unknown foreign hacker had briefly knocked the port’s computers offline.
Intelligence and cybersecurity officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that the attack, which snarled traffic around the port for days, was carried out by Israeli operatives, presumably in retaliation for an earlier attempt by Iran to penetrate computers that operate rural water distribution systems in Israel.
A security official with a foreign government that monitored the May 9 incident called the attack “highly accurate” and said the damage to the Iranian port was more serious than described in official Iranian accounts.
“There was total disarray,” said the official, who spoke on the condition that his identify and national affiliation not be revealed, citing the highly sensitive nature of the intelligence. A US official with access to classified files also said that Israelis were believed to have been behind the attack.
The Washington Post was shown satellite photographs depicting miles-long traffic jams on highways leading to the Shahid Rajaee port on May 9. In a photograph dated May 12, dozens of loaded container ships can be observed in a waiting area just off the coast.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has been conducting a campaign of intense attacks on the jihadist positions in northwestern Hama after a deadly attack was carried out by the Hurras al-Deen group on the SAA’s positions in the al-Ghaab Plain last week.
On Monday, the Syrian Army continued their campaign against the jihadist rebels, as their forces unleashed a heavy attack on the Hurras al-Deen group’s positions in the northern region of the al-Ghaab Plain.
According to a military source in the area, the Syrian Arab Army utilized its missile platforms to repeatedly bombard the jihadist fortifications, while also targeting gathering points for these snuffies in northwestern Hama.
At the same time, the Syrian Army was also involved in festivities along the front-lines in southern Idlib, as their troops engaged a group of Ottoman Turkish-backed snuffies in the Jabal al-Zawiya region.
Since the start of May, the northwestern region of Syria has witnessed an increase in violence and bloodshed after last month was relatively calm in Idlib, Latakia, Hama, and Aleppo.
Despite this violence, however, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire... and Russia maintain that the ceasefire in northwestern Syria is upholding well, with both sides commending the situation in the region.
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.
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
...Arabic for 
...Arabic for 
[ALMASDARNEWS] According to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), the incident happened at 12:30 GMT. The organization advised extreme caution to any vessels transiting the area.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A 17-year-old girl was beheaded by her ex-boyfriend after breaking up with him in Sweden, it is alleged. Wilma Andersson vanished on November 14 last year and police found a 'body part' two weeks later - which was later revealed to be her head. 
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
...
[JPost] An alleged Israeli airstrike targeted a site belonging to the Fifth Division of the Assad regime in the city of Izra in the Daraa Governorate in southern Syria early Tuesday morning, according to a report quoted by the opposition-affiliated Halab Today TV.
...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire...
