(Xinhua) -- A suicide attacker exploded himself near the vehicle of intelligent service members in eastern Afghan province of Khost, killing two intelligent agents and two civilians on Friday morning, said a police official. Abdul Qayum Baqizai, the provincial police chief told Xinua that it occurred at 10 a.m. (GMT 0530) in the Jaji Maidan district when a suicide bomber with explosive material strapped to his body exploded himself next to the vehicle of Afghan intelligent service member killing two agents and two civilian passers-by. "Seven more were injured in the blast including a former senior intelligence official named General Azizullah," Baqizai said.
No one or individuals have yet to claimed responsibility. Taliban militants have carried out several similar attacks against interests of government and international troops. Conflicts and spiraling insurgency have claimed the lives of over 4,000 people mostly militants so far this year in the war-torn country.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
...killing two intelligent agents and two civilians...
Russia's navy has sent a warship to Somalia's coast to combat pirates and will mount regular anti-piracy patrols in the area, a navy spokesman told Russian state television on Friday. "In the future the Russian navy will send its ships on a regular basis to zones where there is a danger from maritime piracy," navy spokesman Igor Dygalo told the Vesti-24 television station. "There's no need to fear!
The Russian navy is here!"
He said one Russian warship left its base on the Baltic Sea on September 24 heading for the area off Somalia's coast to tackle pirates operating there. The ship is equipped for a crew of around 200 and is armed with torpedoes, missiles, artillery and mines.
A Ukrainian freighter was seized by pirates on Thursday with tanks and other military hardware aboard. The Belize-flagged Faina with a crew of 21, including three Russians, was hijacked while on its way to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, reportedly with a cargo including 30 T-70 battle tanks and armored vehicle spares.
Dozens of ships, mainly merchant vessels, have been seized off Somalia's 3,700-kilometre coastline in recent years, despite the presence of Western navies deployed in the region to fight terrorism.
The pirates travel in speedboats and are armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. They sometimes hold ships for weeks until ransoms are paid by governments or owners.
In recent months, a multinational taskforce based in Djibouti has been patrolling parts of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, where a pirate mother ship is believed to be operating.
You'd think that if we wanted to find the mother ship, we'd find the mother ship.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
"He said one Russian warship left its base on the Baltic Sea on September 24 heading for the area off Somalia's coast to tackle pirates operating there."
Don't they have any ships in the Indian Ocean? The timeline for their response is a week?
#4
Russia on its way to Somalia to defeat pirates and release booty?
Stalin and the Russian army was on its way to Berlin to defeat Hitler and appropriate booty.
The rest is history.
#5
If the Russian cruiser were to say, hit a WWII era mine in the middle of the Indian ocean on the way to fight pirates off Somalia, well,
that would be an interesting history lesson.
Anyone with a WWII era mine laying around for an interesting object lesson.
#7
Laugh all you want. It could just be that the clumsy, heavy handed approach of the Russians is exactly what is needed here. No more surgical strikes. No more finesse. No more worry about collateral damage. Just blast away.
Posted by: Abu Uluque6305 ||
09/27/2008 16:04 Comments ||
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#8
The problem is that Russian anti terrorist ops have killed many more Russians than the bad guys. Budyonnovsk, Nord Ost and Beslan come to mind. On the other hand, there are few Russian civilians in Somalia.
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 17:11 Comments ||
Top||
#9
My understanding is that there is a US warship 1000 yds from where it's ancored to prevent any off loading. So we gonna have a jurisdictional dispute when the Lone Rangerski shows up?
#10
EB- They have a couple of days to think about it. My question is whether the Ruski Air Force is showing up for this. They can land in Kenya for refueling/emergency overhaul.
Sucks not having any decent UAV capability either.
Police in London say they have arrested three men under the Terrorism Act, according to the Associated Press. Police told AP they are questioning three men aged 22, 30 and 40. The men were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Police said they were searching four properties in London, but did not give immediate details on what the men were suspected of doing.
AP reports that two of the men were stopped in the street by armed officers in Lonsdale Square, north London, and that a small fire at a property in the square was related to the arrest, police said. The third arrest was made near a subway station in the Islington district of north London. The arrests were intelligence-led, police said.
#1
More Police arrested three men on Saturday in connection with a fire at the offices of the publisher of a book about the Prophet Mohammed and his child bride.
#2
From tipper's article: Britain's domestic Press Association news agency said some residents, whom it did not identify, reported that the incident may have involved a petrol bomb being pushed through the firm's letterbox.
I read elsewhere that the police/Scotland Yard/MI-? had been watching the gentlemen for some time, followed them to the house, watched them push a flaming petrol bomb through the mail slot in the door, then arrested them while the firemen broke down the door to put out the fire. It seems the neighbors are just now discovering how much they dislike having a terror magnet in their midst.
(AKI) - The terror suspects arrested by German police at Cologne airport on Friday were planning to go to Pakistan, a German daily has claimed. It's the Promised Land for turbans...
Citing unnamed security officials, the Berlin newspaper, Tagesspiegel, said both suspects were en route to Pakistan via Amsterdam and Uganda.
The two suspects were arrested after a special commando unit stormed a KLM airliner on the tarmac of Cologne-Bonn Airport before it took off. A 23-year-old Somali national and a 24-year-old German citizen born in Somalia were arrested after months of surveillance by police who feared they would carry out suicide attacks.
Police are reported to have found farewell letters in the apartment of the two suspected terrorists saying they wanted to die for 'jihad' or holy war.
According to KLM, the Dutch airline, the plane had already received clearance for take off but permission to depart was later revoked and commandos raided the aircraft. Following the arrest of the suspects, the remaining 48 passengers aboard KLM Flight 1804 left the aircraft and all luggage was checked.
The passengers later continued on the flight, which landed in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport after a one hour of delay.
Both suspects apparently did not live in Cologne.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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For the past six weeks Pakistani troops supported by helicopter gunships, tanks and heavy artillery have begun to drive Taliban militants out of the tribal area of Bajaur.
The action was visible as Cobra helicopters pounded positions outside the village of Tang Khatta, a short distance from Khar, Bajaur's main town, and ground troops fought an hour-long gun battle. Militants have regularly attacked the village compounds with rockets since they were pushed out two weeks ago.
The sound of explosions and machine guns were audible from behind Tang Khatta's thick mud walls as soldiers traded fire with the Taliban across fields hemmed in by barren mountains. The army claims it has killed over 1,000 militants in Bajaur, a place described by commanders as the "centre of gravity of the insurgency".
"The threat from Bajaur radiates in all directions," said Maj Gen Tariq Khan, the commanding officer of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force engaged in the bulk of counter-insurgency operations in the tribal areas. "If we dismantle this here and destroy its leadership then 65 percent of militancy will be controlled. If they lose this, they lose everything."
Khar and its surroundings are deserted. Soldiers have taken over the area's numerous schools and nearly a third of Bajaur's one million people have fled the fighting. At Tang Khatta militants took cover in fields of half-harvested maize, caves and dried-up ravines a mile away.
"I wish I could take you there but they are in the nullahs [ravines]," Colonel Javaid Baloch told a group of journalists taken to the village on a visit organised by the military.
But fighting did not all go the army's way. Three officers - one of whom lost both his legs - were seriously injured.
The battle for Bajaur began only after 2,000-3,000 militants overran a paramilitary post at Loi Sam, which the military has not yet retaken. "It was like putting your hand into a wasp's hive," said Maj Gen Khan.
Militants have dug into areas with fox-holes, tunnels and trenches and over 65 troops were killed and 200 wounded. The Taliban have gathered reinforcements from the Waziristan tribal areas. Others are coming from Afghanistan. "We caught 200 crossing the border with rocket launchers from Afghanistan," said Maj Gen Khan, who appeared angry at America's failure to control the frontier. "But there is no such effort to stop them".
It's your frontier. Why don't you control it?
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 00:36 ||
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#1
I'll wait to pass judgment on the troop transport trucks, it's those two on point that are not instilling any confidence - is that a bicycle built for two?
#3
Months???? Huh? - They've had 721 months and haven't made visible progress, not that the British did all that much better in roughly two centuries before them, Sir Charles Napier excepted.
Took a few centuries to close the frontier in North America, if Mexico is considered "closed".
#5
"We caught 200 crossing the border with rocket launchers from Afghanistan," said Maj Gen Khan, who appeared angry at America's failure to control the frontier. "But there is no such effort to stop them".
well, since they were returning home, don't you Paks think you have a responsibility here?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 10:08 Comments ||
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#6
As Fred has pointed out, while the various players are members of different tribes and thus hate each other, they're in agreement on the broad principles of Pakistain: 1) Hindus are evil and must be put down 2) Sharia is the only natural law 3) Afghanistan is the preserve and pasture of Pakistain and 4) everyone is out to get them. The only questions are how much Sharia and who gets to wear the bejeweled turban.
So of course the Pak army doesn't want to fight the rubes frontier people. They're cousins. Close cousins.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 11:38 Comments ||
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#7
Counterinsurgency wars are not easy. By this time our military knows quite a bit about successful counterinsurgency efforts from both training and experience. Aghanistan and Pakistan are bundled together. We don't win in Aghanistan unless we control things in Pakistan. That means having the support of the larger population and government of Pakistan, having good intelligence, and isolating the militants (terrorists) from the larger population. This is a tall order. Whether Pakistan is up to the task is a big, big question mark. The Pakistan military shooting at our helicopters is not a good sign of their willingness to do something about their terrorist problems.
To win in Afghanistan and Pakistan, our military has to have the support of our government. Many in our Congress and the main stream media torpedoed the war effort in Vietnam and they would like to torpedo the effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We cannot win in these hostile areas if we can't win the hostile areas in the U.S. I remember seeing patent hostility that some of our Democratic Senators showed when they questioned General Petraeus when he testified before Congress. I remember, the moonbat left Soros-backed MoveOn.org referring to General Petraeus as General Betrayus. That is very sad, treacherous, and downright evil. I will remember this traitorous behavior when I vote in the upcoming Presidential election. Despite what BO says, I don't believe that he is ready, able, or has the willingness to address our terrorism problems. So in order to win in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we must win two wars. I never, ever want to see our buildings toppling and our skyline on fire and 3000 of our citizens murdered before our eyes on television.
#8
Whether Pakistan is up to the task is a big, big question mark.
Sadly, Pakistan will not begin to be up to the task until as a society they decide that it is not only worth doing, but that they themselves must do it, not us as their servants/dupes. They are not anywhere near that point, even if a few of the intelligencia are willing to say that the jihadis are now attempting to conquer Punjabi Pakistan as well as the tribal territories and Afghanistan. I've no idea how to square that circle with the fact that for the nonce we need the transport corridor to Afghanistan even more now that the fight is moving there from Iraq.
Police on Friday arrested a terrorist carrying explosives and a kalashnikov from Mohib Shah Road in Jampur. The terrorist, Abdur Rahman Khetran, was wanted by the Rajanpur police in a number of terrorism cases. However, Khetran's accomplice Huzoor Bakhsh Lund managed to escape, Jampur Deputy Superintendent Police Shah Alam Gashkori told reporters.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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A Mulagoori tribe lashker foiled a Taliban bid to kidnap a prayer leader from a local mosque late on Friday. The lashker captured 11 Taliban after an exchange of fire. The tribesmen intercepted the Taliban taking prayer leader Omer Gul to the Khyber Sheikhwal area. Three Taliban were injured during the clash, and have been handed over to the political administration. The remaining eight Taliban are still being held by the lashker. The tribesmen said they would decide about the remaining Taliban's fate following consultations. One Taliban was killed in a brief clash outside the mosque as the prayer leader was hauled into a Taliban vehicle.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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Taliban publicly executed a man after finding him 'guilty' of charges of murder, robbery and theft in Swat's Speenpura area on Friday. The Taliban brought the man to Speenpura after an 'Islamic court's verdict' and killed him in front of hundreds of people. Meanwhile, a woman and her son were killed when a mortar shell hit their house in Madian. Two policemen were injured in firing by the Taliban in the district's Barikot Bazaar. Meanwhile, Swat police have issued shoot-at-sight orders for any masked individual in the district, Samaa TV reported. The Swat DPO also ordered police action against vehicles with tinted glasses.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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The situation in Bajaur Agency will be stabilised within two months, the Frontier Corps (FC) chief in the region said on Friday. "My timeframe for Bajaur is anything from between one-and-a-half to two months to bring about stability," FC Inspector General Maj Gen Tariq Khan told reporters on an army-organised trip to Bajaur.
Taliban killed: Khan said troops had killed more than 1,000 Taliban and injured 2,000 others since the offensive began in early August. Khan said five top Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders were among those killed in the month-long operation. He said they included four foreigners. They were Egyptian Abu Saeed Al-Masri, Arab Abu Suleiman, Uzbek Mullah Mansoor, and an Afghan commander called Manaras.
The fifth was a son of Faqir Mohammad, the top Taliban commander in the region. Faqir himself was believed to be injured. Some 63 troops had died and 212 were injured in the operation so far, Khan said.
65 percent: Khan estimated 65 percent of the Taliban problem would be eliminated if they were defeated in Bajaur, describing the region as a 'centre of gravity' for the Taliban. "If they lose here, they've lost almost everything," he said.
Military officials paraded 10 blindfolded and handcuffed men said to be Taliban fighters -- arrested during the operation -- before the reporters who joined the trip.
Khan also showed reporters photos of tunnel systems and trenches, suggesting the Taliban were well established in the region that is considered a likely hiding place for top Al Qaeda leaders including Osama Bin Laden. He put the Taliban's strength at around 2,000, including Afghans, Uzbeks and Arabs as well as Pakistani Taliban. He said the Taliban's fighting strength had not gone down appreciably despite heavy casualties due to reinforcements coming in from the northwest as well as Afghanistan. "I personally feel that trained squads have been moved in," Khan said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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The Meghalaya police on Friday produced before court Mominul Hoque, a third year student of Shillong Law College, who was arrested on Thursday night after he had allegedly confessed to having sent an e-mail warning suicide attack on senior BJP leader L.K. Advani.
The court remanded him to 14 days in police custody. The student is a resident of the Laban locality of Shillong.
The police also picked up seven others for questioning. The police said they were trying to ascertain if the student had any link with the Indian Mujahideen. Several newspapers of Meghalaya on Wednesday received an e-mail purportedly sent by the Indian Mujahideen, threatening to carry out a suicide attack on Mr. Advani during his visit to Shillong on September 29.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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The noose was further tightened around top SIMI leader Safdar Nagori and alleged brain behind Indian Mujahideen(IM) Abdul Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer with Andhra Pradesh filing cases against them and eight others on the charge of conspiring to wage a war against the state by planning terror camps.
The case was registered based on the confessions of suspected SIMI activist Mohammed Jaber who was arrested by city police earlier this month, officials of the Central Crime Station (CCS) said.
Police claimed Jaber, who also figures in the case, told investigation officers that Nagori, during a visit to Hyderabad in May 2007, had inquired about a location on the city outskirts to set up a terrorist training camp on the lines of a terror camp unearthed at Kalaghatgi forest area in Dharwad district of Karnataka early this year.
Jaber, currently in police custody, told the officials Nagori and two other top SIMI functionaries stayed at his residence here and planned a terror training camp in forest area of Anantagiri Hills in neighbouring Ranga Reddy district.
The proposed camp was aimed at recruiting youths from neighbouring states to train in jihadi and sabotage activities, a CCS official said.
Nagori, who is in custody of Gujarat Police, was arrested from Indore in March this year.
The other accused in the case include Abu Basher, alleged mastermind of Ahmedabad blasts, another top SIMI functionary Qamaruddin Nagori, Muqeemuddin Yasir and Raziuddin Nasir - sons of Moulana Naseeruddin, a city resident accused in the assassination of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya, and Motasim Billah, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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(AKI) - At least six people were killed and several others were wounded in a bomb attack on a train in eastern Pakistan near the Indian border on Friday. More than 15 people were injured in the explosion which occurred near the city of Bahawalpur in the eastern province of Punjab.
It was the second major incident in Pakistan on Friday. Three suspected militants blew themselves in the southern port city of Karachi after police stormed their hideout reportedly thwarting a major attack
According to a report on Pakistan's Geo News, two train carriages were derailed following the blast in Bahawalpur, killing at least six people including a woman and three children. Sources said that many of the injured were in a critical condition and were rushed to Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur while rescue teams were sent to the scene of the accident.
According to police, several people were still trapped in the wreckage.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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The United States has suspended visa services at consular offices in Pakistan following a bloody terror attack in the capital of the country, the State Department said Thursday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
There goes the walkin' around $$$ courtesy of DoS.
#3
The United States has suspended visa services at consular offices in Pakistan following a bloody terror attack in the capital of the country, the State Department said Thursday.
About fuxking time!@
Cancel Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, ...... SHIT CANCEL EVERY ISLAMIC COUNTRY STARTING CLEAR BACK TO FORGOTTEN YESTER-YEARS OR SOONER.
WHY do "OUR" unelected immigration apparatchiks think our Beautiful nation is is immune to Damage, Treachery or plain EVIL??
I fear we lost some very good folks due to the "bloody terror attack".
Three would-be suicide bombers were killed along with a handcuffed hostage when one of the bombers blew himself up following a police raid on a house early on Friday, police said. They were believed to be members of terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. ... which is now an element of al-Qaeda in Pakistain.
Police raided the house in Baldia Town following information from an activist of the group arrested on Thursday, AP reported. "Ow! Ow! Ow! I'll talk! I'll talk! Just put them back!"
They hurled five hand grenades at the police before one of them blew himself up, Karachi Police Chief Wasim Ahmed said, adding terrorist leader Raheemullah was arrested from the house.
Target: "We have saved Karachi from death and destruction. We know [about their identities and intended targets], but we cannot disclose them immediately," Sindh Police Chief Babar Khattak said, adding the terrorists were suspected of planning an attack on a 'high-profile' target in Karachi.
The handcuffed hostage was identified as Shaukat Afridi, a transport worker who supplied fuel to the US-led forces in Afghanistan. He was kidnapped five months ago for a ransom of five million dollars.
Raheem allegedly masterminded the April 2006 Nishtar Park suicide attack, the killing of Allama Hassan Turabi in July 2006 and the October 18, 2007, twin blasts at Karsaz. The police also seized explosives, hand grenades and rifles from the house.
This article starring:
Allama Hassan Turabi
Karachi Police Chief Wasim Ahmed
Raheemullah
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Sindh Police Chief Babar Khattak
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has demanded the Fidayeen-e-Islam, a militant outfit that has claimed responsibility for the September 20 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, change its name, the BBC Urdu reported.
Taliban spokesman Zulfikar Mehsud told BBC from an undisclosed location that the TTP already had an organised subsidiary branch with the name of Fidayeen-e-Islam, which he said had nothing to do with the Marriott bombing, and it would be better for the group, calling itself Fidayeen-e-Islam, to use another name. According to BBC, the TTP announced the establishment of Fidayeen-e-Islam -- a group consisting of would-be suicide bombers -- in February 2007. The organisation was, however, not heard of following the announcement.
This article starring:
ZULFIKAR MEHSUD
TTP
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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Turkish warplanes crossed the border into northern Iraqi airspace to bomb 16 Kurdish rebel sites, a spokesman for Turkey's military said Friday. There were no reports of any deaths in the air attacks, which occurred late Thursday night.
The airstrikes targeted Kurdish rebel positions on Qandil mountain, at Iraq's border with Iran, Brig. Gen. Metin Gurak told reporters in Ankara, Turkey's capital.
Ahmed Deniz, a spokesman for Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, told wire services the airstrikes targeted areas that already were largely abandoned, owing to earlier attacks from neighboring Iran. The raids injured one rebel and two civilians, Deniz said.
Turkish leaders say intelligence shared by the U.S. military has helped Turkey better target the rebel bases. In New York on Friday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul praised what he called the strategic partnership between Turkey and the United States, and called it vital to regional and global security.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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(PTI) At least 20 LTTE cadres were killed in fierce clashes in the restive northern Sri Lanka where fighter jets attacked a Sea Tiger base in Jaffna peninsula, the military said today.
Sri Lankan Air Force MI-24 helicopters attacked a Sea Tiger gathering point in Pooneryn in Jaffna late last night, the defence ministry said. Air force confirmed that the strike caused heavy damages to the outfit, it said.
"Security forces personnel engaged in Wanni liberating operation in Mullaittivu front are on the eve of another significant victory against LTTE cadres as the troops of 57 Division advanced into the Kokkavil general area this afternoon," the Defence Ministry said.
Reports of fighting have increased in recent months amid government's declaration to crush the group by the end of the year. Fighting, which has escalated in the past two years, further flared after the government in January pulled out of the 2002 cease-fire pact with the rebels.
According to the latest information received from the front, the troops of 57 Division are in close vicinity to the Kokkavil railway station complex, it said.
Elsewhere, troops killed four LTTE cadres during a confrontation in Akkarayankulam in Kilinochchi yesterday, the military said, adding two militants were killed earlier in the area during an attack on the Tamil Tiger bunker in the area on Thursday.
Separately, one rebel was shot dead in Akkarayankulam in Kilinochchi yesterday, the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) said. It said troops captured two trench lines in Kokkavil in Kilinochchi after heavy clashes yesterday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008 00:00 ||
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CAIRO, Sept. 27 -- A car carrying more than 400 pounds of explosives blew up in Syria's capital on Saturday, killing 17 people in at least the third deadly attack this year in the tightly policed Arab country.
Interior Minister Bassim Abdel Majid said "terrorists" were responsible for Saturday's attack but told state television that officials did not know who carried it out. "We cannot blame any party," he said.
The bomb exploded Saturday morning in a neighborhood around the capital's Sayida Zaineb shrine, ripping the fronts off buildings and shattering car windows. The shrine attracts Shiite pilgrims in the majority Sunni Muslim nation. The apartments lining the crowded streets around the mosque are home to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees, many of them poor, unemployed and undocumented.
News reports from Syria said the bombing occurred near a state security post. There were conflicting reports as to the nature of the post, with one opposition web site saying it was no more than a car park used by state security services.
Police barred all journalists except state television crews from the scene. Syrian television said all of those killed were civilians.
The attack follows a car bombing in February that killed Imad Mugniyeh, a security chief for Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based armed political movement that the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization. Last month, a gunman shot to death a Syrian general who the Syrian opposition and Israeli officials said had been a top liaison between Syria and Hezbollah. Syria has not announced any arrests in those killings, and the identity of the killers and their motives remain a mystery.
Syria, under President Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000, and his son and successor Bashar al-Assad, has built one of the world's most extensive internal security systems.
Which apparently isn't working so well ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 15:37 ||
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#2
Bashar al-Assad should stuck with dentistry. Well maybe not. How about goat tender? Syria seems to be at the confluence of some kind of cosmic payback.
#3
Forget the goat tender comment. Don't want to be unkind to goats and besides PETA is a little over-committed with trying to get mother's milk to replace cow's milk in ice cream.
North Korea covertly supplied Syria with nuclear reactor technology and a facility that was bombed by Israel, CIA Director Michael Hayden last week confirmed.
Israeli planes bombed the North Korean structure at Al-Kibar alongside the Euphrates River last September. However, Damascus refused to acknowledge the facility was a nuclear reactor. "We have nothing to say about it."
Following the raid, The Syrians immediately cleared away the rubble and every trace of the building, stonewalling the IAEA when asked to explain," Hayden told a forum in Los Angeles. Which is easy to do to a lap watchdog organization such as the IAEA.
"Their cover-up only underlined the intense secrecy of this project and the danger it had posed to a volatile region.
The CIA formed a group of officers who started working overtime on this issue in April 2007 and kept at it for months, he said.
Virtually every form of intelligence -- imagery, signals, human source, you name it -- informed their assessments, so that they were never completely dependent on any single channel," he said.
Hayden said a report from a foreign partner initially identified the structure as a nuclear reactor similar to one in North Korea. U.S. officials have said Israel supplied the information, including photographs.
"But even without that piece of the puzzle ... we had previously identified the facility on imagery as a suspicious target," Hayden said. "When pipes for a massive cooling system were laid out to the Euphrates River in the spring of 2007, there would have been little doubt this was a nuclear reactor." Hey, it's a water treatment plant.
Yeah, but the discharge goes back into the river.
Well, that's it. A reactor. Just playin' the devil's advocate and seeing if you guys were on yer toes, heh.
Hayden denied Pyongyang sought to use the reactor as a replacement for Yongbyon. We took that hypothesis and worked very hard on it, but the mainstream theory held sway," he said. It was just the Norks and Syria's version of globalization economics.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008 15:02 ||
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#1
Well done, CIA!
/yes, it feels good to be able to say that. I hope there are lots of other little projects they're working on that we'll find out about afterward.
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.
(Xinhua) -- A suicide attacker exploded himself near the vehicle of intelligent service members in eastern Afghan province of Khost, killing two intelligent agents and two civilians on Friday morning, said a police official. Abdul Qayum Baqizai, the provincial police chief told Xinua that it occurred at 10 a.m. (GMT 0530) in the Jaji Maidan district when a suicide bomber with explosive material strapped to his body exploded himself next to the vehicle of Afghan intelligent service member killing two agents and two civilian passers-by. "Seven more were injured in the blast including a former senior intelligence official named General Azizullah," Baqizai said. 
Russia's navy has sent a warship to Somalia's coast to combat pirates and will mount regular anti-piracy patrols in the area, a navy spokesman told Russian state television on Friday. "In the future the Russian navy will send its ships on a regular basis to zones where there is a danger from maritime piracy," navy spokesman Igor Dygalo told the Vesti-24 television station. 
Police in London say they have arrested three men under the Terrorism Act, according to the Associated Press. Police told AP they are questioning three men aged 22, 30 and 40. The men were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
(AKI) - The terror suspects arrested by German police at Cologne airport on Friday were planning to go to Pakistan, a German daily has claimed.
A Mulagoori tribe lashker foiled a Taliban bid to kidnap a prayer leader from a local mosque late on Friday. The lashker captured 11 Taliban after an exchange of fire. The tribesmen intercepted the Taliban taking prayer leader Omer Gul to the Khyber Sheikhwal area. Three Taliban were injured during the clash, and have been handed over to the political administration. The remaining eight Taliban are still being held by the lashker. The tribesmen said they would decide about the remaining Taliban's fate following consultations. One Taliban was killed in a brief clash outside the mosque as the prayer leader was hauled into a Taliban vehicle.
Three would-be suicide bombers were killed along with a handcuffed hostage when one of the bombers blew himself up following a police raid on a house early on Friday, police said. They were believed to be members of terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. 
Turkish warplanes crossed the border into northern Iraqi airspace to bomb 16 Kurdish rebel sites, a spokesman for Turkey's military said Friday. There were no reports of any deaths in the air attacks, which occurred late Thursday night. 
CAIRO, Sept. 27 -- A car carrying more than 400 pounds of explosives blew up in Syria's capital on Saturday, killing 17 people in at least the third deadly attack this year in the tightly policed Arab country.
