Terrorism Watch

ANKARA, Turkey — A prominent lawyer and human rights defender, who faced a criminal charge for supporting Kurdish rebels, was killed Saturday in an attack in southeast Turkey in which a police officer also died, officials said. Tahir Elci was shot while he and other lawyers were making a press statement. Two policemen and a journalist were also injured. It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the attack and there were conflicting reports about what led to it. Interior Minister Efkan Ala and other officials said the assault was against police officers, and that Elci died in an ensuing clash. However, the Diyarbakir Bar Association said the lawyer, who was Kurdish, was the target of the attack. Elci, 49, was the head of the bar association in the mainly Kurdish city and a human rights activist. He was briefly detained and questioned last month for saying during a live news program that the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, is not a terrorist organization. Soon afte

President Obama on Saturday called for additional gun control measures in the United States, after  the slaying of three people Friday  at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. In a written statement, Obama said that regardless of the motive, it was unacceptable that these sort of mass shootings happen so frequently in the United States. "This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal," he said. "If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period. Enough is enough." Administration officials have been scrutinizing whether they can undertake additional gun controls through executive action, but no proposals have yet to be finalized. The leading proposal would impose new background-check requirements for buyers who

As the hacker collective  Anonymous continues its cyber war against the Islamic State , other internet users have also joined the fight.  The hacker group has vowed to hunt down members of the terror group, while creative users of imageboard 4Chan have decided to fight back with humour using rubber ducks. "How about castrating the image of IS by replacing the faces on ALL the propaganda photos with bath ducks?" a 4Chan user wrote. Since then, many Photoshop masters have been busy putting the heads of rubber ducks onto images featuring Isil fighters. An album called  ‘creates the duck state ’ has been viewed more than 100,000 times on photo-sharing site Imgur.  "Great, now I'm scared to take a bath," commented one user. Another wrote: "This is how we fight Daesh. Humiliate them." The campaign comes after Anonymous declared war on the Islamic State following the  terror attacks in Paris .  "You should know that we will find you and we will not let y

Media reportage of incidents and events of a geopolitical nature merely skim the surface. The reality or deeper reality is obscured by the murky world of geopolitics and even world politics. This statement amounting to almost an axiom may capture the lows that the Turkish Russian relations have fallen to after the downing of a Russian jet by the Turkish military. It may be stated here that Turkey claims that it did not know that the jet was Russian; its military had warned the pilot of the jet after it strayed into Turkish airspace. After repeatedly ignoring warnings, Turkish military shot down the jet. This irked the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who has launched what amounts to war against the Islamic State. Putin ignored calls from the Turkish President, Reccep Erdogan , demanded an apology and Russia has vowed to scale down ties with Turkey. On the face of it, the reaction to the shooting down of the Russian jet by Moscow seems churlish and even childish. States do not usu

NOVEMBER 28, 2015, 7:14 AM | The man was arrested Thursday in Brussels and was not identified, but was charged with terrorist attacks and taking part in the activities of a terrorist group. Belgium now has six people still in police custody, all under suspicion of involvement in terrorist activity related to the Paris attacks. Debora Patta reports from Brussels. View More: Saturday News | World News | Live News | More News Videos Source:  http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/suspect-arrested-in-belgium-in-connection-with-paris-terror-attacks/

DAMASCUS: One person was killed and 30 wounded Saturday in rocket and mortar attacks on two neighborhoods of the Syrian capital separately blamed on rebels and government forces, state media and activists said. The fatality and three of the injuries occurred when a rocket hit the mostly Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma in the Old City of Damascus, state news agency SANA reported, blaming rebels. Meanwhile, 27 people were wounded by government mortar rounds fired into the northeastern rebel-held Qabun neighborhood, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Some of them were seriously wounded, said the Britain-based group. It was not immediately clear if Saturday's casualties were civilians. Rebels frequently fire rockets on Damascus, which is largely in government hands, from positions on the outskirts of the city. They often hit residential areas, causing dozens of deaths. Government forces also regularly attack rebels entrenched in the Eastern Ghouta region

KIRKUK, Iraq: A suicide bomber killed six people on Saturday in the Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu, the scene of deadly clashes between Kurdish and Shiite forces earlier this month, officials said. The bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint in the town, also wounding 16 people, according to Shallal Abdul Baban, the official responsible for the area, and a police colonel. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but suicide bombings are a tactic employed by Sunni extremists in Iraq, including ISIS, which overran large areas last year. The bombing follows deadly fighting between Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish forces that began as a dispute at a checkpoint near Tuz Khurmatu on Nov. 12, then escalated into clashes that spilled into the town itself. The violence between groups of fighters opposed to ISIS was a stark illustration of the major divisions among the various Iraqi forces battling the extremists, which has hampered efforts to defeat the

Peshawar, Nov. 28 ( ANI ): In an airstrike carried out by the Pakistan Air Force near the Afghan border, 17 militants have been killed. According to the Express Tribune, four militant hideouts and an ammunition dump were also destroyed in the strikes that took place in the Rajgal area of the Khyber Agency as per the statement released by the military. "Seventeen terrorists including some foreigners were killed in the aerial strikes in the remote area of Rajgal," a brief military statement said. The strikes, which have begun since 2014, were part of a key attack aimed at taking out the Taliban and Al Qaeda strongholds, one of seven Pakistani tribal districts bordering Afghanistan. Following the Taliban massacre at a school in Peshawar last December leaving 150 dead, the army has intensified its offensive. Source:  http://aninews.in/newsdetail4/story242479/pakistan-airstrikes-kill-17-militants-in-khyber-agency.html

Four Egyptian security personnel have been killed in a shooting attack on a police checkpoint south of the capital, Cairo. Two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire using machine guns at the checkpoint in the ancient burial ground of Saqqara, a security source said on Saturday. The Egyptian Interior Ministry said in a statement that the assailants were still at large and security forces were scanning the area of the attack in search of the gunmen. The news of the shooting attack comes as Egyptian security forces and officials have been frequently targeted by militants based in the Sinai Peninsula. The volatile region is regarded as a safe haven for the militants from the so-called Sinai Province Takfiri group. In mid-November, Egyptian security forces killed 24 Sinai militants in an attack on their hideout in the central part of the region. The Sinai Province militant group has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks in the region over the past months. The group has p

London/New Delhi, Nov. 28 ( ANI ):  New Delhi  is under a serious threat of  aerial strike s from different terror outfits including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (  ISIS ), the Ministry of Home Affairs said. The report said that security agencies have taken necessary steps to foil any such attacks and have prepared a list of 15 key areas in the Indian capital that they fear might be targeted. The areas under threat, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs, include the Prime Minister's house, the residences of Home Minister and Vice-President, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Rajpath, India Gate and the CGO Complex that houses the headquarters of key agencies such as the CBI, CISF and BSF. Various objects like unmanned air system (UAS), drones, and paramotors could be used to launch these attacks, the ministry said. The security agencies have been instructed to shoot down any unidentified or suspicious flying object once it is declared 'non-friendly' by the India Air F

At least three people have died - including two peacekeepers and a contractor A mortar attack on a United Nations base in northern Mali has left at least three people dead, including two peace-keepers and a contractor. he attack on the base in Kidal also injured 20 people, of which four are in a serious condition. VIDEO: Footage from inside the hotel in Mali where dozens were killed and wounded in terror attack Video by:  ITN-Asana Greenstreet 360p low 00:00 / 01:01 It is not known who was behind the attack but Islamic extremists are suspected. There are unconfirmed reports that the two peacekeepers were from neighbouring Guinea. 2 Tight security surrounds Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita as he visits the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali (AP) Mongi Hamdi, the head of the UN mission and the special representative for the secretary-general in Mali, said: "I want to reit

Source http://m.timesofindia.com/world/middle-east/Why-do-people-join-ISIS-Expert-says-foreign-fighters-are-almost-never-recruited-at-mosque/articleshow/49935399.cms The vast majority of people who join ISIS are recruited by family and friends and radicalisation hardly ever occurs in a mosque environment, a leading Oxford University academic has said. Speaking on a panel hosted by the UN in New York, Scott Atran revealed that research shows three quarters of those who join ISIS as foreign fighters were encouraged to do so by friends and peers. Acc. to Prof. Scott Atran,  #radicalization  can be seen over 6 stages  #CTC   #FTFs #CT_research   @PRLTUN @UNwebcast pic.twitter.com/FPOiPXECzV — United Nations CTED (@UN_CTED)  November 24,  2015 A further 20 per cent were recruited to Isis by family members, the expert said. In the wake of the Paris attacks almost two weeks ago, there have been widespread calls for Muslim communities to do more to denounce extremism in structured se

JAKARTA: The scene is horrifyingly familiar. Islamic State soldiers march a line of prisoners to a riverbank, shoot them one by one and dump their bodies over a blood-soaked dock into the water. But instead of the celebratory music and words of praise expected in a jihadi video, the soundtrack features the former Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, singing a Javanese mystical poem: "Many who memorize the Quran and Hadith love to condemn others as infidels while ignoring their own infidelity to God, their hearts and minds still mired in filth." That powerful scene is one of many in a 90-minute film that amounts to a relentless, religious repudiation of the Islamic State and the opening salvo in a global campaign by the world's largest Muslim group to challenge its ideology head-on. The challenge, perhaps surprisingly, comes from Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population but which lies thousands of miles away from the Islamic State's base in th

New York:  After the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado and the Mumbai attack in 2008, police departments across the United States adopted a new mindset on how to deal with what they call "active shooter" incidents in which people are trapped in restaurants, theaters or other soft targets. Long gone are the days of establishing a perimeter and waiting for SWAT teams and hostage negotiators to save the day. The new formula for preserving lives calls for ordinary police officers to go on offense and take the attackers' lives, with an emphasis on speed and force. It's an approach reinforced by the recent multipronged attacks in Paris and the hotel siege in Mali. After those attacks, authorities have been hammering home the dangers of responding to mass homicides in progress, even suggesting that hostages should fight for themselves as a last resort. With the horrors of Paris still fresh, Washington, D.C., Police Chief Cathy Lanier said in a recent television

Source http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34950261 Reuters A man could be seen being taken into custody outside the centre Three people have died after a man exchanged gunfire with police from inside a birth control clinic in the US city of Colorado Springs, police say. One police officer and two civilians were killed, Mayor John Suthers said. Several other people were injured. A male suspect was taken into custody after a stand-off with police lasting hours at the Planned Parenthood clinic. A number of people were trapped inside the clinic while the stand-off with police took place. Authorities say the motive for the incident is unclear. Officials said earlier that 11 people, five of them police officers, had been wounded but it is not clear if the fatalities came from that number. All roads around the area were closed, the  city's police said  in a tweet. Eyewitness Carol tells the BBC that she saw an officer being shot and then dragged to safety The manager of a nearby hair