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Showing posts from January 24, 2010

Eight Americans Killed by Afghan 'Suicide Bomb' - Inside Job by XE/Blackwater

WASHINGTON The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at a remote outpost in southeastern Afghanistan had been invited onto the base and had not been searched, two former U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Thursday A former senior intelligence official says the man was being courted as an informant and that it was the first time he had been brought inside the camp. An experienced CIA debriefer came from Kabul for the meeting, suggesting that the purpose was to gain intelligence, the official said. The former intelligence official and another former official with knowledge of the attack spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The CIA would not confirm the details, and said it was still gathering evidence on the incident. "It's far too early to draw conclusions about something that happened just yesterday," said spokesman George Little. A separate U.S. official suggested the bomber may have set off the explosives a

Investigative details of Karachi Ashura Blast & Aftermath - Dunya Today (4/8)

Ex-Greek premier escapes terrorist blast

Source: UPI Published: Jan. 29, 2010 at 2:46 PM ATHENS, Greece, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- A bomb shook the central Athens office of former Greek Premier Costas Smithis Thursday but there were no injuries. A relatively new group calling itself Revolutionary Liberation Action claimed responsibility for the explosion. There was considerable damage to the 73-year-old Smithis' fifth floor office but he was not there. The group first appeared last March when it claimed responsibility for a similar explosive device planted outside the offices of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a New Democracy MP.

Hamas says top commander killed by Israel in Dubai

Source: Reuters DAMASCUS (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas accused Israel on Friday of assassinating one of its top military commanders in a Dubai hotel, and the Dubai police chief said he could not rule out the involvement of Mossad. World Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, an Israeli target since engineering the capture of Israeli soldiers in the 1980s during a Palestinian uprising, was killed on January 20, a Hamas official told Reuters in the Syrian capital Damascus. "I cannot rule out the possibility of Mossad involvement in the assassination of Mabhouh," Dubai police chief Dhahi Khalfan Tamim told Al Jazeera television, referring to the Israeli intelligence agency. He said he could not announce the nationalities of those involved. Dubai police had earlier said that a "criminal gang" had been following the victim's movements before his arrival in the United Arab Emirates. An official statement said most of the suspects had European pas

Iraq: Blasts Cast Doubt Over Election Security Plan

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Source: Global arab network By Khalid al-Ansary and Ali Karim    Friday, 29 January 2010 01:13 Multiple explosions raise fears that upcoming ballot will be marred by further attacks. A series of bloody bombings that tore through central Baghdad this week has cast doubt on whether a newly-launched security plan will be enough to prevent expected violence ahead of Iraq’s March parliamentary election. The January 25 car bomb attacks on three prominent hotels frequented by foreigners and Iraqi government officials killed at least 36 people and were claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaeda affiliate. The following day, a car bomb attack on an interior ministry forensics office in central Baghdad killed 17 people and injured 80, according to an interior ministry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. The blasts shattered several weeks of relative calm in the capital and raised questions about whether Iraq can control security during the

Spanish police find two suspected ETA arms caches

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Source: JAVNO Police found two caches of bomb-making equipment thought to belong to militant Basque separatist group ETA.   Police found two caches of bomb-making equipment thought to belong to militant Basque separatist group ETA on Friday, regional police said. The two dumps were uncovered close to the site of a cache found on Thursday on a mountainside near the northern Spanish town of Ondarroa, which contained explosives and other bomb-making materials. The finds came following the arrest on Tuesday and Thursday of seven suspected ETA members. Police believe the group were behind a series of attacks including a car bomb blast at the Ondarroa police station in September, which injured around a dozen people. Officers also seized drugs and weapons in the course of the operation. Spanish media reported that packets of cocaine ready for sale were found, along with equipment for weighing the drug. ETA is listed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union a

Burmese Rebel Group Denies Responsibility for Tuesday Blasts

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Source: VOA VOA News 28 January 2010 A prominent ethnic rebel group in Burma has rejected the government's accusation that its members are responsible for two bomb explosions in a central town Tuesday. The Karen National Union issued a statement Tuesday "categorically" denying any involvement in the blasts in the town of Kyaukkyi.  The group accuses Burma's military authorities of instigating violence in order to win the 2010 election.   Burma's state-run media reported Wednesday that authorities had arrested 11 people for allegedly planning terrorist attacks in the Rangoon area.  A report in The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said the suspected terrorists were trained by the Karen National Union. The regime has blamed the group for a series of recent bombings, including a December blast in eastern Karen state that killed seven people and the two blasts Tuesday in Kyaukkyi.  No one was wounded in the Kuyaukkyi bombings, but several buil

'Al Qaida increasingly well-educated and Iraqi'

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Source: Gulf news Group claims responsibility for Baghdad hotel bombings Christian Science Monitor Published: 00:01 January 28, 2010 Soldiers inspect the site of a bomb blast at Iraq's forensics headquarters in central Baghdad on Tuesday. Eighteen people were killed in the attack. Image Credit: EPA Baghdad: An Al Qaida front group in Iraq claimed on Wednesday it carried out the deadly bombings against Baghdad hotels earlier this week, boasting its suicide car bombers were able to breach extensive Iraqi security. Meanwhile, gunmen in a speeding car in Baghdad opened fire on two buses carrying Iranian pilgrims, killing an Iranian woman and an Iraqi driver, the Baghdad security command said. The attack on a main road in northwestern

Bomb kills three children in wave of Pakistan unrest

Source: AFP By Lehaz Ali (AFP) – 2 days ago PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Three children were killed when a bomb exploded Wednesday in a village in northwest Pakistan, while other unrest blamed on Taliban militants left 10 people injured and a militia leader dead. Three boys -- two brothers and their cousin aged between eight and twelve -- were killed as they grazed their families' goats in Dir district, where the military last year embarked on an offensive to drive out Taliban fighters. "It was a timed device. Three children were killed on the spot. Apparently it is an act of terrorism. The militants want to create fear and terrify the residents," district police chief Raoof Khan told AFP. In a similar incident earlier this month in northwest Tank district, one boy was killed and five other children wounded when the youngsters mistook a mine for a football and began playing with it, causing it to explode. It was unclear in that incident if the bomb was planted by militants o

Market blast kills four in Pakistan

Source: THE HINDU A bomb rigged to a cycle detonated in a south-western Pakistani town on Thursday, killing at least four people, police said. Sixteen people were wounded in the blast, which ripped through a market in Sohbatpur in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but most impoverished province, which is plagued by nationalist violence. “It’s simply terrorism as the public was the target,” local police chief Fareed Ali Shah said. Mr. Shah himself survived a roadside bombing in the nearby town of Dera Allah Yar on Tuesday. No group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack, but suspicion fell on ethnic Baloch separatists, who have been waging a low-key insurgency for years. In a separate incident on Thursday, suspected Islamist militants attacked a NATO convoy of three tractor-trailers loaded with trucks, leaving three people injured in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi, police said. The ambush took place before dawn on a main road in Karachi’s SITE industrial neighbourhood sho

Taliban say no decision yet on Karzai offer of talks

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Source: Reuters KABUL/LASHKAR GAH (Reuters) - Taliban leaders will decide soon whether to join talks with the Afghan government, a militant spokesman said on Friday, after President Hamid Karzai invited them to a peace council aimed at ending the Afghan war. In the country's south, suicide attackers launched an assault in the capital of Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province, with gunmen holed up in three buildings, battling government and NATO troops who returned fire with helicopter strikes. When the fighting stopped before dusk a Reuters reporter at the scene saw the bullet-riddled bodies of four gunmen dragged out of a building by Afghan troops and displayed in the street. Two of the dead gunmen wore police uniforms. On Thursday, at a major conference on Afghanistan, Karzai set the framework for dialogue with Taliban leaders when he called on the Islamist group's leadership to take part in a "loya jirga" -- or large assembly of elders --

3 Suicide Bombers Attack Baghdad Hotels, Killing 36 People

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Source: VOA Officials concerned insurgents could stage high-profile attacks to disrupt national parliamentary elections scheduled for March 7 25 January 2010 Photo: AP Iraqi police evacuate a victim of a bomb attack in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Jan. 25, 2010  Three large explosions ripped through Baghdad Monday, killing at least 36 people and wounding more than 70 others.  In the midst of the chaos, the Iraqi government announced the execution of "Chemical Ali"  one of Saddam Hussein's most notorious lieutenants. The series of explosions hit the center of the capital in mid-afternoon.  Iraqi officials said car bombs were detonated outside the Babylon, Ishtar Sheraton, and al-Hamra hotels.  The buildings house foreign aid and news organizations and are frequented by government officials. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Lawmaker and national security advisor Moafak al Robaie said they bore the hallmarks of the al-Qaida offshoot in Ir

DRC Rebel Group Demands Promised Government Ministerial Positions

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Source: VOA The spokesman for the Mai Mai armed group says President Joseph Kabila’s government has failed to meet their demands for ministerial positions after integrating into the national army. 27 January 2010 Map of the DRC In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the spokesman for the Mai Mai armed group says President Joseph Kabila’s government has failed to meet their demands for ministerial positions after integrating into the national army. Didier Bitaki said the ex-combatants are concerned about the government’s refusal to fully implement the political integration agreement signed last year between the former rebels and the Kabila administration. “Since one year now (that) we signed the peace agreement in Goma…the government is not making any action to integrate the political leaders such as myself. We are afraid and very anxious that there is a team of people that (have) confiscated the power in Kinshasa and they don’t want anybody to get there…if they don

Wake Up to American Jihadism

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 Source: CBS NEWS  (CBS/AP) (CBS)  Bruce Newsome, Ph.D., lectures on counter-terrorism at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Made, Not Born: Why Some Soldiers Are Better than Others (Praeger, 2007). For years, Americans have assumed that home-grown Jihadi terrorism would be impossible. Yet in recent months the US government has admitted that it is riskier than previously realized. This admission was triggered by disturbing recent trends. At least twenty Somali Americans have left the US to join a Jihadi group in Somalia within the last couple years. At least two of them have blown themselves up in Somalia this year. In September, federal prosecutors indicted an Afghan-born US resident (Najibullah Zazi) for conspiracy to set off a series of bombs in the US. In October, federal prosecutors indicted a Pakistani American (David Headley) for helping the Jihadi attack in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. Could Americans really plot Jihadist mass-casualty terror

Good turnout in Sri Lanka polls, blasts in Jaffna

source: rediff  Last updated on: January 26, 2010 The first presidential elections in Sri Lanka in the post-LTTE era evoked enthusiastic response on Tuesday from the voters who turned up in large numbers to decide the fate of incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka amid blasts in Tamil heartland of Jaffna. People started lining up even before the beginning of the polls, which opened across the country at 7:00 am. Voting will close at 4:00 pm. "Two petrol bombs were hurled in Velvetthurai in Jaffna early in the morning," military spokesperson Udaya Nanayakkara told PTI. No one was injured in the blasts. Large queues was seen in polling booths at Colombo and elsewhere in the country as people waited eagerly to cast their ballet. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is pitted against former Army Chief General Sarath Fonseka in the sixth Presidential elections in the country. Ahead of the Presidential polls, the Sri Lankan government vowed to protect

Air strikes kill 12 militants in NW Pakistan

Source: AFP (AFP) – 11 hours ago KHAR, Pakistan — Pakistani fighter jets and gunship helicopters shelled two Taliban strongholds killing 12 suspected militants on Monday in the northwest tribal belt, security officials said. The air strikes hit in mountainous and remote areas of Bajaur district, which borders Afghanistan and has been the target of repeated military operations to try to destroy Islamist insurgent hideouts. The first bombing raid took place in Mamoond town, a well-known stronghold of Taliban militants about 25 kilometres (15 miles) northeast of the main district town of Khar. "Air strikes by the jet fighters continued for more than two hours. Ten militants have been killed and several hideouts were destroyed," a paramilitary Frontier Corps official in Khar told AFP. Firamosh Khan, a local administrative official, confirmed the shelling and said "it is true that several militants were killed." Gunship helicopters also shelled Salarzai town, abo

Yemen rebels sue for peace

Source: arab news Agencies   SANAA: The leader of Yemen’s rebels has declared the war with Saudi Arabia over and says he will pull his fighters out of Saudi territory. In an audio recording posted on the Internet, the rebel leader, Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi, said this was a “real chance” for peace between the two sides and called on the Kingdom to accept his unilateral cease-fire. There was no official Saudi response to Al-Houthi’s statement, but Prince Khaled bin Sultan, assistant minister of defense and aviation, said Yemeni intruders would think several times before launching another attack on the Kingdom. Speaking to reporters after opening a medical conference in Riyadh on Monday, Prince Khaled said: “All border regions (in the south) are under our full control for more than a month.” The minister added that the Interior Ministry’s forces would deal with drug and weapons smugglers and other infiltrators. He said b

One killed and 14 wounded in Yemen separatist violence

Source: AFP (AFP) – 13 hours ago SANAA — A policeman was crushed to death in south Yemen on Monday, amid a strike and protests by secessionists in which 11 policemen and three schoolchildren were also wounded by gunfire, witnesses said. The latest unrest followed a weekend of deaths and other violence in the formerly socialist South Yemen, amid growing moves for independence from the traditionalist North. In Monday's violence, a police patrol car ran over a policeman and 11 other law officers were wounded during a shootout with protesters in the city of Daleh, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Sanaa, witnesses said. They said that three schoolchildren were also wounded in Daleh when an armed protester, angry that a secondary school stayed open during a strike called by separatists, opened fire inside the school. Businesses and shops were shuttered in Daleh and the southern city of Zanjibar for a general strike called by the secessionist "Peaceful Movement for th

Attack targets Baghdad hotel compounds, kills at least 36

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Source: Washington Post Gallery Blasts rock hotel district in Baghdad A coordinated attack on Monday, Jan. 25, hit three hotel compounds in the Iraqi capital known for housing foreign journalists, leaving dozens dead and injuring scores of others. The bombings came on the same day as the execution of "Chemical Ali," the notorious cousin of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. » LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY By Leila Fadel, Ernesto Londoño and Debbi Wilgoren Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, January 25, 2010; 2:16 PM BAGHDAD -- A coordinated attack of vehicle bombs on Monday ripped through the perimeters of three hotel compounds known for housing foreign journalists, destroying a nearby apartment building and leaving at least 36 people dead. The bombers hit the Sheraton Hotel compound, which also houses the Babylon Hotel; and the al-Hamra Hotel compound, where The Washington Post bureau is located. Security officials said at least 71 people were wounded. Three of the

Bombs Rock Baghdad As "Chemical Ali" Hanged

Suicide blasts outside hotels popular with Westerners killed dozens of people in Baghdad Monday, according to Iraqi officials. The explosions hit just before the announcement came that Saddam Hussein's cousin was hanged. (Jan 25)

John Burns Q. and A. on Islamic Radicalization

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By JOHN F. BURNS This week, John Burns, the chief foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is responding to readers’ comments and questions about Islamic radicalization. Since the 9/11 attackers flew passenger jets into the twin towers, the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania on that halcyon day in 2001, it is a question few in America, indeed few anywhere in the Western world with access to a newspaper, a radio or a television set, have not asked. Lars Klove for The New York Times Why would a group of young Middle Eastern Muslims, many of them with good educations, promising futures and the opportunity to benefit in their travels from much that is best in life in the West, want to leave such a terrible mark in history? What passion so great, what commitment of faith and unreason so immutable, what cast of mind so hostile to gentleness and compassion, could drive 19 young men to commit such appalling acts of mass murder, extinguishing their own lives in the process?

Car bomb attack kills four in Pakistan

Source: AP By Lehaz Ali (AFP) – 1 day ago PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide bomber killed at least four people including two children on Saturday while militants destroyed a NATO tanker in a region of Pakistan known for harbouring Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The attacker detonated a car bomb outside a police station in Gomal, near the northwestern city of Tank, which neighbours the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan where Pakistani troops are battling Islamist militants. "The bomber struck... outside the police station, killing one policeman and three passers-by including two children," district police chief Ejaz Abid told AFP. He said 11 people including five policemen, three passers-by and three prisoners in the police lock-up were wounded. "This was a car bomb attack, which is a reaction to the ongoing operation in South Waziristan region," Abid added. Pakistan sent about 30,000 troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships into battle against the T

Bin Laden takes responsibility for Christmas Day airline bombing plot

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Source: L A TIMES The Al Qaeda leader vows to continue targeting the U.S. as long as Washington backs Israel. But American officials doubt he played a meaningful role in planning the failed attack. On the tape, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said: "The message we want to communicate to you through the plane of the hero, the holy warrior Umar Farouk . . . is a confirmation of a previous message, which was delivered to you by the heroes"of Sept. 11 . ( AP, AFP/Getty Images ) Reporting from Washington and Beirut - Al Qaeda's leader claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an American civilian jet in an audiotape broadcast today on Arab television. In the clip, Osama bin Laden said his group was behind the failed attempt, allegedly carried out by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight. Speaking directly to President Obama, he vowed to continue launching te