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Showing posts from March 28, 2010

Changing face of terror in Russia

Source: FT By Charles Clover Published: April 3 2010 03:00 | Last updated: April 3 2010 03:00 Posing for the camera, 17-year-old Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova brandishes a pistol and snuggles up to her husband, his own pistol-toting arm draped around her. On Friday, Ms Abdurakhmanova became the face of Islamist terrorism in Russia, after authorities announced that she was one of two female suicide bombers who carried out the deadliest terror attack in Russia for six years, killing 40 in the Moscow metro on Monday morning. She is thought to have detonated an explosive belt in Lubyanka metro station, killing at least 26. She and her husband, Umalat Magomedov,were foot soldiers in a shadowy grouping, the Caucasus Emirate, which claimed responsibility for the blasts on Wednesday. Like al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups, it is less of an organisation and more of a brand name for a loosely affiliated movement of autonomous warlords, bound by little more than ideology and hatred.

Blast near SAA presumed to be assassination attempt

Source: Eyewitnessnews Rahima Essop | 7 Hours Ago It has emerged that a bomb blast near the South African Airways office in Maputo was aimed at the wife and children of a Pakistani businessman. Independent Mozambican media reported that Tuesday’s blast was an assassination attempt and not targeted at the airline’s office. An SAA security company told weekly newspaper Savana that the blast occurred a few minutes after the wife of businessman Syed Manzar Abbas returned home from fetching their children from school. Three people were seriously hurt in the explosion and three cars damaged. The force of the blast also rocked nearby buildings. It has been reported that the bomb was planted on a motorbike and timed to explode at 2pm, when Abbas’s wife usually fetches her children, but went off 10 minutes too early. Mozambican police arrested a man on Thursday in connection with the attack but have remained tight-lipped about the case, neither confirming nor denying the possib

Yemen denies jailbreak in south

Source: paltelegraph Sana’a, Yemen, April 3, 2010 ( Pal Telegraph, by Anwar Al-Shoaybi)- Yemen on Thursday denied reports that about 30 detainees recently rounded up by police forces had fled following a bomb blast outside a prison in the southern Yemeni city of Dalea. A statement from the Yemeni Ministry of Interior said that “Reports of prisoners escaping from jail are totally groundless”.Security sources had reported that a tussle flared up outside a police station close to the prison between security men and protestors participating in a mass anti-government demonstration in Dhale’a. One of the detained protestors then pelted a bomb he was hiding at the police, wounding two policemen and three demonstrators, according to the sources. They said that around 30 of those just apprehended took to their heels after the explosion. Sources from the Southern Protest Movement said that the bomb was hurled at the protestors by police. However, the Ministry statement said that one

Blast in Lalgarh on eve of Chidambaram visit

Source: TOI KOLKATA: Suspected Maoist guerrillas triggered a landmine blast in rebel-hit Lalgarh in West Bengal's West Midnapore district Saturday, a day ahead of union home minister P Chidambaram's visit to the area, police said. The blast in Bamal village, a few km from Lalgarh town, created a four-feet crater on the road. "Raids are on in the area. They (the Maoists) may have triggered the blast," West Bengal police chief Bhupinder Singh said. Television channels said three-four Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers were injured in the blast. Bhupinder Singh said he had no such information. Chidambaram is scheduled to visit the Lalgarh belt, about 200 km west of the metropolis, Sunday to review the operation being conducted by the joint forces comprising central paramilitary troopers and state armed police since last June to flush out the left wing extremists from the area.

Official: Militants kill policeman in Dagestan

Source: AP (AP) – 1 hour ago ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia — A Russian official in the restive southern province of Dagestan says three militants opened fire on police officers in a drive-by shooting, killing one and injuring another. Dagestan — part of Russia's predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region — has been the epicenter of a week of violence. A 17-year-old Dagestani girl has been named as one of the two suicide bombers to hit the Moscow subway, killing 40 people Monday and injuring 90. Two other suicide bombers struck Wednesday near Dagestan's border with Chechnya, killing 12 people. Dagestan's Interior Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Gadzhiyev told The Associated Press that Saturday's shooting occurred near the village of Chontaul, 40 miles (70 kilometers) northwest of the provincial capital of Makhachkala. Russian authorities are fighting an active Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus.

First terror attack on J&K rail track

Source: TOI SRINAGAR: Terror targeted railway tracks in the Valley for the first time as suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives blew up a portion of the line near Avantipora station late on Thursday night, disrupting train services between north and south Kashmir for nearly 12 hours. There was no casualty. The terrorists detonated an improvised explosive device at Gulbugh village, 44km from Srinagar, between Anantnag and Pulwama around 10.30pm. ``They had planted IED under the track and triggered the blast, blowing up two feet of the section. At the time, a Baramulla-bound train was 10km away at Anantnag, in the Qazigund-Baramulla section,'' said IGP, railways, Gopal Reddy, on Friday. It was the first attack on railway property in the Valley, a Northern Railway spokesman said in New Delhi, indicating the ``desperation'' of the extremists. The terrorists had made an abortive bid to blow up tracks on April 8 last year, barely six months after Prime Minister Manmohan Sin

Somalis in rare march against al-Shabab militants

Source: megi Hundreds of Somalis have marched through the streets of Mogadishu, protesting against al-Shabab militants. The protesters, mostly women and children and wearing traditional white clothes, chanted slogans denouncing the al-Qaeda-inspired group.The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan says this is only the second public demonstration against al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia. The protesters shouted their support for the UN-backed government. Mohyadin Hassan Afrah, who helped organise the protest in one of Mogadishu's few government-controlled districts, says people were upset at a move by al-Shabab to destroy the tombs of revered Sufi clerics. Al-Shabab follows the strict Saudi Arabian-inspired Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, rather than the Sufi Islam of many Somalis. "We call for a holy war against them," said Sheikh Somow, from the Sufi Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama group, which recently stuck a deal with the government. Mr Afrah also sa

Britain and America linked to Somali pirates, Somalia still suffers

Source: redress By Tim Coles 1 April 2010 Tim Coles argues that British and US policies in Somalia, and London’s and Washington’s support for warlord Abdullahi Yusuf’s Transitional Federal Government, belie their opposition to the Somali pirates. Britain’s former chief of the General Staff, Richard Dannatt, has clarified the role of British institutions in world affairs. “[S]uccess can only be achieved if our actions are fully integrated with our government partners in the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], DFID [Department for International Development] and all the other instruments of national power” (2009). According to DFID, one of the instruments of national power, “[a]cross the country [Somalia], as fighting cuts off the delivery of essential services and a prolonged drought causes widespread crop failure, an estimated 3.76 million people – close to 40 per cent of the population – are thought to require emergency help. In no other country in the world

Minimising nuclear risks, rationally

Source: PAKOBSERVER Syed Muhammad Ali US expert David Albright’s latest book, ‘Peddling Peril’ warns that theft of nuclear material by terrorists pose a serious risk to international peace and security. The effort to cope with this enormous global challenge needs not only international co-operation but also appropriate re-direction, proportionate to the risk and relevant to the locations of large nuclear stockpile storage sites and major nuclear technology sources spread in well over 40 countries. At their 2002 summit, G-8 leaders committed to spend $20 billion over a decade to secure weapons of mass destruction. But that effort, the researchers said, appears to have lost its way and only $3.5 billion has been spent, said Robert Einhorn, co-author of a CSIS report and a former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation According to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB), more than 250 incidents involving unauthorized pos

28 Nations Helped U.S. To Detain “Suspects”

Thursday, 1 April 2010, 4:44 pm Twenty-eight nations have cooperated with the U.S. to detain in their prisons, and sometimes to interrogate and torture, suspects arrested as part of the U.S. “War on Terror.” The complicit countries have kept suspects in prisons ranging from public interior ministry buildings to “safe house” villas in downtown urban areas to obscure prisons in forests to “black” sites to which the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC) has been denied access. According to published reports, an estimated 50 prisons have been used to hold detainees in these 28 countries. Additionally, at least 25 more prisons have been operated either by the U.S. or by the government of occupied-Afghanistan in behalf of the U.S., and 20 more prisons have been similarly operated in Iraq. As the London-based legal rights group Reprieve estimates the U.S. has used 17 ships as floating prisons since 2001, the total number of prisons operated by the U.S. and/or its allies to house

Hezbollah denies responsibility for truck bomb blast that killed Hariri

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Source: CSMONITOR Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the militant Shiite group Hezbollah, said Wednesday his group was not behind the 2005 truck bomb blast that killed Lebanon's former prime minister. Many fear instability if an investigating tribunal issues indictments in the Hariri assassination against Hezbollah officials. General view of the scene of a car bomb explosion in Beirut February 14, 2005. A massive car bomb killed Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri on Beirut's waterfront. Mohamed Azakir/Reuters/File Beirut, Lebanon The leader of Lebanon’s militant Shiite Hezbollah confirmed for the first time late Wednesday that a tribunal investigating the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister has summoned several members of the party for questioning. ut Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah rejected accusations that his party had a hand in the assassination of Rafik Hariri in a February 2005 truck bomb blast, claiming that su

13 Afghans killed by bicycle bomb Victims were waiting for seeds given out as part of anti-poppy campaign

Source: The star KABUL—A bomb concealed on a bicycle killed 13 people Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, as the Pentagon’s top military officer said NATO forces hope to reverse the Taliban’s momentum in the south with an upcoming offensive in Kandahar. Forty-five people, including eight children, were wounded in the blast, which occurred in the Nahr-e-Sarraj district just north of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, said deputy provincial police chief Kamaluddin, who uses one name. The bomb exploded near a crowd gathered to receive free vegetable seeds provided by the British government as part of a program to encourage them not to plant opium poppy, provincial government spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said. Casualty figures fluctuated several times during the day because of communications problems in the area, Kamaluddin said. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which President Hamid Karzai blamed on “enemies of the Afghan people who are against peace.”

Fear of anti-Muslim backlash after Russia blast

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Source: kuwait times International News  April 01, 2010 MOSCOW: Her only fault was she looked different. Nargiza, a 17-year old daughter of a half-Armenian janitor mother, was beaten up by enraged Muscovites as their anger over Monday's metro bombings linked to Caucasus militants boiled over into blind prejudice. "She was beaten up in the street, her hair torn, face injured, her clothes torn,"said Galina Kozhevnikova of Moscow-based Sova Centre, a rights centre that tracks hate crimes, citing an acquaintance who witnessed the incident. The girl-assumed to be Muslim because of her darkish skin-became an unfortunate victim of a spike in anti-Islamic sentiments stirred up by the twin bombings that claimed the lives of 39 people, Kozhevnikova said. "They stood there, recorded on phones and yelled: go on, finish off a shahid," said the account posted by the witness, who was not named, on LiveJournal, one of Russia's

Why the Moscow Bombings Weren’t Breaking News in Russia

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Source: Updatenews 01 April 2010. The news of the subway suicide bombings in Moscow on Monday – Russia’s worst terrorist attack in five years – led news broadcasts around the world almost immediately after the event unfolded. But in Russia, viewers who tuned in to the country’s three main television networks that morning had little reason to suspect anything was amiss – they were watching shows about cooking and makeovers. The networks, all of which are controlled by the government or state-owned companies, stayed with their regularly scheduled programming as the tragedy unfolded, waiting for up to two hours to provide their first substantive reports on the attacks, which killed at least 39 people. Bloggers and political commentators say the slow response of the networks – Channel One, Rossia 1 and NTV – is indicative of the state of television journalism in Russia today: the major broadcasters have been so co

Wednesday: 4 Iraqis Killed, 6 Wounded

Source: antiwar by Margaret Griffis , March 31, 2010 Updated at 9:03 p.m. EDT, March 31, 2010 At least four Iraqis were killed and six were wounded in unusually light violence. Meanwhile, the governor of Ninewa province called for the release of Iraqi detainees who have not been convicted of any crimes. In election news, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ’s bloc submitted complaints regarding the election tally. The prime minister promises to abide by any decisions made and insists he is not trying to change the outcome. Meanwhile, Moqtada al-Sadr has called upon Iraqis to vote in a referendum that will determine the new prime minister. Votes will be collected this weekend at Sadr offices, mosques, and other sites. A spokesman for the Iraqiya bloc, which won the most seats, said that any referendum would be non-binding. In Mosul , a blast killed two policemen . Two people were wounded in a grenade attack. Also, at l

Suicide bombers hit Russia again

Source: Toranto SUN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  March 31, 2010 6:55am  By Arsen Mollayev, MAKHACHKALA, Russia - Two suicide bombers including one impersonating a police officer killed 12 people in southern Russia on Wednesday, two days after deadly suicide bombings blamed on the region's militants tore through the Moscow subway system. Wednesday's blasts in the province of Dagestan came despite Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's vow to "drag out of the sewer" the terrorists who carried out the Moscow attacks, which killed 39 and injured scores more. There have been no claims of responsibility for either set of attacks. Bombings and other attacks occur almost daily in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia, provinces in Russia's North Caucasus region where government forces are struggling against a separatist Islamist insurgency. The Moscow subway bombings were the first suicide attacks in the capital in six years and shocked a country that had grown accu

One person dead after explosions and fire destroy Rock Island home March 31, 2010

Source: WQAD March 31, 2010 ROCK ISLAND, Ill. - One person is dead after a fire swept through a Rock Island home Wednesday. 9-1-1 callers reported hearing an explosion just before the flames, where smoking and oxygen tanks may have been a bad mix. "It was like a bomb going off," said one neighbor. Neighbors rushed to the scene around 2 p.m. Wednesday, after a blast shook their floors and rattled their windows and walls. Charlie and Christine Owen shot an amateur video of the scene minutes before fire crews arrived. The video shows flames beginning in the living room area of the home, and a neighbor using a garden hose to keep the flames from igniting his house.

Govt not ruling out Headley's extradition 1 Apr 2010,

Source: ET NEW DELHI: Even as the government vets the legal papers required to be submitted to the US authorities for seeking access to Lashkar operative David Coleman Headley, it is exploring the possibility of his extradition by examining his plea agreement in the light of the Indo-US extradition treaty. “No...we are not ruling out seeking Headley’s extradition,” Union home minister P Chidambaram said on Wednesday and added that the government was taking a careful look at the three relevant documents — the plea agreement between Headley and the US attorney for the North district of Illinois, the MLAT and the extradition treaty in force with the US — before finalising its legal moves in the Headley case. “We are examining the legal implications of the (plea) agreement and, as I stated earlier, we intend to press our request for access to David Headley for questioning him and for recording his testimony... We are also examining the plea agreement in the light of the provisions o

Kasab's trial ends, verdict on May 3

Source: HT A special court in Mumbai on  Wednesday set May 3 for pronouncing its verdict in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case, over a year after trial began in the sensational case that saw several ups and downs, including prime accused Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab retracting his confession. According to Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, the final arguments in the case ended here Wednesday and Speial Judge ML Tahaliyani scheduled the verdict for May 3. Kasab and his Indian associates Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed are the prime accused in the case. "Thereafter, if Kasab is found guilty, then the special judge would decide about the punishment," a beaming Nikam told mediapersons. Appearing relieved of the major burden of single-handedly conducting the prosecution, Nikam said this is the first time in the world that a trial against a dreaded terrorist has been completed in a record seven months -- he was discounting the court holiday due to parliamentar