Terrorism Watch

50 killed as suicide blast hits mosque in Pakistan.

KARACHI - PAKISTAN: Huge blast rips through Karachi police compound

Source: Washington Post The bombing injured scores and leveled much of a police building in Karachi. An official said 350 people might have been inside. (Rizwan Tabassum) By Karin Brulliard Friday, November 12, 2010 ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Gunmen and a vehicle bomber attacked a police building in the center of Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, late Thursday, killing at least 18 people and injuring scores, officials said. In what appeared to be a well-organized assault, about six militants opened fire on a criminal investigations office in Karachi's "red zone," a highly secured area that houses the provincial minister's residence, elite hotels and the U.S. Consulate. That was followed by a massive truck bombing that was heard across the city and that reduced much of the police building to rubble. Violence is common in the southern port city, which is riven by ethnic and sectarian rivalries. But large-scale bombings are rare, and the attack stirred fears that

 Source: CP By Jon Gambrell (CP) – 38 minutes ago MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Nigeria's main militant group in the oil-rich southern delta on Friday released a list of hostages it had taken from an attack on an offshore oil rig, with at least one name matching that of a U.S. worker believed to be held. In an email, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta identified the seven men taken from a rig operated by London-based Afren PLC — which includes two U.S. workers, one Canadian, two French and two Indonesians. The email sent to journalists described the men as being "in good health and (they) will be in our custody for a while." "Our fighters (caused) extensive damage on this facility and attempted to set it ablaze as they were instructed to do," the email read. The list of seven names included that of James Robertson, a U.S. worker on the rig for contractor Transocean Ltd. Local television stations in Mississippi earlier this week reported that Rober

Source: Front page Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (Regnery), and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster) Reza Aslan is an increasingly comic figure as he races around the country slandering freedom-fighters and trying to pretend that people have a negative view of Islam because of “Islamophobes” rather than Islamic jihad terrorism. It’s rather surprising that this diminutive Islamic supremacist snake-oil merchant still finds willing audiences of dupes, but such is the abysmal state of the public discourse today. “Aslan discusses

Source: Collegian 11/12/2010 President Obama talked about U.S. jobs and economy in India and Indonesia this week. Meanwhile, he’s been questioned back home about these efforts and those of the Federal Reserve to jump start the economy through techniques that are being described as “devaluing” the U.S. dollar to aid American exports. This approach has been compared to the currency manipulation that China engages in and the U.S complains about. President George W. Bush also just released his memoir and he has appeared on network television to discuss his presidency. There’s certainly a lot to compare between the state of the world and the outlook the U.S. has toward the world under both the Bush and Obama administrations. With that comes an important need to measure the not only the actions and styles of leadership between these two presidents but also the feeling

Source: Open Democracy   Joint anti-nuclear proliferation operation results in multiple arrests in Georgia. One year after Fort Hood shootings, US army outlines plans for radical security overhaul. Somali pirates land largest-ever ransom payment. All this and more in today's security briefing. On Monday the Armenian government announced the detention of a man suspected of supplying weapons-grade uranium to two men arrested earlier this year in a joint operation between the Armenian and Georgian security services. Garik Dadayan, who previously served two and half months of a two-year sentence for a similar offence committed in 2003, was intercepted following a tip-off by Georgian investigators. Anonymous investigators told the Guardian they believed Dadayan had been allowed to keep some of his stash by Georgian border guards at the time of his original arrest, having bribed his way out of detention. Meanwhile, the two men to whom Dadayan is alleged to have supplied 18g (0.6

Source: DEFPRO November 8, 2010 WASHINGTON | Extremist networks are melding together, unsafe technologies are rapidly increasing, and the United States must stand vigilant in the face of these threats, the undersecretary of defense for policy said here on Thursday. U.S. troops are fighting in Afghanistan today because the region has been a breeding ground of “plausible” threats of massive harm to Americans, Michèle Flournoy told the World Affairs Council. The most vicious and elaborate attacks of terrorism in the past decade have originated in Afghanistan, “and it’s on the Pakistani side of the border that Afghanistan’s senior leadership continues to evade justice and plot future attacks,” Flournoy said. Terrorists can easily access technologies of mass destruction, and they have the will to use them, she added. The recent cargo plane bomb effort by terrorists in Yemen is one example of how such attacks can be unpredictable, she said. Free nations in the world cannot allow t

Source: Telegraph In a special despatch, The Sunday Telegraph looks at the lawless Yemeni region that is the haunt of Anwar al Awlaki and other leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.    Image  1  of  2 Anwar al-Awlaki is thought to be hiding in southern Yemen   Photo: AP   Image  1  of  2 Yemeni army troops take position on September 27, 2010 in the hills overlooking the southern town of Huta   Photo: AFP By Tom Finn in Sana'a, Bill Lowther in Washington, Philip Sherwell and Colin Freeman 7:30PM GMT 06 Nov 2010 For someone who lives close to some of the world's most wanted men, Abu Mudrik Bin Fahir takes a suprisingly neighbourly attitude. A tribal sheikh in the eastern Yemeni province of Shabwah, his fiefdom is wedged amid the mountains that serve as the mai

Source: washington post ALGIERS, Algeria -- The interior minister has reportedly said that Algeria will resume a policy of arming people to reinforce the fight against terrorism in the north African country. Dahou Ould Kablia says the government would honor a request of some civilians in insecure areas for weapons "to fight against terrorism." He didn't specify which people would be armed and said the defense ministry was behind the decision. Algerian media on Wednesday published the comments made Tuesday. Al-Qaida's offshoot in North Africa has its roots and has carried out killings in Algeria. The government had a policy of arming civilians during the Islamist insurgency that left up to 200,000 people dead in Algeria in the 1990s. It was later halted under amnesty deals

Source: Telegraph A team of Pentagon arms control experts is being sent to East Africa to warn of growing threats that al-Qaeda could make biological weapons with deadly germs stolen from insecure laboratories. The Pentagon arms control experts team includes US Senator Richard Lugar, who spearheaded programmes to destroy the former Soviet Union's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons after 1991   Photo: AP By Mike Pflanz in Nairobi 9:00PM GMT 09 Nov 2010 The panel, including Kenneth Myers, the director of the Pentagon's Threat Reduction Agency, will inspect facilities in Kenya and Uganda where some of the world's most infectious diseases are stored and studied. Defence analysts are increasingly concerned that the laboratories' security is too weak to withstand the increasing threat from regional terror groups, including al-Qaeda, who are hunting for ing

Source: Globe and mail Reviewed by DANIEL SEKULICH From Wednesday's Globe and Mail When it comes to describing Somalia, one of the few words you would expect a sane person to use would be “paradise.” But a few years ago, in Kenya’s port city of Mombasa, that was exactly how one man remembered for me the Somalia of the 1970s: as an economically vibrant, politically stable and culturally inviting country. Today it is better known as one of the most lawless places on the planet, fraught with warlords, famine, religious extremists – and pirates. Pirate State: Inside Somalia?s Terrorism at Sea, by Peter Eichstaedt, Lawrence Hill Books, 209 pages, $27.95 How Somalia got to this point and how piracy has come to flourish in the seas off the Horn of Africa are what drives U.S. journalist Peter Eichstaedt’s new book, Pirate State: Inside Somalia’s Terrorism at Sea . A former senior editor with Uganda Radio Network, the author knows East Africa well (his previous book looked a

Source: gmanews Leftist militants warned the Philippine government against building up a climate of “anti-terror hysteria" and urged it to respect human rights as it responds to growing fears of a possible terror attack in the country. Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) made this warning amid a spate of travel advisories by foreign countries warning against possible attacks in the country, following the foiled terrorist attack on the United States. “The government should take caution in validating so-called terror threats. It should not promote fear and panic and it should respect human rights," Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes Jr. said on the Bayan website on Nov. 4. The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and France have all issued travel advisories, warning their citizens of possible terror attacks in the Philippines. Human security act In the same statement, Bayan also exhorted the government not to rush its use of the

Source: saba news [07/November/2010] SANA'A, Nov. 07 (Saba) – Yemen is spending a large portion of the funds allocated for development on the fight against terrorism and piracy and providing needs of about a million African refugees, Deputy Minister for Planning and International Cooperation Hisham Sharaf said on Saturday. Though these problems are aggravating and overshadowing the situation in Yemen, the international support to Yemen remains insufficient, he said. "The international community should support Yemen financially, technically and militarily to be a capable force against terrorism under the current circumstances." Yemen is for a region free from problems and is determined to root out terrorists and overcome all security and economic challenges, he said. FR Saba

Iranian pilgrims are targetted in bomb explosion near the Iraqi central city of Karbala, a Shia holty city. Source: Aljazeera   Bomber targets Karbala pilgrims Suicide bomber kills at least six as Shia pilgrims converge on Iraqi holy city. ( 28-Jul-2010 ) The Shrine of Imam Hussein in the holy Shia city of Karbala is one of the sites frequented by pilgrims [GALLO/GETTY]  A bus carrying pilgrims from Iran has been hit by a bomb explosion in Touirij town near Karbala in central Iraq, killing at least 10 people and injuring another 38. According to officials, the explosion occurred at a parking lot in the northern part of the city on Monday. It is an important place of pilgrimage, especially for Shia Muslims. Some 1,500 pilgrims from neighbouring Iran visit Shia shrines in Iraq a day, mainly in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Mohammed al-Moussawi, head of the Kerbala provincial council said that, "It was a car bomb. There were Irania

source: abc news 5 countries, 2 days, several near misses: How authorities thwarted al-Qaida mail bombs The woman stepped off Hadda Street into a pair of courier offices in Yemen's capital. In FedEx and UPS storefronts tucked along shopping centers and travel agencies in San'a, she mailed two Hewlett-Packard printers to the United States. FILE - In this Nov. 4, 2010 file photo, armed Yemeni police stand guard by a closed UPS office in San'a, Yemen. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File) (AP) She used a fake name, address and phone number. She paid in cash. Then she disappeared. Hidden inside each printer was a bomb powerful enough to down an airplane. Authorities believe it was the most sophisticated effort yet by al-Qaida in Yemen to strike inside the U.S. Though details are still emerging, a senior U.S. official said evidence points to a plot to blow up cargo planes inside the U.S., either on runways or over American cities. Alerted to the plot by Saudi intelligence