Terrorism Watch

Mogadishu: Somalia`s government said Saturday that 12 Shebab militants were killed in Friday evening`s raids on two heavily-fortified Mogadishu hotels Internal Security Minister Abdirasak Omar Mohamed told reporters that "it was only them (the attackers) who died" in the coordinated suicide strikes. "The violent elements attacked the Weheliye and Siyaad hotels in order to disrupt people from breaking their fast in peace. Seven attackers were involved in the hotel Weheliye attack while five attackers were involved in the Siyaad hotel, and all of them were killed," he said. However a statement from the UN Special Representative for Somalia, Nicholas Kay, said the raids "resulted in the death and injuries of civilians, members of the security forces, AMISOM (African Union) troops and government officials". Security sources said late Friday at least five people died, and witnesses said at least a dozen people were wounded. The evening also saw mortar rounds fi

Srebrenica, Bosnia Herzegovina (CNN) Twenty years ago, as the world stood by, an army   massacred 8,000 men and boys in a Bosnian town because of their ethnicity. It was a drop in a deluge of bloodshed that had gone on for three years.   On Saturday, f ormer President Bill Clinton was part of a delegation  that traveled there to commemorate the largest single atrocity in Europe since World War II, the Srebrenica massacre against the Muslim population during the civil war that tore former Yugoslavia apart. Remembering the victims of the Srebrenica massacre   02:07 The moment of heightened carnage pushed Clinton and other Western leaders to take action back then against a genocidal force the U.N. had warned for months might strike a very vulnerable spot. Gen. Rupert Smith, commander of the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia, had watched the Bosnian Serb Army advance on ground the U.N. had declared as safe areas. He feared it would retake them -- with ruthless consequences for Muslim civilia

Sanaa, July 11:  Fighting raged in Yemen after a UN-brokered humanitarian truce came into effect early Saturday with the warring parties being accused of breaching the ceasefire, officials and witnesses said.(READ:  United Nations chooses Dane to head General Assembly  ) Warplanes of the Saudi-led coalition forces struck several military targets in Yemen’s capital Sanaa and other major cities early on Saturday, two hours after the truce came into effect, while the Shia Houthi group fired mortar shells against pro-government fighters in Mansoura neighbourhood in the southern port city of Aden, witnesses told Xinhua news agency.The ceasefire, which was announced on Thursday by the UN between Yemen’s exiled government in Saudi Arabia and the Shia Houthi group controlling the capital of Sanaa, started at 11.59 p.m. on Friday and will last through the end of Muslim holy month of Ramadan till July 17. It is aimed at facilitating aid deliveries to more than 21 million people in Yemen who have

A suicide bomber on a motorized tricycle killed four people after detonating explosives in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Saturday. The bomber failed to ram a 18-seat bus at about 8 a.m. as the vehicle moved out of a station in the city, said Hassan Ibrahim, a pro-government militia member. “The suicide bomber could not gain enough momentum to get to the traveling bus,” Ibrahim said by phone from Maiduguri. A “few kilometers away from the garage it exploded, killing the tricyclist and three other people who were walking on the road. A few others have also been injured and have been taken to the hospital for treatment.” Africa’s largest economy has been hit by the worst spate of violence since President Muhammadu Buhari took office on May 29. Bombings in the Nigerian cities of Jos and Zaria killed nearly 70 people in the past week. Maiduguri, the birthplace of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, has been the scene of some of the worst bloodshed. Source http://www.bloombe

CAIRO (Reuters) - A bomb exploded in front of the Italian consulate in Cairo on Saturday, killing one person, officials said, raising the possibility that Islamist militants will open a new front against foreigners in Egypt. A security official told Reuters the blast was caused by a car bomb. State news agency MENA cited a senior security source as saying preliminary investigations indicated that a bomb was placed under a car near the consulate and remotely detonated. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the early morning blast, which caused heavy damage to the consulate. It shook other buildings downtown and could be heard in several surrounding neighborhoods. A health ministry spokesman said one Egyptian civilian was killed and 10 wounded. MENA separately said two policemen were among the wounded. Italy's Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said there were no Italian victims in the blast. "Italy will not be intimidated," he said on Twitter. Egyptian President

ISTANBUL:     Turkey   would struggle to cope with a new influx of refugees from Syria's civil war, and many of them would likely end up trying to get into Europe, Turkey's EU Affairs minister warned in comments published on Friday.   Turkey is already sheltering close to 2 million Syrian migrants, more than any of the war-torn country's other neighbours, making it the world's leading host of refugees. It now fears fighting around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo could push as many as 1 million more over its borders.  "Turkey has reached its total capacity for refugees. Now, there is talk that a new wave of refugees may emerge. That would exceed Turkey's (capacity), and it would put the EU face to face with more migrants," Volkan Bozkir told the newspaper Hurriyet during a trip to   Brussels .  Europe is already struggling with an immigration crisis, and European states cannot agree how to cope with it. More than 135,000 refugees and migrants have arrive

- Ideas - The Boston Globe MERSIN, T urkey  — When Marwan Munir  left Syria three years ago, he only intended to stay away from home a short while, like most of the refugees he knows. Munir worked as a trainer at the local professional soccer club in Lattakia, a coastal city known for its fair Mediterranean climate and its boisterous waterfront cafes. Today, Munir is the founder and head coach of a new Syrian national soccer team made up of rebels in exile, which hopes to displace the regime-backed soccer team in Damascus. He has found a home in Mersin, Turkey, a sort of doppelganger just around a bend in the Mediterranean from his hometown. After practice, Munir and his players repair to teahouses along the sea where Syrian expatriates refresh the coals on the water pipes and Arabic competes with Turkish as the lingua franca. Continue reading below “I don’t want to learn Turkish,” Munir said. “I don’t want to admit that we might stay here.” But he has proven quite adept at learning th

Fighters from the Somali militant group al-Shabaab have stormed two hotels in the capital, Mogadishu on Friday evening, leaving several people dead, officials say. According to witnesses, at least four fighters armed with assault rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade attacked Hotel Wehelie, which is situated in the popular strategic road of Makka al-Mukarama. It was timed to happen just after sunset and at the same time that many people were in the hotels to break the fast. Somalia security forces quickly reached the scene and battled the fighters for almost two hours. Security officials have told local media outlets that four of the attackers have been shot dead. Al-Shabab officials claimed responsibility for the attack. The group had carried out similar attacks in hotels located in the same busy area. So far, at least four civilians have been confirmed dead and several others injured. In another attack, a blast was heard in hotel Siyaad which is closely located to the Presidential pa

Open Gallery  1 A woman kisses a coffin of a newly identified victim of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre at the Memorial Center in Potocari near Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mary Fitzgerald 11/07/2015 | 02:30 What is it like to bury the mangled remains of the men of your family over a period of decades? The women of the Ademovic family know. They are among the women of Srebrenica who lost fathers, husbands, brothers and sons when Bosnian Serb forces overran the besieged Muslim town on July 11, 1995 despite the fact the United Nations had declared the enclave a "safe area". As former secretary-general Kofi Annan put it, what happened in Srebrenica will forever haunt the UN. The poorly supported Dutch peacekeepers stationed there to protect the town were pushed aside. They looked on as the Serbs rounded up everyone in sight, separated the men from the women and children, and took them away to be killed. Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic ordered women and children to be tak

July 1, 2015 15:59 PM IST Johnlee Varghese A file image shows Isis policemen carrying out night patrol in Mosul. Islamic State Nineveh Information Centre Among a host of restrictions introduced by Islamic State (Isis) militants in the Iraqi city of Mosul is the ban on performing the traditional Taraweeh prayers during Ramadan, the violation of which resulted in the public flogging of some residents. According to  Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty  (RFE/RL), Isis has declared the practice of Taraweeh prayers as 'Bid'ah', which in Arabic means religious improvisation. The ultra-radical group had decreed that the Taraweeh prayers should not be performed as there is nothing religious about it and just a 'fad' invented by Saudi clerics. It is practised widely in Saudi Arabia. Taraweeh prayers are performed by pious Muslims, including Salafists. Although Isis is an offshoot of salafism, the radical group has decreed that anyone found performing Taraweeh prayers will be flog

Fascist moment The Arab world is in the throes of a fascist conflagration, borne of Islamist extremism, writes  Abdel-Moneim Said The “fascist moment”, like the “perfect storm”, expresses the nature of a period of time that sweeps into the histories of peoples and nations in a flash. It is a period of upheaval, quakes, hurricanes; a period in which events range out of control and in which the system, human or material, only regains equilibrium after great violence and destruction. Historically, the fascist moment arrived in the wake of major changes brought, for example, by the French Revolution and its repercussions, from the Napoleonic wars to the rise of labour and socialist movements. These triggered conservative backlashes that eventually turned racist against minorities in European countries and against “non-white” countries elsewhere. Eventually, World War I erupted, perhaps to restore the world to some sanity. But the fascist moment arrived again in the 1930s, when the “sanity”

My parents in the days of Rhodesia, before a brutal war overthrew that racist government and the country became Zimbabwe.   AN AFRICAN The detail that completely caught me by surprise in  Politico 's rather unsatisfying post " Want to Meet America’s Worst Racists? Come to the Northwest ," was not the Pacific Northwest's ugly "racial legacy," nor that the region is the home to "virulent online racists" the Northwest Front (a group apparently admired by the man accused of killing nine black Americans in a Charleston church,  Dylann Roof ). Nor did it surprise me to learn that the NF wants to make the PNW a country as white and pure as snow. No, the thing that I didn't see coming is that the leader of NF,  Harold Covington , wants the PNW to be "a Rhodesia regained." I was born in this man's paradise, Rhodesia,  a country that is now called Zimbabwe. The transition from Rhodesia (ruled by whites) to Zimbabwe (ruled by blacks) was mad