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Showing posts from November 15, 2015

Mali mourns heavy toll after hotel terror attack

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Source http://m.france24.com/en/20151121-mali-counts-heavy-toll-after-hotel-terror-attack Islamist militants killed 19 people in an attack on a top hotel in the capital of Mali on Friday before government commandos stormed the building and rescued 170 people, many of them foreigners.  President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita announced the death toll and said seven people were wounded  in the attack , which has been claimed by jihadist group Al Mourabitoun and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Two militants were killed. Friday’s assault on the Radisson Blu hotel comes a week after deadly Islamic State  attacks in Paris  that killed 130 people. The Mali attack was the latest in a series of deadly raids this year on high-profile targets in the country, which has battled Islamist rebels based in its desert north for years. “Tonight the death toll is heavy,” Keita said on state television, declaring a 10-day state of emergency and three days of national mourning. The president had

Paris raid police: 'We were shot at with machine guns'

The BBC's Fergal Keane  has spoken to the head of the elite police assault group which carried out the raid in Saint Denis. The alleged ringleader of last Friday's attacks in Paris, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is confirmed to have died in the seven-hour-long raid in the Rue Cormillon apartment on Wednesday morning. Hasna Ait Boulahcen, 26, also died in the apartment. "Hugo", which is not his real name, has described what police were confronted with at the scene. Source http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34884986

US air strike on IS in Iraq 'killed civilians'

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Getty Images The US is investigating several reports of civilian deaths linked to US airstrikes A US air strike aimed at an IS checkpoint is likely to have killed four civilians, possibly including a child, the US military has said. On Friday the military released the findings of an investigation into the incident, which took place in March. Investigators concluded the checkpoint was a valid target and the attack did not violate international laws. The US has rarely acknowledged civilian deaths in the fight against IS and the announcement brings the total to six. "All reasonable measures were taken to avoid unintended deaths of, or injuries to, non-combatants," US Central Command spokesman Patrick Ryder said. Col Ryder told reporters that the four civilians emerged from vehicles parked near the checkpoint, near the northern town of al-Hatra, after the A-10 jet released its weapons. He said the plane's crew was not aware of their presence at the time the strikes were autho

Brussels on high alert over threat of ‘imminent’ attack

Belgium raised the alert status for its capital Brussels to the highest level on Saturday, shutting the metro and warning the public to avoid crowds due to a “serious and imminent” threat of an attack.  Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told a press conference the measure had been taken because of the “threat of an attack by individuals with explosives and weapons at several locations in the capital”, without offering more details. A week after the  Paris attacks carried out by Islamic State militants, one suspect from Brussels is at large and said by authorities to be highly dangerous. The city was placed overnight on the top level "four" in the government’s threat scale after a meeting of top ministers, police and security services. “The advice for the population is to avoid places where a lot of people come together like shopping centres, concerts, events or public transport stations wherever possible,” a spokesman for the government’s crisis centre said.

Deadly suicide bombings target Cameroon's Far North

A suicide attack by suspected members of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram has killed at least 10 people over the border in the Far North region of Cameroon on Saturday, security sources said.  Boko Haram  has mounted numerous attacks in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria this year and is turning the border region near Lake Chad  into a war zone , the United Nations refugee agency said last month. "The initial figures speak of 10 dead including the suicide bombers and around a dozen wounded," said a senior Cameroonian army commander of the attack on the village of Nigue, a suburb of Fotokol town. Boko Haram has waged a six-year campaign for an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria. Neighbouring countries joined an offensive against the group this year and the conflict spilled across their borders, displacing tens of thousands of people. Boko Haram used Cameroon’s impoverished Far North to stockpile supplies and recruits until the government cracked down

Russia Pounds Islamic State Jihadists With For Paris Bombs

Source http://m.ndtv.com/world-news/russia-pounds-islamic-state-jihadists-with-for-paris-bombs-1245800?pfrom=home-topstories Moscow:  Russia is pounding the Islamic State jihadists in Syria with bombs emblazoned with the words "For our people" and "For Paris" after Moscow vowed vengeance following the bombing of a plane over Sinai. Russian television broadcast a video in which a man is seen scrawling "For our people!" and "For Paris!" in black pen on aerial bombs minutes before a warplane is set to take off from the country's airbase in Syria. "For our people! For Paris! Pilots and technicians of #Hmeymim airbase sent a message to terrorists by airmail," the Russian defence ministry said on its official Twitter account. "The armed forces are conducting an aerial campaign of retribution," the defence ministry said in a separate statement, adding the military had begun coordinating their operations with the

PM Modi calls for India-China partnership to fight global terrorism

The threat of international terrorism and the global economic slowdown dominated talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang on the margins of the ASEAN-India Summit in the Malaysian capital on Saturday. The two leaders met against the backdrop of devastating terror attacks in the French capital and the Malian capital of Bamako that killed more than 150 people. The focus of the recent G20 Summit in Turkey and the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur shifted from the usual economic issues to the threat posed by terrorist groups such as the Islamic State. Modi suggested to Li that India and China should come together to fight terrorism and increase strategic coordination, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup told a news briefing after the meeting. Read: India, ASEAN must come together to fight global terror: PM Modi The Indian Prime Minister said international terrorism had become the “biggest challenge” of the times following terror attacks i

Terrorists May Have Spent as Little as $7,500 on Paris Attacks

London:  The terrorists who killed 130 people in Paris, triggering waves of air strikes on Syria and security alerts around the world, may have spent as little as around 7,000 euros ($7,500) to stage their attacks. World leaders scrambled to crack down on terrorist financing after the November 13 assaults, which have been claimed by Islamic State in retaliation for strikes on Iraq and Syria. Within days, France and Belgium announced 1 billion euros worth of additional security measures. In contrast, the attacks themselves, requiring little more than Kalashnikovs and ammunition, homemade suicide belts, rental cars and apartments, suggest that the eight attackers spent relatively little to kill indiscriminately and sow fear and confusion. The September 11 attacks on Washington and New York cost between $400,000 and $500,000, according to the independent 9/11 Commission, a sum that covered pilot training for the hijackers, flights and living expenses over an extended period of train

Inside the Surreal World of the Islamic State's Propaganda Machine

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The assignments arrive on slips of paper, each bearing the black flag of the Islamic State, the seal of the terrorist group's media emir, and the site of that day's shoot. "The paper just gives you the location," never the details, said Abu Hajer al Maghribi, who spent nearly a year as a cameraman for the Islamic State. Sometimes the job was to film prayers at a mosque, he said, or militants exchanging fire. But, inevitably, a slip would come with the coordinates to an unfolding bloodbath. For Abu Hajer, that card told him to drive two hours southwest of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of the caliphate, or Islamic realm, declared by the militant group. There, he discovered that he was among 10 cameramen sent to record the final hours of more than 160 Syrian soldiers captured in 2014. "I held my Canon camera," he said, as the soldiers were stripped to their underwear, marched into the desert, forced to their knees and massacred with automatic rifles

Brussels on Highest Alert After 'Serious, Imminent Threat' Warning

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Source http://m.ndtv.com/world-news/brussels-metro-shut-as-belgian-capital-put-on-maximum-alert-1245885?pfrom=home-topstories BRUSSELS:  Belgium raised the alert status for its capital Brussels to the highest level today, shutting the metro and warning the public to avoid crowds because of a "serious and imminent" threat of an attack. A week after the Paris attacks carried out by Islamic State militants, of whom one suspect from Brussels is at large and said by authorities to be highly dangerous, the city was placed on the top level "four" in the government's threat scale after a meeting of top ministers, police and security services. "The advice for the population is to avoid places where a lot of people come together like shopping centres, concerts, events or public transport stations wherever possible," a spokesman for the government's crisis centre said. He declined to say what specifically prompted the new alert. A statement on the centre'

Tapped Phone Led Paris Attack Leader to His Death

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Paris:  The top suspect behind last week's Paris attacks was watched by police being led into a building by a woman suicide bomber the evening before they both died there during a raid by special forces, a police source said on Friday. Police had been tapping the phone of Hasna Aitboulahcen as part of a drugs investigation and were able to track her down to the Saint-Denis suburb north of the French capital. They watched the 26-year-old take Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected mastermind of the Nov. 13 bombings and shootings that killed 130 people, into the building where both died early on Wdnesday morning. She detonated a suicide belt during the seven-hour police assault on the building, where officials said a third unidentified person died with them. Aitboulahcen may be Abaaoud's cousin. Once they learned Abaaoud was in France from Moroccan officials, French police focused on Aitboulahcen, a woman with links to him whom they were already trailing. Earlier, a police source said Aba