Terrorism Watch

PressTV- At least one railroad worker has been killed when a bomb blast hit a train in southern Thailand, a few weeks after a string of bomb attacks in the Southeast Asian country’s tourist resort towns killed several people. According to police Captain Pramoj Juichuay, the deadly incident occurred when a bomb, planted on the tracks, was detonated as the train passed over it at a station in Khok Pho district in the southern province of Pattani at about 5:30 p.m. local time on Saturday. The official said the blast ripped through half of the last carriage of the train, blew a big hole under the track and wounded three others, including two other railroad workers and a female passenger. He added that an investigation had been launched into the incident. The train was on its way from Sungai Golak, a town located on the Malaysia-Thailand border in the neighboring province of Narathiwat, to Hat Yai, the largest city of Songkhla province, near the Malaysian border. Other reports, h

The Malian army has managed to retake control of the central town of Boni from militants, officials say. They “left Boni in the night and today around 8 a.m. the Malian army came back to take control of the town,” an unnamed Malian security source told AFP on Saturday. Meanwhile, another source, close to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, said two helicopters were providing cover over Boni “to support the Malian army, who are now in control.” Unidentified militants invaded Boni on Friday and forced the few troops stationed there to withdraw from the town. According to witnesses, the militants were shooting in all directions, particularly on administrative buildings, and set ablaze the mayor's office. Reports also say the militants left the town while abducting a Boni community official accused of giving information to security forces by phone. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Armed groups have proliferated in the African

Gunmen have abducted 15 workers of a major Nigerian oil facility in the south as unrest continues to plague the African country’s main source of revenue. A police spokesman in Rivers state said Saturday that the oil workers were on their way to the facility in Port Harcourt when they were kidnapped late on Friday. “Fifteen oil workers, including their driver, were abducted yesterday (Friday) by unknown gunmen who hijacked their vehicle on Omoku-Elele road after shooting into the air to scare passersby,” Nnamdi Omoni said, adding that those seized were employees of Nestoil, an oil and gas service firm active in Rivers. The official said police had launched an operation to find the gunmen and those involved in the kidnapping, adding that the bus transporting the oil workers had been recovered by the police after it was abandoned by the gunmen. “We are combing the bush and creeks in the area. Our men are all over the place. We are doing our best to rescue the victims and appr

PressTV- At least three people, including a woman, have been killed in two separate Saudi aerial attacks against residential neighborhoods in Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada. Saudi warplanes targeted a house in Baqim district south of Sana’a on Saturday, leaving a couple dead, Arabic-language al-Masirah television reported. One more civilian was killed and four others injured when Saudi jets struck a civilian car in the Wadi al-Jabal district.  In another airstrike, Saudi warplanes hit a civilian vehicle in the  Wadi al-Dhabian, wounding three people. The casualties came after Yemen's army snipers fatally shot two Saudi soldiers in al-Rabu’ah town of kingdom’s southwestern border region of Asir. A Saudi military vehicle also went up in flames after Yemeni soldiers and their allies targeted it with a guided missile at a camp in the same southwestern Saudi city. Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015, with the UN putting the death toll from the mili

Istanbul:  US forces hit Islamic State targets overnight near Turkey's border with Syria using a newly deployed mobile rocket system, a senior diplomat said today.   "US forces struck ISIS targets near Turkey's border in Syria last night via newly deployed HIMARS system," Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the coalition to counter Islamic State, said on his official Twitter account. HIMARS refers to a "High Mobility Artillery Rocket System". It was not immediately clear when the system was deployed at Turkey's border. Turkey, a member of the US-led coalition against ISIS, opened up a new line of attack in northern Syria today, as Turkish tanks crossed the frontier from Kilis province, starting a western leg in an operation to sweep militants from its border. © Thomson Reuters 2016 Source http://m.ndtv.com/world-news/us-forces-target-isis-in-syria-with-new-rocket-technology-1454150

By Enrico Dela Cruz and Karen Lema MANILA (Reuters) - Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte declared on Saturday a "state of lawlessness" in the country after an explosion in a market killed 14 people in his home city while he was on a regular weekend visit there. Duterte, the crime-busting mayor of Davao City for more than two decades, said the blast late on Friday outside a high-end hotel intensified what was an "extraordinary time" in the Philippines, and security forces would redouble efforts to tackle crime, drugs and insurgency. "I must declare a state of lawless violence in this country, it's not martial law," Duterte told a phalanx of reporters on a Davao street at daybreak after visiting the blast site. "It's not martial law until it's a threat against the people and against the nation ... I have this duty to protect this country." Duterte was at a meeting some 12 km (7.5 miles) away from downtown Davao wh

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago recorded its deadliest month in two decades in August, part of a sharp rise in gun violence in the nation's third-largest city this year. Chicago police said Thursday that 90 people were killed last month, a 66 percent increase over August 2015. There were 472 shooting victims — an average of more than 15 people per day. The 90 homicides was the most the city has seen in any month since August 1996, when there also were 90 people killed, according to Chicago Police Department data. Among the victims this year have been innocent bystanders, including a father paying bills at his kitchen table and the cousin of NBA star Dwyane Wade, who was shot last month while pushing her baby in a stroller near a school. Here's a look at what's happening in Chicago: ___ HOMICIDES UP There were more than 449 homicides in the city between the start of the year and the end of August, a roughly 50 percent increase over the same period last year, police said. That's a

The US State Department has offered a $3 million reward for any information leading to the arrest of Gulmurod Khalimov, a former Tajik police commander who is currently one of the main leaders of the Daesh terrorist group. While the press release labels him as a terrorist, it fails to mention that it was the US who actually trained him. “The US Department of State’s Rewards for Justice Program is offering a reward of up to $3 million for information leading to the location, arrest, and/or conviction of Gulmurod Khalimov (variant Halimov), a key leader of the terrorist group ISIL, also known in Arabic as Da’esh,” says the press release posted on the department’s website on Tuesday. The document also says that Khalimov is a former Tajik special operations colonel, police commander, and military sniper. He was the commander of a police special operations unit in the Ministry of Interior of Tajikistan, or OMON, used against militants in the Central Asian nation. In April 2015 he

Follow @neilsteinberg Blinking red light on the phone. A message. “Neil, this is Arlene K—, I live in Oswego. I really enjoy your columns. Would you please do a column on alt-right and explain it? I don’t know what that’s about, and I’m starting to get worried about it.” This column is not a lounge band; I don’t take requests. However, in this case: an excellent question, Arlene, one much in the news. “Alt-right” is the new, sanitized term that includes a rogue’s gallery of haters, loons, tinfoil-hats, bullies and misfits, united by unmerited self-regard and a contempt for modern American life and most of the people who comprise it. They are a far right fringe, have always been with us, and surged into the public eye lately thanks to the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump, who used the rock they live under as the cornerstone of his campaign. When Trump says “America is a hellhole and we’re going down fast” or when he says political correctness

Despite a burst of publicity at its first appearance, Reclaim Australia (RA) has been eclipsed by the certifiable fascists of the United Patriots Front (UPF). The UPF announced themselves in May last year, when they attempted to march on Richmond Town Hall, but they got a hiding. They have had similar experiences on repeated occasions in Melbourne, either being blocked by anti-fascists or cowering behind masses of cops. Their mobilisations in Bendigo, however, have been far more successful, each time outnumbering the anti-fascists who came out to counter them. This hasn't been all. Alarmingly, on 1 November the UPF visited the Melbourne Anarchist Club and radio station 3CR, in unspoken but clear acts of intimidation. Then, on 26 June, the UPF and the even more thuggish True Blue Crew decided to counter an anti-racist rally in Coburg. To cut a long story short, the fascists eventually got another hiding, but not before things nearly went the other way. Meanwhile, overseas, fasc

One of Sweden's opposition leaders has caused a stir after she said that she did not think far right nationalist party Sweden Democrats were racist. In an interview with Christian newspaper  Dagen  published in the early hours of Thursday, Christian Democrats leader Ebba Busch Thor was asked if she considers the Sweden Democrats to be a racist party. “No, I don’t if we’re talking about their official policy today, but the party has a history which came from racist origins,” she replied. Busch Thor’s opinion contrasted the one previously expressed by Moderate leader and fellow Alliance boss Anna Kinberg Batra only four days earlier. When asked in an interview with public service broadcaster  SVT  last Sunday whether SD were a racist party, Kinberg Batra replied “they blame all problems on immigration, that’s racist”. The opposing answers suggested a difference in opinion towards SD within the centre-right Alliance parties, an expert said. “Anna Kinberg Batra put her

The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has reportedly banned football referees in one of the Syrian regions under its control. Its commanders took the decision to outlaw the authority figures in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor because  the referees allegedly spread the rules of world football’s governing body FIFA “in violation of the commands of Allah and the Sunnah.” It is the view of ISIS that referees “do not judge according to what Allah has revealed,” according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a monitoring group that has an extensive network of sources on the ground in the country. Try Newsweek for only  $1.25 per week A fighter waves an ISIS flag in Raqqa, Syria, in June 2014. A monitoring group says that ISIS leaders have banned football referees as they implement the "laws of FIFA" and "not Sharia."  Reuters  SOHR added that  ISIS created  a new set of rules under its Sharia law that permit an injured p

The propaganda footage shows a car setting off from a sparsely-populated flat piece of land. The vehicle is then captured heading into town before it disappears. Speaking in Arabic the man can be heard telling the driver: "It's going well, it's going well." The video, filmed by men speaking Arabic, then cuts to a cloud of black smoke amid cheers from those behind the camera. A large plume of white smoke can be seen billowing into the sky The man filming can be heard celebrating and shouting Allauh Akbar (God is Great). Earlier in the clip, the men tell the driver "It's going well" over a radio as he drives towards his death. They also urge him to "stay low" to avoid being shot as he approaches the town. The windscreen of the car was reportedly reinforced with metal to shield the driver from bullets.  A car sets off from a sparsely-populated flat piece of land A caption at the beginning of the video says the attack targ

Remarks by Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa were a rare admission of Daesh presence in Pakistan, where officials have long insisted that the extremist group has no footprint.   By  Munir Ahmed The Associated Press Thu., Sept. 1, 2016 ISLAMABAD—Pakistan has foiled a bid by Daesh to expand its network into this predominantly Muslim country, with the military arresting 309 suspects, including members from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, a military spokesman said Thursday. The remarks by Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa were a rare admission of Daesh presence in Pakistan, where officials have long insisted that the extremist group has no footprint. Earlier, Pakistani officials had insisted Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, has no presence in the country. Bajwa told reporters at a press conference in the capital, Islamabad, that among those arrested were 25 foreigners, all from countries where the Sunni militant group has an established presence. He did not provide details of whe

 - Deccan Herald The reported death of Islamic State’s senior propagandist and strategist Abu Muhammad al-Adnani in a US drone strike in northern Syria on Tuesday casts in sharp relief the immediate challenge the terrorist group faces in replacing one of its pivotal founding members.  The attack, carried out by a military Reaper drone, also underscores the progress the military’s most elite Special Operations commandos and the Central Intelligence Agency have made in the conflict’s two years by using information from spies on the ground and sensors in the sky to target a growing number of IS leaders. The US-led coalition has killed about 120 important IS officials and operators, including about a dozen of the group’s top leaders, according to the Pentagon.  Still, the IS has proved to be remarkably resilient, US officials and counterterrorism specialists say, noting that the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has succession plans to replace even its top leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says Daesh is the most pressing national security threat facing Australians, but cautions against fomenting distrust of Muslim communities.   ( Rick Rycroft  /  Associated Press )   By  Rod McGuirk The Associated Press Thu., Sept. 1, 2016 CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA—Australia’s prime minister warned Thursday against fomenting distrust of Muslims as he outlined tougher measures against supporters of  Daesh , also known as ISIS or ISIL. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Australian laws will soon be amended to give Australian F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet pilots the same legal standing as their coalition partners when conducting airstrikes against Daesh targets in Iraq and Syria. The Australian legal definition of combatants will be expanded to include people supporting armed fighters and will become consistent with international norms. Turnbull, who is resisting pressure from lawmakers to ban Muslim immigration and relax hate spe