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"UP cops nab IM terrorist planning aerial strike" Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui, TNN, 2 February 2010, 01:48am IST SNIPPET: "LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI: The arrest of Shehzad alias Pappu — one of the key accused in the September 2008 serial blasts in Delhi and the Batla House encounter — by the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of UP Police from Azamgarh on Monday evening is being seen as a major breakthrough in exposing a module that was planning to unleash air strikes. Shehzad, intelligence agencies had recently discovered, had undergone a training to fly planes from an institute in Bangalore and had surfaced as a...

Sana’a – A US-born radical cleric is alive and well following reports he may have been killed in a Yemeni airstrike against suspected Al-Qaeda hideouts, friends and relatives said Friday. The government said it targeted a meeting of high-level Al-Qaeda operatives in Thursday’s airstrike in the remote Shabwa region. It claimed at least 30 militants were killed, possibly including Anwar Al-Awlaki, a radical cleric who has been linked to the shooter in last month’s attack at the Fort Hood military base in the US. In addition to Al-Awlaki, the top leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (in Saudi Arabia...

Nato has promised a full investigation into an air strike on two fuel tankers that killed up to 90 people in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province. The alliance said many Taliban insurgents who had hijacked the tankers were killed but it admitted it had reports of many civilian casualties. The Nato-led forces said they regretted "any unnecessary loss of human life". President Hamid Karzai said targeting civilians was "unacceptable" and announced his own investigation panel. A statement from his office said the president expressed "deep sorrow for the loss of our compatriots" and "emphasised that innocent civilians must not be killed...

KABUL, Sept. 8, 2009 – The commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has appointed a two-star general to lead the formal investigation into a Sept. 3 air strike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that reportedly killed numerous civilians. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal appointed Canadian Maj. Gen. C.S. Sullivan to lead the joint investigation board’s probe of the incident. Sullivan directs ISAF’s air component and serves as the command’s deputy director of joint operations. The board also will include a U.S. Air Force officer, a German officer and a legal advisor and will coordinate with the Afghan investigation team formed...

A German commander who ordered an air strike on fuel tankers that killed dozens of Afghans used intelligence from a single observer in a possible breach of tactical rules. An American warplane dropped 500lb bombs on the tankers after they were hijacked by Taliban militants and then became stuck in a river. Reports suggested dozens of civilians could have been burned alive alongside the militants as villagers crowded round the lorries to collect fuel before the bombs struck in northern Kunduz province. The Washington Post reported grainy live video footage seen by the officer from the F15 jet had not...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2009 – NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has launched an investigation into a coalition air strike that reportedly killed civilians yesterday, military officials reported. NATO officials still are working to ascertain the facts in the incident, which occurred in Regional Command North’s area of operations in Kunduz province, according to an ISAF news release. What is known is that ISAF soldiers reported that insurgents had hijacked two fuel trucks in Kunduz yesterday. The troops located the trucks on the banks of the Kunduz River when the vehicles became stuck in the mud. The troops observed...

A unilateral attack by Israel against Iran to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions would be an "absolute catastrophe," AFP quoted French President Nicolas Sarkozy as warning on Thursday. Sarkozy was speaking after a summit of the Group of Eight and other leaders in Italy at which they agreed on the need to pursue a negotiated deal with Tehran to halt its nuclear program.

WASHINGTON, June 8, 2009 – The investigation into a May 4 close-air support incident in Afghanistan’s Farah province that caused civilian casualties has pointed to some deviations from established tactics, techniques and procedures, but those involved showed extraordinary care in the incident, the Pentagon’s press secretary said today. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell responds to questions posed by members of the news media during a June 8, 2009, Pentagon press conference. DoD photo by R. D. Ward   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Geoff Morrell said Army Brig. Gen. Raymond Thomas conducted the review and briefed Navy Adm....

Reporting from Washington -- Military investigators have concluded that some airstrikes that killed civilians during a battle in western Afghanistan last month were mistakes, but are still trying to determine whether the service members who called in the strikes could have known they were no longer in imminent danger when the bombs were dropped. The investigation questioned the last two airstrikes conducted during the 8 1/2 -hour battle, according to a military official familiar with the probe. The 2,000-pound bombs used in those strikes were dropped by an Air Force B-1 bomber at night, when it was more difficult to...

TIME Magazine on Tuesday cites high-ranking Israeli security officials as saying that dozens of Israeli jets and unmanned drones took part in the January strike on a Gaza-bound weapons convoy in Sudan. According to sources cited in the TIME article, the attacks were carried out by F-16 fighters, which carried out two attack runs on the convoy. F-15 fighter planes were also positioned nearby, a precaution against the possibility of hostile fighters rushing to the area. Once the first bombing run was completed, unmanned drones laden with cameras passed over convoy site to ensure its destruction. After the footage indicated...

TEL AVIV, Israel–The Israel Defense Forces is carrying out drills to practice for a possible massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days - or even hours - of being given the go-ahead by its new government, according to a report today in the Times of London. "Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words," one unnamed senior defense official...

The squad was targeted as it fired rockets toward Israel, according to Hassanain and Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Ahmed. The Israeli military said at least five rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel on Saturday, causing no injuries or damage.

KABUL – A coalition airstrike has killed a powerful Taliban commander who broke a promise to renounce violence after village elders persuaded President Hamid Karzai to free him from prison, officials said Monday. The Sunday night attack destroyed a building housing Ghulam Dastagir and eight other militants in the village of Darya-ye-Morghab, near the Turkmenistan border, the U.S. military said in a statement. Dastagir was responsible for a surge in violence in the province in recent months, including a November attack on an Afghan army convoy that killed 13 soldiers, the statement said. "He was like the shadow governor of...

GAZA CITY (AFP) – One Palestinian gunman was killed and three people were wounded by an Israeli air strike in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday as rocket and mortar fire from the territory hit southern Israel. The raid came amid international calls for calm one day after Hamas ended a six-month truce and with growing internal pressure on the Israeli government to take tough action in Gaza. The raid took place near the northern town of Jabaliya when warplanes fired three missiles at militants preparing to launch rockets. Ali Hijazi, 24, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militant...

Pastoral scenes, tourist sites only targets of NATO war machines. Afghan and Pakistan tribal officials claim that a recent attack by NATO forces on a village did not kill any terrorists, but instead claimed the lives of three puppies, a kitty, an unknown number of children with glasses, and two wittle-wee fluffy bunnies. A stuffed animal warehouse was also blown up during the attack, the villagers charged. The attack occurred in the lawless tribal region on the Afghan-Pakistan border, an area named for Lucy Lawless. "We were just minding our own business sewing breast plates into tunics when I heard...

Exclusive: Israel’s air maneuver did not simulate possible Iran strike strategy June 21, 2008, 3:20 PM (GMT+02:00) DEBKAfile’s Western military sources do not believe that if Israel does attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, it will resort to the old-fashioned aerial blitz tactic employed in 1981 for bombing Iraq’s Osirak reactor. They therefore challenge the US officials’ conclusion that Israel’s aerial exercise in conjunction with the Greek Air Force over Crete in early June was in fact a rehearsal for Iran. What was demonstrated was the Israeli Air Force’s capability for deploying a large aerial force of more than 100 warplanes and...

WASHINGTON, June 11, 2008 – Defense Department officials called a U.S. air strike yesterday in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border “legitimate” and “self-defense,” and said they are investigating the attack with Pakistani officials. “Every indication we have at this point is that the actions that were taken by U.S. forces were legitimate, in that they were in self-defense after U.S. forces operating on the border of Pakistan in Afghanistan territory came under attack from hostile forces,” Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said in a news conference today. “In self-defense, they called in an air strike, which took out those forces...

Excerpt - MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Airstrikes, possibly by U.S. planes, caused explosions in a remote area in southern Somalia, officials said Monday. There was no immediate information on casualties. Buale town chairman Ibrahim Noleye said planes were heard flying nearby Sunday night, followed by two loud explosions that shook the ground. Buale is 255 miles southwest of the capital, Mogadishu. A U.S. military official said there was no information about U.S. planes activities in Somalia. Noleye said he had contacted officials in nearby villages, who told him by two-way radio that the planes had hit an area between Buale...

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military fired guided missiles into the heart of Baghdad's teeming Sadr City slum on Saturday, leveling a building 55 yards away from a hospital and wounding nearly two dozen people. Separately, the U.S. military said late Saturday that four Marines were killed on Thursday by a roadside bomb in Anbar province. The military also said that a U.S. soldier died of wounds suffered in a roadside bomb that struck the soldier's vehicle during a combat patrol in eastern Baghdad Friday. At least 4,071 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq...

Turkey launches biggest bombing raid on Kurdish rebels in Iraq · Woman killed as 50 planes target PKK guerrilla bases · Prime minister warns of further military action Ewen MacAskill in Washington Monday December 17, 2007 Guardian Turkey yesterday launched the biggest attack on Iraq since the US invasion in 2003, sending more than 50 warplanes to bomb suspected Kurdish insurgent bases inside Iraqi territory, accompanied by long-range artillery shelling. Kurdish officials reported at least one civilian fatality, a woman, and two others injured. The strike, carried out in the middle of the night, sent hundreds of families fleeing and...