Daily Terrorist Round-Up 6/24/05

6/24/05

[Straight Vermonter]

AFGHAN OFFENSIVE KILLS 132

Afghan authorities say they have killed 132 Taliban militants and surrounded four of the ousted regime’s top commanders after a three-day battle in the south of the country.

Afghan police, assisted by Afghan and US troops, have hunted down insurgents in their hideouts on the borders of Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces in a bid to stem a rising wave of violence three months before parliamentary elections are due.

Kandahar police chief General Mohammed Salem said six foreigners were discovered among the dead.

“They have found two Chechen nationals, three Pakistanis, and one Arab,” General Salem added, saying that 10 Taliban fighters, including a Pakistani national, had been captured alive.

Most of the militant deaths occurred when US warplanes armed with laser-guided bombs and supported by British aircraft pounded suspected Taliban safe havens, US and Afghan officials said.

At least three Afghan policemen have been killed in the operation, said to be the bloodiest in four years.

Around 200 Afghan police have led the assault on the stubborn Taliban resistance which has kept a grip on pockets of the country after US-led forces toppled Taliban rulers in 2001.

Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman, Mohammed Nu’man Atifie, said security forces had tracked down four Taliban commanders who were now hemmed in north of Mian Nisheen.

Mullah Brader, considered to be the militia’s current deputy, is thought to be among the surrounded group.

According to the Agence France Presse (AFP) news service, the Taliban’s usual spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

However, the Pakistan-based private Afghan Islamic Press said the militia’s spokesman told it by telephone that no important Taliban commander was surrounded in Mian Nisheen.
 

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U.S., Iraq Troops Kill at Least 5 Rebels
HAMZA HENDAWI

American and Iraqi troops battled al-Qaida-linked insurgents holed up in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood Thursday, killing at least five militants apparently waiting to carry out suicide bomb attacks.

Word emerged that a senior al-Qaida leader was killed in a U.S. airstrike near Syria's border. And in a devastating escalation in insurgent attacks in the capital, a string of car bombings that began late Wednesday continued Thursday morning with four more blasts that killed at least 15 people and wounded 28.

Among the wounded was a young boy, his left leg missing from below the knee, who sat on the sidewalk near a mangled bicycle, screaming as a man called for help.

The force of the blasts — timed for when the capital's streets are most crowded — blew off store shutters, and the surrounding sidewalks were littered with debris, including charred vegetables and fruit.

All told, Thursday's violence across Iraq left at least 19 civilians killed and 37 wounded.

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Foreign fighters, mostly from Iraq's Arab neighbors, are thought to be responsible for many of the car bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqis over the past 18 months.

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Thursday's gunbattle was fought in western Baghdad's al-Jamaa neighborhood, where Sunni and Shiite professionals live. "I woke up to the sound of intense gunfire," said one resident who declined to give his name because of the precarious security in the capital. The house caught fire and then exploded during the gunbattle, the military said. Footage shot by Associated Press Television News showed large sections of the house razed to the ground and partial damage to the house next door.

Afterwards, dozens of residents gathered as U.S. troops loaded one Humvee with heavy machine-guns, rocket propelled grenades, rifles and belts of ammunition found inside. Iraqi police put bodies onto a pickup truck. The insurgents were associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaida in Iraq and the most notorious terrorist in Iraq, the military said. The U.S. military said six insurgents were killed.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said only five of its men — four foreign Arabs and one Iraqi — were in the house at the time of the raid. They were there waiting for "their turn to leave the world," militant jargon for taking part in suicide bombings. It said the five men "used all kinds of weapons" to keep the attackers at bay, forcing them to retreat with huge losses. "The crusaders, as usual when they lose, called for the warplanes which bombed the house and the five joined the martyrs," it said in a statement posted Thursday night on a militant Internet site. Its authenticity could not be independently verified.

An al-Qaida affiliate, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility for a series of car bombs that killed dozens of Shiite Muslims over a 12-hour span in Baghdad. The bombings appeared designed to stoke sectarian tensions and push the country into civil war.

In an Internet statement posted Thursday, al-Zarqawi said Abdullah Mohammed Rashid al-Roshoud was killed in a U.S. airstrike during fighting with U.S. and Iraqi forces. The campaign took place last weekend near the Syrian border in northwest Iraq. Al-Roshoud, a Saudi, had been No. 24 on a list of the 26 most-wanted terrorist leaders issued by Saudi Arabia two years ago — and was one of only three at large. The statement did not say when he was killed, but U.S. warplanes carried out numerous airstrikes during an operation that targeted foreign fighters being smuggled into Iraq from Syria.

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Operation Anaconda - the Indian version soon
Abhay Vaidya

Drawing lessons from the Afghan war where US forces had to ferret out the Taliban from caves and bunkers, India's leading defence explosives laboratory in Pune has developed specialised bombs to deal with terrorist hideouts.

While the high-penetration smoke-spewing incendiary ammunition developed by the High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) is ready for production, work has been initiated on oxygen-depleting thermobaric warheads.

"The earlier version of the suffocating smoke-spewing incendiary ammunition did not have a high penetration capability. Our latest version can penetrate 9-inch-thick walls and then explode inside, releasing suffocating smoke to ferret out terrorists," HEMRL director A Subhananda Rao said in an exclusive interview with TOI.

Thermobaric warheads, which are used to attack targets inside closed environments such as bunkers, caves or buildings, explode after penetration, releasing a shock effect, flammable gas and sucking out oxygen. HEMRL, which specialises in developing a range of powerful warheads for Indian munitions and propellants for missile systems, has initiated work on thermobaric warheads. "We have already started work on this and will have a project sanctioned," Rao said.

HEMRL has also developed anti-thermal, anti-laser smoke bombs that obscure infra-red signals and enable tank movement behind a smoke cover. These grenades which emit smoke and also provide IR (Infra red) screening effect provide a cover from active and passive night-vision devices, thermal imagers and laser range finders and thereby increase the survivability of tanks and armoured vehicles in the battlefield.

Rao said it would take another two years for the HEMRL to develop the multi-spectral camouflaging flares that mislead anti-aircraft homing missiles by simulating the exhaust emissions and infra red/millimetre wavelengths of the Su-30 and other combat aircraft.

"This is an advanced area and will take us another two years to develop," he said.

Meanwhile, a superior alternative to the conventional tear gas has been developed by the HEMRL, specifically at the request of the Border Security Force. These new non-lethal smoke bombs based on capsicum oleoresins (active chemical in chillies) have been demonstrated successfully and are ready for production.

 

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JORDAN: NEW EVIDENCE IN CHEMICAL PLOT TRIAL

Amman, 23 June (AKI) - New evidence has been coming to light in an ongoing trial of 13 Islamic extremists accused of having plotted to carry out a chemical attack on Jordan's intelligence headquarters - the first such attack al-Qaeda has ever planned. A chemicals expert from the Jordanian army, Najah Azza, testifying at the military tribunal in the capital, Amman, said the attack would have killed many thousands of people instantaneously, across a massive area of Jordan, Iraq-based Radio Sawa reported on Thursday. Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's pointman in Iraq, is one of the suspects in the foiled plot, which Jordanian secret services uncovered in April last year.

Jordan has become a prime target for al-Zarqawi and his followers because of its pro-western policies, and the Jordanian authorities keep any suspected militants under close surveillance.

In May, eight men were charged with plotting to attack foreign tourists in Jordan and planning to launch military operations inside Israel in 2004 and 2005, the Jordan Times reported. The men allegedly planned attacks on tourist destinations in northern Jordan as well as other areas of the Kingdom. Charges against them also include identifying aspotates - heretics or religious turncoats - as targets.

In January, Jordanian authorities charge 16 suspected Islamist with plotting terrorist attacks on various targets on its soil, including the American and Israeli embassies in the Amman, and a hotel popular with Israeli tourists.

Last October, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) detained and interrogated 11 al-Qaeda suspects at a secret facility in Jordan.

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FSB prevented dozens of terrorist attacks in 2005's first quarter

MOSCOW, June 23 (RIA Novosti) - The Federal Security Service (FSB) prevented more than 70 terrorist attacks in the first three months of 2005, said service official. "Fifty-eight militants were killed, 296 individuals were arrested on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activities and 149 militant bases were discovered and destroyed in FSB operations conducted during the period," said Yury Sapunov, head of the FSB's Anti-terrorism Department. The FSB is currently focusing its efforts on tracking down warlords and international terrorist organization emissaries. Ten activists of the organization known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have been identified and extradited to Uzbekistan in recent years.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office pointed to the positive effect of cooperation with the CIS in extraditing terrorists. "Scandals like seven requests to extradite notorious terrorist Ahmed Zakayev turned down by Britain, do not happen within the CIS," said Vladimir Kolesnikov, Deputy Prosecutor General. "They mix law enforcement activities with politics in the UK."

Kolesnikov said the Prosecutor General's Office had sent requests related to terrorism crimes to Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Uzbekistan. "The requests were satisfied completely and in full in a matter of one to four months," he said. Law enforcement bodies outside the CIS are reluctant to respond to Russian prosecutors' requests and many go unanswered, Kolesnikov said. "They are pursuing a policy of double standards," he said.

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Police intensifies drive Vs. Sayyaf, crime in Basilan
By Bong Garcia Jr.

ZAMBOANGA CITY – Police stepped up its campaign against the Abu Sayyaf and crime groups in Basilan and has concentrated its forces in two towns. Supt. Abdulwahab Karimuddin, Basilan police director, said that the operation has focused on what he said was a ragtag band of the Abu Sayyaf and “lost command” forces of two major Moro revolutionary groups operating in the island and other Moro-populated areas.

“Although they are no longer active and aggressive like before, the Abu Sayyaf and lost command rebels are still a concern,” Karimuddin said over television station ABS-CBN on Friday. Karimuddin identified the adjacent towns of Sumisip and Tipo-Tipo as the concentration of operation

The Abu Sayyaf had established a camp in Mount Punoh Mohajid, Sumisip on year 2000. It was in the camp where they kept captives 54 people including a priest, teachers and pupils they kidnapped from two schools of the said town. Government troops have since occupied the camp after they seized it to rescue the hostages.

Karimuddin did not say however, the top-ranking leaders of the Abu Sayyaf, Khadafy Janjalani and Jainal Salih alias Abu Solaiman, who were known to operate in Basilan, were still hiding in the towns of Sumisip and Tipo-Tipo. Karimuddin said that since January this year, his command has arrested 40 wanted persons in the different parts of Basilan province. He said majority of those arrested were facing charges in Basilan courts for kidnapping and murder. He would not disclose whether or not some or many of those arrested have links with the Abu Sayyaf Group.      

He said the campaign will continue until they would account for all wanted persons believed hiding in the six towns and one city of Basilan province. The six towns of Basilan are Lamitan, Tuburan, Tipo-Tipo, Sumisip, Lantawan and Maluso. Isabela City is the provincial capital.

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Abu Sayyaf rebel killed in clash in southern Philippines

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines (DPA): A member of the al-Qaeda-linked Muslim Abu Sayyaf rebel group was killed on Thursday in a clash with government troops searching for an Indonesian hostage in the southern Philippines, the military said.

Brig. Gen. Alexander Aleo said marines were verifying the reported presence of an Indonesian hostage in the village of Darayan in Patikul town, Jolo island, 1,000 kilometers south of Manila, when they encountered the rebels.

"There was no immediate sighting of the hostage," Aleo said. "Pursuit operation is ongoing."

Aleo said the marines went to the area after receiving information that Indonesian hostage Ahmad Resmiyadi, 32, was being kept in a hideout there.

Resmiyadi is one of three Indonesian sailors abducted on March 30 off a Malaysian island by a group calling itself Jamiat al-Islamiyah of Southern Mindanao.

The group is believed to be affiliated with the Abu Sayyaf, which has been linked by the Philippine and U.S. governments to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.

On June 12, the other two hostages - Erickson Hutagaol, 23, and Yamin Labuso, 28 - were rescued. They have since returned to Indonesia. (**)

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ALGERIA: YEMENI AL-QAEDA SUSPECTS ARRESTED
 
Algiers, 21 June (AKI) - The Algerian authorities have arrested six Yemeni students they suspect of belonging to al-Qaeda and of having formed an al-Qaeda cell in the city of Annaba, eastern Algeria, the al-Khabar daily reported. The arrests, which security forces made over the past few days, followed phone taps of calls the men made on their line to Peshawar in Pakistan, as well as to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
 
The Yemeni arrests follow a recent swoop in Annaba in which police arrested six Tunisians seeking to join the radical Algerian terror formation Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). In early June, Algerian police arrested five men suspected of belonging to a GSPC cell they believe masterminded a series of ambush attacks against Algerian military convoys and police road blocks in May.

[Straight Vermonter]

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Centcom's New Iraq Scorecard

Saudi Arabia's Most Wanted Scorecard

[Straight Vermonter]

Ping

[deadeyedawg]

DICK durbin and his crowd are probably very upset at this story. Our doom is their joy.

[Coop]

New evidence has been coming to light in an ongoing trial of 13 Islamic extremists accused of having plotted to carry out a chemical attack on Jordan's intelligence headquarters - the first such attack al-Qaeda has ever planned.

That we know about.

[Valin]

Bump!