The Terrorist Round-up for 5/11/06

5/11/06

[Straight Vermonter]

The War is Global

Israeli soldiers take position during a military operation in the West Bank village of Bani Naim near Hebron May 10, 2006. (REUTERS/Nayef Hashlamoun)	Hand cuffs alleged terrorist Anif Solchanudin, center, escorted by Indonesian polices after his first appearance trial in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia,Tuesday, May. 9, 2006. Solchanudin is accused of helping fugitive terror mastermind Noordin Top to orchestrate the attacks on three tourist restaurants in Kuta and Jimbaran Bay last October were killed at last 20 people.(AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)
Pakistani soldiers patrol a street of Wana, in South Waziristan tribal region, near the Afghan border May 10, 2006. (REUTERS/Ali Imam)	Indian troops have shot dead two Islamic militants along the de facto Kashmir border while rebels killed two people in separate attacks.(AFP/File/Sajjad Hussain)
Iraqi army soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint set up to buttress security throughout Baghdad amid Iraq's fourth Parliament session. (AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)	US soldiers get ready for a patrol as the sun rises in Afghanistan. (AFP/Pool/File/Eugene Hoshiko)

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Pakistan arrests three suspected militants

Pakistan army troops prepare to leave for patrolling from a military base in Miran Shah. (AP Photo/Matthew Pennington)

Pakistani security forces arrested three suspected militants, including a Tunisian believed to belong to al Qaeda, in the troubled tribal region of North Waziristan, a senior security official said on Wednesday. There was no immediate official comment from the government or the military.

The senior security official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the Tunisian, identified as Abdul Rehman Saifuddin, was caught along with an Afghan and a Pakistani on Tuesday in the region bordering Afghanistan.

The Tunisian is believed to be a known al Qaeda operative, but not very senior, the official said.

Last month, a Pakistani helicopter attack close to Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, killed an Egyptian al Qaeda member wanted for involvement in the 1998 bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Pakistani security forces have killed over 300 militants, including around 75 foreigners, in North Waziristan since the middle of last year, and clashes with militants have intensified since early March.

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U.S. commander: NATO can handle Taliban activity
By Leo Shane III

Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, speaks with reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday. (Lawrence Jackson / AP)

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday said he is confident NATO forces will be able to handle increasing Taliban activity in southern parts of the country when they take over military responsibilities there this summer.

“They are already on the ground and they are proving themselves,” said Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, commander of Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, during a news conference Wednesday. “I have absolute confidence that all the NATO forces coming in will be very capable forces and … will prevail in the south and do well.”

Eikenberry confirmed reports of increased Taliban activity in southern Afghanistan, but also blamed tribal fighting and other criminal activity in the region for an upsurge in violence there. Attacks in the region are up so far this year as compared to 2005.

NATO forces are scheduled to take over military command of several southern provinces by the end of July, though Eikenberry emphasized that U.S. forces will still provide much of the equipment and manpower to operations there.

But he dismissed concerns that the transition will leave the region vulnerable, and possibly provide an opportunity for Taliban or terrorist organizations to regroup.

“We will maintain, even as the NATO mission proceeds, this capability to strike against high value targets or the al-Qaida structure,” he said. “There is no distinction between the U.S. and NATO. We will have combat forces in southern Afghanistan under NATO. And all forces are committed to fight against the enemies of Afghanistan.”

Canadian forces currently in Kandahar, Australian troops in Uruzgan province and British fighters in Helmand province will make up much of the new security force for that region, along with the U.S. forces already in the south, he said.

Eikenberry would not say whether the increased NATO role could lead to a drawdown in U.S. troop levels in coming months, only that the United States will continue to provide the most troops of any country involved in Afghanistan.

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Afghan police battle Taliban, kill three

Afghan police killed three Taliban insurgents who ambushed a patrol in a southern province where British troops are overseeing security, a provincial official said.

Taliban insurgents have intensified their campaign against foreign troops and the government in recent months with a wave of suicide bombings, attacks and assassinations.

British troops are seen at Camp Bastion, in the southern province of Helmand, Afghanistan (REUTERS/Robert Birsel)

The rebels ambushed a police patrol in the Sangin district of Helmand province, a provincial spokesman said.

"There were no casualties among police either in the ambush or during the clash that followed," Mahaiuddin, who uses only one name, said.

Foreign troops were not involved, he said.

Britain has started deploying troops in Helmand as part of plans for the expansion of a Nato-led peacekeeping mission that will see 3300 troops in the Afghan south.

Canada has 2200 troops in the region and the Netherlands is soon sending up to 1600.

Taliban attacks are aimed at undermining domestic support for the deployments, military officials say.

The Nato reinforcements will allow the United States to cut its troop numbers in Afghanistan from more than 19,000 to about 16,500

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U.S. forces target insurgent ‘hub’ in Ramadi

For the third time in three days, U.S. forces pounded an abandoned train station with “precision munition” during fighting in the Anbar province capital of Ramadi, officials said Wednesday.

The train station, on the southern edge of the city, is a “known hub” of insurgent activity, a Multi-National Force-West press release read. Just one day before, U.S. and Iraqi forces bombed another abandoned building in south Ramadi after reporting small-arms fire. That building is near the train station, officials said.

Ramadi, about 75 miles west of Baghdad, remains a stronghold of Sunni insurgents battling both American troops and the Shiite-led Iraqi security forces.

Last week, American officials said that U.S. and Iraqi forces had killed more than 100 insurgents during seven days of fighting in the city.

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Nine commanders voluntarily surrender weapons in Nangarhar

On Thursday May 11th, 2006, a ceremony will take place at the 9th Brigade Farmihada in Jalalabad, Nangarhar, to follow the surrender of a mix of 77 light and heavy weapons as well as over 25,000 rounds of ammunition by nine former Jihadi Commanders.

The ceremony, which will start at 8:30 am, will be attended by local government officials, representatives of the Afghanistan's New Beginnings Programme (ANBP), UNAMA and the Provincial Reconstruction Team. Media are invited to attend and will be able to ask questions at the end of the ceremony.

The weapons will be transferred to Pol-i-Charki central weapons collection point where they will be under the surveillance of the Afghan National Army (ANA). They will be either used by the security forces of Afghanistan or – if not serviceable - destroyed.

By voluntarily surrendering their weapons, the commanders are complying with the Gun Law regulating the possession and use of weapons in Afghanistan. They are also actively supporting the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG), a process intending to eradicate the influence of illegal armed groups in the country, thus allowing the consolidation of peace, rule of law and prosperity in Afghanistan.

The DIAG process was launched on 11June, 2005 when officially announced by Vice President Khalili. As of 8th May, 21,629 weapons as well as 20,869 pieces of boxed and

170,381 pieces of unboxed ammunition have been handed over to and verified by ANBP collection teams in Afghanistan.

*DIAG: Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups

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More explosives seized from Hamza hideout

The interrogation of two terrorists arrested on Monday evening by the special cell has unravelled Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT) plans to execute major strikes in both Delhi and Mumbai.

Apart from the four kg RDX seized on Monday from slain Pakistani militant Mohammed Iqbal alias Abu Hamza, the police on Tuesday recovered more than 5 kg of PETN explosives, automatic rifles and satellite phones from the Ballabhgarh hideout of Iqbal.

His aides who were arrested a few hours before the encounter, were identified as Feroze Abdul Latif Ghaswala and Mohammed Ali Chippa. Ali and Feroze had just arrived in Delhi with 4 kg of RDX and Rs 50,000 cash at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Station when they were arrested.

According to the police, they were supposed to deliver the consignment to Iqbal near Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium where he was killed later in an encounter. Iqbal's Santro car has also been seized.

Iqbal was staying in a rented flat at Jagdish Colony in Ballabhgarh where he had stored the explosives apart from two AK-56 rifles, 10 hand grenades and several litres of nitric acid. While Feroze belongs to Mumbai, Ali is from Ahmedabad.

"Both of them had earlier been to Pakistan. They first flew to Iran from India and from there they illegally crossed over to Pakistan," said joint commissioner (special cell) Karnal Singh, adding that the explosives had been smuggled into India through the border area in Bhuj.

Feroze was earlier a car mechanic in Mumbai. He went to Bangladesh in 2004 and was trained there by Harkat-ul-Jehad-Al-Islam (HuJI) chief Mufti Abdul Hannan.

During his stay in Bangladesh, Feroze came in contact with LeT operatives who motivated him to work for the outfit. It was there that he met Azam Cheema alias Baba, the chief of LeT's operations in India, who invited him to Pakistan.

Feroze again met Cheema at his office in Bahawalpur next year in June. Iqbal was also introduced to Feroze in Bahawalpur. Cheema trained Feroze in handling high-quality explosives.

Feroze has told cops that Iqbal was involved in at least three major terrorist strike in the valley in which Rashtriya Rifles establishments were attacked. Ali, according to the police, had earlier also met Cheema in his Bahawalpur office.

He learnt how to handle bombs and timers there. The plan to smuggle explosives into India and set up a base near Delhi was formulated in Bahawalpur. The two have also provided information hitherto not known about Cheema.

Cheema is apparently a professor in Zadawalan Degree College in Faislabad. According to Feroze, Cheema runs a training camp from his house in Bahawalpur.

(This is really a major story that seems to be getting no play in the western media. This guy Hamza was apparently the LeT specialist in car bombings. They caught these guys while they were getting ready to do a bombing in a major city. Then they squeezed these guys for info which led to another major bust (see story below). It is important to not forget that the global war on terror is indeed global.)

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Mumbai police foil Ellora terror bid

Ellora caves: These 34 monasteries and temples, extending over more than 2 km, were dug side by side in the wall of a high basalt cliff, not far from Aurangabad, in Maharashtra.

TERROR NETWORK SPREADS: Mumbai Police say LeT was planning to bomb Ellora caves.

The anti-terrorist squad of the Mumbai police seized a huge cache of explosives and weapons in raids conducted at various places in the Aurangabad district late on Tuesday night. The operation was conducted by a joint team of Delhi and Mumbai police officials, three kilometres from the popular tourist spot Ellora caves.

The team was working on specific intelligence that a group of Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists was planning to launch a terror attack on the Ellora caves.

One person, Amir Shakeel Ahmed, aged 30, was arrested and two other persons were detained for interrogation. The police also seized 10 AK-47 rifles, 30 kg of explosives and 11 boxes of 2,000 live catridges. A Tata Sumo vehicle was also seized. The arrested LeT suspects will be brought to city later in the afternoon and will be produced in court.

The Delhi connection

The information that led the Mumbai crime branch to Aurangabad reportedly came from the two Lashkar terrorists who were arrested on May 8 following an shootout near the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi.

A top Lashkar terrorist Abu Hamza was killed in the shootout. The police had found a slip of paper on Hamza with an address of a house in Ballabhgarh on the outskirts of Delhi. The police then carried out a raid at that address and found a huge cache of arms and ammunition including 2 AK 56 rifles, 179 cartridges, 10 hand grenades, nitric acid, urea a timer circuit and other materials used in making bombs.

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Algerian forces kill 10 Islamic rebels after siege

Algerian troops stormed an Islamic rebel hideout on Wednesday and killed 10 guerrillas, the largest number shot dead by government forces since the country began an amnesty to end violence, state news agency APS said.

Soldiers had besieged the rebels for a month in the rugged mountains of the Seddat area in Jijel province, some 230 km (140 miles) east of Algiers, before they took the hideout.

APS did not say which rebel group the guerrillas belonged to, but Algerian newspapers have said they were from the al Qaeda-linked Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).

Algeria began implementing an amnesty in March as part of efforts to put an end to violence that broke out when authorities scrapped legislative elections in 1992 that a now-banned Islamic party was poised to win.

An estimated 200,000 people have been killed since then and authorities say 17,000 rebels were among the dead and some 800 rebels are still active.

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Iraqi army captures terrorist cell leader in east Baghdad
By MULTI-NATIONAL DIVISION - BAGHDAD, 4th Infantry Division, CAMP LIBERTY

Click for a larger map

Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, along with 4th Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, 506th Infantry Regiment’s Military Transition Team, dealt the anti-Iraqi forces a blow when they detained an al-Qaeda in Iraq cell leader and seven other anti-Iraqi forces in two different raids in the Adhamiyah area May 4.

The first raid led to the capture of the AQIZ cell leader and two other suspects, along with 17 full AK-47 magazines, 20 rolls of TNT, three pistols, two belts of 7.62 mm ammunition and eight boxes of pistol ammunition.

The suspects were then taken into custody and questioned.

"The apprehension of the cell leader was entirely the work of the Iraqi Army," said Capt. Joshua Brandon, 4-320th FA MiTT. "We (U.S. and Iraqi forces) have been tracking this guy and gathering joint intelligence for the last four months, but the Iraqi Soldiers took the lead and detained this guy and got information on another weapons cache."’

Acting on a tip from the cell leader, the Soldiers then mounted up again, this time with the help of the MiTT team, and moved out to the second location, where they detained the other five suspects and recovered eight timer switches, one Motorola-rigged detonator, an 82 mm mortar tube, three pipes for rockets, an 82 mm mortar tripod, a 60 mm mortar tripod, an 82 mm base plate, a large rocket, several nine-volt batteries rigged to switches and a bag of paraphernalia.

"The Iraqi Army did a great job," Brandon said. "This was the best Iraqi Army ran mission that I have seen."

The capture of the suspects and the weapons cache found help make the area safer for the civilians in the Adhamiyah area.

[Coop]

Yeah, but I bet they're often not able to finish that second senten..[BOOM!]

[Coop]

Good news bump

[Sundog]

Touche

[Valin]

Algerian troops stormed an Islamic rebel hideout on Wednesday and killed 10 guerrillas, the largest number shot dead by government forces since the country began an amnesty to end violence, state news agency APS said.


Well that amnesty is working out real good!

[Valin]

Algerian troops stormed an Islamic rebel hideout on Wednesday and killed 10 guerrillas, the largest number shot dead by government forces since the country began an amnesty to end violence, state news agency APS said.


Well that amnesty is working out real good!