A Kassam rocket launched from the northern Gaza Strip just before midnight fell inside a western Negev kibbutz, security officials said. The crude missile struck a house, causing significant damage to the structure, but its inhabitans were unharmed, according to Army Radio.
Nine rockets have been fired into Israel since Friday morning.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164882008424&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Saudi cleric labels Shias ‘infidels’
Saturday, December 30, 2006
DUBAI: An influential cleric of Saudi Arabia’s hardline Sunni school of Islam has denounced Shia Muslims as “infidels” in a new religious edict that comes amid rising sectarian tension in the region.
“The rejectionists (Shias) in their entirety are the worst of the Islamic nation’s sects. They bear all the characteristics of infidels,” Sheikh Abdel-Rahman al-Barrak said in the fatwa, or ruling, distributed on Islamist websites. “They are in truth polytheist infidels, though they hide this,” the fatwa said, citing theological differences 14 centuries after the death of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), such as reverence of shrines which followers of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi school consider abhorrent.
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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006/12/30/story_30-12-2006_pg1_3
‘Treacherous enemy’ sowing discord among Muslims: Khamenei
Saturday, December 30, 2006
TEHRAN: Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has told pilgrims on the annual Hajj to Mecca that those who sow discord among Muslims are “mercenaries of the treacherous enemy”, Iranian media reported Friday.
“Those with a grudge call some Muslim groups infidels... to please the US and the Zionists they speak of the dangers of a Shiite crescent, and they kill people to destabilise the popular Iraqi government,” he was quoted as saying in his message marking this year’s pilgrimage.
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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006/12/30/story_30-12-2006_pg4_14
Mogadishu: Ethiopian tanks rumbled south from Mogadishu to attack Somali Islamists yesterday after the religious movement's leaders called on fighters and residents in the port city of Kismayo to cast off a foreign "occupation".
Shaikh Sharif Ahmad, whose forces fled the Somali capital on Thursday, urged thousands of people gathered at a Kismayo stadium for Eid Al Adha to defend their nation and faith from Somali government troops backed by armour, soldiers and jet fighter planes from mostly Christian Ethiopia.
"Our country is under occupation so we have decided to fight," he told the crowd as Islamist troops on trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns stood guard outside.
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http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Somalia/10093343.html
Pilgrims begin ritual of stoning the devil
December 31, 2006
Mina: More than two million Muslim pilgrims began the symbolic stoning of the devil yesterday, that puts to test new safety measures at a stage of the Haj that has seen tragedy in the past.
But the rites were overshadowed by the news that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussain, a hero to many Sunni Arabs because of his anti-US stance, had been executed at dawn by the US-backed Shiite government.
Security fears were already high during this Haj season because of sectarian strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.
Many Sunni Arabs were angered by the news but some Iraqi pilgrims were celebrating both Saddam's death and the Eid Al Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, that began yesterday. "Congratulations, this is like two Eids! I hope God will not have mercy on him," said Iraqi pilgrim Nadir Abdullah.
The stoning ritual at the Jamarat Bridge - when pilgrims symbolically cast out the devil - begins on Eid Al Adha, the third day of the gruelling 5-day Haj which is a duty for all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it. With such large crowds, Saudi Arabia deploys more than 50,000 security men to try to avoid deadly stampedes, as well as attacks by extremists.
The authorities are also worried over political protests which security forces have broken up by force in the past. "The Haj rites are not the place for slogans, postures and name-calling," top Saudi cleric Shaikh Abdul Aziz Al Al Shaikh warned in a sermon at Mount Arafat on Friday.
Excerpted
http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Saudi_Arabia/10093341.html