A suicide bomber on Monday rammed his explosives-laden car into a military convoy near Mirali, North Waziristan Agency, killing four security personnel and a woman, and injuring 23, including 20 soldiers, officials and eyewitnesses said. The incident occurred at the Khajori checkpoint, about two kilometres east of Mirali town, when a joint convoy of the army and paramilitary force was heading from the Bannu Garrison to Miramshah, the restive region’s administrative headquarters.
A militant commander in the neighbouring South Waziristan Agency, Baitullah Mehsud, had vowed last week to avenge the Hamzola air strike in which over 10 people were killed and eight others wounded. Witnesses said that three military vehicles and a passenger coach were also damaged in the first deadly attack since the government and Taliban-backed tribal insurgents signed a peace agreement on Sept 5, 2006. Army and paramilitary troops had vacated the Khajori checkpoint as per condition of the peace deal and it is now managed by members of the Khasaddar force.
Militants in the North Waziristan promptly denounced the incident and claimed they were not involved in the attack. A statement issued from the security office of the Taliban, North Waziristan, said: “We (Taliban) have no hand in the bomb attack and we want to keep the peace agreement intact and the government should also act upon the deal”.
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http://www.dawn.com/2007/01/23/top1.htm
UK airline bomb suspects "radicalized in weeks"
Wed Jan 24, 2007
LONDON - A group of British Muslims suspected of plotting to blow up U.S.-bound airliners flying from Britain had been radicalized in just weeks or months, Britain's top police officer said on Wednesday.
British detectives announced last August they had foiled a suicide bomb plot to blow up planes using liquid explosives. Officers have charged 15 people over the suspected plot with offences including conspiracy to murder and planning acts of terrorism. The suspects are due to go on trial next year.
"One of the really shocking things ... is the apparent speed with which young, reasonably affluent, some reasonably well-educated, British-born people were converted," London police chief Ian Blair told a conference on Islamophobia. He said the suspects had been converted "from what would appear to be ordinary lives in a matter of some weeks and months, not years, to a position where they were allegedly prepared to commit suicide and murder thousands of people."
British authorities are trying to understand what has caused a growth in extremism among the country's 1.8 million Muslims, dramatically exemplified by the July 2005 suicide bomb attacks on London's transport system by four British Islamists who killed themselves and 52 other people.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070124/wl_nm/britain_security_dc_1
Homeland Security: There's a lot of talk about al-Qaida safe havens in Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. But the FBI is closely watching a potential hot spot in our own hemisphere. Al-Qaida is suspected of having set up a front in the Caribbean island state of Trinidad, and sympathetic jihadists have already launched a movement there to replace Trinidad's Westernized government with Islamic law.
The militant Muslim group Jamaat al-Muslimeen staged a bloody coup attempt in Trinidad last decade that involved the firebombing of police headquarters in Port-of-Spain. A rash of bombings over the past couple of years has been linked to the group, whose leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, recently was released from prison after claiming to be ill.
Local police had arrested him in 2005 after raiding his headquarters and seizing high-powered rifles, grenades, walkie-talkies and 700 rounds of ammo. He awaits trial for inciting religious violence and terrorism. The number of Bakr's followers is said to be growing, along with the number of kidnappings, murders and bombings in Trinidad. And fears are growing within the Department of Homeland Security and FBI that Trinidadian jihadists could train and export terrorists to strike the U.S.
Trinidad might be harboring the "next Mohamed Atta," a college-educated, English-speaking Saudi native known within al-Qaida as "Jafar the pilot." His real name is Adnan El Shukrijumah, and the FBI considers him "armed and dangerous." He's been connected to al-Qaida plots to attack America with dirty bombs.
Local papers report that Shukrijumah has stayed with friends in Trinidad, and worshiped at local mosques, indicating a possible cell exists there. U.S. authorities at Miami International Airport are closely monitoring inbound flights from that area.
The FBI's Web site says Shukrijumah "carries a Guyanese passport but may attempt to enter the United States with a Trinidadian passport." Shukrijumah's late father is Guyanese. He taught Arabic and lectured in mosques there and in Trinidad before moving to America to work for the Saudi Embassy and then run a small radical mosque in Florida (which was bankrolled by the former Saudi ambassador, according to Newsweek). Shukrijumah still has relatives in Guyana, which is near Trinidad.
So is Venezuela, headed by the anti-American thug Hugo "El Diablo" Chavez, who could ally himself with jihadists against their common enemy. A jihad domino effect in our hemisphere isn't far-fetched. If Fidel Castro dies, it would create a power vacuum in Cuba that could be filled by jihadists. Haiti also is vulnerable, and could fall to Islamists.
U.S. authorities worry that Caribbean blacks have been targeted by al-Qaida for Islamic conversion and recruitment along with African-Americans. Though the majority of Trinidad's population is Christian, its Muslim population is growing. The communists tried to set up a beachhead in Grenada during the Cold War. We did not hesitate to stop them. Trinidad may not be the next Grenada, but we certainly can't risk letting al-Qaida raise its black flag of jihad in our hemisphere
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=254445363192537