Posted on 03/01/2004 11:18:06 PM PST by Eurotwit
just breaking on CNN...seems to be targetting Shias. Many people out for their holy celebrations..
Agitators and terroist symapthizers, acting as victims with CNN cameras more than willing to show anybody with an anti-American sentiment, IMO.
Smoke rises from the Nairobi City Hall, after it was gutted by fire early Tuesday, March 2, 2004. The cause of the fire was not known. (AP Photo/Sayyid Azim)
PLUS
Many Feared Dead in Attack on Shi'ites in Pakistan
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Several people were feared dead in an attack on Shi'ite Muslim mourners in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta Tuesday, witnesses said.
An explosion occurred in the heart of the city while Shi'ite Muslims were holding traditional Muharram processions to mark the seventh century slaying of Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad.
The explosion was followed by fierce gunfire, witnesses and doctors said, adding they feared several people had been killed. Doctors said at least six people were admitted to hospital with bullet wounds.
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Gunmen killed an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a street ambush early Tuesday, feeding fears of growing lawlessness and chaos ahead of a possible Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Khalil al-Zaben, 59, was hit by 12 bullets as he left his Gaza City office. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing, seen as one of the most serious challenges yet to Arafat. Security officials said they had no suspects.
The Palestinian Authority has been weakened by more than three years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, and armed gangs, included gunmen with ties to Arafat's Fatah movement, are increasingly controlling the streets.
Al-Zaben, a local publisher, had recently criticized the growing chaos and spoken out against the rogue armed gangs roaming Gaza. He was the best-known Palestinian to be killed in the internal fighting and power struggles in Gaza City.
The Palestinian Cabinet and national security council were to discuss the killing at a meeting Tuesday, said minister Saeb Erekat.
"This chaos will not be tolerated. I believe the Palestinian government and security forces must take all action to end this chaos," Erekat said. "It is really undermining the Palestinian struggle to establish an independent state."
The shooting was the latest in a string of violent confrontations in Gaza and the West Bank.
On Saturday, about 15 masked, armed Palestinians barged into the Gaza City offices of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, demanding jobs.
In a similar incident last Wednesday, about 20 masked men armed with submachine guns and hand grenades raided the Gaza City office of the Palestinian Land Authority, demanding land deeds be transferred to their names, employees said.
On Friday, the mayor of the West Bank's largest city, Nablus, resigned amid growing chaos and infighting between armed militias. Mayor Ghassan Shakaa accused Arafat of not doing enough to prevent Nablus from plummeting into lawlessness. In November, Palestinian gunmen shot and killed Shakaa's brother.
At Gaza police headquarters recently, rival groups opened fire on each other after an armed man slapped the police chief. A policeman was killed in the exchange that followed, which involved Arafat's forces and men loyal to Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan, an Arafat rival. Later, Arafat and Dahlan met in an attempt to stop the violence.
There is concern that chaos will follow a planned Israeli pullout from most of the Gaza Strip. Islamic militant opposition groups could try to seize power.
In more than three years of fighting, Israel has attacked and destroyed the headquarters and infrastructure of many branches of the official Palestinian security forces. In most places, the uniformed men barely function. In some cases, security forces are active in militant activities.
Al-Zaben joined forces with Arafat in the 1960s and held a number of positions, including media adviser and personal secretary. He returned to Gaza along with Arafat and other exiled Palestinian leaders in 1994, under terms of Israeli-Palestinian interim peace accords.
More recently, he published a weekly magazine devoted to Palestinian affairs and human rights. In a recent article, he criticized "killer gangs" he said were behind the chaos.
Two of his brothers are Palestinian ambassadors in South America, and his son works as an airline pilot there. He is also survived by his wife and three daughters.
The Gaza journalists' association condemned the killing and called for the Palestinian attorney general to resign for his "failure" to protect civilians. The group urged Arafat to bring the attackers to justice.
"Everyone will remember March 1 as a black day in the history of freedom and democracy," said Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant group, also condemned the killing. "We hold the Palestinian Authority responsible for the continuation of attacks against journalists and other sectors of the Palestinian civil society," the group said.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces killed an unarmed Palestinian man as they surrounded the home of a fugitive in the West Bank village of Yatta, an army spokeswoman said. The man fled the home and was shot after he refused to halt, she said.
In Washington, an Israeli delegation headed by Dov Weisglass, the head of Sharon's office, met National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell to outline and discuss the prime minister's plan to unilaterally withdraw from parts of the Gaza Strip.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An American soldier was killed Tuesday when insurgents tossed a grenade at an Army Humvee as it drove down a road Baghdad, the military said.
Another soldier was injured and taken to a military hospital where he was listed in serious condition. There was no word on Iraqi casualties.
Both soldiers were part of the 1st Armored Division. Their names were being withheld.
The military said it didn't believe the attack was related to the bombings at Shiite shrines in the capital in Karbala, which left several dead and injured.
The latest death brings to 548 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the United States launched the Iraq war in March. Most have died since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.
February 11, 2004
By Hamza Hendawi
Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq Foreign Islamic fighters in Iraq want to accelerate their anti-U.S. campaign by attacking Kurds, kidnapping U.S. soldiers and trying to control land at night, according to a letter from an operative to al-Qaida leaders intercepted by the U.S. military. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter, which the military announced Monday it had found on an al-Qaida operative captured in Iraq.
The letters author says the insurgency is in a race against time to wreck American plans to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30. If it fails to prevent that, then there will be no choice but to pack our bags and move to another land where we can once again carry our banner.
He also complains that Iraqi insurgents battling the Americans have not cooperated enough with foreign fighters and outlines a strategy to attack Shiites in order to spark a sectarian war that Sunni Muslims will join.
The military believes Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant thought to be linked to al-Qaida, wrote the document. The letter, 11 pages long in Arabic, is written in flowery prose and addressed to our two kind brothers, whom it also refers to as the men in the mountains.
It is thought to have been sent to senior al-Qaida leaders, perhaps Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who are believed hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan or western Pakistan.
Insurgents must act quickly to prevent the handover of power to Iraqi police and military forces, since Iraqi fighters would be less willing to attack them, the letters author says. The noose is beginning to tighten around the necks of the mujahedeen, and the future is frightening with the future deployment of more troops and police, he writes.
Our hope is for the pace of our work to accelerate, to form brigades and battalions that have experience and perseverance and to wait for zero hour, when we begin to appear in public and control the land at night and, God willing, also during the day, he says.
The document vows to target symbols of the Kurdish community and to increase attacks on troops, police men and collaborators Iraqis who work with the U.S.-led coalition.
It calls Americans the most cowardly of Gods creatures, saying, We ask God to enable us to get at them, either through killing them or capturing them to swap them for our sheiks and brothers in detention.
But it says the only solution is to repeatedly attack the Shiites to prompt them into retaliating against Sunnis.
If we succeed in dragging them into the sectarian battlefield, the slumbering Sunnis will wake up, the letter says.
The author rails against Kurds and Shiites, saying Kurdish leaders have turned northern Iraq into a Trojan horse for Israelis. It brands Shiites as heretics aiming to create a Shiite state extending from Iran, passing by Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon and ending with the cardboard kingdom of the Gulf an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia.
He also says Iraqi fighters are hesitant about carrying out suicide attacks and restrict themselves to planting explosives and firing rockets. Some Iraqi fighters brag among themselves that none of them had been killed or captured. We have repeatedly told them that safety and victory dont go together.
By MOHAMMED ARSHAD, Associated Press Writer
QUETTA, Pakistan - Armed men opened fire on Shiite Muslim worshippers during a religious procession in a city in southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 33, authorities told The Associated Press. The mayor declared a curfew.
Officials reported an explosion and gunfire in a congested area of Quetta, the main city in southwest Baluchistan province, as a procession of hundreds of Shiite Muslims marking the Muharram holiday passed by.
Soon after, a Sunni Muslim mosque, a television network office and several shop were set afire as Shiites rioted in parts of the city, and an exchange of gunfire took place near the scene of the initial attack, police said.
Riaz Khan, a Quetta police official, put the death toll at 12.
Samim Durrani, medical superintendent at the central government hospital, said it had received 10 dead and 33 injured, some in critical condition. Other hospitals in the city were also believed to have received casualties.
Mayor Abdul Rahim Kakar told AP that he had imposed an immediate curfew in the city of 1.2 million to maintain law and order. He said troops and paramilitary forces had been deployed and were bringing the situation under control.
"I was present near the procession when we first heard an explosion and then some people fired shots," he said. "We still do not know what kind of explosion it was."
Ambulances were quickly called in to ferry the wounded to local hospitals.
No arrests have been made.
The violence occurred hours after a series of coordinated blasts in Iraq struck major Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing scores of religious pilgrims.
Meanwhile, two people one Shiite and one Sunni were killed and 40 other people wounded in a clash between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Phalia, a town in Punjab province, about 100 miles east of Islamabad, said Nisar Ali Shah, a local police official.
The shootout happened during a Shiite procession, and people from the two sides then set several houses on fire, Shah said.
In Quetta, gunshots continued to ring out in the city nearly an hour after the killings, said Khyzar Hayyat, a local police official.
"The situation is very bad," he said. "I can hear gunshots."
Khan said that a Sunni mosque was set afire and was partially destroyed. Also, there was an exchange of fire between Shiite Muslims and unidentified rivals, he said.
Ijaz Khan, a reporter for the private GEO television network, said six unidentified people entered the GEO office there and set it afire. The office was empty and no one was injured. Last week, the network had run a talk show that allegedly aired offensive comments against Shiites.
Quetta was the site of one of the deadliest acts of sectarian violence in years in Pakistan. Attackers armed with machine-guns and grenades stormed a Shiite Muslim mosque in the city in July, killing 50 people praying inside.
Allama Hassan Turabi, a senior Pakistani Shiite leader, demanded that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf who has repeatedly vowed to defeat extremism in the Islamic country sack government officials including the interior minister for failing to prevent Tuesday's attack.
"This is not the first attack against us. Our people are not safe at homes. They are not safe in mosques," he told AP by telephone from Karachi.
Security had been stepped up nationwide in anticipation of Muharram, a month of mourning when Shiite Muslims recall the seventh-century death of Hussein, grandson of Islam's prophet, Muhammad.
Shiites mark the occasion with religious processions, wearing black clothes as a sign of mourning and whipping themselves, in a sign of penitence over Hussein's death.
Most of Pakistan's Sunni and Shiite Muslims live peacefully together, but small radical groups on both sides are responsible for frequent attacks. About 97 percent of Pakistan's population is Muslim, and Sunnis outnumber Shiites by a ratio of about 8-to-2.
On Saturday, a suicide attacker blew himself up at a Shiite mosque in Rawalpindi, injuring two worshippers. The explosives appeared to go off prematurely.
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