CLIFTON -- A grenade -- believed to be live and rigged with a trip wire -- was removed Monday night from a bus shelter on Van Houten Avenue by the Passaic County sheriff's bomb squad and detonated at a facility on Garret Mountain. "This appears to be an act of sabotage," said Bill Maer, a sheriff's spokesman.
Detectives from Clifton and the Sheriff's Department were dispatched to several "county locations" late Monday as part of the continuing investigation, Maer said. About 60 patrons in two bars across the street from the bus shelter, near Sade Street, were told to stay inside, keep the doors closed and stay away from windows as bomb squad mem- bers used a robot to retrieve the device.
Authorities were alerted when someone called police and told them about a bomb, Maer said. Police alerted the Fire Department, and then the Sheriff's Department.
Bomb plot uncovered at Finnish base in Afghanistan
16.1.2007
An attempted bomb attack was uncovered Monday against a military base in Afghanistan housing Finnish peacekeepers. According to the peacekeeping force Tuesday the bomb was discovered in time and diffused. p>The incident occurred at the Maimana base in northern Afghanistan one day before Jonas Gahr Store, the Norwegian foreign minister, was scheduled to visit the base. Mr Store's visit is to go ahead as planned on Tuesday. A total of around 200 Finnish, Latvian and Norwegian troops, all part of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), are housed at the base in Maimana.
http://virtual.finland.fi/stt/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=14753&group=General
Kenyan police ‘arrest’ top leader of Islamic militants; Somali govt orders Al-Jazeera, local radios off the air
Jan.16.2007
GARISSA, Kenya (Agencies): Kenyan police arrested a top leader in Somalia’s Islamic militant movement on Monday, a Kenyan security official said. The leader was arrested at midmorning at a refugee camp near the Kenyan border with Somalia, the official said, quoting from a police report. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said he was on his way to the Dadaab refugee camp, 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Garisa, to help identify the suspect. If confirmed, the arrest could be a major step toward ending the fighting in Somalia, which began when Ethiopian troops intervened to stop the Islamic movement’s advance to destroy the internationally backed government.
Top movement leaders Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys and Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed have pledged to carry on a guerrilla war as long as Ethiopian troops remain in Somalia. Unidentified gunmen have repeatedly attacked Ethiopian troops in the capital, Mogadishu, over the last two weeks. Aweys was the founder of the Council of Islamic Courts, which took up arms to establish an Islamic emirate in Somalia in January. Before that, he was a senior leader of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a group listed by the United States as a terrorist organization with ties to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Somalia’s transitional government on Monday ordered the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television network and three local private radio stations to stop broadcasting from the country’s capital.
Excerpted
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/world/Viewdet.asp?ID=8905&cat=a
Kohima, Jan 16: Seven ULFA militants, including two women, have been rounded up in Mon district bordering Upper Assam where the security forces have launched a crackdown on the cadre of the banned outfit. The ultras were arrested by personnel of the Assam Rifles yesterday while they were trying to sneak into Myanmar via Mon district, defence sources said today.
Five of the arrested belonged to the outfit's dreaded 28th battalion which recently carried out the killing of non-Assamese migrant labourers in upper Assam. The two women cadre were handed over to the police.
Equipments, including radio sets, dicta phones, SIM cards, radio transistor and knives were recovered from them, they said.
The Assam Rifles said the drive against ULFA militants would continue in Nagaland in the coming days even though the ceasefire was in force in the state. They asked NSCN and villagers not to collude and provide shelter to the militants from Assam who frequently adopt hit-and-run tactics and seek safe refuge either in bordering districts of Nagaland or Arunachal Pradesh.
http://www.newkerala.com/news4.php?action=fullnews&id=80306
Pakistani military says it killed up to 30 militants
Tuesday January 16, 2007
Islamabad– Pakistani security forces on Tuesday killed up to 30 militants, including some foreign fighters, in an early morning operation in the South Waziristan tribal district bordering Afghanistan, a military spokesman said. Three of five suspect compounds in the Zamzola region - located more than 300 kilometres south of Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province - were destroyed in a strike by ground forces supported by helicopters, army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
"We had information about terrorists and local facilitators," he said. "It is believed that they were present in the [destroyed] compounds."
None of the 25 to 30 insurgents in the buildings was believed to have survived, he said. The targeted group was involved in militant training and terrorist activities in the area, according to the spokesman, adding that there were no government casualties.
Excerpted
http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Pakistani_military_says_it_killed_u_01162007.html