An open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.
By Professor Joseph B. Varner
Global War on Terror
Canadian troops have killed a two- and four-year-old siblings by opening fire on a car that they feared was about to attack their convoy, the Canadian Forces announced Monday. A statement said that around sunset the previous evening, troops opened fire on a car in Kandahar province after its driver ignored repeated signals to keep a safe distance.
Sources at the local hospital said a boy and his sister had been killed, and their parents had received medical attention. Afghan and United Nations officials have pleaded with international troops to avoid civilian casualties, which threaten to undermine support for the government and foreign forces. The organization Human Rights Watch says at least 300 Afghan civilians were mistakenly killed by the coalition last year, and thousands are believed to have died since 2001. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)
A senior United Nations envoy has charged that Pakistan’s intelligence agents are likely responsible for recent attacks in Afghanistan, and the international community should support the Afghan government’s complaints about such activity. Chris Alexander, a former Canadian ambassador now serving as a UN deputy special representative in Afghanistan, says he believes the Afghan authorities, who say their neighbour’s spy service is sending terrorists across the border. President Hamid Karzai has accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency of plotting many spectacular attacks in his country in recent months, including an attempt on his life and an embassy bombing that killed at least 41 people in Kabul. “We have to ask ourselves, was Karzai right on this point?” Mr. Alexander said in an interview. “I think the answer is yes.” While many foreign officials and analysts have privately endorsed Mr. Karzai’s view of the ISI, Mr. Alexander is the first Western diplomat to back the accusation in public. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)
It was once known as the Parrot’s Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the U.S.-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the Cold War. Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is near the center of the new kind of struggle. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege. The Taliban, which have solidified control across the Pakistani tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds for attacking U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 30-kilogram, or 65-pound, bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100. In a mini-conflict that yet again demonstrates the growing influence of the Taliban and the Pakistani government’s lack of control over this sensitive border area, young and old, wounded and able-bodied, have become refugees in their own land. Thousands of displaced Shiites from Parachinar are scattered among relatives in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, and in hotels and shelters where images of Iranian religious leaders decorate the halls. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)
Missiles hit a religious school in a village just inside Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan on Monday, killing six people. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the incident follows a series of strikes from unmanned U.S. aircraft in recent months against militant leaders in Pakistan’s wild tribal belt. It occurred hours before President George W. Bush was to receive Pakistan’s prime minister at the White House amid mounting American and international pressure on Islamabad to act against Taliban and Al Qaeda strongholds in its territory. State-run Pakistan Television said the missiles hit Azam Warsak, a village in the South Waziristan region. It said six people were killed and several others wounded. PTV did not identify the source of its information or provide any other details. Two Pakistani intelligence officials said the missiles hit an Islamic school in the village. (Source: IHT)
A Pakistani Taliban cleric says a large number of suicide bombers are ready to take on the military if it launches more operations in the Swat valley. The scenic valley in the North-West Frontier Province has seen much violence in recent months from Taliban militants and supporters under control of local cleric Maulana Fazlullah. Appearing before reporters in Kabal village, the elusive cleric, who has mostly been in hiding, said a Taliban retaliation against a government attack would be more deadly than before, Dawn newspaper reported. Fazlullah also said the jihad against infidels both in Pakistan and Afghanistan across the border would continue with zeal and spirit. He said his Tehrik-i-Taliban Swat supporters are awaiting orders from the central Tehrik-Taliban Pakistan led by Baitullah Meshud. Last week, Mehsud’s group warned of severe attacks if the military operations didn’t stop. A Mehsud spokesman was quoted as saying the local government must end its military campaign in Hangu, Swat and other areas in the region. Mehsud also had asked the provincial government to resign. Officials rejected that call.
(Source: UPI)
In eastern Varanasi, a deadly explosion interrupted Hindu devotees as they lit oil lamps to Hanuman, the monkey god, one Tuesday at dusk. In southern Hyderabad, a homemade bomb planted inside a historic mosque killed worshipers one Friday afternoon. In the commercial capital, Mumbai, commuters streaming home on packed city trains died in a series of blasts. In western Ahmedabad, 17 back-to-back explosions Saturday evening were directed at shoppers and strollers, and then, the hospitals where the wounded and their kin rushed for help, killing 49 and wounding more than 200. Over the past several years, terrorist attacks in India have become all too common. The targets seem to have nothing in common except that they are soft: ordinary and easy to strike. Virtually none of the attacks of the past three years have resulted in convictions; a suspect in the Varanasi bombings was shot and killed by the police. Ahmedabad, the commercial center of the state of Gujarat, with a population of 3.5 million, is no stranger to violence. In 2002, a train fire that killed several dozen Hindus led to of the killing of 1,000 Muslims over several days, one of the worst outbreaks of religious violence in Indian history.
An obscure group calling itself “Indian Mujahedeen” claimed that the attacks Saturday were in “revenge of Gujarat,” plainly referring to the 2002 killings. The statement was sent in an e-mail, written in English, to television stations just before the first blasts went off. H. P. Singh, joint police commissioner of Ahmedabad, said Sunday that some of the explosives had been strapped to bicycles in crowded streets and markets. Later in the evening, a pair of car bombs went off in front of two city hospitals. The police said that two additional bombs had been found and defused, in Ahmedabad and nearby Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat. On Sunday afternoon, the police found two abandoned cars in the industrial city of Surat, also in Gujarat, one stuffed with bomb-making chemicals and detonators, the other with live bombs. The police said they were still tracing the cars’ ownership. The Ahmedabad blasts came a day after a series of similar low-intensity blasts in southern Bangalore, which killed a woman standing at a bus stop. Two months ago in Jaipur, synchronized blasts on bicycles killed 56; the Indian Mujahedeen sent an e-mail message claiming responsibility for those attacks as well. On Sunday, the state police intelligence bureau director, P.P. Pandey, said “a single mind” was suspected to be behind the three latest attacks. As they do after every such episode, the police said they had detained people for questioning and The Associated Press reported 30 people were in custody. Officials offered no further details about who was involved in the group or a possible motivation behind the bombings. A report prepared last year by the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington quantified the scale of violence in India. Between January 2004 and March 2007, the report concluded, the death toll from terrorist attacks was 3,674, second only to Iraq during the same period.
(Source: IHT)
A stroll through Beijing’s maze of hutong alleyways these days reveals much about the Chinese government’s obsession with security ahead of the Olympic Games and its unerring ability to rally its people around a common cause. These quiet lanes are now the barracks of many of the capital’s 400,000 “public security volunteers,” a citizen army of neighborhood committees acting as the extra eyes and ears to Beijing’s Olympic security force, which already comprises 80,000 police officers, 100,000 counterterrorism troops and 300,000 surveillance cameras. “If the Olympics are not safe, there is nothing else worth speaking of,” Xi Jinping, the top Chinese official in charge of Olympic preparations, was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying earlier this week. The mobilization of the neighborhood committees for the Olympics harks back to Chairman Mao Zedong’s concept of “people’s warfare,” said Willy Lam, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation and a veteran China commentator. (Source: Washington Times)
The video seemed to fit the Islamist terror profile. Incantatory music precedes the footage of a white turbaned man, his face shrouded in white cloth, dressed in military fatigues, flanked by two similarly uniformed comrades whose identities are hidden by black commando face masks. In the video, a previously little known group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party claims it carried out several fatal bombings in the country in recent months. The group’s self-described military commander, Seyfullah, said it was responsible for incidents in Shanghai in early May and in the southern city of Kunming on July 21 that killed a total of five people. He also said the group had bombed a plastics factory in the province of Guangdong. Most ominously, he threatened to carry out further attacks during the Beijing Olympics, which are scheduled to open on August 8. Indeed, the video begins with Beijing’s Olympic logo in flames and with a grainy image of a sports facility superimposed with an animated bomb blast. But was it a serious threat? The three minute video, which was obtained under unspecified circumstances by the Intelcenter, a Washington D.C. company that specializes in collecting counter terrorism information, was greeted with skepticism both in and out of China. Police in Shanghai and Kunming said the blasts weren’t related to opposition to Chinese rule by ethnic Uighur Muslims in the country’s far western province of Xinjiang. Police in Guangdong province also said they had no record of an explosion on the date mentioned in the video.
(Source: Time)
The death toll in two bomb blasts in Istanbul rose to 17 on Monday in an attack that increased tension hours before a top court was to begin deliberating on whether to ban the governing party. State news agency Anatolian, citing officials, said the toll rose after one person died from wounds sustained in the Sunday evening blasts in a working class neighborhood on the European side of Istanbul. More than 150 people were wounded in the attacks which officials said left 115 people being treated in hospital, including seven in a serious condition. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan cancelled his weekly cabinet meeting to travel to Turkey’s largest city to visit the site of the blasts in Gungoren, a government official told Reuters. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, the deadliest in Turkey since 2003. Newspapers said three people had been detained in connection with the bombings. Kurdish separatists, far-left groups and Islamist militants have all carried out bombings in Istanbul in the past. Several newspapers said police were focusing their investigations this time on the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), saying it has used similar explosives. Opposition leader Deniz Baykal said, according to NTV broadcaster, that police suspected the PKK were responsible.
The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union, has waged a deadly campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey since 1984. The PKK usually does not target civilians. Officials said an initial loud blast on Sunday evening brought people into the streets and a larger bomb hidden in a rubbish bin exploded 10 minutes later and 50 metres away in the Gungoren district, near Istanbul’s main international airport, where families gather in the evenings to dine and stroll. The Istanbul attacks came hours after Turkish fighter jets bombed suspected PKK targets across the border in northern Iraq, used by guerrillas as a base from which to carry out strikes on Turkish territory. (Source: Reuters)
Clashes broke out in Gaza City on Sunday, wounding at least six people, as Hamas security forces moved to arrest members of the Army of Islam, a shadowy militant group believed linked to Al Qaeda. (Source: AFP)
Iraq
Three female suicide bombers killed at least 28 people and wounded 92 in Baghdad on Monday as Shiite pilgrims flooded into the Iraqi capital for a major religious event. In the northern oil city of Kirkuk a suicide bomber killed at least 16 people and wounded 112 others at a demonstration against Iraq’s provincial elections law. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Baghdad blasts, but Al Qaeda has often targeted Shiite pilgrims taking part in religious events in Iraq. It considers Shiism, the majority Muslim denomination in Iraq, heretical. The apparently coordinated explosions in Baghdad shattered months of relative calm in the city, and took place despite a heavy security clampdown ahead of the annual Shiite pilgrimage to the Kadhamiya shrine in the city’s northwest. At least one million people are expected to take part in the pilgrimage, which peaks on Tuesday and marks the death of one of Shiite Islam’s 12 imams. Security officials said improved security would boost visitor numbers compared to previous years.
The U.S. military said it was possible that three suicide bombers had carried out the attacks, but did not specify whether they were women. Al Qaeda has increasingly used women to carry out suicide attacks because they can often evade the more stringent security checks applied to men. Women have carried out more than 20 suicide attacks in Iraq this year. The blasts occurred near the Karrada district in central Baghdad, an area
many pilgrims would pass through on their way to the shrine. Gunmen killed seven pilgrims in southern Baghdad on Sunday as they made their way to the shrine on foot. In Kirkuk, Kurdish television footage showed thousands of people demonstrating against Iraq’s provincial elections when an explosion prompted a rush for cover. A Reuters witness said there was a stampede as police started to shoot into the air. Tensions have been in high in the disputed oil-rich city ahead of provincial elections scheduled to take place this year. (Source: Reuters)
Seven Shiite pilgrims travelling to a shrine in Baghdad were shot to death in an ambush in a Sunni town south of the capital Sunday as authorities tightened security ahead of a major religious festival that is expected to draw tens of thousands of worshippers. The U.S. military, meanwhile, said two new operations will begin early next month in a bid to rout insurgents from rural hideouts in northern Iraq and solidify recent security gains in urban areas. (Source: Reuters)
United States
The Army has begun a search for the next generation of bulletproof body armor. Pentagon-supervised live-fire testing was recently completed at the Army’s Aberdeen, Md., Proving Ground. Further tests are scheduled before the service chooses a successor to ESAPI, or Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert. It is a system of super-hard ceramic plates designed to stop armor-piercing rounds. ESAPI slides inside an Outer Tactical Vest, creating the Interceptor Body Armor System. A retired Army officer who has toured Iraq and Afghanistan to poll service members on their armor needs told The Washington Times that one theme stands out: the war fighters say that whatever new plates are chosen, they want the Interceptor to remain relatively lightweight at under 30 pounds. Added weight, they say, restricts mobility and thus increases the chance of being shot. (Source: Washington Times)
Africa
Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been accused by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court of genocide and vilified the world over as an incorrigible mass murderer bent on slaughtering his own people. But inside Sudan, his grip on power seems to be surer than ever. In the past few weeks, one sworn political enemy after another has closed ranks behind the Sudanese president, criticizing the looming arrest warrant from the international court as an obstacle to peace and an affront to Sudanese sovereignty. The result has been a swift and radical reordering of the fractious political universe in Sudan, driven in part by national pride but also by deep-seated fears that if Bashir were removed by outside interference, Sudan could easily tumble into Somalia-like chaos. The Sudanese government seems to be in a high-stakes high-wire act, trying to determine exactly how much it needs to concede to survive. One previously unthinkable proposal that is now being discussed is whether the Sudanese government should arrest Ahmad Muhammad Harun, the former interior minister, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader.
(Source: IHT)
Nigerian rebels claimed Monday they had sabotaged two Shell pipelines in Nigeria’s main oil producing region, sending the price of crude climbing on international markets. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed “heavily armed” MEND fighters had attacked the pipelines in the southern Rivers state operated by Shell. Oil prices rose on the news, with Brent North Sea crude for September delivery climbing 1.58 dollars to 126.10 dollars a barrel, while New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for September, rose by 1.50 dollars to 124.76 dollars a barrel. A spokesman for Shell in Nigeria, Tony Okonedo, said a helicopter overflight had confirmed an attack on one of the pipelines, at Kula. (Source: AFP)
An outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in two Nigerian poultry markets, the first discovery in almost 10 months in Africa’s most populous nation, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. Junaidu Maina, agriculture director for the livestock department, said the infected chickens and ducks were located last week in the northern cities of Kano and Katsina. The virus, which can spread to humans, was first discovered in Nigeria in February 2006 and infected poultry in 25 states before being contained. The last Nigerian outbreak was in October 2007. The outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu began in Asia five years ago and has been found in about 60 countries and territories, according to the World Organization for Animal Health. The virus has killed 243 people since 2003. (Source: Reuters)
Americas
Canada need not fear a diplomatic cold shoulder from its southern neighbor should it repatriate a Canadian once labeled an Al Qaeda operative whose name appears on the U.S. no-fly list, suggests U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins. In an interview with The Canadian Press, the ambassador suggested that the U.S. would not view as an affront Canada bringing home anyone red-flagged by the Americans. The ambassador wouldn’t specifically address the situation involving Abousfian Abdelrazik, who is unable to return home from Sudan because he is on a United Nations Security Council terror list. Mr. Abdelrazik was jailed in Sudan in 2003 on allegations he was involved in Islamic extremist activities. He was later freed because Sudanese investigators found no evidence to support criminal charges. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)
Asia
Cambodia and Thailand struggled Monday to settle a standoff over disputed border territory near an ancient Hindu temple that prompted both countries to deploy thousands of troops to the area. Foreign ministers from the two Southeast Asian nations expressed optimism that their talks would produce a breakthrough in the dispute. (Source: Washington Times)
Prime Minister Hun Sen appeared headed for an expected election victory on Sunday after what experts said was the least violent political campaign in Cambodia’s recent history. His overpowering control of the country’s political machinery has been buoyed by economic growth and a sense of stability, as well as by a surge of patriotism as Cambodia faces off against Thailand for sovereignty over a temple on their border.
“Preliminary results show that the CPP is leading, and we expect to win the election,” said Khieu Kanharith, the spokesman for the governing party, the Cambodian People’s Party. On Tuesday morning the party said it was likely to increase its hold on Parliament, winning more than 90 of the 123 seats, with 26 seats going to the main opposition Sam Rainsy Party. Official results will be announced later in the week. (Source: IHT)
Property belonging to Norwegian People’s Aid, One of Norway’s biggest non-government organizations which was accused of secretly smuggling is weapons for at least another insurgency in Sudan in the past, is being used by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for its military activities , Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defense charged. The Defense Ministry said, “heavy earth moving vehicles, four trucks, a tractor, several land cruiser jeeps and a number of motor cycles,” belonging to the Norwegian People’s Aid are being used by the LTTE, quoting unnamed sources, believed to be the Army’s intelligence services. (Source: Asian Tribune)
Europe
The Basque separatist group ETA planned to murder politicians, attack businesses and start a summer bombing campaign in the tourist region of Andalusia, court documents show. The details emerged during an investigation into one of the armed militants’ most active cells, dismantled Tuesday by the police with the arrest of nine people. ETA has killed more than 800 people in its four-decade campaign for independence for the Basque region. The cell was plotting to kidnap and murder Benjamin Atuxta, a Basque Socialist town councilor, in the same way Miguel Ángel Blanco, a conservative Popular Party politician, was killed in 1997. ETA shot the 29-year-old twice in the back of the head and dumped his body on a country road, provoking nationwide disgust, after the group’s demand for all ETA prisoners to be moved to the Basque country went unheeded. The guerrillas also planned to kill Senator Ramón Rabanera of the Popular Party and a judge, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and were about to carry out attacks in the holiday region of Andalusia. (Source: IHT)
Radovan Karadzic’s lawyer said he expected his client to be extradited before a Tuesday evening anti-government rally by ultranationalist supporters of the war crimes suspect. The rally organizers the right-wing Serbian Radical Party plan to bus Karadzic’s supporters from all over Serbia and Bosnia. There are fears of violence on Belgrade streets and that the ultranationalists will try to prevent Karadzic’s extradition by force.
The war crimes court in Belgrade that is dealing with the case of the ex-Bosnian Serb leader said Monday that his appeal had not arrived by the start of morning office hours.
Karadzic’s lawyer Svetozar Vujacic said he mailed the appeal at the last possible moment late Friday, trying to delay Karadzic’s extradition to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for as long as possible. (Source: Washington Times)
Russia announced plans Sunday to revive its navy by building several aircraft carriers and improving its fleet of nuclear submarines. Russia’s power at sea is a shadow of that of the formidable Soviet Navy of the Cold War era. But with a strong economy from booming oil exports, the Kremlin is seeking to raise its profile on the world stage by modernizing its armed forces. Russia will build five or six aircraft carrier battle groups in the near future, the RIA news agency quoted a navy commander, Vladimir Vysotsky, as saying at Navy Day festivities in St Petersburg. “We call this a sea-borne aircraft carrier system that will be based on the Northern and Pacific fleets,” Vysotsky said. “The creation of such systems will begin after 2012.” He said such carrier groups would operate in close contact with Russia’s military satellites, air forces and air defenses.
Russia now has only one aircraft carrier, the Nikolai Kuznetsov, which was launched in 1985 but did not become fully operational for 10 years because of the turmoil after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Kuznetsov is not even a full-fledged aircraft-carrier, being officially called an air-capable cruiser. It carries fewer aircraft than U.S. carriers and features a steam turbine power plant with diesel generators, while all modern carriers are nuclear-powered. The first Borei submarine, the Yuri Dolgoruky, was launched in February and is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2008. Two other submarines of this class are being built. Tests of a new nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile, Bulava-M, designed to be mounted on Borei submarines, have had mixed results. The Kremlin has claimed the missile can penetrate any air defense. (Source: IHT)
Russia, which under Vladimir Putin has shown increasing hostility toward NATO and other post-World War II security organizations in Europe, has put together a set of proposals that essentially sidelines these groups in favor of a broader one. The proposals, to be presented to NATO on Monday in Brussels, clearly have no chance of being accepted by the United States and its allies in Europe. But they reflect the Kremlin’s latest efforts to reassert itself on the world stage and to challenge longstanding diplomatic practices. The Kremlin wants in particular to weaken the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which Russia is a member of, and NATO, which it is not. The Russian proposal would establish a broad security pact open to other countries, including possibly China and India. Dmitri Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to NATO, acknowledged that the alliance would not quickly embrace the proposals, but he suggested that the Kremlin was hoping to begin a dialogue. (Source: IHT)
The U.S. and Russia are trying to quiet speculation over a possible deployment of Russian nuclear-capable bombers to Cuba, but the reports haven’t gone away. The Russian newspaper Izvestia on Thursday reported that Russian bomber crews have visited Cuba to survey for possible refueling stopovers. The newspaper report, which could not be confirmed, came on the same day that a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman denied an earlier Izvestia report about alleged Russian plans to deploy strategic aircraft in Cuba. But on Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry issued a strong denial of the report that first appeared in Izvestia on Monday. At the same time, the Bush administration sought to defuse tensions by calling the Russian government a partner, not a threat. Buzz about a possible Caribbean crisis began when an Izvestia report claimed Russia was planning a tit-for-tat response to the U.S. that evoked the nuclear-holocaust fears of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The flap over Cuba came as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was in Russia to broker oil deals and buy $1 billion worth of weapons systems. Izvestia said Russia was considering dispatching long-range bombers to Cuba in answer to Bush administration plans to deploy an anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe. (Source: Seattle Times)
Middle East
Hamas security forces on Saturday arrested 162 Fatah activists in Gaza after an explosion on Friday that killed five Hamas militants and a girl. Hamas security men seized computers and files at the Gaza offices of the PA’s WAFA news agency, and stormed 40 other Fatah offices. (Source: Reuters)
Security forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction detained more than 50 Hamas activists in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday. (Source: Reuters/Washington Post)
Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) Director Yuval Diskin told the Cabinet on Sunday, “Since the cease-fire began, four tons of explosives have been transferred into Gaza for Hamas, as well as 50 anti-tank missiles, light arms, and materials for Kassam rocket manufacture, metal rods and gunpowder.” Most of the smuggling is taking place by land, through tunnels. Hamas has taken control of the tunnels in the area.” He said the recent prisoner exchange deal with Hizbullah has encouraged terror groups to plan additional kidnappings of Israeli soldiers. (Source: Ynet News)
One month into the lull arrangement, there has been a significant decrease in the number of rockets and mortar shells fired at Israel, and the cease-fire is generally upheld. However, it has occasionally been violated by rocket and mortar fire from rogue terrorist organizations which oppose the lull. These are mostly local Fatah networks, with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad violating the lull only on one occasion. Terrorist activity in Judea and Samaria during the lull continued and even increased. There were four major terrorist attacks perpetrated since the beginning of the lull. (Source: Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center)
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) Home Front Command conducted a drill on Sunday of a mass rocket attack and shelling of southern cities and communities. During the exercise, firefighters, ambulances, the National Emergency Authority, and the mayors of Kiryat Gat and Ashdod cooperated in a simulated large-scale evacuation of affected areas. Senior defense officials have repeatedly said Hamas has armed itself with new rockets which can hit targets in Ashdod, Israel’s fifth-largest city situated 25 km. from Gaza, and Kiryat Gat, 21 km. from Gaza. (Source: Jerusalem Post)
Israeli security forces have received a number of warnings of possible terror attacks in the West Bank and within the “green line” by Hamas terrorists recently released from Israeli jails, a senior Israel Defense Forces officer said over the weekend. The IDF and the Shin Bet security service have seen efforts by Hamas over the past few months to rehabilitate its military infrastructure in the West Bank. A large number of lower-level Hamas activists have recently been released from Israeli jails after serving sentences of about five years for intifada-related crimes. An apparently large number of them have returned to terrorism, employing new techniques learned from veteran prisoners. The army and the Shin Bet say most of these activists are quick to begin setting up new networks to carry out major attacks. (Source: Ha’aretz)
IDF and police forces killed senior Hamas member Shihab Natsheh, who was behind the Dimona suicide bombing last February which left one woman dead. Natsheh was killed during exchanges of fire with IDF forces in the West Bank city of Hebron early Sunday. (Source: Ynet News)
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is pressuring Israel and the Palestinian Authority to try to agree on a document of understandings by September, ahead of the UN General Assembly, according to Palestinian sources. Rice wants to be able to present the document during the General Assembly to show progress in the talks. A senior Israeli official confirmed that Rice wants to use the General Assembly to present a document summarizing the progress of the last nine months. The Israeli and PA teams, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qureia, will arrive in Washington on Wednesday to continue negotiations. A three-way meeting with Rice is expected.
According to the Israeli official, “neither we nor the Palestinians want a deadline that can’t be met. That will only hurt the talks and the good progress that has been achieved so far.” The official said gaps remain on most issues. Livni and Qureia agree that talks should reach a point where they can survive changes of government on all sides, including in the U.S. (Source: Ha’aretz)
Iranian President Ahmadinejad said Saturday his country now possesses 6,000 centrifuges, double the 3,000 uranium-enriching machines Iran had previously said it was operating. “Announcements like this, whatever the true number is, are not productive and will only serve to further isolate Iran from the international community,” said White House spokesman Carlton Carroll. Iran says it plans to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment that will ultimately involve 54,000 centrifuges that could churn out enough enriched material for dozens of nuclear weapons. (Source: AP/Washington Post)
Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University.
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