Syria: Islamic State Starts Attack On Air Base
 
August 20, 2014 

Islamic State militants have launched an attack on Tabqa air base in northeastern Syria, looking to seize the last position held by regime forces in Raqqa province, an Islamic State stronghold, AP reported Aug. 20. The group has tightened its siege of the facility in recent days, capturing a number of nearby villages. Islamic State has effectively eliminated the military's presence in Raqqa outside of Tabqa.

Norway On Alert For Islamist Terror Attempt

July 24,2014

Norway announced Thursday that they are on alert for a possible terror attempt within a few days. The Police Security Service "recently received information that individuals affiliated with an extreme Islamist group in Syria may have the intention of carrying out a terrorist action in Norway," the service said in a statement ...We also have information indicating that a terrorist action against Norway is planned to be carried out shortly -- probably in a few days ...We have no information about who is behind such an attack, how it will be carried out, the target or in what way such an attack will be carried out. ... As the information is not specific and not very concrete but at the same time credible, it is difficult to give advice to the citizens of this country on how to act in this situation."

Syrian Rebel Jihadists Arrested in France

July 22,2014

French authorities have arrested two former Syrian rebel jihadists in the town of Albi. They appear to have been part of a cell attempting to recruit individuals to commit attacks inside of France.

Hezbollah Leader Says They Are Ready To Support Hamas
 
July 21, 2014
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been heard in conversation with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah stating that Hezbollah is prepared to assist Hamas against Israel

Israel Strikes Weapons Cache is Sudan

July 21, 2014

There are reports that Israeli forces have destroyed a cache of weapons in Sudan that was headed for Hamas in Gaza. It appears that Israel's air force carried out the attack on a warehouse in Sudan.

About 300 people presumed dead after Malaysian Boeing 777 crash in Ukraine

MOSCOW/KIEV, July 17. /ITAR-TASS/. 

A Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 passenger plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine 60 km from the Russian border on Thursday, July 17, and as many as 300 people aboard are presumed to be dead.

The plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 km and was supposed to enter Russia’s airspace at 17:20 Moscow time. Malaysian Airlines confirmed that it had lost contact with the plane over Ukraine.

A source in the Russian Federal Agency for Air Transportation said the plane’s crew had not contacted Russian air traffic controllers. The plane was supposed to fly through Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine’s air navigation service said there were 280 people and 15 crew members aboard the plane.

A source in the aviation circles told ITAR-TASS that up to 300 people could have been traveling by that flight. “It crashed 60 km from the border. Its emergency locator beacon sent a signal,” the official said.

Malaysia Airlines plane crashes in Ukraine in 60 km from Russian border

Ukrainian mass media said the plane had crashed in the Donetsk Region. The commanders of the army operation being conducted by Kiev in this eastern Ukrainian region said the military had found the crash site north of the city of Torez.

A competent source cited objective control data as indicating that the Ukrainian army’s Buk air defense battalion had been moved to the Donetsk area on Wednesday, July 16. Another such battalion is getting ready for redeployment in Kharkov.

The source said aircraft flying at altitudes higher than 10,000 meters could be reached only by weapons like S-300 or Buk systems. The militia does not have and cannot have such weapons, the source said.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered the creation of a government commission, with the participation of ICAO officials and representatives of the Netherlands and Malaysia, to investigate the accident.

The presidential press service said “the armed forces of Ukraine did not take any actions against air targets”.

North Korean Ship Tests the Waters Near America's Shores

July 17, 2014

It’s not often that North Korean-flagged freighters turn up near America’s shores, but when they do, they deserve attention. North Korea has a prolific record of arms smuggling, narcotics dealing, counterfeiting, terrorist ties and missile and nuclear proliferation. So, let’s hope U.S. authorities are keeping a close eye on a North Korean cargo ship called the Mu Du Bong, which late last month called at Cuba, then vanished from the commercial shipping grid for more than a week. This past Thursday, July 10, the Mu Du Bong reappeared at Havana, then began steaming north of Cuba, and as of this writing is cruising the Gulf of Mexico, not all that far from the Mexican port of Tampico — or for that matter, the coast of Texas.

The Mu Du Bong’s mission could be entirely legitimate. But its behavior bears some disturbing similarities to last year’s voyage of another North Korean freighter, the Chong Chon Gang, which last summer sailed into the Caribbean, picked up an illicit load of weapons in Cuba, and got caught trying to smuggle its cargo through the Panama Canal.

Acting on a tip, Panamanian authorities searched the Chong Chon Gang. They discovered some 240 tons of arms and related materiel, including two disassembled MiG-21 jet fighters, additional MiG engines, surface-to-air missile system components, night vision goggles and ammunition — all hidden under more than 200,000 bags of Cuban sugar.

Documents found on board the Chong Chon Gang proved a trove of information for members of the United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea sanctions, who summarized some of their findings in a UN report released this past March. The U.N. investigators were able to reconstruct an array of techniques with which the Chong Chon Gang tried to hide its illicit mission. They concluded that both the arms shipment and the related transaction between North Korea and Cuba had violated U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

The U.N. report describes how the Chong Chon Gang set out in mid-2013 from North Korea, took on fuel in a Russian Far East port, crossed the Pacific and transited the Panama Canal into the Caribbean. The ship then disappeared from the commercial shipping grid by switching off its onboard transponder, the Automatic Identification System (AIS), with which vessels for reasons of maritime safety are required to signal their identity and real-time location.

While its transponder was switched off, the Chong Chon Gang discharged cargo in Havana, then drifted around north of Cuba for about 10 days, then made a covert stop at the Cuban port of Mariel — where the weapons were loaded on board. The ship then called at another Cuban port, Puerto Padre, where the sugar, a legitimate cargo, was loaded on top on the contraband.

Now comes the Mu Du Bong, a North Korean-flagged general cargo ship, launched in 1984. This vessel is named after a hill in North Korea near Mount Paektu, a locale central to the mythology with which North Korea’s totalitarian regime has deified its founding tyrant, Kim Il Sung.

According to ship-tracking information on Lloyd’s List Intelligence, the Mu Du Bong has spent the past three years plying the coast of China, close to North Korea. In April, that changed. The Mu Du Bong called at the Russian Far East port of Nakhodka, then crossed the Pacific, transited the Panama Canal in mid-June, and made for Cuba. On June 25, she signaled on AIS a few miles off the port of Mariel; then signaled again on June 29 and 30 from the nearby port of Havana.

Then, for nine straight days, from July 1-9, the Mu Du Bong stopped signaling on AIS, and disappeared from the commercial shipping grid. It’s possible the ship was simply sitting quietly at anchor. But there are echoes here not only of the Chong Chon Gang, but of a number of other North Korean-flagged freighters which over the years have followed this pattern of dropping off the grid in the vicinity of Cuba. In congressional testimony last September, illicit-trafficking expert Hugh Griffiths, of the StockholmInternational Peace Research Institute, described this practice as “a common risk indicator of maritime trafficking.” (Iran in recent years has used the same tactic to mask sanctions-busting activities of its oil tankers).

According to ship-tracking data logged by Lloyd’s, the Mu Du Bong recently reappeared on commercial radar, on July 10, again signaling from Havana. Since then, the ship has signaled as sailing north and west, into the heavy shipping traffic in the Gulf of Mexico.

Who is behind the North Korean-flagged Mu Du Bong? On what errand did this ship just call at Cuba, and on what business is it now in the Gulf of Mexico? Publicly available information is either a muddle (in the case of its ownership), or nonexistent (regarding its cargo). Two respected shipping databases, Lloyd’s List Intelligence and Equasis, give different accounts of the Mu Du Bong’s precise pedigree. Both point to the government of North Korea.

According to Lloyd’s, the Mu Du Bong’s beneficial owner is the government of North Korea, but its registered owner is a company in Thailand, called Mariners Shipping and Trading Company Limited. When I phoned this company’s Bangkok number, the phone was answered by someone who gave his name only as Mr. Chanvit, which is the name listed by Lloyd’s as the company’s manager. Chanvit, who spoke good English, said that Mariners Shipping and Trading normally acts not as a ship owner, but as an agent. Asked about the Mu Du Bong and any connections with Cuba and North Korea, Chanvit declined to answer any more questions over the phone. He asked that such queries be submitted by email, which I did. There has been no response.

There does appear to be a company in Thailand at the same address, with an almost identical name — Mariner’s Shipping and Trading Company (the difference from the name given on Lloyd’s being the addition of an apostrophe) — in which North Korea’s state news agency over the past 11 years has taken a cordial interest. Is it coincidence?

In 2003 and 2004, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Mariner’s Shipping and Trading in Thailand had hosted cultural events commemorating the works of Kim Il Sung. More recently, in 2012, KCNA reported that an unnamed “director” of Mariner’s Shipping and Trading, while attending a celebration of North Korea’s Kim dynasty rule, had rhapsodized about North Korea’s state doctrine known as songun – which gives first priority to the North Korean military in the allocation of resources. In the words of a Sept. 4, 2012 item from KCNA: “The director of the Mariner’s Shipping and Trading Company of Thailand stressed that Songun is the best way of defending the sovereignty of the country and the nation at present when the imperialists are becoming all the more undisguised in their high-handed and arbitrary practices.”

Lloyd’s also lists as a contact for the Mu Du Bong a company called Korea Tonghae Shipping Company, based in Pyongyang. According to a 2012 UN report, Korea Tonghae Shipping was designated by Japan as a major North Korean ship-owning company “associated with the illegal exports of WMD-related goods and equipment and etc. from Japan to the DPRK.”

On the Equasis shipping database, the Mu Du Bong is listed as owned by the Mudubong Shipping Co Ltd, in Pyongyang, with an address care of Taedonggang Sonbak Co Ltd, also in Pyongyang. According to the 2014 UN panel of experts report on North Korea sanctions, the commercial operator for Taedonggang Sonbak is another Pyongyang-based company, called Ocean Maritime Management Company Ltd — which was the commercial operator for the arms-smuggling Chong Chon Gang, and “played a key role in arranging the shipment of the concealed cargo of arms and related materiel.”

The questions multiply. Who is providing insurance for the Mu Du Bong? (Lloyd’s, usually a source for such information, shows nothing). With a number of North Korean banks under U.S. sanctions, who paid the fees for the Mu Du Bong’s passage last month through the Panama Canal?

What might the U.S. do? To date, the U.S. government has not imposed sanctions on North Korean vessels. If the Mu Du Bong heads home by way of the Panama Canal, presumably Panama’s authorities could be asked, politely, to check the cargo. But there is no guarantee this ship will head back through the canal. This is not the Mu Du Bong’s first trip to Cuba. She called there previously, in 2009. On that trip, the Mu Du Bong entered the Caribbean via the Panama Canal, but exited by a different route. After calling at Cuba she plied the Atlantic for months between Latin America and West Africa, with port calls in Brazil, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Senegal, before heading around the Horn of Africa and back to East Asia with stops enroute in Qatar, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Singapore.

Perhaps it’s unlikely that North Korea would so brazenly attempt another smuggling run so close to America’s shores, so soon after the seizure of the Chong Chon Gang. But in dispatching the Mu Du Bong via the Panama Canal to Cuba, Pyongyang is at the very least sticking a thumb in America’s eye, and quite possibly testing the waters for future smuggling runs.

Claudia Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.

Hamas unveils new UAV

Mohammed Najib, Ramallah and Jeremy Binnie, London - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly

15 July 2014

 

 

The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced on 14 July that it has a self-produced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) called the Ababil 1.
It said it had developed three different models: the A1A for reconnaissance missions; A1B for offensive missions; and A1C for attacking suicide missions, in which the UAV is used as a loitering munition.
The announcement was accompanied by the release of a video showing what the al-Qassam Brigades said was an A1B in flight.
The aircraft has a boxy fuselage with a high-wing, twin-boom, pusher configuration and fixed, wheeled under-carriage. It carried what appeared to be two improvised rockets under each wing. While it did not appear to be fitted with an electro-optical turret, it had a camera fixed under each boom to film what is in front of the UAV.

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Yemen Shia fighters consolidate control over Amran

July 10, 2014

BEIRUT - The crisis in Yemen sparked by a Shia rebel offensive has been aggravated by the fighters' consolidation of control over the region of Amran, about 50 kilometers north of the capital Sanaa. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), dominated by Saudi Arabia (which leads the area's Sunni bloc), has expressed deep concern after Yemeni president Abd Rabbo Mansur Hadi's visit to Riyadh. The Saudis openly accuse Iran of supporting the Shia rebels, which belong to the Zaidi community, a branch of the Shia religion widespread in Yemen. According to local sources quoted by the Arab daily Al-Hayat, Houthi rebels (named after the founder of the armed group, which has been battling the central government for roughly 10 years), have taken control of the main police and military posts left unguarded by Sanaa government forces in Amran, the capital of the region. Houthi rebel spokesman Muhammad Abdessalam confirmed to the daily the killing of General Hamid Qushaybi, commander of the 310th brigade of government forces stationed in Amran. Sanaa's response so far has been limited to carrying out air strikes on rebel positions and using government infantry troops backed by pro-government tribal militias.

Six Russian helicopters violate Ukrainian airspace

July 10, 2014
 
Russian helicopters crossed the Ukrainian air border in the area of the counter-terrorism operation in eastern Ukraine, the National Security and Defence Council said. 

"Our border guards registered six Russian helicopters flying 4 km into Ukraine near the settlement of Illienkove, and returning later," the Council’s information centre spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on Thursday. Border guards checked the area and found mortar positions and military ammunition items, he said.

ISIL Militants Seize Nuclear Materials in Iraq

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
July 10, 2014

NBC’s Keir Simmons reports the Iraqi government is reaching out to the U.S. for help, as Iraqi state TV confirms that militants there have seized uranium compounds.
“Iraqi state TV confirming that uranium was taken from Mosul University when ISIL overran that city last month, it is a small amount, just 88 pounds we are told. The International Atomic Energy Agency is saying it’s low-grade uranium; it does not present a significant safety, security, or nuclear proliferation risk,” Simmons said on the Today Show.
“All the same, the Iraqi government wrote to the U.N. warning them about this saying the uranium could be used as an act of terrorism and says that’s why the West should get involved in Iraq,” he added.

This entry was posted in National Security and tagged Iraq, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.  

Llink.

 

Mexican Anti-Cartel Vigilantes Emerge Close to US Border

July 10, 2014

 

In light of the consistently failing attempts by municipal police to rein in the drug cartels in Mexico, citizens have taken up arms to push the cartels out of their areas. The fight occurred mostly in southern and central Mexico, but now the fight appears to be moving closer to the US-Mexico border and could disrupt a portion of cartel drug traffic into America.

 

When former Mexican president Felipe Calderon launched the government offensive against the country’s drug cartels in 2006, violence, murders, and kidnappings in Mexico skyrocketed. Mexican police were having trouble with the cartels because they were either outgunned or on the cartels’ payroll. Calderon then called upon the nation’s military forces to fight the cartels, but brutal violence continued.

Fed up with the cartels kidnapping and murdering their neighbors, vigilante groups, made up primarily of farmers and ranch hands, decided to fight back. In many instances, they have been successful, pushing out cartel presence in several rural areas in southern Mexico. Now, a vigilante group called the Alberto Carrera Brigade is emerging close to the US-Mexico border in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the border of which extends from around Laredo to the southernmost tip.

That area of the border is a major US-Mexico trade route where thousands of shipping trucks cross daily. The area, like Ciudad Juarez, which has been the hotbed of violence in the drug war, is an active route for drug smugglers mainly going through from Nuevo Laredo to Laredo, TX and from Reynosa to McAllen, TX.
Tamaulipas is controlled by the Los Zetas and Gulf Cartel, who have a bitter and ultraviolent rivalry, as the Zetas were founded by a group of Gulf Cartel defectors in 2010. Los Zetas have developed a reputation of being one of the most ruthless of the Mexican cartels.

Some are saying that the Tamaulipas vigilante groups are being armed by the Zetas rival, the Gulf Cartel, and are merely clearing out any resistance for the Gulf Cartel. However, the mayor of Ciudad Victoria, the Tamaulipas state capitol, believes the Brigade is genuine in its attempt to fight the cartels.

If the Alberto Carrera Brigade are genuine, and with as successful as the vigilante groups have been in fighting the cartels in southern Mexico, the movement could possibly disrupt the flow of drugs into America.

How a Mexican Cartel Demolished a Town, Incinerated Hundreds of Victims, and Got Away With It

 
By Diego Enrique Osorno

July 10, 2014
 
This story originally appeared in VICE Mexico.
Over the course of 10 days — between Sunday, January 26, and Wednesday, February 5, 2014 — nearly 100 government officials in Coahuila state, northern Mexico, left their desks to execute some unusual fieldwork. They were investigating what exactly happened to dozens of people who disappeared in a region known as Los Cinco Manantiales, or the Five Springs.
The ambitious operation included forensic inspections of 50 homes, businesses, prisons, ranches, and abandoned properties, as well as interrogations of the former mayors, municipal council members, and public secretaries of 11 towns and cities near the border with Texas.
The government’s crusade, however, ended in a cloud of confusion. It was marked by criticism from the press and doubts — raised by local organizations on behalf of the families of the missing people — about its effectiveness.

Although it involved state and federal police, as well as soldiers and marines, the operation was conducted by a Coahuila government body created in 2012. The agency’s laborious name sums up the tragedy that this state has suffered. It is called the Sub-Prosecutor for the Investigation and Search of Missing Persons, Attention to Victims, the Offended, and Witnesses of Coahuila.

We’ll just keep it simple and call it the sub-prosecutor.

The efforts were focused primarily on Allende, a town in Los Cinco Manantiales, named for the vast water springs that sprout up across the plains. In March 2011, Allende (pop. 22,000) suffered a massacre that now, three years later, is finally being investigated by the authorities. Commandos working for the Zetas cartel looted and destroyed dozens of buildings, while kidnapping an estimated 300 people who were never seen again.
The incident was cloaked in secrecy for three years and authorities have yet to disclose exactly what happened.

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Nigeria gas depot blast was suicide bombing


July 10, 2014
By Robin Dixon

Nigeria's nightmare scenario has been this: Islamist militias waging terror in the country's northeast launch attacks in distant Lagos, a chaotic megacity of about 20 million in the southeast and the country's economic engine.
Two weeks ago, Islamic extremists from Boko Haram, or an offshoot group, did attack Lagos, according to security analysts who believe the government and security forces hid the truth.
A female suicide bomber parked her car next to a gasoline tanker in Lagos' Apapa district beside a fuel depot and blew herself up June 25, said security analysts who viewed photographs of the aftermath. Moments earlier, an improvised bomb was thrown over a nearby fence, the analysts said.

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