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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Jihadists seek to open new front in Burma

July 15, 2013
By Bill Roggio

"A brigade of Mujahedeen from Burma, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan" purportedly have launched operations in Burma. Photographs of scores of armed jihadists in military uniforms have appeared on a jihadist website.

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Former bin Laden doctor reportedly heads al Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula

By David BarnettJuly 17, 2013

Ramzi Mowafi. Image from Al Arabiya.

Egyptian security forces have reportedly arrested a number of jihadists operating in the Sinai Peninsula who are linked to Ramzi Mowafi, a former physician for Osama bin Laden.
Sources have told Egyptian media outlets that Mowafi's group has been responsible for numerous attacks in the Sinai over the past two years. Among those recently arrested are a Yemeni and a Palestinian who were found in the possession of maps and laptops.
In August 2011, Egyptian security officials told CNN that Mowafi, who is also thought to be an explosives expert, was spotted in the Sinai. At the time, Mowafi, born in Egypt in 1952, was said to be providing military training to a number of people in the Sinai.
Mowafi, who is believed to have done chemical weapons work for al Qaeda, was involved in the January 2011 prison break in which former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi escaped along with a number of other senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

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Wanted Hamas member killed

Jerusalem (CNN) -- A wanted Hamas operative was killed overnight in an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank, the military said Friday.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli military told CNN that Israeli soldiers were on a mission to apprehend Palestinian Iyad Shilbayeh for suspicions of involvement in recent "terror activity" in a town near the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.
Shilbayeh ran toward the Israeli soldiers with his hands behind his back in a suspicious manner and continued to advance despite calls for him to stop, according to the spokeswoman. It was at this point that Israeli soldiers opened fired the spokeswoman told CNN.

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Car bomb, gunmen attack Mogadishu airport: 7 dead

By Mohamed Olad Hassan, The Associated Press

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A suicide car bomber and gunmen attacked the front gate to Mogadishu's seaside airport on Thursday, triggering an explosion and gunbattle, officials said. At least seven people were killed, including six security forces.
The co-ordinated attack was the latest in a surge of assaults by Islamist insurgents, who last month declared a new, stepped-up effort to oust the country's weak government. The barrage took place about 40 minutes after Somalia's president flew out of the country.

After the car bomb exploded, a second vehicle full of militants opened fire at African Union and Somali security forces, said Osman Dahir, a police officer at the airport. He said there were several dead bodies of insurgents lying in front of the airport, but he didn't know how many.
Two soldiers with the African Union force and four Somali police officers were killed, said Maj. Barigye Bahoku, the spokesman for the AU force. One Somali civilian was also killed, he said.
Vehicles from the African Union blocked the car bomb attacker from gaining entry into the airport, said Abdul Rahman Yussef, an official with Somalia's army. The 7,000-man AU force guards the airport and presidential palace and prevents the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab from overthrowing Somalia's weak government.

Yussef said he believes two women who were begging near the gate also were killed. Bahoku could not confirm the deaths.
No group immediately claimed responsibility, but the attack was likely carried out by al-Shabab, Somalia's most dangerous militant group.
Late last month al-Shabab militants stormed a Mogadishu hotel favoured by lawmakers and killed 32 people, including four parliamentarians. In July, al-Shabab masterminded twin bombings in Uganda's capital during the World Cup final, attacks that killed 76 people.

Al-Shabab recently declared a new, stepped-up campaign to overthrow Somalia's government and install the harsh, ultraconservative form of Sharia law that it practices across Somalia. Militant veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts help train al-Shabab fighters, one of the reasons the sophistication of its attacks has risen in recent months.

15 killed in car bomb attack in Russia 

A suicide car bomb attack in a busy marketplace in Russia's Vladikavkaz city, capital of North Ossetia, left at least 15 people dead Thursday, according to the Itar-Tass news agency.

Around 80 people were injured when the car packed with 40 kg of TNT exploded, according to the interior ministry of the Republic of North Ossetia.

Two people were in the car, which bore the licence plates of the neighbouring predominantly Muslim republic of Ingushetia.

The attack, which occurred on the final day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, damaged numerous buildings in the city and set dozens of cars on fire.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned the attack and called on the region's Muslim population to help prevent similar incidents in the future.

Security precautions were increased after the blast, with authorities evacuating all schools and kindergartens in North Ossetia.  

Six years ago, Islamist separatists carried out one of the worst attacks in Beslan, North Ossetia, in which more than 330 people were killed - including 168 children.

The neighbouring republics of Dagestan and Chechnya have seen repeated attacks by the separatists.

Medvedev ordered his special envoy for the northern Caucasus, Alexander Kloponin, to travel to Vladikavkaz. Police in the city defused a second bomb at the entrance to the marketplace, after the first one went off.

Putin accused the terrorists behind the car bombing of seeking to sow discord.

'We are counting on the Muslim population to make a decisive contribution towards the fight( against terrorism), Putin said.

Islamic separatists in the Muslim north Caucasus are fighting elements loyal to the Kremlin with the goal of setting up an independent 'Caucasus Emirate' in the region.