It may sound like science fiction, but the prospect that suicide bombers and hijackers could be made redundant by flying robots is a real one, according to experts. The technology for remote-controlled light aircraft is now highly advanced, widely available — and, experts say, virtually unstoppable.
In his office in Peshawar’s historic Mohabat Khan mosque, prayer leader Maulana Yousaf Qureshi smoothes his beard from the white roots to the henna-orange tips. "There’s no time limit. If someone kills the cartoonist in 50 years he will still get the million dollars," he says.
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/ 2 February 2006
The bomb only singed the wall of his home, but Fatah loyalist and former security heavyweight Suleiman Abu Mutleq says the message is crystal clear: Hamas wants a fight. The one-time senior officer in the preventive security force was heavily defeated by the Islamic Resistance Movement in last week’s election.
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/ 13 January 2006
The far-flung jihadist movement, much like the United States-led world economy it seeks to disrupt, is undergoing a rapid globalisation, evolving into a nebulous and loosely knit network more dangerous than what remains of al-Qaeda, international security experts say.
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/ 15 September 2005
Hundreds of people continued to cross the border between Gaza and Egypt unhindered on Thursday despite efforts by police on both sides of the frontier to assert control. Around 30 Palestinian police and 20 Egyptian border guards took up positions at dawn on the main road straddling the border but just hours later they failed to stop a group of Palestinians.
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/ 14 September 2005
Hamas militants blew a gaping hole on Wednesday in a concrete barrier on the Gaza Strip’s southern border, enabling Palestinians to continue surging into Egypt despite pledges to restore order. Under pressure from Israel, Egyptian authorities set a new deadline for all Palestinians to return to the Gaza side.