A Sudanese cameraman with the al-Jazeera on Friday accused United States authorities of insulting Islamic symbols on his return home after six years of detention at Guantánamo Bay. There were ”many violations — [we were] deprived from praying and there were … deliberate insults to God’s holy book” said Sami al-Haj.
Somali Islamist militants on Friday promised to avenge the killing of a man said to be an al-Qaeda’s chief, warning citizens from countries they considered hostile to stay away from the war-torn country. The United States military on Thursday killed Moalim Aden Hashi Ayro and 11 others when it bombed a house in Somalia’s central town of Dhusamareb.
Two suicide bombers killed 30 people and wounded 65 others when they detonated explosive vests in a busy market in a town north-east of Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi police said. Police said the second bomber struck as crowds rushed to evacuate the wounded from the first attack.
A United States air strike killed an Islamist commander thought to be al-Qaeda’s leader in Somalia and at least a dozen other people on Thursday, the insurgents and witnesses said. Aden Hashi Ayro died in the latest of several US bombings in recent months to have targeted Somali rebel leaders.
More than 900 people have been killed in clashes between militiamen and security forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City, which broke out last month, a senior Iraqi official told reporters on Wednesday. ”There were 925 martyrs in Sadr City and 2 605 others have been wounded”, said Tehseen Sheikhly, a spokesperson for the government’s Baghdad security plan.
Mauritanian security forces recaptured five suspected al-Qaeda militants on Wednesday, including a fugitive accused of killing four French tourists, officials said. The December 24 killing of the French tourists and a shooting attack against the Israeli embassy in Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, in February raised fears of a rise in Islamic violence.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai escaped unhurt after an assassination attempt by Taliban fighters with guns and rockets during an official celebration in the capital, Kabul, on Sunday. Government ministers along with leaders of other political factions were seen ducking for cover after gunfire sounded at the celebration to mark the 16th anniversary of fall of the Afghan communist government.
There is a ”real possibility” that the Beijing Olympics will be targeted by terrorists or that anti-China groups could attack athletes, Interpol’s secretary general said on Friday. ”An attempted act of terrorism is a real possibility and a real concern that all Olympic host countries have shared in recent years,” said Ronald Noble.
Amnesty International accused Ethiopian soldiers on Wednesday of killing 21 people, including an imam and several Islamic scholars, at a Mogadishu mosque and said seven of the victims had their throats slit. The rights group said the soldiers had also captured dozens of children during the raid on the al-Hidaaya mosque.
Denmark has evacuated staff from its embassies in Algeria and Afghanistan because of terror threats following the reprint in Danish newspapers of a caricature depicting the Prophet Muhammad, officials said on Wednesday. The threat ”is so concrete that we had to take this decision”, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could ”totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel. Clinton said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian attack.
Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday threatened an ”open war” against the Iraqi government unless it halted a crackdown by Iraqi and United States security forces on his followers. The spectre of a full-scale uprising by Sadr sharply raises the stakes in his confrontation with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Pakistan’s envoy to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, who went missing in February, appeared on Saturday in a video aired by al-Arabiya news channel in which he said that he was held by the Taliban. ”We were on our way to Afghanistan in our official car on February 11 when we were kidnapped,” said Azizuddin.
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of mourners in northern Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 50 people, a police officer said. The man detonated an explosives vest in the crowd in the Sunni Arab village of Bu Mohammed, 120km south of the oil city of Kirkuk, at about 11am local time, Captain Abdullah Jassim said.
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday reaffirmed his doubts about the accepted version of the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, describing the strikes as a ”suspect event”. ”Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech to a public rally in the holy city of Qom.
Spanish, French and American tourists once filled the winding alleys of Sanaa’s old quarter, drawn by Yemen’s 2 500-year-old history and unique architecture. But a spate of attacks on foreigners is driving visitors away and souvenir shop owner Hussain Abdel Moghni says the only tourists who come to Yemen these days are ”adventurers”.
A series of bombings blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq tore through market areas in Baghdad and outside the capital on Tuesday, killing nearly 60 people and shattering weeks of relative calm in Sunni-dominated areas. The bloodshed struck directly at United States claims that the insurgents’ power is waning.
Two car bombs killed more than 50 people in Sunni Arab areas of Iraq on Tuesday, a sudden spasm of violence in places that had been comparatively quiet while battles raged in the Shi’ite south. In one of the deadliest strikes in months, one car bomb killed 40 people and wounded 70 others in Baquba.
China said it was outraged by a resolution by United States lawmakers urging an end to a crackdown in Tibet as a Beijing-run newspaper linked al-Qaeda to claimed plots to attack the Beijing Olympics. The condemnation came in response to a US House of Representatives resolution urging China to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama.
Saharan sand dunes stretch to the horizon in Timimoun, an oasis town of red clay where visitors can ride camels with Tuareg nomads and sleep on dunes under the stars. Timimoun should be easy to get to, but it isn’t. It offers few comforts after a long, arduous journey. But those few tourists who make it here value its remoteness.
The top United States commander in Iraq told Congress on Tuesday he plans to stop US troop withdrawals in July due to fragile security gains and heard appeals for quicker action to find a way to end the war. Appearances by General David Petraeus and the US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, drew US presidential candidates.
Police and troops in Mauritania, armed with tear gas and automatic weapons, on Tuesday stormed a building in Nouakchott hunting for Islamic extremists but their quarry managed to escape, security sources said. An operational bomb factory was found in the abandoned house, police said.
Gunmen kidnapped 42 university students near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday, police said, in one of the biggest mass abductions in the country in many months. ”Gunmen stopped two buses in a village south of Mosul,” said Khalid Abdul-Sattar, police spokesperson for Nineveh province. The group was freed hours after being kidnapped.
”Martyrdom” videos glorying in alleged planned bomb attacks on aircraft leaving from Heathrow were shown in court on Friday in the trial of eight alleged members of a British terror cell. The jury at Woolwich Crown Court also heard transcripts of videos in which the men talked of body parts ”decorating the streets”.
A newly declassified 2003 Justice Department memo gave United States military interrogators broad authority to use extreme methods in questioning al-Qaeda detainees, US media said on Wednesday. The memo argued that the US president’s wartime authority exempted them from laws banning cruel treatment.
The number of Iraqis killed in March climbed to 1 082, mostly civilians, the highest monthly figure since August, amid a spike in violence driven by clashes between Shi’ite militiamen and security forces, officials said on Tuesday. The figure confirms a reversal of the trend of gradually decreasing violence since June.
The head of the main United States spy agency has warned that al-Qaeda is training operatives who ”look Western” and could enter the United States undetected to conduct terrorist attacks. Central Intelligence Agency Director General Michael Hayden said the terror network has shed its operational reliance on mastermind Osama bin Laden.
The United States confirmed on Sunday that US special forces units were operating alongside Iraqi government troops in Basra, where the government is battling militants loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The Iraqi special forces team killed four suspected militants in a house and two on a roof before calling in an air strike.
Muslim nations on Friday condemned a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Qur’an of inciting violence, and Dutch Muslim leaders urged restraint. Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the internet on Thursday evening, prompting an al-Qaeda-linked website to call for his death.
Somalis uprooted by fighting in Mogadishu looted trucks carrying United Nations food aid on Friday, peacekeepers said, highlighting what relief agencies warn is a fast deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe. Somalia now has one million internal refugees, aid workers say, and their numbers are swelled by an exodus of about 20 000 civilians each month.
A Malian Tuareg politician said in an interview published on Friday that two Austrian tourists held captive by al-Qaeda in the Sahara were not in the country, as previously suspected. ”They are not in Mali. I would know and our president would know,” said Assarid Ag Imbarcaouane.
Somalia’s Islamist insurgents vowed on Thursday to launch more hit-and-run attacks against the government, saying their tactics were designed to reduce civilian casualties. Islamist fighters briefly seized the town of Jowhar, north of Mogadishu, on Wednesday, highlighting the interim government’s inability to assert its authority.