China arrests 139 Muslims for urging jihad.

China arrests 139 Muslims for urging jihad.

AFP  | 09 Oct 2013 ::  China has arrested 139 people in Xinjiang for allegedly spreading jihad, state-run media said Wednesday, as it warns of growing religious extremism in the far western region home to Muslim Uighurs.

Beijing has pointed to violent incidents to indicate a rising militant threat among the ethnic minority, but information in the vast region is tightly controlled and Uighur organisations complain of cultural and religious repression.

Police in Xinjiang have "handled an increasing number of cases in which individuals have posted or searched for religious extremist content on the Internet", the China Daily said, citing an unnamed source in the Xinjiang Daily.

In the two months to the end of August, 139 people were arrested for "spreading religious extremism including jihad", it said.

Also citing the Xinjiang Daily, the Global Times said a farmer in Hotan was detained after he uploaded 2GB of e-books about secessionism which were read 30,000 times.

Dilshat Rexit, a spokesman for the overseas-based World Uyghur Congress, which Beijing calls a separatist group, said the claims were a "total distortion of the truth" aimed at blocking Uighurs from going online.

Those detained had "expressed discontent with Chinese rule and systematic repression in the area", he said.

China's goal "is to suppress Uighurs' use of the Internet to obtain information and express different points of view", he added.(Courtesy:Jihad Watch)

Iraq Kurds reach out to Baghdad to fight surging al-Qaeda.

Iraq Kurds reach out to Baghdad to fight surging al-Qaeda.

Distrust between the security forces of Iraq’s central government and
 forces in Kurdistan help increase al-Qaeda's power in the country.
(File photo: AFP)

Reture | 16 Aug 2013 :: When hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters in armored trucks attacked the northern Iraqi town of Shirqat with machine guns last week, the local army unit called for backup and set off in pursuit.

But after a two-hour chase through searing desert heat, most militants vanished into a cluster of Kurdish villages where the Iraqi army cannot enter without a nod from regional authorities.

It was just one example of how distrust between the security forces of Iraq’s central government and of its autonomous Kurdish zone helps the local wing of al-Qaeda, the once-defeated Sunni Islamist insurgents who are again rapidly gaining ground, a year and a half after U.S. troops pulled out.

“We had to wait more than two hours to get the required permission to go after them,” an Iraqi military officer who took part in the operation 300 Kilometers (190 miles) north of Baghdad said.

“While were we waiting, they simply disappeared.”

The Shi’ite-led Iraqi government and Kurdish authorities are now looking at examples like the Shirqat attack and considering the once unthinkable - launching joint security operations and sharing intelligence - to combat the common enemy of al-Qaeda.

Such cooperation has been extremely rare since U.S. troops left at the end of 2011, while the central government and the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region in the north have been locked in an increasingly hostile dispute over land and oil.

That the two sides are publicly contemplating working together underlines how worried they are about the insurgency and the threat of Iraq slipping back into all-out sectarian war.(Courtesy:Al Arabia)

Bomb detonated at Beijing airport; attacker only casualty.

Bomb detonated at Beijing airport;attacker only casualty.

34-year-old wheelchair-bound man sets off small explosion — motive unknown

Medical workers and policemen work at the smoke-filled
 terminal 3 of the Beijing International Airport in Beijing, 

BEIJING | AP | 20 Jul 2013 ::  A man in a wheelchair set off a homemade bomb in a crowded terminal at Beijing’s main airport on Saturday evening, injuring himself but no one else, Chinese state media and witnesses said.

Order was quickly restored and no flights were affected by the explosion at Terminal 3, the airport’s main international terminal, state-run China Central Television said on its microblog.

The official Xinhua News Agency said a wheel-chaired Chinese man set off the device outside the arrivals exit of Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital International Airport at around 6:24 p.m. It said the man was being treated for injuries, but that no one else was hurt in the explosion.

“The explosion sound was loud,” said a witness who gave only his family name, Chen. He said he was only 25 meters (27 yards) away from the explosion when it occurred.

Chen said there was only one explosion, and that the terminal was crowded with people. “Since there was no second explosion, many people took out their phones and gathered near the explosion spot to take photos,” he said.

He said police responded to the explosion immediately.

CCTV, which also reported that no one else was hurt, identified the man in the wheelchair as Ji Zhongxing, born in 1979 and from the eastern province of Shandong.

It was not immediately clear why the man allegedly set off the bomb. Police are investigating the incident, Xinhua said.

Photos posted by CCTV on its microblog showed the area near the arrivals exit empty and filled with smoke. One photo showed medical staff and police officers gathering at one spot, with a wheelchair sitting on its side a few steps away.

Reached by phone, the airport’s news office said it was not aware of the explosion, and airport police declined to answer questions.

Terminal 3, which opened in 2008 just ahead of the Beijing Olympics, is the airport’s hub for international flights. United Airlines and American Airlines operate out of the terminal. Calls to both carriers were not answered Saturday night in China.(Courtesy: Times of Israel)