Bomb attack near Afghan capital kills influential governor.

Bomb attack near Afghan capital kills influential governor.

Reuters |  15 Oct 2013 :: A bomb attack on a mosque in Afghanistan killed the governor of a province south of Kabul, a friend of the country's president, on Tuesday as he was making an address on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, officials said.

Arsala Jamal was governor of Logar province, a strategically important province on the southern approaches to Kabul and home to one of Afghanistan's richest mines.

He had previously been governor of violence-plagued Khost province on the Pakistani border and the killing of such a senior official will raise new fears for Afghanistan's security as foreign troops prepare to leave by the end of next year.

"When the governor was giving a speech it detonated. He is martyred," said Jamal's spokesman, Din Mohammad Darwish. He said one other person had been killed.

No one claimed responsibility.

Jamal was a close friend of President Hamid Karzai and served as his campaign manager during his successful bid for re-election in 2009.

He had already survived at least one attempt on his life, when a suicide bomber inv him, killing his guards and a local official in 2007.

Darwish said the bomb had been planted inside the mosque and detonated remotely. Police initially said a suicide bomber had been responsible.

A group supporting Afghanistan's administrative development said it suspected Jamal's work to get the Aynak copper mine in Logar province up and running was the reason he was killed.

"Jamal... had done considerable work for the excavation of copper at the Aynak mine," the Independent Directorate of Local Governance agency said in a statement.

"These activities were not acceptable to the enemies of the country and that is why they martyred him on the first day of Eid al-Adha," it said. It did not elaborate on who it thought was behind the attack.

Jamal spent part of his life in Canada, where his wife and two children continue to live.

Taliban insurgents fighting to expel foreign forces have stepped up attacks on government targets ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

The Taliban have rejected government calls for peace talks and have denounced a presidential election due in April as illegitimate.

A Chinese consortium is running the Aynak mine under a $3 billion deal agreed in 2007.

It is Afghanistan's largest foreign investment project but Taliban attacks on the site have prevented work from getting going.

The Chinese investors in August demanded a review of the deal, putting the project at risk. Production was originally scheduled to start this year, but now is seen as unlikely before 2019.

The Taliban's elusive leader, in a message to mark the Eid holiday, urged his fighters to step up their fight against the government.

"My advice to all mujahideen is to stand up to the enemy firmer than before," Mullah Omar said in the message, distributed via email, referring to Muslim holy fighters. (Courtesy: Reuters)

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)

Five killed in Pakistan market bombing.

Five killed in Pakistan market bombing.

QUETTA |Pakistan | 10 Oct 2013 ::  A bomb exploded outside a police station in a crowded market in southwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least six people, police said. 

The blast in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, also wounded at least 30, said police official Mohammed Mohsin.In a telephone call to an Associated Press reporter, a spokesman for a small separatist group called the United Baluch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the bombing. Mureed Baluch said the attack targeted the police station in retaliation for what he said was authorities’ restricting aid to areas of Baluchistan hit on Sept. 24 by a massive, 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

The earthquake killed at least 376 people. Aid efforts have been hampered by repeated attacks by militants against the Pakistan military as it carries out relief operations.

Baluchistan is home to separatists who have waged a decades-long insurgency against the government.

Also Thursday, a bomb exploded in a busy market in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, killing one person, said police official Raj Tahir. The bomb, which was planted in a restaurant in the market, also wounded 11 people, he said.

No one claimed responsibility for that attack, but suspicion will likely fall on the Pakistani Taliban and their allies.

Islamic militants have carried out scores of attacks throughout Pakistan, but Lahore has been relatively peaceful in recent years.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, five members of a tribal police force were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded next to their vehicle on the outskirts of the city, said a police official, Mir Hassan Khan.

The officers were returning from protecting workers who were administering polio vaccinations, and Khan said he suspected they were attacked in retaliation for their anti-polio efforts.

Pakistan is one of three countries where polio is still endemic, and the government has carried out an intensive effort to eradicate the disease. But the vaccinators and those who are supposed to protect them have repeatedly come under attack.

Many militants have accused the polio campaign of being a cover for intelligence gathering efforts and say the vaccines are actually a western plot to sterilize Muslims.(Courtesy:The Washington Post)

Iraq bombing kills eight: officials.

Iraq bombing kills eight: officials.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008,
 when the country was just emerging from a brutal
sectarian conflict. (Reuters)

09 Oct 2013 :: A roadside bomb exploded near a truck carrying workers in Iraq on Wednesday, killing eight people, a police officer and a hospital employee said.

The blast south of Baghdad also wounded seven, they said.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal sectarian conflict.

This year's surge in violence has raised fears of a relapse into the kind of intense Sunni-Shiite bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people.

Diplomats and analysts say the Shiite-led government's failure to address the grievances of the Sunni Arab minority - which complains of political exclusion and abuses by security forces - has driven the rise in unrest.

With the latest violence, more than 200 people have been killed so far this month, and over 4,900 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.(Courtesy:The Indian Express)

Lashkar-e-Taiba high alert Ayodhya, other religious places in UP

Ayodhya, other religious places in UP put on high alert.

Ayodhya | 05 Oct 2013 :: Security has been tightened in Ayodhya and other religious places in Uttar Pradesh following Indian Mujahideen co-founder Yasin Bhatkal’s revelation that a most wanted terrorist, Tahseen Akhtar, was planning to target religious places in UP.

“Name of Tahseen Akhtar figured in interrogation with Yasin Bhatkal after which district police chiefs have been alerted and his sketch has been provided to them,” IG (Law and Order) of Uttar Pradesh RK Vishwakarma told reporters in Lucknow.

Security agencies, during interrogation with Bhatkal, have come to know about Akhtar’s plan to target Ayodhya and other religious places, sources said.

Akhtar, wanted in connection with Hyderabad and other blasts, is an IM operative and carries Rs 10 lakh reward on his head.(Courtesy:NITI Central)

 

Iraq violence: Baghdad hit by series of deadly blasts.

Iraq violence: Baghdad hit by series of deadly blasts.

BBC News | 07 Oct 2013 :: At least 22 people have been killed and dozens hurt in a series of explosions across the Iraqi capital, police say.

There are reports of at least six apparently co-ordinated bomb attacks in mainly commercial areas of Baghdad.

The majority were reported in mainly Shia districts, but a predominantly Sunni Muslim neighbourhood was also hit, according to Reuters news agency.

Iraq has seen a sharp rise in sectarian violence in recent months. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed this year.

Two of the explosions were reported in Doura and in the Husseiniya district, where a parked car was reportedly blown up in a busy street during the evening rush hour.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.The rate of attacks has quadrupled since the relative calm in the months before US forces pulled out in 2011.

Almost 1,000 were killed in Iraq during the past month alone, the UN has said, amid fears of a return to the sectarian conflict that peaked in 2008.

Most of the violence has been blamed on Sunni Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which belongs to the over-arching Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

Iraq has also seen a spill-over of violence from the conflict in Syria, where jihadist rebels linked to the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni militant umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda, have risen to prominence.

In the past two months, Iraqi security forces have reportedly arrested hundreds of alleged al-Qaeda members in and around Baghdad as part of a campaign the government is calling "Revenge for the Martyrs".

But the operations, which have taken place mostly in Sunni districts, have angered the Sunni community and failed to halt the violence.(Courtesy:BBC News)

‘sex jihad’ waging women

Official: few Tunisian women waging Syria ‘sex jihad’.

Rebel fighters scouting in the Syrian city of Homs. (File photo: AFP)

AFP | Tunis | 07 Oct 2013 :: The number of Tunisian women travelling to Syria to wage “sex jihad” by comforting Islamists fighting the regime is very low, a senior interior ministry official told AFP on Sunday. 

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, seemed to play down previous government statements that suggested “sex jihad” was more widespread. 

“At most about 15 Tunisian women went to Syria, most to care for fighters or to do social work,” the official said. 

But some of them were forced to have sexual relations with Islamist fighters once they were in the country, the official said. 

“Four of them came back from Syria, and one is pregnant,” he added.

“The pregnant woman said that she was caring for fighters and had to have sexual relations with them.”

The official said, however, that women from Chechnya, Egypt, Iraq, France and Germany had travelled to Syria for “sex jihad”. 

“They were targeted for indoctrination over the internet and by foreign sheikhs,” he added, referring to information obtained from Tunisian women returning from Syria. 

Interior Minister Lotfi ben Jeddou told the National Constituent Assembly in September that Tunisian women had gone to Syria where “they have sexual relations with 20, 30, 100” militants.

“After the sexual liaisons they have there in the name of ‘jihad al-nikah’ -- (sexual holy war, in Arabic) -- they come home pregnant,” Ben Jeddou said at the time.

Ben Jeddou did not elaborate on how many Tunisian women had returned to the country pregnant with the children of jihadist fighters.

Jihad al-nikah, permitting extramarital sexual relations with multiple partners, is considered by some hardline Sunni Muslim Salafists as a legitimate form of holy war.

Meanwhile the head of the relief association for Tunisians abroad, Badis Koubakji, said “dozens of Tunisian women have come back” from Syria after carrying out the jihad al-nikah there and that “hundreds” were still there.

Koubakji said there was a camp for the women in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. 

“It’s a complete network and the interior ministry is not being transparent on this issue,” he said on Sunday. 

He said that these young women aged between 17 and 30 would not talk about their experiences because their families wanted to “preserve their honour”. 

NGOs in Tunisia have urged the government to do more to tackle networks recruiting young girls to travel to Syria. 

The interior ministry said earlier this year that it had beefed up checks at airports to stop young Tunisians trying to reach Syria. 

Ben Jeddou had said that since he assumed office in March “six thousand of our young people have been prevented from going there” to Syria.

Local media outlets in Tunisia have published several anonymous witness accounts from young women saying they had come back from Syria, but AFP has been unable to verify them. 

Media reports say thousands of Tunisians have, over the past 15 years, joined jihadists across the world in Afghanistan Iraq and Syria, mainly travelling via Turkey or Libya.(Courtesy:Al Arabiya)