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Tag: suicide bombing

  • Islamists Continue Worldwide Offensive

    As the news spread of coordinated U.S. Navy SEAL strikes against Islamist leaders on either side of the African mainland, Islamists elsewhere were launching attacks of their own.

    Iraq was rocked by a series of suicide bombings this weekend, Reuters reports. One bombing involved a truck loaded with explosives that was driven into a primary school playground in the northern region; in that attack, 14 children and the school headmaster perished.

    An additional Saturday bombing targeted a group of Shi’ite pilgrims visiting a Baghdad religious site, killing 14 and wounding over 30 others.

    No public claims of responsibility have been made for any of the recent attacks, although the tactics utilized cause local police to suspect Sunni-affiliated terrorists tied to al-Qaeda. The primary school bombing occurred mere minutes after a reported attack on a Tel Afar police station just 45 miles northwest of Mosul city, a known Islamist stronghold. In the police station attack, no injuries were reported. A Tel Afar city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity commented that “The fingerprints of al Qaeda are clear on both attacks.”

    Meanwhile, deep in the Nigeria’s Borno state, the Islamists of the Boko Haram rebel group killed at least 20 when they assaulted the town of Damboa early Saturday morning. Five were executed at a mosque as they said their morning prayers.

    In a statement given to Reuters, Nigerian military spokesman Captain Aliyu Danja said, “While they [the Islamists] were unleashing their mayhem, troops [with the Nigerian military] engaged the terrorists, killing 15 in the process while others fled.”

    The military’s casualty counts for engagements with militant Islamists are frequently exaggerated and often unverifiable. Nigerian military forces have been waging an offensive against the Boko Haram rebels since May, but it remains the biggest security threat to the country. Traditionally known for targeting security forces as well as Christian and Muslim opponents, Boko Haram has recently conducted roadside massacres, and threatened Western schools considered sacrilegious.

    [Image via an AFP news report on YouTube about the Boko Haram Islamist faction]

  • Mali Explosion Caused by Suicide Bombers in Kidal

    The AP reported this morning that an explosion rocked a UN World Food Programme storage facility in the town of Kidal in northern Mali. Two civilians died in the attacks and seven others were wounded by shrapnel.

    The targeted building was blown apart, and Daouda Maiga, an official from Kidal, said that aid supplies were being stored in the building. French forces and UN peacekeepers stationed in northern Mali responded immediately and set up a defensive perimeter.

    The explosion comes in the wake of the Tuareg rebel group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, withdrawing from a peace accord they signed with the Malian government. That agreement initially permitted government military forces to return to Kidal, but many of the native Tuaregs remain staunchly opposed to the government efforts.

    A second AP story, this one written out of Bamako, indicated several houses in Kidal collapsed as a result of the bomb.

    The president of the regional assembly around Kidal, Mohamid Ibrahim Cisse, said “In the town, the explosion caused several houses to collapse, which resulted in at least three civilians coming to the emergency room at Timbuktu’s hospital.”

    One witness who described the attacks, Timbuktu native Abdoulaye Cisse, said that “The force of the explosion was so strong that the wall and the gate of the camp were razed, and another house fell in the city because of the earthquake caused by the explosion.”

    The UN peacekeepers, meanwhile, remain undeterred. The UN’s head of the Malian peacekeeping mission, Bert Koenders, said that they will “continue to support the Malian people and their authorities so that peace and stability are restored across the entire region.”

    Unfortunately for peacekeepers, the town of Kidal has been turned into a Tuareg state of sorts. Today’s car bombing represents the second attack since the Tuareg rebels pulled out of peace accords, with the first being a grenade that was launched into a Kidal bank from a neighboring house on Friday. In that attack, two security guards were wounded, but investigators made a quick arrest of one individual who remained in the house that the grenade came from.

    If you’re interested in a concise history of the Mali-Tuareg conflict, which has a rich ethnic background similar to that of Czechoslovakia, you may find this YouTube video enlightening.

    [Image via a YouTube video of the Origins of the Malian conflict]

  • Nairobi Westgate Mall: Islamists Kill 25

    Islamists around the world are staging coordinated attacks with increasing regularity. Yesterday saw a series of coordinated attacks on the Arabian peninsula, and today sees al-Qaeda affiliated militants seizing a shopping mall, killing dozens and injuring 40.

    Witnesses say that terrorists were responsible for the attack, which happened earlier this morning. Gunmen burst into the mall and indiscriminately killed some while taking others hostage. The police took those escaping civilians to a secured location to verify they were not gunmen trying to sneak away; reports indicate they were streaming away from the mall, arms raised as a police escort accompanied them.

    The Kenyan Interior Ministry released a press statement urging “Kenyans to keep off Westgate mall, adjacent roads and its environs until further notice… We’re doing our job to ensure that everyone is evacuated to safety. This is a scene of crime, let police do their job.”

    CNN reports Joseph Ole Lenku, a Kenyan government official, confirming 11 dead while Reuters has the number solidly at 25. Lenku said of their conservative estimate that the number “may go up, but for now, that’s the number we have.”

    Reuters notes this latest attack is the largest instance of terrorism to occur in Nairobi since the 1998 al-Qaeda bombing of the U.S. embassy. Although at first hesitant to report any one group as responsible for the attack, (Kenya’s president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud believes they “don’t have any proof that the people who did this are Somali”) Kenyan officials are blaming Somali militant group al Shabaab, which is affiliated with al Qaeda.

    The attack is believed to be an al-Qaeda response to coordinated efforts by Kenyan military forces that target al Shabaab. No public claim of responsibility has been made, but one witness did report that the attackers told all Muslims to clear the area.

    If you want to read the Reuters version, you can find it here, but be warned that the details are graphic and it should be viewed with discretion.

    [Image via a brief YouTube report of the shooting]

  • AQAP Stages Suicide Car Bombing, Kills 38 Yemenis

    The AP via USA Today reported earlier today that al-Qaeda militants in Yemen launched a coordinated attack on a military barracks in the southern part of the country called Shabwa province. 38 soldiers were killed in the attacks and dozens of others were wounded.

    Yemeni defense official Maj. Mohammed Nasser, speaking about the attacks, said that the soldiers were caught unprepared, and that Shabwa Province is widely known to be an al-Qaeda stronghold. The attacks began as militants tried to storm three military encampments in Maysaa, Kamp, and al-Ain. At Kamp, the guards outside the barracks were overpowered and a suicide car bomb was driven inside; most of the casualties occurred when this first bomb detonated.

    At al-Ain, ground-based infantry fighting was continuing to occur throughout the morning, and a second car bomb was detonated outside the barracks.

    The attack seems to have had a dual purpose: Nasser reported that although the militants lost eight jihadists in the assault, they gained six hostages in the form of seized soldiers and five unspecified military vehicles.

    Yemeni authorities have been waging war against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, because officials in Washington consider it to be the deadliest and most dangerous offshoot of the al-Qaeda brand. AQAP has recently been orchestrating a series of attacks on the military and has claimed responsibility for the assassinations of a variety of officials.

    These latest attacks are the largest yet made against the Yemeni military, and they come in the wake of warnings from Sanaa that more al-Qaeda attacks are on the way. In response to the continued attacks on Yemeni security forces, the United States stepped up the drone war efforts.

    The AP also reported that the AQAP franchise had claimed responsibility for several foiled bomb plots against US citizens, including one involving an underwear bomb on an airline and another plot to hide mail bombs in toner printer cartridges.

    [Image via a brief YouTube video of an Al-Jazeera report on AQAP]