Negative Blogs

Pirates released a Greek-operated cargo ship with a crew of 12 Ukrainians aboard that was hijacked off Somalia over the weekend, the ship’s operator says.

“Yesterday night, the captain contacted us,” said George Tripakis, managing director of TDM Carrier, the Athens-based operator of the cargo ship MG Lugela.

“He informed us that everybody is OK, alive, the pirates not on board, and the vessel in proceeding to Bombay (Mumbai, India).” Pirates attacked the vessel on Saturday some 900 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia, after it left the Gulf of Aden, the Brussels-based the European Union NAVFOR command said.

The ship altered course a short time later and headed for the Somali coast, NAVFOR said, No information was immediately available concerning the circumstances of the release of the Panama-flagged ship.

The ship had left the Egyptian port of Alexandria and was heading to Mauritius carrying steel bars and cable, the owners said. The ship has since its release been ordered to change course for Mumbai to undergo an examination.

“We would like to check the vessel,” in the Indian port, Tripakis said.

Foreign naval powers have deployed dozens of warships since 2008 in a bid to secure the Gulf, a crucial maritime route leading to the Suez Canal through which tens of thousands of merchant vessels transit each year.

But pirates have gradually extended their area of operations, seizing ships as far east as the Maldives’ territorial waters and as far south as the Canal of Mozambique.

Naval missions, including the European Union’s Atalanta deployment, have boasted success in curbing attacks but the number of hijacked ships and detained seafarers remains at one of its highest levels since Somali piracy surged in 2007.

By timeslive.co.za

A ship is docked outside the container terminal at the southern Yemeni port of Aden

Al-Qaida’s North Africa branch claimed responsibility in an audio message broadcast Tuesday for kidnapping five French nationals that disappeared in the deserts of Niger last week.

Seven foreign workers were kidnapped from a uranium mine operated by the French company Areva in Niger Thursday and were last seen heading toward the neighboring countries of Mali and Algeria with about 30 captors before vanishing in the vast desert.

“The men were able to attack the mine of Arlit in Niger which is considered one the most important sources of uranium that France has been stealing from for decades,” said the excerpt purported to be from al-Qaida in the North Africa that was broadcast on Al-Jazeera news channel.

The message said fighters from the group overcame security in the area and kidnapped “five French nuclear experts” and said it would issue its demands to the French government “shortly.”

“We also warn them from doing anything stupid,” it added.

In July, AQIM said it executed a 78-year-old French aid worker it had taken hostage three months before, saying the killing was in retaliation for the deaths of six al-Qaida members in a French-backed military operation against the group.

There was no way to authenticate the message, but in the past al-Qaida and its affiliates have claimed responsibility for operations through messages sent to Al-Jazeera.

Those abducted from Arlit mining town include five French nationals, one from Togo and one from Madagascar. One of the men taken worked for Areva, along with his wife, and the others were employees of a subcontractor called Satom.

Al-Qaida’s affiliate in North Africa operates in the vast desert region from Mauritania to Chad. The group grew out of an Algerian insurgency movement that officially joined with the terrorist network in 2006.

Areva, a leading global nuclear manufacturer, gets much of its uranium from Niger. Aid groups say almost half of Niger’s population desperately needs food and up to one in six children suffers from acute malnutrition.

By kansascity.com

This undated photo provided by French nuclear manufacturer Areva shows the uranium mine of Arlit, northern Niger. French soldiers operating out of a hotel in Niger's capital and using reconnaissance flights over the Sahara searched Monday Sept. 20, 2010 for seven foreign workers who were kidnapped near a French-operated uranium mine and seemingly swallowed by the vast desert. Armed assailants kidnapped last week seven people near the uranium mining town of Arlit, in northern Niger.

The target of the drone attack was the Haqqani network, a Pakistani militant group based near the Afghanistan border that has been blamed for attacks on NATO troops.

A suspected US drone attack in Pakistan’s tribal region on Wednesday killed at least six people. The target of the strike was the Haqqani network, a Pakistani militant group blamed for attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports.

The strike, which targeted at least one house in North Waziristan, was the sixth drone attack in the area this week. The missile hit a house in the village of Dande Darpa Khel just outside North Waziristan’s main town of Miran Shah, according to the AP.

The house was owned by Maulvi Azizullah, a member of the Haqqani network, a militant group based in North Waziristan that U.S. military officials have called the most dangerous threat to NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani network is closely allied with the Taliban and is led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a well-known fighter during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Haqqani received support from the U.S. and Pakistan during the Soviet war but has since turned against the Americans.

Drone strikes appear to be the only available way for the US to go after the Haqqani network, reports the AP. US officials have long urged the Pakistani government to crack down on the group, but Islamabad has refused, possibly due to its desire to preserve their historical ties with a group that can influence events in Pakistan.

The Institute for the Study of War traces those ties back to the days of the 1980s jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, when Islamist militant groups like the Haqqani network allowed Pakistan to exercise influence in its chaotic and war-torn neighbor. The Institute says that Pakistan’s top military official, General Ashfaq Kayani, has referred to the group as a “strategic asset” for Islamabad.

Pakistan may grow more concerned with the strategic use of militant groups as the US-led NATO war in Afghanistan draws to a close, says the AP, which reports that “analysts believe the government views them as an important ally once foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan.”

The news website Indian Express says that ten militants were killed and several others were injured in the attack and the Times of India reports that two houses were destroyed in the strike, but neither report has been confirmed.

In August, the US State department released its annual global terrorism report for 2009, singling out groups like the Haqqani network and other Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan as “the foremost security threat to the US homeland.”

As the Monitor has previously reported, those fears were underlined in June when a Pakistan-born Connecticut man, Faisal Shahzad, pled guilty to attempting to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square. Shahzad had traveled to Pakistan to receive training from Al Qaeda there, and called his attempted attack an act of “war.”

By CSmonitor.

In this Jan. 31, 2010 file photo, a U.S. Predator drone flies over the moon above Kandahar Air Field, southern Afghanistan.

Eleven policemen and four schoolchildren were among the 19 people killed in a suicide bomb attack on a police station in Lakki Marwat, a district of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa bordering Punjab. According to the police, 600 kg of explosive material were used in the blast which brought down the police station and damaged several buildings in the vicinity including a hospital, a mosque and a school.

The death toll is expected to rise as many of the 40 injured are battling for life. The suicide bomber rammed the explosive-laden vehicle into the rear wall of the police station early in the morning.

The schoolchildren were killed as their van was parked nearby.

As many of the buildings in the vicinity bore the brunt of the huge explosion, police cordoned off the area while efforts were on to pull out people buried in the rubble. After the explosion, police rounded up 10 persons suspected to be linked to terrorist groups.

Area police said this was the handiwork of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has claimed responsibility for last week’s suicide attacks on Shias in Lahore and Quetta. Talking to reporters, a senior police officer said: “The TTP is all out to hurt us. They are targeting everyone. We have lost personnel from the level of constable to Assistant Inspector General. The frontier police is writing its history with blood.”

On Sunday, The Daily Times had reported that terrorists had resurfaced in the suburbs of Peshawar — the capital of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa — and were imposing their writ by declaring a ban on shaving beards. After holding a barber captive for a fortnight, they released him last week with the diktat that barbers would be killed if they shaved beards.

By Thehindu.

People gather at the site of suicide bombing at a police station in Lakki Marwat, Pakistan on Monday.

How many cease-fires can you announce and break before everyone stops paying attention?

Spaniards inured to cease-fire announcements by the violent Basque separatist group ETA were mulling whether the latest one holds anything different or will fail like the others to end Europe’s last major armed militancy.

The government on Monday swiftly ruled out holding negotiations on a Basque homeland and rejected Sunday’s truce as a desperate gambit by an extremist group staggering after the arrests of its leaders.

Spain claimed the cease-fire was just another gambit by ETA in order to buy time, regroup and rearm. And a major newspaper, El Mundo, ran a cartoon Monday of a hooded ETA gunman in a traditional Basque beret offering an olive branch — albeit one that stuck out of a gun barrel.

Since launching its campaign for an independent Basque homeland in the late 1960s and killing more than 825 people in the process, ETA has announced 11 cease-fires, the last of them in 2006, which it called permanent.

Promising peace talks with the government ensued but quickly went nowhere, and nine months later ETA reverted to violence with a massive car bomb that killed two Ecuadorean immigrants in a parking garage at Madrid’s Barajas Airport.

This time, inside, not outside, forces appear to have prompted three masked ETA members to declare a cease-fire Sunday in front of a ETA sign with a snake slithering around an ax. While ETA historically has called the shots, the pressure for a new halt to violence seems to have come from the group’s own political supporters.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said Monday that when ETA shocked Spain by abruptly ending the 2006 cease-fire, “many people in the Basque nationalist movement woke up and said, ‘With this ETA we are not going to get anywhere.’”

Those divisions have been growing as ETA’s banned political wing, Batasuna, apparently came to the conclusion that bombs and bullets were doing nothing to achieve the goal of Basque independence.

ETA’s last deadly attack was a July 2009 car bomb that killed two policemen on the island of Mallorca. But Spain has no tolerance for terrorism now after Islamic militants killed 191 people in a 2004 train bombing in Madrid.

By Daniel Woolls

In this video grab provided by the Basque militant separatist group ETA to the newspaper website Gara.net on Sunday, Sept. 5, 2010, three masked ETA members declare a cease-fire in their efforts to establish an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.

Two Russian pilots were abducted on Sunday in the city of Nyala in Sudan’s South Darfur province, the country’s SUNA news agency reported on Monday.

Both pilots were employees of the Khartoum-based Badr Airlines, the agency said without giving further details. The airliner provides cargo and passenger air services for various international aid programs.

The civil war that broke out in the western region of Darfur in early 2003 has claimed the lives of more than 300,000, according to United Nations estimates, and forced 2.7 million people from their homes. Sudan puts the number of dead at 10,000.

Abductions of foreigners, including aid workers and peacekeepers, have been on the rise in the war-torn region in the past months. In most cases, foreign nationals are being abducted for ransom.

In the most recent similar incident, a Mi-8 helicopter of the Russian aviation company UTAir was seized by an armed tribal group in late July. The helicopter, with a crew of four Russians, later returned to its base in Nyala.

Darfur Independence Front/Darfur Independence Army (DIF/DIA) militants

The French Foreign Ministry has said the deployment of Russian S-300 air defense systems in the former Georgian republic of Abkhazia undermines stability in the region.

Russian Air Force head Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin said on Wednesday S-300 systems had been placed in Abkhazia to protect the airspace of Abkhazia and the other former Georgian republic of South Ossetia. He did not say how many S-300s had been deployed.

“We are concerned about [Russia's] announcement about the deployment of air defense systems in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It [deployment] harms stability in the region,” a spokeswoman for the French Foreign Ministry told a news conference in Paris.

France acted as an intermediary in the settlement of a five-day conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia in August 2008.

Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia two days after the conflict, which began when Georgian forces attacked South Ossetia in an attempt to bring it back under central control.

Russia signed agreements with South Ossetia and Abkhazia earlier this year on establishing permanent military bases in the republics.

The bases are located in Gudauta, on Abkhazia’s Black Sea coast, and in South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali. Each base hosts up to 1,700 servicemen, T-62 tanks, light armored vehicles, air defense systems and a variety of aircraft.

On Wednesday, the Georgian Foreign Ministry described the Russian move as “extremely dangerous and provocative,” saying it threatened “not only the Black Sea region, but European security as a whole.”

Washington later downplayed the Russian move by saying that the move was not a new development as Moscow had been deploying S-300 missiles in Abkhazia for the past two years.

By RIA Novosti

Russian S-300 air defense system

In a move that is antagonizing North Korea and irking China, South Korea commenced a major naval exercise in the Yellow Sea Thursday, the largest since 46 South Korean sailors died in March in the sinking of a warship.

The five-day exercise involves some 4,500 personnel and all four branches of the military, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

Seoul, which oversaw an international investigation into the March sinking of the Cheonan, claims a North Korean submarine sank the corvette and is demanding an apology. A multinational investigation also found North Korea responsible. Pyongyang has vehemently denied the accusation.

Prior to the Cheonan’s sinking, the South Korean navy had largely discounted the threat of submarines in the Yellow Sea, due to the shallow waters in the area.

North Korea said via state media that it would undertake “strong physical retaliation” and warned fishermen to stay clear of the Northern Limit Line, the disputed maritime border between the Koreas.

The drills amount to an “undisguised military intrusion,” Pyongyang has said.

“The army and people of the DPRK are closely watching every move of [South Korean President] Lee Myung-bak’s group of traitors. And if the puppet warmongers dare ignite a war, they will mercilessly destroy the provokers and their stronghold by mobilizing most powerful war tactics and offensive means beyond imagination,” the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said, according to North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA.

“Raising issue with the legitimate, defensive exercise is a provocation in itself,” South Korean Rear Adm. Kim Kyung-sik retorted Wednesday, speaking to local reporters.

Meanwhile, China, which has refused to condemn North Korea over the alleged torpedo attack and which remains Pyongyang’s closest strategic ally, is reportedly carrying out air defense drills on its Yellow Sea coast across from the Korean peninsula.

Given North Korea’s decrepit military, experts say the chances of a naval attack on well-prepared South Korean forces are small.

“The North Koreans have to rely on asymmetric capabilities,” said Dan Pinkston, who heads the international Crisis Group’s Seoul offices. “In a straight-up fight they are not that capable.”

Deadly North Korean strikes in past years — a commando raid on the South Korean presidential mansion in 1968; terrorist bombings in 1983 and 1987; and naval clashes in 1999 and 2002 — all used the element of surprise, an element that would be difficult to spring on the large, alert force South Korea is fielding for the maneuvers.

If North Korea retaliates, it will likely be with a weapons test rather than a direct confrontation, said one expert.

“They do not do eye-for-eye, tit-for-tat responses,” said Choi Jin-wook of the Korea Institute of National Unification. “Shooting a missile or testing a weapon or some kind of diplomatic action are possible, but I don’t think there will be a military reaction.”

The exercise does not include any U.S. assets, leading some commentators to wonder whether Washington is wary of angering Beijing in the Yellow Sea.

South Korean and U.S. forces conducted exercises together in the Sea of Japan last month. Those exercises included an anti-sub infiltration component — intended to thwart a submarine attack on a ship.

If the joint exercises continue, such a move could be part of a gradual build-up of American pressure on China.

“The U.S. is slowly containing China in other places, and they could exercise in the East Sea in the future,” said the Korea Institute of National Unification’s Choi. “I think the U.S. is very deliberately pressuring China.”

The warship sinking has heightened tensions between the two neighbors who fought a war from 1950 to 1953. The war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, meaning the two nations are still technically at war. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea.

By the CNN

A South Korean destroyer drops depth charges during anti-submarine drills on Thursday.

A suicide bomber wearing an explosives-laden jacket killed at least three people, including a key security official, in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar Wednesday.

Among the dead was Sifwat Ghayour, commander of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary, said Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a provincial government official. Ghayour had just left his office and his car was stopped at a traffic light when the attack occurred.

The Frontier Constabulary is spearheading the fight against Islamic militants in the northwestern frontier province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is supported by the United States.

In southern Pakistan, the death toll rose Wednesday to 57 in widespread violence that broke out after the killing of a provincial lawmaker. The number of wounded has also gone up — to 110, said Rafiq Gul, deputy superintendent of Karachi police.

Syed Raza Haider, a leader of the MQM party, was shot Monday evening at a mosque in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi. Haider was attending the funeral of a relative, Gul said. The gunman also killed the politician’s bodyguard.

Haider’s death triggered political and ethnic violence in the city, as mobs set fire to vehicles and gunfire erupted. Gul said 48 vehicles, eight shops and several gas stations were set ablaze in the mayhem. The MQM is part of the ruling coalition backing President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party.

By the CNN

A suicide bomber wearing an explosives-laden jacket killed at least three people, including a key security official, in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar Wednesday.

A car that exploded outside a police station in Londonderry contained 200lbs of homemade explosives, police have said.

Dissident republicans are being blamed for the attack.

No-one was injured in the attack which happened at 0320 BST but several businesses were badly damaged in the blast.

Police said the bomb was loaded into a hijacked taxi and the driver ordered at gunpoint to drive to the station.

Divisional Commander Steve Martin said it was fortunate no-one was killed because the device went off more than 20 minutes before a warning said it would.

He said two men hijacked a taxi in the Bogside. The driver was taken to Glenfada Park where the bomb was loaded into the car.

The driver was then ordered at gunpoint to drive to Strand Road police station and warned he would be shot if he did not.

Supt Martin said they had been warned the device would go off in 45 minutes, however only 23 minutes had passed when the car exploded.

He also revealed that a policeman risked his own life when he walked past the bomb twice to bring to safety staff at a nearby fast food shop.

The first and deputy first ministers have condemned the attack.

Peter Robinson said he was thankful there was no loss of life.

“Using a taxi driver to deliver the device shows the cowardice of those behind the attack and my sympathies are with him and all those targeted,” he said.

Martin McGuinness said those who planned the attack were an “embarrassment” to the people of Derry.

“It’s about trying to undermine the peace process, about trying to undermine Sinn Fein’s peace strategy,” he said.

“If they think they will destroy the political institutions the people of Ireland voted for, if they think they’re going to destroy the working relationship I have with Peter Robinson, if they think they will undermine the peace process they are living in cloud cuckoo land.”

SDLP Mayor of Derry Colum Eastwood blamed dissident republicans for the attack.

“Police didn’t even have time to evacuate a nursing home or apartments right beside the police station.

“We are very lucky today not to be talking about fatalities. It’s an attack not just on the police but the entire community.”

‘Panic’
Lotfi Jalloul, whose kebab shop was destroyed in the blast, had been cleaning up for the night when he saw the car arrive at the police station.

“I thought he was a taxi driver picking up a passenger but about 15 minutes later, we were evacuated by the police,” he said.

“There was a lot of panic. I left the money in the till and didn’t even get the chance to pull down the shutters - thank God we got out of there, I can’t believe we’re still alive.”

He said he had been told his business had been destroyed by the explosion but had not yet been able to see what damage was caused because the area remains cordoned off.

Conor Kelly, who lives in an apartment block near the police station, said it had been a terrifying experience.

“I was still awake and reading when I heard an enormous noise like thunder and saw debris flying past my window,” he said.

“There were no alarms or attempts to evacuate the building.”

He said the front of a fast food outlet had been “ripped to shreds” and other buildings had windows blown out.

In May, a mortar bomb was fired at the same police station. It struck a wall but failed to explode.

The attack comes just weeks after Derry was picked to be UK City of Culture in 2013.

SDLP MP Mark Durkan said the bombing was “a cowardly, dangerous and vulgar act”.

“Those responsible for this incident have achieved nothing and this campaign of violence will achieve nothing,” he said.

By BBC

Forensic scientists examined the taxi destroyed by the bomb.