Three Egypt policemen killed in attack in Nile Delta town
CAIRO | Mon Oct 28, 2013 5:03am EDT
(Reuters) – Three Egyptian policemen were killed on Monday when masked men attacked a checkpoint in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, security sources said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants have stepped up attacks on soldiers and police since the army toppled Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July.
The majority of the attacks have been carried out in the largely lawless Sinai region, although militants have on occasion extended their campaign into major cities.
Three men in a car and one on a motorcycle approached the checkpoint before dawn and fired at the policemen “to make sure that they were dead”, a security source in Mansoura said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“This is another attack in the series of terrorist attacks against the police,” he said, saying the violence shows the intent of “revenge” against the security forces. He did not specify who had carried out the attack.
Somalia’s al-Shabab commanders ‘killed’ in strike
Somalia: Failed State
An air strike in southern Somalia has killed two senior commanders of the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab, residents have told the BBC.
The strike destroyed the vehicle the militants were travelling in between the towns of Jilib and Barawe, seen as a major base of al-Shabab, they said.
The US launched a failed raid in Barawe earlier this month to capture an al-Shabab commander.
Al-Shabab is the main al-Qaeda-linked group in East Africa.
A Kenyan military source told the BBC their troops had raided Jilib, and that there might have been some casualties.
However, correspondents say it is unlikely that they carried out the air strike.
Residents of Jilib, some 120km (75 miles) north of the port of Kismayo, told the BBC that it was probably a drone attack that killed the al-Shabab commanders.
One of those killed was al-Shabab’s top explosives expert, also known as Anta, a member of the group told the Associated Press.
“This afternoon, I heard a big crash and saw a drone disappearing far into the sky, at least two militants died,” local resident Hassan Nur was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.
Iraq: 62 killed in bomb attacks
Workers clear debris while passersby inspect the damage of a car bomb attack yesterday, which left six dead, in the Shaab neighbourhood of Baghdad. Picture: AP
by SINAN SALAHEDDIN
A SERIES of car bombings in Baghdad, an explosion at a market and a suicide assault in a northern city killed at least 62 people across Iraq yesterday, officials said, the latest in a wave of attacks sweeping across the country.
Co-ordinated bombings hit Iraq many times each month, resulting in a rise in bloodshed that has killed more than 5,000 people since April. The local branch of al-Qaeda often takes responsibility for the assaults, although there was no immediate claim for yesterday’s blasts.
Police officers said that the bombs in the capital, placed in parked cars and detonated over a half-hour period, targeted commercial areas and parking lots, killing 42 people.
The deadliest blasts occurred in the southeastern Nahrwan district, where two car bombs exploded simultaneously, killing seven and wounding 15, authorities said, adding that two other explosions hit the northern Sha’ab and southern Abu Dshir neighbourhoods, each killing six people.
Other blasts hit the neighbourhoods of Mashtal, Baladiyat and Ur in eastern Baghdad, the southwestern Bayaa district and the northern Sab al-Bor and Hurriyah districts.
“I was eating my breakfast when a powerful blast shook the building, shattering the window of my apartment and covering the dining table with pieces of glass,” said Suad Ahmed, a woman living in Baladiyat, where a car bomb killed three people.
“I was terrified, I heard women and children shouting next door. I started to cry. I was afraid of death.”
Two die in northern Lebanon in spillover from Syria war
(Reuters) – Two people died in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli on Monday, in fighting between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Lebanese army, as violence continues to spill over from the civil war next door.
Tripoli, a city that, like much of Lebanon, is divided along sectarian lines, is only 30 miles from the Syrian border and its majority Sunni Muslims, who back the Syrian rebels, have often clashed with the minority from Assad’s Alawite sect.
The two dead were from the Sunni district of Bab al-Tabbaneh, where gunmen clashed with the Lebanese army, which has taken on both sides in the fighting. A soldier and twelve people from the area were wounded, security and medical sources said.
(File photo)
One killed in Turkey by mortar shell fired from Syria
A mortar shell from Syria Monday exploded in Turkey’s Ceylanpinar of the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, killing at least one person, local Dogan News Agency reported.
The stray shell reportedly came from the clashes between the al- Nusra Front and the Democratic Union Party on the Syrian side of the border.
Recently, clashes between different groups of the Syrian rebels intensified near the Turkish-Syrian border, bringing Turkey to high alert on any spillover into its border cities.
Last month, Turkish troops exchanged fires with militants linked to al-Qaida near the Syrian border, after a mortar shell fired from the Syrian side landed near a Turkish border outpost.
Booby-trapped Motorcycle Rips through Army Vehicle in Syria, 1 Killed
A booby-trapped motorcycle ripped through a military vehicle in Syria’s northern province of Qamishly, leaving unknown number of casualties, the pan-Arab Mayadeen TV reported.
While the TV gave no further report, the pro-government al- Ekhbaria TV said the blast took place at al-Wehda street in Qamishly and killed one person in addition to causing property losses.
Blasts and mortar attacks have become dominant themes of the country’s long-standing conflict.
Separately, the Syrian army regained control Monday over the Christian-dominated town of Sadad in central Syria after radical groups overran it last week, according to the mainstream media.
Kashmir: India says soldier killed in Pakistan firing
The Indian army says one of its soldiers has been killed by Pakistani firing in Indian-administered Kashmir.
The killing took place in the Uri sector on the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Pakistan is yet to comment on the latest incident.
In recent months, India and Pakistan have regularly accused each other of unprovoked firing along the border in disputed Kashmir, which both claim.
Monday’s killing came hours before the military authorities from the two countries were due to meet to end tensions along the LoC, the BBC’s Riyaz Masroor in Srinagar says.
India says there have been nearly 200 violations of the decade-long ceasefire agreement since the beginning of this year.
Reports say hundreds of villagers have fled their homes in border areas in recent days due to repeated firing from Pakistan.
The increased volatility along the border comes 10 years after a ceasefire was agreed along the LoC.
Afghan villagers beat to death man blamed for roadside bomb deaths
Relatives with the dead bodies of the bomb victims in Andar district of Afghanistan. Photograph: Rahmatullah Nikzad/AP
After an IED killed 18 wedding guests in Ghazni province, an angry mob headed for the house of a suspected Taliban sympathiser, according to local officials
Monday 28 October 2013 16.53 GMT
Afghan villagers devastated by a roadside bomb that killed 18 people, most of them women and children, hunted down the man they believed set the explosives and beat him to death, officials have said.
The killing, in a restive province south of the capital, was a rare reprisal for a Taliban attack. Most Afghans in rural areas, where the group holds sway, are either sympathetic to their aims or have been cowed into silent acquiescence.
The violence began with a blast on Sunday afternoon that ripped apart a minibus full of wedding guests arriving from a neighbouring village. Only five survived, and they were badly injured. Among the dead were 14 women and girls, one teenage boy and three men.
Villagers rushed to the site of the explosion, in the Andar district of Ghazni province, and amid the devastation found a set of footprints leading to a nearby building, home to a suspected Taliban sympathiser.
