Category: Terrorism

KABUL, Jan 10 —Attacks in three major Afghan cities highlighted the worsening security situation in the country, as blasts killed more than 45 people on Tuesday and wounded close to 100 others, including members of a delegation led by the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates.

Kandahar’s provincial governor, Humayun Azizihad, had been meeting with the U.A.E. ambassador to Afghanistan, Jumaa al Kaabi, at the time of the explosion, and both survived with injuries, Afghan officials said.

“Both of them are in stable condition,” said Samim Khpalwak, the governor’s spokesman.

The provincial health department in Kandahar said the explosion killed 11 people, including a number of Emirati diplomats and high-ranking Afghan officials at the meeting. At least 14 others were wounded.

“The corpses are difficult to identify,” a provincial health official said, adding that the building had caught fire, burning victims inside.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The U.A.E. Ministry of Foreign Affairs said its ambassador to Afghanistan and a number of Emirati diplomats had been wounded in the attack. It didn’t say whether any had been killed.

“The U.A.E. ambassador’s visit to Kandahar was on [a] humanitarian mission within the program of the U.A.E. to support the brotherly Afghan people,” the ministry said.

In Kabul, twin blasts killed at least 32 people and wounded at least 70 others near Parliament during afternoon rush hour, at an office building used by members of Parliament, officials said. In the first explosion, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives vest next to a minibus transporting government employees, they said. As rescue crews reached the scene, a car bomb went off.
The Taliban, Afghanistan’s largest insurgency, claimed responsibility for the assault, which interrupted weeks of relative calm in the capital amid frigid winter temperatures.

The explosions shattered the windows of nearby buildings. Casualties were transferred to hospitals by ambulances and private vehicles, said Mohammad Asil, an employee of a private firm who was near the scene.
“It was horrifying,” he said. “I have never seen so many dead bodies in my life. Many innocent people died. It was like a bloodbath.”

The attack is the deadliest in Kabul since Islamic State claimed responsibility for a November bombing that killed 30 Shiite Muslim worshipers at a popular shrine.

The Taliban and the country’s Islamic State affiliate regularly staged attacks in the city throughout the past year, targeting government workers and buildings, foreigners and members of Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara minority.

The third attack took place earlier Tuesday. The Taliban bombed a meeting of an elite Afghan intelligence agency squad in the capital of Helmand province, killing at least three people and wounding seven others, said Payenda Mohammad, a local police official. The casualties included members of the squad, he said.

Following the bombing in the province’s capital Lashkar Gah, intelligence officers also found a truck in the area that was loaded with explosives, which they defused, Mr. Mohammad said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message, saying the assailant fled the area after the assault. Local authorities said it was a suicide attack.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s special representative for security in Helmand, Abdul Jabar Qahraman, said the intelligence agency squad had been formed last year to strike Taliban-controlled areas.

“This is guerrilla war and the creation of such force is a necessity,” Mr. Qahraman said. “We have to go after the Taliban inside their strongholds.”

Helmand province in the southwest of the country is a major center of narcotics production and trade, making it an important source of income for the militants.

Last year, the Taliban nearly overran Lashkar Gah but were pushed back by U.S. and Afghan troops. The city remains under siege, with most major roads leading to and from the city controlled by the militants.

The latest spasms of violence in Afghanistan come a little more than a week before Donald Trump is sworn in as U.S. president.

Amid gains by the Taliban and the growth of Islamic State, U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan has deepened since the withdrawal two years ago of most foreign forces in the country.

In the past year, the Obama White House has granted expanded authority to the U.S. military to fight Islamic State in Afghanistan and to allow the U.S. to target the Taliban under certain circumstances.

The number of airstrikes carried out by the U.S. Air Force in the country increased dramatically last year, and on Friday the Pentagon announced that 300 U.S. Marines would be deployed to Helmand this spring, the first marines in the province since 2014.

The U.S. has about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan to train and advise government security forces fighting the Taliban.

—Jessica Donati in Kabul and Asa Fitch in Dubai contributed to this article.

The man suspected of shooting 13 people at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday afternoon, killing five and injuring eight, is a former U.S. Army combat engineer who flew to South Florida from Alaska — where he had received mental-health treatment after disclosing he felt forced to fight for the terrorist group ISIS.

Federal investigators believe Esteban Santiago, 26, landed at Fort Lauderdale early Friday afternoon with a checked bag containing a firearm. He picked up his bag at the carousel and walked into the men’s room, where investigators suspect Santiago loaded the weapon. Then he returned to the Terminal 2 baggage claim and pulled the trigger.

Witnesses described Santiago unloading magazine after magazine of ammunition. In some cases, they feared, he was aiming straight at his victims’ heads.

Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies captured Santiago unharmed, without firing a shot of their own, Sheriff Scott Israel said, though he wouldn’t name Santiago.

“If I had to give a hypothesis based on the knowledge I have at this time, it would be a home-grown violent extremist,” Israel told reporters about the shooter, who is believed to have acted alone.

Law enforcement sources confirmed to the Miami Herald that Santiago went to an FBI office in Anchorage, Alaska, in November to confess he felt compelled to fight for ISIS. The feds sent Santiago to get psychiatric help. They are expected to comb through Santiago’s social-media profiles and possessions to try to understand his possible motives.

Federal investigators began interviewing Santiago and airport witnesses Friday. A Facebook profile thought to belong to Santiago quickly vanished from the site. So did an Instagram account that appeared to show three photographs of Santiago — in an Army uniform, with cohorts and with a Puerto Rican flag. Other snapshots showed him in London, with a cousin in Southwest Florida and showing off several tattoos. Whether Santiago owned either or both accounts was unverified by authorities.

Why Santiago was in Fort Lauderdale is unknown, and where his flight originated is unclear. Investigators first said they believed he’d arrived from Canada. But Air Canada, which had two flights land at around noon Friday, said in a statement it has “no record of a passenger by the name Esteban Santiago, or checked guns, on any of our flights to Fort Lauderdale.”

A spokesman for Delta Air Lines, the other carrier that operates Terminal 2 flights, declined to offer any details on whether Santiago was one of its passengers, citing the ongoing shooting investigation.
Regardless of the city Santiago departed from, he had been living in Anchorage, public records show.
He was discharged last summer. Santiago, a former Army private first class, was an Iraq War vet who also served from Puerto Rico to Alaska between December 2007 and August 2016, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Candis Olmestead of the Alaska National Guard.

Olmstead said Santiago served in Alaska for less than two years, starting Nov. 21, 2014, and received a “general discharge” from the Alaska Army National Guard on Aug. 16, 2016 “for unsatisfactory performance.” She did not elaborate.

He joined the Puerto Rico National Guard on Dec. 14, 2007, Olmstead told the Miami Herald by email, deployed to Iraq with the Puerto Rico National Guard from April 23, 2010, to February 19, 2011 and also did a stint in as in the Army Reserves before he joined the Army National Guard in Alaska. He never served in the Florida National Guard.

The U.S. Army issued a nearly 10-year military record that described Santiago as released from the Alaska National Guard in August to the Inactive Ready Reserve, meaning he could be available for future service.
His assignments included a short stint at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, likely for training, and a single deployment — to Iraqi from April 2010 to February 2011.

He received 10 medals and ribbons for his service, notably the Army Commendation and Good Conduct medals as well as the Iraq Campaign Medal with a campaign star.

In January, Santiago was charged in Alaska with misdemeanor counts of property damage and assault.

The charges stemmed from an alleged assault on his girlfriend at her Anchorage home, according to court records obtained by Alaska Dispatch News. The girlfriend told police that Santiago smashed in her bathroom door and tried to strangle her, although an officer said she did not appear to be injured, the newspaper reported. Santiago was later accused of returning to his girlfriend’s house, which he had been ordered to avoid.

A spokeswoman for the Anchorage Police Department referred all questions to the FBI. Santiago’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Santiago’s brother in Puerto Rico told the Associated Press Santiago received psychological treatment in Alaska. Bryan Santiago didn’t know why or how his brother was being treated. He knew of the help from a call his family received in recent months from Esteban Santiago’s girlfriend, the AP reported.

Santiago was born in New Jersey but moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2 years old, according to the AP. Esteban Santiago grew up in the southern coastal town of Penuelas.

Santiago’s aunt, María Ruiz, told reporters in Union City, New Jersey, that Santiago seemed troubled when he returned from Iraq. According to the Bergen Record, Ruiz said he was “happy” after the recent birth of a child.
“I don’t know why this happened,” Ruiz told the Record.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Berlin terror attack which killed 12 people and injured nearly 50.
The group’s Amaq news agency said in a statement that “the person who carried out the truck run over attack in Berlin is a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the attack in response to calls for targeting citizens of the Crusader coalition.” 

Its claim came as German police released the man they had arrested because of lack of evidence, meaning the real culprit is still at large and armed and dangerous.

Authorities urged people to remain “particularly vigilant” and to report “suspicious movement” to a special hotline.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has visited the scene and paid her respects for the victims by laying a single white rose. Tonight, she joined the city’s residents for a church service just yards from the horror.

Earlier it emerged that police under increasing pressure to find those responsible had spent 24 hours questioning the wrong man.

“We have the wrong man,” an unnamed police source told Welt newspaper earlier. “This means the situation is different. The real culprit is still armed and can commit further atrocities.”

The man arrested on Monday night under suspicion of ploughing a 7-tonne truck through a Christmas market in the heart of Berlin, killing 12, was named in German media reports as a 23-year-old asylum seeker of Pakistani origin. 

He denied involvement in the attack, according to police, and this evening he was freed.

The Welt daily reported that police raided a large shelter for asylum-seekers at Berlin’s defunct Tempelhof airport overnight. Four men are understood to have been questioned, but not arrested.

At least 48 were injured, some seriously, in the attack, after the vehicle mounted the pavement at about 40mph and crashed into them.

A passenger in the lorry – believed to be the original driver – was later found dead inside. German authorities confirmed that the passenger was a Polish national and that he was not the person in control of the vehicle, which belonged to a Polish delivery company, at the time of the crash.

Security forces on Monday killed the mastermind of the Quetta Civil Hospital bombing along with four other high-profile militants during an operation in Balochistan’s Pishin district, said Balochistan’s Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti.

“Jehangir Badini, mastermind behind the attack on Quetta’s Civil Hospital was killed during the operation,” said Bugti.

Bugti was talking to the media at a press conference in Quetta.

The militants were involved in a series of terrorist acts, including the attack at Hazara women and the murder of Barrister Amanullah Achakzai, the principal of University of Balochistan’s law college.

“So far three of the five terrorists have been identified,” the home minister said.
Balochistan Police Chief Ahsan Mehboob and other high-ups also flanked him during the press conference.

Security forces also claimed to have recovered a large quantity of arms and ammunition from the possession of the militants.

“Security forces recovered 30 to 40 kilogrammes of explosives, four suicide jackets and other weapons,” said Bugti.

One suspect was detained during the operation and was being interrogated by security forces.

The suicide bomber, who exploded himself in the hospital in Quetta on Aug 8, was also identified with the help of DNA tests.

His name was Ahmed Ali and he was a resident of Quetta, Bugti added.

Ali had targeted the emergency services ward at Quetta’s Civil Hospital, killing at least 70 people and leaving scores injured.

Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), had claimed responsibility for the bombing, which occurred at the gates of the building housing the emergency ward.

The bomber struck as more than 100 mourners, mostly lawyers and journalists, crowded into the emergency department to accompany the body of Advocate Bilal Anwar Kasi.

Quetta, Nov 13: A suicide bomber detonated his vest in the midst of devotees at a packed shrine in a remote area of Khuzdar district Saturday evening, killing at least 52 and maiming more than 100. Officials fear the death toll might go up as rescuers were scrambling to reach the shrine, located in the dirt-poor mountainous region where medical facilities are limited.

The teenage bomber targeted a crowd of devotees performing dhamaal (devotional dance) at the shrine of Sufi saint Shah Noorani, some 750 kilometres south of provincial capital Quetta. “The bomber appeared to be 14 to 16 years old,” said Muhammad Hashim Ghalzai, the commissioner of Kalat division, of which Khuzdar is a district.

At least 45 dead, over 100 injured in Khuzdar’s Shah Noorani shrine explosion

SSP Jafar Khan said that around 1,000 devotees were present in the shrine when the bomber detonated the explosives strapped to his body. Provincial Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti confirmed 43 fatalities, though he could not provide a precise figure for those injured.

Rescue officials, however, confirmed to The Express Tribune that at least 50 devotees had been killed and more than 100 wounded in the deadly blast. They added that the casualties included a number of women and children.

According to witnesses and survivors, the bombing took place in a place reserved for the daily ritual of dhamaal. “Every day at sunset, there is a dhamaal session here and a large number of devotees turn up to perform the devotional dance to drumbeats,” he told The Express Tribune by phone.

The custodian of the shrine, Nawaz Ali, said 1,000 to 1,500 devotees participated in the dance on the night between Saturday and Sunday.

Chief military spokesperson Lieutenant General Asim Saleem Bajwa said troops and medical teams had been dispatched but that “difficult terrain and long distance” were hampering their progress.

He said that 20 ambulances and 50 soldiers were about to reach the site, while a further 45 ambulances and 100 troops were also on their way, along with medical teams. A military helicopter would attempt evacuations at night, he added, but medical teams could not access the area by plane as there were no air strips close by.

Balochistan government spokesman Anwarul Kakar said Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Zehri was personally monitoring the situation.

He added that the casualties were being ferried to hospitals in the nearby industrial town of Hub and the port city of Karachi, where a state of emergency has been declared.

Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo said the suicide bombing could be a reprisal for the killing of a senior commander of a banned militant organisation. Jundullah chief Saqib, alias Arif alias Anjum Abbas, was taken down in a gunfight with security forces in Hub on Friday. His wife and nine-year-old son were also injured in the clash.

The carnage came a day before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was scheduled to flag off the first shipment of trade goods from Gwadar port to international markets, marking the historic launch of trade activity through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
“Balochistan has become frontline state to bear the cost imposed on Pakistan for CPEC and India’a non-conventional warfare,” Jan Achakzai, special assistant to the chief minister, wrote on Twitter while commenting on the shrine bombing. However, Ports and Shipping Minister Bezenjo believes it could be linked to sectarianism and not CPEC.

A woman mourns the death of relative in a mortuary in Karachi on November 12, 2016, following the arrival of those killed in bombing at a Sufi shrine

Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti, who briefed the media on the deadly blast in Gwadar, said that the provincial government has no helicopters to ferry the casualties from the site. “It’s not possible to fly helicopters for rescue in pitch darkness,” he added. “We have sent ambulances to the site.”

Chief Minister Zehri, who was in Gwadar for Sunday’s CPEC ceremony, directed that all available resources be utilised to ferry the injured to hospitals. “Terrorists cannot deter us with such attacks. Action against them will continue unabated,” he said while strongly condemning the bloody attack.

President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the bombing in separate statements. “The government is determined to eliminate terrorism and extremists from the country,” Mamnoon said in a statement expressing sympathy with the victims and their families.

A statement from Sharif’s office said the prime minister called for the “best medical treatment” to be given to the wounded

At least 30 people were killed and 70 were injured on Saturday in an explosion at the shrine of Shah Norani in Khuzdar district of Balochistan, DawnNews reported.

“30 people have been killed and 70 injured in the blast including women and children,” said Tehsildar Javed Iqbal. He added women and children are among the casualties.

The explosion took place at the spot where the dhamaal is performed, within the premises of the shrine.

Security forces have reached the spot of the incident. Emergency services are facing difficulty in reaching the site of the incident due to its remote location and poor communication infrastructure. The shrine is also located in hilly terrain, further adding to the difficulties being faced by emergency services.

No group has yet taken responsibility of the attack.

“People who are critically injured in the blast will be transported to Karachi,” said Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti.

No major hospital is located near the shrine, and the injured will be shifted to Karachi for further treatment. Reportedly the injured are being shifted in private vehicles.

While answering a question regarding security measures in Balochistan, Bugti said “If there is security lapse on part of the state, those responsible will be held accountable”.

The shrine is frequented by a large number of devotees on Friday, and is visited by people from across the country. Iranian nationals also frequent the shrine.

Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has expressed his grief over the killing of innocents and condemned the blast at the shrine of Shah Noorani.

Earlier attacks
In October, heavily-armed militants wearing suicide vests stormed a police academy in Quetta, killing at least 61 people and wounding at least 117.

Three gunmen burst into the sprawling academy, targeting sleeping quarters home to some 700 recruits, and sent terrified young men aged between 15 and 25 fleeing.

Communication intercepts showed the attack was carried out by Al-Alimi faction of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) militant group.

In August, a suicide bomber targeted the emergency services ward at Quetta’s Civil Hospital killing at least 70 people and leaving scores injured, majority of those killed were lawyers.

Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), had claimed responsibility for the bombing which occurred at the gates of the building housing the emergency ward.

Balochistan has been experiencing incidents of violence and targeted killings for over a decade. More than 1,400 incidents targeting the minority Shia and Hazara community have taken place in the province during the past 15 years.

The largest province of the country by area, is home to a low-level insurgency by ethnic Baloch separatists. Al Qaeda-linked and sectarian militants also operate in the region. The province shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran.

QUETTA, Pakistan — Survivors of a Monday night attack that killed 61 people at a Pakistani police academy described chaotic scenes of gunfire and explosions, with militants shooting anyone they saw and cadets running for their lives and jumping from windows and rooftops.

A Taliban splinter group and an affiliate of the Islamic State group made competing claims of responsibility for the four-hour siege late Monday at the Police Training College on the outskirts of the southwestern city of Quetta.

Most of the dead and the 123 wounded were recruits and cadets, said Wasay Khan, a spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps. Of the three militants who carried out the attack, two blew themselves up with explosive vests and the third was killed by army gunfire, he added.

As the nation reeled and sought to understand how militants were able to carry out such violence, many Pakistanis were reminded of a bloody 2014 attack by the Taliban on an army-run school in Peshawar in which more than 150 people, mostly children, were killed.

Broadcasters on Tuesday showed the aftermath of the attack on the Quetta academy: scorched windows and floors littered with the shoes of the dead and wounded.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif rushed to the scene to meet with survivors, who spoke of the horrors of the surprise attack on about 700 cadets, trainees, instructors and other staff that began about 11:30 p.m.

Cadet Asif Hussain said he had been asleep when gunshots broke out.

“We hid ourselves beneath cots. We had in our mind that if we didn’t lock ourselves inside the hall, they will kill us,” he said.

The attackers kicked at their door but failed to open it, Hussain said. The gunmen instead fired on them from a window, wounding two cadets before moving to a nearby dorm.

Shortly after entering, one of the attackers detonated his vest inside a hall after firing at cadets.

In the chaos, cadets and trainers ran for their lives, jumping through windows and off rooftops to try to escape.
Troops arrived and “it gave us confidence that we are safe now,” Hussain said.

Another recruit, his face covered in blood, told a TV station that the gunmen shot at anyone they saw.
“I ran away, just praying God might save me,” he said.

Another witness, Faisal Khan, said he had been chatting with friends when the shooting began.
“We closed the main door and switched off lights,” he said.

While most of the casualties were from the academy, some of the soldiers who responded to the assault also were killed, said Shahzada Farhat, a police spokesman in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

The Islamic State group posted a claim of responsibility on the group’s media arm, the Arabic-language Aamaq news agency. The claim was not confirmed by Pakistani officials and IS did not offer any previously unknown details about the attack.

A little-known breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, called the Hakimullah group, also claimed responsibility.

In addition, Maj. Gen. Sher Afgan, head of the Pakistani paramilitary force that is primarily responsible for Baluchistan province, said the attackers had received instructions from commanders in neighboring Afghanistan and were most likely from the banned militant group Lashker-e-Jhangvi Al-Almi, which is affiliated with al-Qaida and the Taliban. The Sunni militant group has mainly targeted minority Shiite Muslims whom its members consider to be infidels.

Pakistani officials said they had received intelligence reports that militants had entered Baluchistan province, but there was no indication of possible targets.

Earlier, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, without naming Afghanistan, said enemies of Pakistan were planning attacks in Pakistan from a neighboring country.

Kabul condemned the attack and dismissed the allegations that the assault was planned from bases inside Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan is the biggest victim of terrorism and denounces all terrorist attacks,” said Mohammad Haroon Chakhansuri, spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Pakistan maintains that militants fleeing army operations in its tribal regions regularly flee over the border and find safe haven in Afghanistan. For his part, Ghani has criticized Pakistan, saying it has provided shelter to the Taliban, and in particular, the violent Haqqani network.

For over a decade, Baluchistan has been the scene of a low-intensity insurgency by nationalist and separatist groups demanding a bigger share in the regional resources.

Pakistan has carried out several military operations against militants in its lawless tribal regions near Afghanistan, including a major push that began in mid-2014 in North Waziristan, a militant base. The militants have killed tens of thousands of people, seeking to install their own harsh brand of Islamic law.

Later Tuesday, the flag-draped coffins of the slain cadets and troops began being moved from Quetta to their families for burial.

One of the dead, army Capt. Rooh Ullah, was given Pakistan’s fourth-highest military award for killing one of the militants before he was slain. Sharif, the army chief, attended a service for him in Quetta before the body was flown to his hometown in the northwest.

Ullah’s father told a local TV station that he was proud his son died a “martyr.”

In Islamabad, minority Christians lit candles for those killed. They chanted slogans condemning violence and vowing to support the victims.