From Al Jazeera
One person has died and at least 30 others have been injured by a series of small bombs planted in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi.
The six devices went off within an hour of each other on Monday evening in different locations of the port city in Sindh province.
A provincial police officer said bomb disposal teams had been sent to determine the nature of the devices.
From Al Jazeera
At least 20 people, mostly police officers, have been killed in a suspected suicide attack in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
The attack on Sunday was near a police station several hundred metres from a rally marking one year since a deadly raid on the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque).
“The whole event at the mosque went smoothly but then the suicide bomber targeted the security,” Rehman Malik, the interior ministry chief, told reporters at the scene.
From IHT.com, by Scott Shane
In a makeshift prison in the north of Poland, Al Qaeda’s engineer of mass murder faced off against his Central Intelligence Agency interrogator. It was 18 months after the 9/11 attacks, and the invasion of Iraq was giving Muslim extremists new motives for havoc. If anyone knew about the next plot, it was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
The interrogator, Deuce Martinez, a soft-spoken analyst who spoke no Arabic, had turned down a CIA offer to be trained in waterboarding. He chose to leave the infliction of pain and panic to others, the gung-ho paramilitary types whom the more cerebral interrogators called “knuckledraggers.”
Martinez came in after the rough stuff, the ultimate good cop with the classic skills: an unimposing presence, inexhaustible patience and a willingness to listen to the gripes and musings of a pitiless killer in rambling, imperfect English. He achieved a rapport with Mohammed that astonished his fellow CIA officers.
From Al Jazeera
The Taliban has taken control of eight villages in Arghandab district in Afghanistan, and have said they plan to march towards Kandahar city.
About 500 fighters are said to be involved in the ongoing Taliban offensive, which got under way on Monday, Al Jazeera has learnt.
Arghandab district lies 30km north of Kandahar city.
Afghan and US-led forces in Afghanistan are said to be preparing to repulse the offensive.
Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Kandahar, said that hundreds of Taliban fighters are taking up positions in the area and taking over nearby villages.
“Sources from the Afghan army say that unless they get support from the Afghan national and international coalition forces, they won’t be able to launch any counterattack,” he said.
“If Arghandab is taken over by the Taliban, it will mean a significant shift in power, and people are concerned that this will be a step forward for the Taliban towards Kandahar.”
From ABCnews.com
An radical jihadist Web site has announced that a new message from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is forthcoming.
A banner announcing the message says he will address the 60th anniversary of Israel. His message is titled, “The reasons for the struggle in the remembrance of the 60th anniversary of the rising of the occupier nation of Israel.”
From International Analyst Network, by Steve Emerson
(Note: This article summarizes my testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. My written remarks can be found here. Also, Congressional Quarterly’s coverage of the hearing can be found here.)
American outreach efforts with the Muslim world have been nothing short of a disaster because we continue seeking partners among those who foster anti-American sentiment and who facilitate, rather than rebuke, radical Islamist ideology.
That’s the message I brought to Capitol Hill Wednesday, where I testified before a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on al Qaeda. Disturbing intelligence estimates are true – the threat from a reconstituted al Qaeda is at its highest point since 2001. While U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement actions have combined to thwart al Qaeda, its safe haven in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas allowed it to regroup with a new generation of battle-tested leaders.
From www.breitbart.com, by Paul Schemm (for AP)
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Osama bin Laden, in a new audio message posted Wednesday, condemned the publication of drawings that he said insulted the Prophet Muhammad and warned Europeans of a “severe” reaction to come. The message, which appeared on a militant Web site that has carried al-Qaida statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group’s media wing al-Sahab, showed a still image of bin Laden aiming with an assault rifle.
“The response will be what you see and not what you hear and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God,” said a voice believed to be bin Laden’s, without specifying what action would be taken.
From CBS.com
Pictures obtained by CBS News from Pakistani sources are among the first public images ever to surface of a man U.S. intelligence officials call “one of the most dangerous people on the planet,” CBS News justice and homeland security correspondent Bob Orr reports.
He is Pakistani warlord Baitullah Mehsud, the accused mastermind of the Benazir Bhutto assassination. An emerging leader, sources say, who threatens to eclipse Osama bin Laden as the world’s top terrorist.
Terrorism analyst Christine Fair says Baitullah Mehsud is running a training camp for suicide bombers in Pakistan’s off-limits tribal region — a magnet for radical Islamic recruits from Europe and potentially the United States.’
Few players in the ‘war on terror’ are more chilling, or misunderstood, than suicide bombers. Yet the true scale of their grisly activities has never been properly calculated. Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Robert Fisk details the shocking extent of the most widespread campaign of self-liquidation in human history
From The Independant, by Robert Fisk (Photo: Reuters)
Khaled looked at me with a broad smile. He was almost laughing. At one point, when I told him that he should abandon all thoughts of being a suicide bomber – that he could influence more people in this world by becoming a journalist – he put his head back and shot me a grin, world-weary for a man in his teens. “You have your mission,” he said. “And I have mine.” His sisters looked at him in awe. He was their hero, their amanuensis and their teacher, their representative and their soon-to-be-martyred brother. Yes, he was handsome, young – just 18 – he was dressed in a black Giorgio Armani T-shirt, a small, carefully trimmed Spanish conquistador’s beard, gelled hair. And he was ready to immolate himself.
A sinister surprise. I had travelled to Khaled’s home to speak to his mother. I had already written about his brother Hassan and wanted to introduce a Canadian journalist colleague, Nelofer Pazira, to the family. When Khaled walked on to the porch of the house, Nelofer and I both realised – at the same moment – that he was next, the next to die, the next “martyr”. It was his smile. I’ve come across these young men before, but never one who so obviously declared his calling.