Latest news with #al-Qaeda
See - Sada Elbalad
7 hours ago
- Politics
- See - Sada Elbalad
34 Soldiers Killed, 14 Injured in Militant Attack in Niger
Israa Farhan At least 34 Nigerien soldiers were killed and 14 others injured in a large-scale militant attack on the town of Banibangou, located in western Niger near the border with Mali, according to an official government statement. The assault, which took place on Wednesday, was reportedly carried out by hundreds of armed militants who used dozens of vehicles and motorbikes to launch a coordinated strike on the military forces stationed in the area. Government sources confirmed that dozens of the attackers were also killed in the confrontation, though no exact number was provided. The intensity and scale of the operation have raised serious concerns about the security situation along Niger's volatile border with Mali, a region frequently targeted by extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS. The latest attack marks one of the deadliest incidents for Niger's military this year, highlighting the persistent threat posed by armed insurgent groups operating in the Sahel region. Authorities have not yet confirmed which group was responsible, but investigations are ongoing. Niger remains a frontline state in the battle against jihadist violence in West Africa. Despite regional and international efforts to stabilize the area, deadly attacks against military and civilian targets continue to occur with alarming frequency. read more Gold prices rise, 21 Karat at EGP 3685 NATO's Role in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict US Expresses 'Strong Opposition' to New Turkish Military Operation in Syria Shoukry Meets Director-General of FAO Lavrov: confrontation bet. nuclear powers must be avoided News Iran Summons French Ambassador over Foreign Minister Remarks News Aboul Gheit Condemns Israeli Escalation in West Bank News Greek PM: Athens Plays Key Role in Improving Energy Security in Region News One Person Injured in Explosion at Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War Arts & Culture Zahi Hawass: Claims of Columns Beneath the Pyramid of Khafre Are Lies News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks Videos & Features Video: Trending Lifestyle TikToker Valeria Márquez Shot Dead during Live Stream News Shell Unveils Cost-Cutting, LNG Growth Plan Technology 50-Year Soviet Spacecraft 'Kosmos 482' Crashes into Indian Ocean News 3 Killed in Shooting Attack in Thailand
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
'War could spark fresh UK terror attacks - there's no going back for Israel'
Regardless of who you believe about Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions the seal is now broken and there is no going back for Israel. It is fully committed and will have to press on with its strikes, hoping to lure America into the fight, with its superior bunker-busting bomb power. But the escalating Iran crisis has serious implications for Israel's western allies too and could boost the risk of terror attacks in countries like the UK. As America's junior partner and ally in the Middle East, Sunni Islamist jihadists and groups aligned with Shia Iran are a huge risk in Britain. British warplanes have in the past taken part in shooting down missiles sent to Israel by Tehran and that will not be forgotten by the Iranian regime. And as Shia Tehran has proved with its backing for Hamas in Gaza, a Sunni organisation, it is very capable of putting aside its religious differences to trigger violence. And Iran has even hosted al-Qaeda leaders in hiding including, it is believed, Osama's son Hamza, who Donald Trump announced had been killed in 2019. The Mirror revealed last year that in fact intelligence officers believe Hamza escaped that attempt to kill him and he now leads al-Qaeda, probably from Afghanistan. Hezbollah and its Iranian islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sponsors have contacts in the UK and these shadowy organisations could launch revenge attacks. The UK has long been regarded as a legitimate target for the region and as Iran begins to lose the conflict with Israel it will likely turn to other means. And they don't even have to radicalise anyone since the internet allows rogue states to seduce lone wolves and small criminal gangs into acting on their behalf for money. Rogue states and terror networks are known increasingly to be tapping into criminal networks across the UK. By putting distance between it, using a criminal gang or naive footsoldier, Iran could easily encourage the spilling of blood in the UK whilst remaining under the threshold for war. The attacker may not even know whom he or she was working for and who they have been speaking to on the internet. Every day and night our MI5 counter-terror officers operate, often in the shadows, trying to smash terror plots, forced to prioritise against an ever-more complex and increasing threat. We in the UK take for granted the relative daily peace we enjoy and yet the threat level for a terror attack in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland remains 'substantial.' This means MI5 believe an attack is 'likely,' so not only can the threat of a terror attack is not be discounted - it is probably going to happen. Targets could be Jewish sites, groups or religious centres in the UK or simply putting the general UK public in its crosshairs with deadly terror strikes. The ongoing fanatical Iranian revolution which started in 1979 has taken a serious toll in recent years - its Hezbollah and Hamas proxies brought to their knees by Israel. It has also lost its huge presence and influence across Syria after the toppling of dictator Bashar al-Assad but it does have a militia foothold in Iraq. For years Iran had steadily spread its influence across the Middle East, stretching across its 'Shia Crescent' from Tehran, through Iraq and Syria, Lebanon and all the way to Israel's doorstep. It has lost all of this in the space of just three years and now the regime is facing an uncertain future. Iran could turn on the west like a wounded animal, launching a wave of terrorism reaching all the way to UK streets. However this current crisis is resolved there will be an increased risk to civilians in Britain and perhaps abroad as Iran seeks revenge. And whilst Israel may have pushed back or destroyed Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions forever, the world may become a safer place. But not as safe as it was.
The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Why can't our government remember torture sessions it took part in?
However, you'd think that we'd manage to remember that our government engaged in torture. It seems quite important. Even if torture somehow slips the mind of the public, surely the government would remember? If you were involved in torture, wouldn't it perhaps stay somewhere in your memory banks? Pity our poor government, then. It's a sure sign of dotage when you can't recall the crimes you've committed. Read more by Neil Mackay I know the Government is busy, but I'm pretty confident that no matter how run off our feet you or I may be we'd remember screams from a torture chamber. This failure of memory struck me as I read accounts of an ongoing tribunal hearing centred on whether British intelligence was complicit in the mistreatment of two men tortured by America's CIA in the early 2000s. The case is continuing behind closed doors, where the findings will be considered in secret. It centres on two alleged al-Qaeda terrorists. Both have been in Guantanamo Bay since 2006, and were held incommunicado at secret "black site" prisons where they were 'systematically' tortured. Lawyers for the two – Mustafa al-Hawsawi, accused of aiding the 9/11 hijackers, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to have plotted al-Qaeda's bombing of a US naval ship – claim there's credible evidence British intelligence unlawfully aided, abetted, conspired or 'were otherwise complicit' in their torture by the CIA. During the reportable part of the case, the British Government admitted UK intelligence services 'were too slow to appreciate the risk of mistreatment to detainees in CIA detention'. This has been described as a 'startling' admission. Professor Sam Raphael, an expert on CIA black sites, said it 'appeared to explicitly concede for the first time that UK agencies were involved in the CIA's detention programme'. For sure, this mealy-mouthed statement from our Government is significant, but in truth we learn nothing new here. I found the entire discussion somewhat strange as I was sure I remembered writing investigation upon investigation at the height of the so-called "War on Terror" outlining explicitly in this newspaper the assistance which British intelligence offered to America in acts of torture. Sure enough, I was right. For once someone's memory hadn't failed them. I'm currently looking at a newspaper from October 2005, in which I wrote a piece for The Herald headed "Torture Flights: the Inside Story". It investigated the use of what's called "extraordinary rendition'" Rendition saw terror suspects scooped off the streets of cities around the world, then transferred to third-party countries where they were tortured. British airports, including Prestwick and Glasgow, were used for these rendition flights. One case I investigated was that of Binyam Mohamed. Born in Ethiopia, Mohamed was raised in Britain. After 9-11, he was seized in Karachi. While in custody in Pakistan, FBI officers interrogated him. When they left, Pakistani jailers beat him and held a gun at his chest. Two MI6 officers then visited him. Mohamed claimed one told him he would 'get tortured by the Arabs'. Mohamed was then handed to American soldiers, stripped, shackled, blindfolded and taken to Morocco. The Americans told him he had to give them information on al-Qaeda. Mohamed denied any involvement with terrorism. The internationally acclaimed lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith represented Mohamed. He told me: 'The British Government was complicit in some of the abuse that took place against Binyam, at least to the extend that the Government told the Moroccans information that they would then use against him in the torture sessions.' Mohamed suffered appalling treatment. One guard told him: 'They'll come in wearing masks and beat you up. They'll beat you with sticks. They'll rape you first, then they'll take a glass bottle, they break the top off and they make you sit on it.' Later, he would face torturers wearing bondage masks, and was beaten until he vomited. His food was stopped, and he was subjected to relentless noise. Mohamed was taken into a room with meat hooks and beaten unconscious. During one torture session, an interrogator used a scalpel to cut his penis. He was held in Morocco for 18 months where he was drugged, and deprived of sleep. It didn't take long for him to start confessing to anything he was accused of: that he'd met Osama bin-Laden, that he was al-Qaeda's top "ideas man". During interrogation he was asked questions which could only have come from British intelligence. Moroccan torturers knew who his fitness instructor was in Britain, what grades he got at school. Stafford-Smith said: 'British intelligence aided and abetted torture by passing information to interrogators which was then used to question suspects.' The Americans later transferred Mohamed to an Afghan holding centre, where he was subjected to more abuse, before sending him to Guantanamo in 2004. He was eventually released in 2009 and returned to Britain. In 2010, Mohamed, and a number of other men, reached a settlement with the British Government for compensation running into millions of pounds. Binyam Mohamed (Image: PA) Such events are far from rare. Britain was involved in torture long before 9-11. In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the treatment of 14 men – known as "the hooded men'" interned without trial in Northern Ireland in 1971 – 'would be characterised today' as torture. In 2011, Human Rights Watch discovered documents in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi revealing 'high-level cooperation among United States, United Kingdom and Libyan intelligence agencies' regarding the transfer of suspects. This followed rapprochement between Libya and the West. Gaddafi was brought in from the cold to assist the war on terror. His regime was known for torture. British intelligence still operates under the so-called "James Bond clause" – section seven of the Intelligence Services Act which protects spies for crimes committed abroad. It matters that we remember and keep talking about the role our Government played in torture. If we don't, it could happened again. Indeed, in might be happening now. Neil Mackay is the Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.
Express Tribune
5 days ago
- Politics
- Express Tribune
The rise of Islamic extremism across the world
Listen to article Islamic extremists and their organisations have now turned their attention towards the parts of Africa where there are large Muslim populations but weak governments. The Islamists are now working through a new set of organisations. Asia is no longer their focus. After several years spent building its strength, Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) is now the strongest military force in West Africa and among the most powerful in the world. It has overtaken al-Qaeda. The JNIM was founded in Mali in 2017 as an umbrella organisation assembling four extremist groups. It is headed by Iyad Ag Gali and Ahmad Koufa, leaders of the 2012 uprising that came to be known as the "Arab Spring". Their organisation took over much of Mali's north. JNIM is "creating a state that stretches like a belt from western Mali all the way to the borderlands of Benin. It is substantial — even exponential expansion," said Heni Nsaibia, senior analyst for the Armed Conflict Location & Event or Data or ACLED, a non-profit research organisation that keeps of track of the militant organisations. Ag Gali belongs to the mostly Muslim Tuareg which has fought for decades to establish an independent Muslim state in northern Mali. Koufa is a Fulani preacher based in northern Mali. The differences between the two men have caused considerable uncertainty about the way Mali is likely to evolve. According to ACLED, in most African countries the security situation has deteriorated. In 2024, Burkina Faso ranked as the nation most affected by terrorist violence for a second straight year, and Niger saw the largest increase in terrorism-related deaths in the world. Increasingly, experts see JNIM's informant and supply chains stretching into stable nations such as Ghana, Senegal and Guinea. Several people who spoke to the journalists who were gathering material for an analysis for The Washington Post recounted how gun-toting JNIM members burst into mosques in Burkina Faso in recent years, announcing that strict Islamic laws would be implemented, schools would be closed and state institutions would be targeted. Violating the rules would carry a heavy price, probably public execution. According to ACLED, nearly 6,000 civilians have been killed, mostly for not following the rules being imposed by JNIM. There are real-time contacts between the Islamic groups operating in various parts of the world. The JNIM programme echoes the one being followed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Somalia, a highly disturbed county in the horn of Africa, has also suffered because of the changing global approach by the United States under the leadership of President Donald Trump. Because of the pullout of America from the area, al-Shabab, one of the affiliates of al-Qaeda, has taken control of important towns from Somali forces since the beginning of 2025. The new administration in Washington does not believe that this group poses a direct threat to the US forces. But according to Matt Bryden, founder of Sahan, a Nairobi-based think-tank, the gaining strength of al-Shabab "would have far-reaching implications for US policy in Africa and much of the Middle East". The sudden breakup of the Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, in 1991, was the result of the defeat of its troops to save from collapse the Communist regime Moscow had installed in Kabul. Moscow was defeated be seven Islamic groups that called themselves the mujahideen who were able to march from the Pak-Afghan border to Kabul. They did this with the help of the security services of Pakistan. Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Geneva agreement, with Pakistan included as one of the signatories, which assured a peaceful exit of the Soviet troops in 1989. The countries along the periphery of the collapsed Soviet Union gained independence. Among those that became independent states were the Muslim states of Central Asia. There were attempts by some elements in these countries to bring Islam into the pattern of governance. These developments were analysed by Barnett R Rubin, noted American authority on the Middle East, who has studied the threat of radical Islam to stability in the Middle East and Central Asia. In a presentation organised by the Asia Society's Asian Social Issues, he focused on local developments in the republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and how they might affect the spread of radical Islam in the area. According to Rubin, the JNIM leadership is watching the developments in Syria. Corrine Dufka, another Middle East watcher, based in Washington, believes there is a model for mainstreaming the trajectory of Islamic movements. Some of JNIM senior leaders are looking at Ahmed al-Sharra — Syrian leader who has recast himself as a moderate after once being closely associated with al-Qaeda. He was embraced by the Americans when, during the recent visit to the Middle East, President Trump found him to be an attractive person to lead Syria. The way the United States left Afghanistan after having been present in that country for 20 years has followed the same approach in West Africa and the Middle East. According to the Defense Department in Washington, there are now fewer than 200 United States troops in the area — down from 1,400 as recently as 2023. "JNIM is now ascendant, but would likely collapse into many parts," one former senior official said to me in a conversation, aware that I was writing on the development of Islamic radicalism around the world. "In a region where we used to monitor and influence developments, we no longer have the tools that follow those policies." According to the official I spoke to, "we are concerned about President Hassan Sheikh Mohammad's prioritization of internal politics and leaving the ground to al-Shabab, the most lethal associate of the once-powerful Al-Qaeda which has pushed the government forces out of several towns in the country's west." Somalia's fractious government which operates from Mogadishu, the country's capital, was propped up by the United States aided by an extensive African Union peace-keeping operation. The AU also had the help of the United States, receiving both training and equipment from Washington. With the Americans no longer closely involved, there is opportunity to act on the part of other regional powers. The obvious candidates are Iran, Turkey and possibly Pakistan. If Pakistan were to be involved, it would do so with the backing of China. This is a subject on which I will write later.
Indian Express
6 days ago
- General
- Indian Express
Top 10 air crashes caught on camera: 9/11 shocker to Captain Sully facing geese attack
Ten plane crashes caught on camera: In the age of ubiquitous cameras, from dashcams to smartphones, some of the most harrowing moments in aviation history have been caught on video. Bystanders, passengers, or surveillance systems trying to capture something completely unrelated have ended up documenting these plane crashes with chilling clarity. From the global shock of 9/11 to the military jet collision, this article explores notable crashes caught on camera, detailing the events, who recorded them, and their lasting impact. During the 9/11 attacks, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, and one hit the Pentagon. News broadcasts, bystander videos, and a Pentagon security camera captured the impacts. Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, was not filmed. The attacks, orchestrated by al-Qaeda, remain the deadliest terrorist incident in history with a total of 2,996 people killed in a single day. Below is a video of the North Tower being hit, captured by Jules Naudet, a documentary filmmaker who was profiling New York's Fire Department. Known as the 'Miracle on the Hudson,' the plane struck a flock of Canada geese shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport, causing both engines to fail. Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles glided the plane to a safe water landing in the Hudson River. All 155 passengers and crew survived. The medical transport plane crashed into a residential area shortly after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, likely due to engine failure. Footage shows the plane descending rapidly, striking a home, and causing a fireball. The crash sparked a fire that damaged nearby properties, though the affected home was unoccupied. All 6 on board, including a pediatric patient and medical staff and 1 on the ground died. The plane overran the runway at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport in snowy conditions, crashing onto a highway. A car dashcam on the M3 highway recorded the aircraft breaking apart, with debris hitting the vehicle. All eight crew members were killed. A US Airforce plane crashed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, during an Arctic Thunder Air Show practice, killing all four crew video, released by the military, cuts off seconds before impact, showing the plane diving behind trees followed by black smoke. The cargo plane, departing from Puerto Carreño, Colombia, struggled during takeoff, hitting a fence and trees before crashing into a forest. Onlooker footage captured the plane barely clearing the runway and dipping out of sight. All six crew members survived, though the pilot was injured. The flight from Bangkok crash-landed at Muan International Airport at 9:03 a.m. after a reported bird strike and failed landing attempt. 179 people died, while 2 crew members survived. A midair collision over the Potomac River in Washington DC was recorded by surveillance cameras at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Clips showed the helicopter striking the jet, causing a fireball. All 64 on the jet and 3 on the helicopter were killed.
