JERUSALEM POST: Palestinians celebrate Beersheba attacks

While hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets in major cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to celebrate the double suicide bombings in Beersheba, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat reiterated his call for sacrificing millions of martyrs to liberate Jerusalem.

Women in Nablus ululated in joy as Arab satellite TV stations interrupted their normal programs to break the news of the bombings. Scores of gunmen opened fire into the air, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” or God is Great.

Similar expressions of joy were reported in Tulkarm and Jenin.

In Gaza City, hundreds of Palestinians marched in the streets carrying pictures of slain Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi. The protesters hailed the suicide bombers as heroes and urged Hamas to launch more attacks inside Israel. Some of the demonstrators handed out sweets to the crowd as a sign of their jubilation.

The attacks in Beersheba took place as Arafat was meeting with hundreds of supporters from the West Bank town of Salfit. Arafat told the crowd that the Palestinians were determined to sacrifice millions of people to liberate Jerusalem.

“We will march towards Jerusalem, we will sacrifice millions of martyrs,” Arafat said in his famous battle cry. “Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine.”

JERUSALEM POST: IDF preparing to destroy suicide bombers’ homes

IDF forces raided the Hebron homes of the two suicide bombers who carried out Tuesday’sdouble terror attack in Be’er Sheva, in which two buses exploded nearly simultaneously killing 16 people and wounding nearly 100.

The two were identified as Nassim Subhi Jabari and Ahmed Kawasmeh, a relative of Imad Kawasmeh, head of the Hamas infrastructure in Hebron.

IDF troops are also preparing to demolish the two houses.

IDF forces questioned members of the Kawasmeh family for further information on the attack and are searching the area for weapons and other materials. The Kawasmeh clan is well known to security forces for involvement in various terror activities.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Ryan Anderson, a Muslim convert serving in the US National Guard, is charged with trying to pass information to the Al Qaeda movement.

The prosecution believes this included details about the vulnerability of some American military vehicles and ways of attacking them.

A defence lawyer has argued that his client had been suffering from a mental disorder.

Update to this story.

Two buses exploded in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Tuesday, wounding at least 15 people, Israeli rescue officials said.

Israel Radio said Palestinian militants were suspected in the blasts, which would mark the first such attack since March. The report could not immediately be confirmed.

The nearly simultaneous blasts occurred in the city’s main street. Israel Radio said one bus was in flames, while windows were blown out of the second vehicle.

Read more…

UPDATE:

According to reports, at least 12 people have died in the explosions and 44 have been injured.

Israel’s Channel Two television said the blasts were carried out by Palestinian suicide bombers, but the report could not immediately be confirmed. TV reports said two mangled bodies were found — presumably those of the bombers.
The militant group Hamas quickly claimed responsibility for the bombings.

UPDATE:

Reports put the death toll at 15 now. Further updates available on the Magen David Adom site.

UPDATE:

From Al-Jazeera:

“These explosions show that all the security precautions and the barrier have been unable to stop the attacks,” Aljazeera correspondent al-Umari said.

(Ed- The barrier is not finished in that region.)

UPI reports:

Algiers, Algeria, Aug. 31 (UPI) — Algerian troops killed four armed Muslim extremists in two incidents in eastern and western Algeria in the past two days, reports said Tuesday.

The Algerian daily al-Khabar quoted security sources as saying soldiers carrying out a combing operation in the province of Boumedras, east of Algiers, clashed with Muslim militants Monday, killing three.

The operation was in response to a major attack perpetrated by 30 gunmen from Algeria’s most feared extremist group, the Salafi Grouping for Daawa and Fighting, 10 days ago in Boumedras in which five troops and two army intelligence officers were killed.

In another incident, the army killed a militant Sunday in the province of Ghlisan, 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Algiers.

Continue reading at Southern Watch (which has more).

HAARETZ: Explosion reported on bus in Be’er Sheva

An explosion was reported on a bus in Be’er Sheva on Tuesday afternoon.

A second bus was reported to have been hit in the blast, which took place close to 2:50 P.M. It was not immediately unclear whether the attack was one blast or two.

The explosion took place close to Soroka Hospital in the city.

A Magen David Adom official said that there were injuries in the blast.

(The link is there for a reason)

HAARETZ: IDF kills Palestinian approaching Gaza settlement

Israel Defense Forces troops shot and killed a Palestinian man who tried to carry out a terror attack at the south Gaza Strip settlement of Morag on Monday night, the IDF told the Itim news agency.

Palestinian sources confirmed that a 34-year-old man had been killed in the area.

The IDF said troops ambushed the Palestinian near abandoned greenhouses in the Morag area after receiving intelligence information that an explosive device had earlier been hidden in the greenhouses.

Troops shot and killed the Palestinian when he crawled to the greenhouses, apparently to detonate the bomb, the army said.

(Ed- I’m 34, and even I know that this is the wrong season for planting bombs even if you’ve got greenhouses.)

JERUSALEM POST: IAF to target Kassam launch crews and factories

The IDF will begin bombing Kassam crews and factories from the air, according to a Ministerial Defense Committee decision quoted by IBA news Monday.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz earlier ruled that the action is legitimate so long as civilians are not harmed.

JERUSALEM POST: Jenin: IAF helicopters fired at gunmen

An Israeli helicopter fired a missile Monday toward a car carrying four Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank town of Jenin, but missed and hit a nearby home instead.

The missile wounded a nine-year-old girl, Palestinian sources said. The gunmen were uninjured and managed to flee the scene on foot.

One of the targeted gunmen in the car was identified as Mahmoud Abu Halfi, a deputy of Zakariya Zubeidi.

Zubeidi is the Jenin commander of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group with ties to Yasser Arafat’s ruling Fatah movement, and he is directly linked to numerous terror attacks in Israel.

The Associated Press reports that an explosion in the office of an American defense contractor in Kabul Sunday, killing as many as six people:

The blast hit the office of Dyncorp Inc., an American firm that provides security for Afghan President Hamid Karzai on behalf of the United States and works for the U.S. government in Iraq, said Nick Downie of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office.

[. . .]

Dyncorp Inc. is a division of Computer Science Services, Inc., based in El Segundo, Calif.

From California Yankee.

JERUSALEM POST: Bomb-sniffing dogs used for Jerusalem city buses

After months of bureaucratic delays, a new security plan for public buses across the country is currently underway, including the unprecedented use of bomb-sniffing dogs on Jerusalem City buses to snuff out Palestinian suicide bombers, a senior official in the Internal Security Ministry said Sunday.

As part of the bus security plan, sixteen specially trained dogs are being used to safeguard city buses in Jerusalem, with the number of dogs expected to triple in the coming months as the program expands nationwide, said the deputy director general of the internal security ministry, Eliezer Rosenbaum.

The dogs, which undergo a five-month training period by the ‘Pups for Peace’ Organization before being handed over to security officials for use on public buses, include German Shepherds, and Labradors.

The dogs are used by security guards to sniff out explosives at bus stops, bus stations, and bus queues.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

At least nine children and one adult were killed when a blast ripped through a school in the south-eastern Afghan province of Paktia, a US military spokesperson said.
[…]
“There were four children, five teenagers and one adult killed,” Master Sergeant Ann Bennett said.

She said an eight-year-old boy was being treated at a US military base, but she was unsure how many more wounded there were.

“The explosion took place last night inside a private madrassah (religious school),” Paktia Governor Haji Assadullah Wafa told Reuters by satellite phone.

The school was in the village of Naiknaam, near the town of Zormat, 125 kilometres south of Kabul, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency.

The premises were also used by a non-government organisation for teaching Afghan women.

Bennett said the cause of the blast was under investigation by a US team.

JERUSALEM POST: IDF soldiers thwart suicide attack

Early Sunday morning IDF soldiers shot at three Palestinian men who they spotted crawling two hundred meters from the security fence north of the Karni crossing in the Gaza Strip.

IDF officials said that the Palestinians had infiltrated a restricted area, and fearing an attack the soldiers opened fire, killing one of the men. The other two men managed to flee.

A search of the body revealed that the man was wearing an explosive belt and was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, four ammunition clips and grenades.

“Additional examination of the fragments of the Tu-134 aircraft which crashed on Tuesday … has revealed traces of hexogen,” an FSB spokesman said.

The FSB said on Friday that hexogen, more widely known as RDX, had been found in the wreckage of the other Tu-154 plane which crashed on Tuesday in southern Russia.

Read more…

PA: Bomb Explodes in Spanish Park

A small bomb exploded today in a park in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela after a warning call on behalf of the Basque separatist [the word should be ‘terrorist’, not ‘separatist’! — F.A.] group ETA.

The explosive device went off in the Parque de la Alameda, in the heart of the north-western pilgrimage city, around noon (1100 BST) causing little damage and no injuries.

Several small bombs have gone off in northern Spain in recent weeks following warnings in the name of ETA.

Today a caller told the pro-Basque daily Gara that a device had been planted in the park in Santiago and another in the nearby city of A Coruna.

The targeted area in A Coruna was cordoned off and a hotel and social club evacuated. No explosives have been found.

This is very interesting. From the National Post:

A captured al-Qaeda operative has told Canadian intelligence investigators that a Montreal man who trained in Afghanistan alongside the 9/11 hijackers was responsible for the crash of an American Airlines flight in New York three years ago.

Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents were told during five days of interviews with the source that Abderraouf Jdey, a Canadian citizen also known as Farouk the Tunisian, had downed the plane with explosives on Nov. 12, 2001.

The source claimed Jdey had used his Canadian passport to board Flight 587 and “conducted a suicide mission” with a small bomb similar to the one used by convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, a “Top Secret” Canadian government report says.

But officials said it was unlikely Jdey was actually involved in the crash, which killed 265 people and is considered accidental. The fact that al-Qaeda attributed the crash to Jdey, however, suggests they were expecting him to attack a plane.

“We have seen no evidence of anything other than an accident here,” said Ted Lopatkiewicz, spokesman for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. “There has been no evidence found, from what I can tell — at least that’s been relayed to us — that there was any criminality involved here. It appears, at least the evidence we have, is that a vertical fin came off, not that there was any kind of event in the cabin.”

Jdey, 39, came to Canada from Tunisia in 1991 and became a citizen in 1995. Shortly after getting his Canadian passport, he left for Afghanistan and trained with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, according to the 9/11 commission in the United States.

Maybe it’s the conspiracy theorist in me (which is small, actually), but the story of that flight going down a month after 9/11, in New York, just after takeoff, because the “tail fell off” never seemed to hold narrative fidelity for me …

A claim of responsibility for the downing of two Russian planes appeared on a Web site known for militant Muslim comment Friday.

The statement, which accused Russians of killing Muslims in Chechnya, was signed “the Islambouli Brigades.” A group with a similar name has claimed at least one previous attack, but the legitimacy of the group and the authenticity of such statements could not be verified.

The statement read, in part:

“We in the Islambouli Brigades announce that our holy warriors managed to hijack two Russian planes and were crowned with success though they faced problems at the beginning.”

“Russia’s slaughtering of Muslims is continuing and will only stop when a bloody war is launched. Our mujahedeen, with God’s grace, succeeded in directing the first blow, which will be followed by a series of other operations in a wave of to extend support and victory to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya and other Muslim areas which suffer from Russian faithlessness.”

Read more…

[Previous posts on this story start here]

From the AFP via The Australian :

At least one of the two Russian plane crashes that killed some 90 people this week was the result of a terrorist attack, the top Russian security service spokesman said Friday.

”According to our initial investigation, at least one of the air crashes, the one in the Rostov region, came as a result of a terror attack,” spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko told ITAR-TASS news agency.

His comments came Friday after investigators said they had found traces of explosive material in the wreckage of one of the two planes that crashed in southern Russia.

HAARETZ: Witnesses: IAF missile injures Jihad militant in Rafah

An explosion tore through a house in Rafah after nightfall Thursday, wounding Mohammed Sheikh al-Khalil, an Islamic Jihad militant wanted by Israel over his alleged involvement in an attack that killed five soldiers in the refugee camp in May, residents said.

Three other people were wounded in the blast, which witnesses said occurred after an Israeli drone had flown by. According to other reports, the blast occurred after an IAF helicopter fired a missile, Israel Radio reported.

The IDF, which has issued leaflets in Rafah warning residents not to cooperate with Khalil, had no immediate comment.

Also available at Jpost.

JERUSALEM POST: French mum on hospital shielding terrorists

A US Jewish group is urging the government of France to “exercise its responsibilities under international law” following the arrest of two Palestinian terrorists at a French-protected hospital in Bethlehem.

On Tuesday, Adnan Abiat and Ratan Ali Hasan Nabhan, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade members who, according to Israel, hid in the hospital for months and are responsible for the murder of eight Israelis, were arrested at the Holy Family Maternity Hospital in Bethlehem, which is operated by the French Association of the Order of Malta. A weapons cache found on hospital premises was also seized.

While France has long been critical of Israel’s counter-terror efforts and questioned its adherence to international law, officials at the American Jewish Congress’s Council for World Jewry said that the arrests – and the French government’s silence on the issue - highlight France’s refusal to practice what it preaches.

In a press release issued Thursday, the organization noted that while hospitals enjoy safeguards under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Part II, Article 19 of the convention notes that “The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy.”

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Thursday’s Winds of War briefings will be given by me, Colt, of Eurabian Times.

TOP TOPICS

• Two Russian airliners went down within minutes of each other, killing all passengers and crew. The death toll stands somewhere between 89 and 94. There are reports that at least one of the aircraft signalled that it was being hijacked. A timeline of events is available here. Sky News (on British TV) is reporting that both aircraft sent hijack warnings, but that’s unconfirmed. The afternoon before, a bomb exploded at a bus stop opposite a Moscow police station, injuring four. The next election in Chechnya is set for Sunday. Russian intelligence and security forces have been on alert since the increase in attacks by Chechen rebels these past few weeks. Vladmir Putin arrived in Chechnya last Sunday to find that Chechen groups had seized several districts in Grozny.

• It looks like I was right to worry about the distribution of anti-radiation pills around Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona. An Iranian Revolutionary Guards spokesman has announced that The entire Zionist territory, including its nuclear facilities and atomic arsenal, are currently within range of Iran’s advanced missiles..

• Montreal police have seized a minivan containing at least 17 guns and 90-135kg of explosives.

Other Topics Today Include: Iran Reports; Domestic Security; GSPC ambushes soldiers; Hezbollah prepare for war; Jordan wants Syria truck bombs stopped; Abu Sayyaf bits and pieces; U.S. warns of more Uzbekistan terror as 17 convicted; Bali bomber goes unpunished for Bali murders; Pakistani PM calls for Jihad; Islamic Jihad calls for Sadr to attack pipelines; Liberia diamonds might have funded 9/11; Islamist Turkey?; Build your own Bush.

Read The Rest…

AP: Yemeni Poet Asks to Represent Himself

A Yemeni poet accused of crafting terrorist propaganda asked to represent himself Thursday before a U.S. military commission, but the panel said it was not allowed.

Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul, 33, of Yemen, is charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes. He appeared with his head shaved, wearing tan pants and a gray polo shirt.

When asked if he had any questions, he said through an Arabic interpreter: “Am I allowed to represent myself?”

The presiding officer, Army Col. Peter E. Brownback, said the order setting up military commissions does not allow for it.

JERUSALEM POST: IDF divides Gaza Strip into three sections

The IDF divided the Gaza Strip into three sections on Thursday morning due to the ongoing Kassam rockets and mortar shells attacks on Israeli communities.

Last week, the IDF imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip following the firing of five Kassam rockets from the area. The blockade, which was lifted after 24 hours, divided the Gaza Strip into three to prevent the transfer of weapons and passage of terrorists from the north to the south.

Officials said the IDF imposed a blockade on the Tancher Route, which links north and south Gaza Strip. In addition, the Gush Katif Junction was blocked to Palestinian traffic as well as the coastal road west of Netzarim, in the center of the Gaza Strip.

Two Kassam rockets were fired at the western Negev town of Sderot Thursday morning. There were no reports of injuries but a storeroom was damaged.

In the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinians fired four mortar shells at the community of Morag. One of the shells fell inside the community, two fell near the guard post at the entrance to Morag and a fourth outside the community. There were no reports of injuries.

(Maybe Gandhi’s “pacifist” grandson ought to spend some time in Sderot. Outdoors.)

Israeli Broadcasting authority radio quotes a “senior Russian official in Moscow” Vladimir Yakovlev as saying that the black boxes of the two crushed planes did not contain any information. (Same from Reuters). An Israeli aviation expert interviwed later on, said that the boxes not being functional to begin with could be consistent with the overall state of disrepair of the Russian aviation.

[The updates to this story have been moved here, to the Global War on Terror section, in light of the reports of a hijack alarm sent by the first plane. Previous postings from last night can be found here]

• The death toll now stands at 89, which is reportedly the total of passengers and crew from both planes, though there are some varying reports on that.

• Russian officials on possible terrorism:

“There are solid grounds for opening a criminal case under this article of the Criminal Code, because a minute before the plane’s crash, the Rostov police office department had received a message from air traffic controller Sviridov, who said the plane’s crew had been attacked,” an unidentified source in the Rostov regional prosecutor’s office said, according to Interfax.

• Second crash site found (update from last night’s news):

The wreckage of a Russian airliner, which went missing on Tuesday night with 46 people on board, has been found near Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don, emergency officials said on Wednesday, hours after another airliner, which crashed at the same time, was found south of Moscow with ll 44 aboard dead.
The Tupelov Tu-154 airplane’s wreckage and human body parts were found nine kilometres south of Gluboky village in the Kaminsk-Shakhtinsky region, the emergency ministry’s spokesperson was quoted by the Interfax news agency.

Updates:

• Key information about each flight can be found here.

• One source so far is saying that there is no sign of terrorism (despite the reports of hijack alerts):

Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, said Wednesday an initial investigation at the crash sites of two airliners had not turned up signs of “terrorism,” the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

More Updates:

• Black boxes from both planes have been found.

• AP has a timeline of the two crashes.

• Chechen rebels deny any role in the crashes.

• Debka (grain of salt alert) reports that one of the planes was hijacked with the intention of targeting Putin’s Sochi residence.

[This post will be updated as details become available]

JERUSALEM POST: Gaza gunmen shoot PA intelligence officer

Three Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a convoy carrying the deputy Palestinian intelligence chief close to the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, wounding him the chest and killing two members of his entourage, according to Palestinian security sources.

Gaza Strip strongman Muhammad Dahlan met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat Tuesday to reconcile differences that led to a state of anarchy in the densely populated 340 sq. km. strip.

But the assassination attempt on Wednesday seemed to show that instability and the struggle for power among various Fatah-related groups continues.

The three masked gunmen peppered Tareq Abu Rajab’s convoy with bullets causing his car to flip over, according to reports. Suffering four bullet wounds including two shots to the chest, Abu Rajab was rushed to a hospital and was undergoing surgery, the officials said. Palestinian security sources added that he was transferred to an Israeli hospital.

All previous coverage on the downed airliners was in the Global Recon section in this post. With this latest news, I’ve made this update in the Global War on Terror section.

Via Rusty Shackleford, ABC News quotes an Interfax report that government officials have said that the missing Tu-154 sent a panic signal indicating a hijacking at 11:04 p.m. Moscow time. This update and all the other news since the story of the downed Russian airlines originally broke can be found in my previous post.

1:25 EDT UPDATE
Channel News Asia confirms the hijacking signal report:

An alarm went off aboard a Russian airliner just before it went missing in southern Russia, signaling that the plane had been hijacked, a Russian official told the Interfax news agency Wednesday.

According to the source, the hijack alarm went off at 11:04 pm Tuesday (1904 GMT), as the Tupelov Tu-154 aircraft, which took off from Moscow, was flying over Millerovo near Rostov-on-Don, with the aircraft dropping off radar screens shortly after.

Blogs of War points to a story that the second plane’s wreckage has been found.

8:10 EDT UPDATE
Reuters:

“The main line of inquiry we are following is violation of the rules of operating civil aircraft,” FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko said.

Ignatchenko said this meant pilot error, mechanical defects or problems with fuel quality — prime suspects in Russia, where pilots are poorly paid and planes often old.

“We are also examining the possibility of a terrorist act, but we have no evidence to support this.”

8:20 EDT
Interfax:

The investigators probing the crashes of a Siberia Airlines Tu-154 and a Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 have so far not discovered any evidence that would prove that terrorist attacks were behind the disasters, Federal Security Service spokesman Nikolai Zakharov told Interfax on Wednesday.
“It has been concluded at the present time that the most likely reason [behind the crash] was a breach of civil aviation aircraft operation regulations,” Zakharov said

8:25 A.M. EDT
Associated Press:

Officials made conflicting statements about whether the signal from the Sibir jet indicated a hijacking or another severe problem on the aircraft, and there was bad weather overnight in both areas….

…Witnesses said they heard what sounded like three explosions before the first plane crashed about 200 kilometers south of Moscow, and suspicions of terrorist involvement were compounded when officials said the Sibir jet that went missing in the Rostov region issued a signal indicating the plane was being seized.

Interfax and Itar-Tass later quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying that the signal was an SOS and that no other signals were sent.

But Oleg Yermolov, deputy director of the Interstate Aviation Committee, said that it is impossible to judge what is behind the signal, which merely indicates “a dangerous situation onboard” and can be triggered during a hijacking or a potentially catastrophic technical problem.

At the same time, Sibir said on its web site that it had received a message from the shift chief at the military department of a nationwide air traffic control network that said a signal of a seizure had been activated on one of the planes. The company “does not rule out the theory of a terrorist act,” it said.

Interfax said emergency workers spotted a fire in the Rostov region, where the Sibir jet went missing. But rainy weather hampered the search efforts and it took hours before any wreckage was found. A flight data recorder from the plane was recovered, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said, according to Interfax….

Quoting an unidentified air traffic official in Moscow, Itar-Tass said authorities were also not ruling out terrorism. Interfax quoted an unidentified Russian aviation security expert as saying the fact that the two planes disappeared around the same time raised suspicions of terrorism….

…Interfax quoted a Domodedovo airport spokesman as saying there were no foreigners on the passenger lists for either plane….

…When Russia’s UN Ambassador Andrei Denisov was told of the initial report of two near-simultaneous crashes, he said, “Now we have to see if there’s terrorism.”

In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity Tuesday evening, said it was the understanding of American officials that the two Russian planes disappeared within four minutes of each other, which “in and of itself is suspicious.”

Cross-posted: Backcountry Conservative.

Other Links:
Current Time in Moscow
Large list of Russian blogs (page has problems in some browsers - Firefox works best.)
Russian Blogs
Globe of Blogs: Russia
Aeroflot
Domodedovo Airport
Tupolev 134 (Tu-134)
Tupolev 154 (Tu-154)
The Moscow Times
Rusnet
MosNews
The Moscow News
Gazeta.ru
Interfax
ITAR-TASS
RIA Novosti
Pravda
Kavkaz Center (Chechnya News)
Other Chechnya News
Federal Security Service (in Russian)
FSB information (English)

HAARETZ: Deputy AG: End to terror could make fence illegal

Israel may have to dismantle the West Bank separation fence if the Palestinians “reach a real decision” to stop carrying out terror attacks, Deputy Attorney General Malchiel Balass told Haaretz on Tuesday.

According to Balass, a cessation of attacks is not sufficient grounds to consider dismantling the fence. A significant act would be required on the part of the Palestinians, similar to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s 1993 letter to Premier Yitzhak Rabin, since the separation fence was erected in the first place as a temporary security measure, which is also its legal justification.

“If the Palestinians reach a real decision to stop terrorism, a major legal question will arise surrounding the justification for the separation fence’s existence, and we may have to dismantle segments of it,” Balass said.

Channel News Asia: Pakistan, Afghanistan vow to curb terrorism as Karzai meets Musharraf

ISLAMABAD : Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf for talks on eradicating Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from their common border, a key issue in his bid for re-election.

Karzai and Musharraf held "an exclusive" one-on-one meeting ahead of formal talks between two sides, an official statement said.

"They reiterated the two countries' common commitment to fighting terrorism in the interests of sustainable socio-economic development of the region," it said.

AllAfrica: Egyptian Minister Calls for Terrorism Summit

EGYPT'S foreign affairs minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit yesterday said the fight against international terrorism requires the holding of an international summit to agree on a comprehensive approach to combat the vice.

Talking to journalists at Lusaka International Airport, Aboul-Gheit who will today hold talks with President Mwanawasa said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's offer in fighting terrorism was a recommendation that the international community needs to meets to agree on specific measures.

"We are of the view of holding an international summit on terrorism to agree on a comprehensive approach...agree on specific measures that call for cooperation of all countries and societies under the UN so as to get policies that are conducive to all," he said.

ChinaView: US, Russia to further cooperation in war on terrorism, says spokesman

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- US President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have pledged to continue bilateral cooperation in the war on terrorism, White House spokesman Scott McCleallan said on Monday.

In a 15-minute telephone call, Bush and Putin stressed the importance of continued US-Russia cooperation in the war on terrorism, McClellan told a news briefing at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"The two leaders discussed Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, and agreed on the need to work together to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability, to ensure the success of the electoral process in Afghanistan, and to stabilize Iraq.

CNN/AP:

A man described as a high-ranking Hamas operative was arrested last week as he videotaped the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and he then was held as a material witness in an unrelated case, authorities said.

Ismael Selim Elbarasse of Annandale, Virginia, long suspected by authorities of having financial ties to the Palestinian extremist group, was taken into custody Friday, the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland said Monday. He was held as a material witness in a Chicago terrorism case.

Elbarasse made an initial appearance in Baltimore’s federal courthouse Monday before U.S. District Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm.

A federal grand jury in Chicago, in an indictment unsealed Friday, described Elbarasse as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 15-year racketeering conspiracy in the United States and abroad to illegally finance terrorist activities in Israel.

Court documents allege that he and defendant Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook — considered one of the highest-ranking Hamas leaders internationally — shared a Virginia bank account that was used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hamas….

…Elbarasse was spotted Friday — the same day the Chicago indictment was made public — by two police officers on the Bay Bridge, authorities said. The officers noticed a man in an SUV who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent videotaping the bridge, authorities said.

Authorities said the man, who was with a woman and two children, said they had gone to the beach but could not specify what beach they had visited. They also said the camera had used had recorded close-up images that seemed atypical for a tourist.

Police learned that Elbarasse was wanted as a material witness in connection with the Chicago case, and was on an FBI terrorist watch list, authorities said. But he was not charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the videotaping.

Cross-posted: Backcountry Conservative.

Note: Also available at the WSJ Opinion Journal, Winds of Change.NET, and at my blog, Chrenkoff (here). Kudos and thanks to James Taranto, one of the few in the mainstream media who continues to spread the good news.

The former king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, has seen it all in his 89 years: after four decades on the throne, a coup that saw his deposed, and another three decades in exile, he is now back in his homeland, living the peaceful life of a private citizen, albeit in the security of a private mansion on the grounds of the presidential palace in Kabul. Asked recently by an interviewer about his country’s future, Mohammad Zahir Shah replied: “I am not a fortune-teller, but I am optimistic.”

For the past quarter of a century, one need not have been a fortune teller to expect that Afghanistan’s near future would remain grim. A communist coup, followed by the Soviet invasion and occupation, then the civil war between former mudjahedin freedom fighters, and finally the oppressive Taliban theocracy have all drastically reduced the number of optimists in this unlucky corner of Central Asia.

But optimism is back, and since the overthrow of Mullah Omar’s regime almost three years ago it has been making a slow but steady comeback. For all the continuing security problems and sporadic fighting with the Taliban and al Qaeda remnants, Afghanistan’s resurrection has been an unheralded success story of the recent times. Huge challenges remain, to be sure, but for the first time in a generation there is real hope that the country is finally breaking out of the cycle of violence and succeeding in its first steps on the road to normalcy.

The Afghans know it’s happening, but we in the West, looking at Afghanistan through the prism of mainstream media coverage, are far less aware of all the positive developments taking place over there. Here is some good news from the last four weeks that you might have missed while the media, true to their form, continued to focus on the negatives.

• Society
  
• Reconstruction
  
• Humanitarian Aid
  
• Security Situation

JERUSALEM POST: Police drill reveals security flaws in malls

Tel Aviv District Police infiltrated dummy bombs into two central shopping malls and a hotel in the Kiryat Ono area on Tuesday without being detected by security guards.

Police, from the Mesubim Station in conjunction with cadets from the Israel Police officer’s course, carried out the drill at the Kiryat Ono Mall, Yehud’s Savyonim Mall and the Avia Hotel in the city. In all three cases, an undercover police officer succeeded in infiltrating a large dummy explosives device inside a backpack into the establishments.

JERUSALEM POST: IDF raids Askar refugee camp

In an IDF raid in the Askar refugee camp near Nablus on Tuesday, security forces detained 300 Palestinian male camp residents at a nearby school.

IDF officials said that security forces checked the identities of the residents and those who were cleared as not being involved in terror activities were later released.

Security forces also searched a number of houses in the camp for weapons and fugitives.

JERUSALEM POST: Senior Al-Aksa fugitive arrested in Bethlehem

The elite IDF Duvdevan unit arrested wanted fugitive and senior member of the Fatah Al-Aksa Brigades Adnan Mohammed Hassan Abayat, 31, who for the last couple of months hid in the Holy Family Maternity Hospital, an obstetric medical center in Bethlehem.

Abayat together with Rateb Ali Hassan Nabhan, 32, another wanted fugitive, were found hiding out in the hospital’s laundry armed with two Kalashnikov rifles, three M16 rifles with telescopic sights, 15 ammunition clips and a heavy machine gun.

(Because as we all know, sometimes you need heavy firepower to remove those ground-in stains in your laundry.)

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Usama bin Laden’schauffeur was arraigned Tuesday in the first U.S. military commissions since World War II, appearing at a pretrial hearing as defense lawyers sought to challenge the process.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a 34-year-old Yemeni, smiled as he appeared without handcuffs or shackles. He wore a flowing white robe and a tan suit jacket with a long shawl over his shoulders.

His lawyers have said he earned a pittance for his family as bin Laden’s driver prior to the Sept. 11 attack. But U.S. officials allege he did more, serving as the Al Qaeda leader’s bodyguard and delivering weapons to his operatives.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

One of the key conspirators of the Bali bomb plot, Idris, has escaped punishment despite confessing to the crime.
[…]
Idris, also known as Joni Hendrawan, was at most of the key planning meetings for the Bali bombings, which killed more than 200 people.

He helped secure the safe houses and the vehicle used. He scouted the targets, taught the Sari Club car bomber how to drive and even detonated the smallest of the bombs near the US consulate.

He was also involved in choosing the targets.

Before court today, he again admitted to his role in the attacks. But the court threw out the case against him, saying the Constitutional Court’s recent decision on the retrospective use of anti-terrorism laws made it impossible to proceed.

Idris laughed in his cell after the ruling.

JERUSALEM POST: Three Islamic Jihad men arrested in Tulkarem

Undercover IDF soldiers arrested three wanted Islamic Jihad members in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Monday afternoon, Israel Radio reported.

One of the men was shot in the leg when he tried to escape. It wasn’t immediately clear how serious his wounds are.

HAARETZ: IDF troops discover arms cache in Nablus

Israel Defense Forces troops discovered a large arms cache Sunday in the West Bank city of Nablus, the eighth found in the area since troops began operating there about a week ago, military sources told Army Radio.

The cache, which was found in the casbah marketplace area of the city, included an explosives belt, mortar shells, chemical materials, electronics and a large amount of explosives, the radio said.

Sappers safely defused the weapons.

Guardian Unlimited:

Silvio Berlusconi brushed off fears yesterday of a fresh terrorist threat in Italy, insisting he would finish his holiday in Sardinia despite a bomb scare in the seaside town where Tony Blair ended a flying visit yesterday.

Police found a home-made device - a plastic tube filled with dynamite wired to a fuse and a timer - hidden between two bins by a main street in the seaside resort of Porto Rotondo.

The device was defused soon after midnight on Tuesday night, at a spot roughly a mile from Mr Berlusconi’s Villa Certosa estate where the Blairs had stayed the night before. It had been set to explode at 4.30am, local police said, roughly eight hours after Mr Blair had left the island.

The explosives had been hid den in a bag and left in a stone shed to conceal the bins in the wealthy resort.

A leftwing “anarcho-separatist” group reportedly said it had planted the mini-bomb as part of a campaign against the Italian prime minister and specifically against the war in Iraq.

The tip-off came from an anonymous caller, claiming to be from an extremist group called the Proletarian Cells for Communism, who contacted the island’s Unione Sarda newspaper on Tuesday.

AFP:

A group linked to Al-Qaeda on Friday purportedly issued yet another threat to attack targets in Italy and across Europe after Rome ignored an ultimatum to leave Iraq and other European countries spurned a truce offer.

“While our weapons are directed at (Italian Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi, we target all of Europe,” said a statement signed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades-Al-Qaeda organization, and posted on an Islamist website.

“The mujahedeen will not desist from jihad (holy war) in Europe so long as one (European) soldier remains on the land of Islam and Muslims,” said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.

The Brigades will not hesitate to “take any European … involved in the wars against Islam and Muslims captive,” said the statement, warning that an “unconventional response” was on the way following the expiry on July 15 of the truce offer by Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

In a statement attributed to it on August 15, the group had threatened to launch attacks throughout Italy and target Berlusconi following the expiry of an ultimatum for Rome to pull its troops out of Iraq.

Cross-posted at Backcountry Conservative.

AP: Pakistan says it has busted suicide plot

Pakistan announced Saturday that it had arrested at least five men suspected of having ties to al Qaeda who’d been plotting to launch suicide attacks on government leaders and the U.S. Embassy.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters that security forces had captured five or six suspects — one Egyptian, the others Pakistani — in the past week across the country, and had seized weapons.

Authorities were hunting for four to five other suspects, he said.

However, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat told The Associated Press that about a dozen suspects had been nabbed. He said they’d been planning suicide attacks on “important personalities.”

Hayyat said the group wanted to hit the official residence of President Pervez Musharraf, Parliament and the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Islamabad, as well as Army House in the neighboring city of Rawalpindi.

They also wanted to target government ministers, he said.

ARAB NEWS: Abdullah Vows to Crush Militants

Crown Prince Abdullah stated yesterday that the Kingdom would crush militants linked to Al-Qaeda terror network as well as their financiers. “God willing, this deviant group, their supporters and guides as well as those who give them money to bring in weapons and explosives will be defeated,” he said.

Addressing a group of citizens, including a delegation of Saudi engineers, Prince Abdullah said the terrorist group had tarnished the image of Islam.

“Unfortunately, they are the tails of Satan… and Satan misleads people,” he said, adding that the fate of the remaining 11 of the 26 most-wanted terrorists would be worse than those who were either killed or arrested in the past.

WaPo via Seattle Times: Hamas leader, 2 others accused of financing, backing terrorism

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department yesterday unsealed an indictment accusing a senior Hamas leader and two others of a 15-year racketeering conspiracy that raised millions of dollars for the militant group, which is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States for carrying out bombings, kidnappings and other attacks in Israel.

The indictment, handed up in Chicago, includes the deputy chief of Hamas' political wing, Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, and a former Howard University professor, Abdelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar of Fairfax County, Va.

Ashqar, 46, and a third defendant, Muhammad Hamid Khalil Salah, 51, of suburban Chicago, were arrested Thursday night. Abu Marzook, expelled from the United States in 1997, is believed to be living in Syria, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

ITV: ETA bombs rock northern Spain - reports

Two explosions have rocked northwestern Spain following warnings sent to a newspaper from Basque separatist group ETA, it has been reported.

The newspaper has reported on its website that two people have been injured in the blasts.

ETA often targets tourists and coastal resorts in a bid to undermine Spain’s tourism industry.

Earlier this month, four small bombs exploded in a northern coast