Death Toll at 95 in Pakistan Volleyball Bombing

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Police say a suicide bomber drove onto crowded volleyball field in North-West Frontier Province town of Lakki Marwat and detonated an explosive-laden vehicle, killing at least 95 and wounding over 100 others.

More bodies are being pulled from the rubble of a sports complex in northwestern Pakistan, raising the death toll in Friday's attack on a volleyball game to at least 95.

Survivors prepared for funerals Saturday, while officials warn the number of victims is likely to increase as recovery efforts moved through their second day.

Police say the suicide bomber drove onto a crowded field in the North-West Frontier Province town of Lakki Marwat Friday and detonated his explosive-laden vehicle while hundreds of spectators watched the match, including women and children.

The blast caused nearby homes to collapse and damaged a nearby mosque where tribal elders were meeting.

Police say that meeting may have been the attacker's intended target.

Some officials have raised concerns about meager medical facilities in Lakki Marwat. Doctors from surrounding areas have come to the town to help treat the more than 100 wounded.

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Pakistan Seeks Terrorism Charges Against Americans

Pakistani police will ask a court to charge five Americans detained in the country this month with planning terrorist attacks and jail them for life, a police official said on Thursday.

The young Americans, from Virginia, are accused of contacting militants groups over the Internet in a bid to wage holy war. Pakistani officials have said the Taliban had planned to use them to carry out attacks inside U.S. ally Pakistan.

“A joint investigation team has concluded its probe and we'll present them before a court on January 4 to seek life imprisonment sentences under anti-terrorist laws,” said Usman Anwar, police chief in Sargodha, where the men were arrested.

“We'll prove in the court that their aim was just to spread terrorism under the garb of jihad and for that, they were in touch with Taliban and other Arab militants in tribal areas.”

Pakistan's Pashtun tribal lands bordering Afghanistan are known sanctuaries for al Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled the U.S.-led assault on Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on United States.

Washington is pushing Pakistan to root out militants who cross the border to attack U.S.- and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

Emails showed that the Americans had plans to travel to a Pakistani nuclear power plant, according to police.

via Pakistan seeks terrorism charges against Americans | Reuters.

Ex-CIA Operative Warns of Terror Attack – 60 Minutes

Henry Crumpton a former CIA operative with the most direct experience fighting al Qaeda on the ground and who predicted the 9/11 attacks has “no doubt” the terrorist organization will strike U.S. soil again and will talk about this and more in an interview on 60 Minutes, Sunday evening.

Henry Crumpton, the ex-CIA mastermind of the war on the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan right after 9/11, also tells 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan the U.S. needs to be in Pakistan making deals with locals to fight the Qaeda and Taliban leaders hiding there.

Logan’s story, including a rare interview with the head of the Afghan intelligence service, will be broadcast Sunday, Dec. 27, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

“There will be an attack in the homeland …sadly…I think we’ll be hit again,” says Crumpton. Asked by Logan whether he had any doubts, he replies, “None.” The former CIA man on the ground in Afghanistan days after 9/11 says the future attack could be greater than the one that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.

Crumpton is in the best position to make such a statement. It was he, with a few other CIA operatives, who enlisted Afghan tribal fighters to dislodge al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts from Afghanistan in the weeks after the 9/11 attack.

via Ex-CIA Operative Warns of Terror Attack – 60 Minutes – Source.

U.S. Launched Missile Strikes on Al Qaeda in Yemen

It appears the war on terror might not be over after all. Despite  talk to the contrary earlier this year by the Obama administration, US efforts to combat terrorism around the world continues and has possibly increased in the past view months.

The U.S. has launched two missile strikes against Al Qaeda targets in Yemen, two U.S. officials told Fox News, signaling an escalation of the Obama administration’s fight against the terrorist organization.

The politically sensitive strikes Thursday, first reported by ABC News, supplement efforts already under way by the government of Yemen to go after Al Qaeda in the country, the officials told Fox News, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the operation.

Such an operation is particularly sensitive in Yemen. “It’s very difficult for Yemen to ask the U.S. for help given the nature of their population and its views about the West,” one official said. “And the U.S. doesn’t want to compromise their ability to ask for help.”

The United States has faced similar concerns in Pakistan, where reports of U.S. drone attacks on militants are common — but never acknowledged publicly by the U.S. or by Pakistan.

via FOXNews.com – U.S. Launched Missile Strikes on Al Qaeda in Yemen, Sources Say.

Pakistan Turns Down Key U.S. Antiterrorism Requests

Washington’s relationship with Pakistan suffered a fresh blow this week with reports that Pakistan’s leader has rejected a personal request from U.S. President Barack Obama to expand the army’s operations in tribal areas where members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are known to enjoy safe haven.Pakistani military officials and diplomats say President Asif Ali Zardari told Obama in late November, before the White House’s new “Af-Pak” strategy was announced, that the country’s military would move against the Islamic extremists in the border areas on its own schedule, and not the accelerated pace Washington requested.

Pakistan’s military chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani, has also reportedly told General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, that no major military operations are planned anytime soon in North Waziristan.The area is a known sanctuary for the Afghan-Taliban-allied Haqqani network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj, a Taliban commander. According to U.S. military officials, Siraj’s fighters pose the biggest threat to U.S. forces in the eastern part of Afghanistan.

Source

Internet Proves To Be Fertile Ground For Jihadist Recruitment

An excellent Op-ed by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times, “www.jihad.com”.

Let’s not fool ourselves. Whatever threat the real Afghanistan poses to U.S. national security, the “Virtual Afghanistan” now poses just as big a threat. The Virtual Afghanistan is the network of hundreds of jihadist Web sites that inspire, train, educate and recruit young Muslims to engage in jihad against America and the West. Whatever surge we do in the real Afghanistan has no chance of being a self-sustaining success, unless there is a parallel surge — by Arab and Muslim political and religious leaders — against those who promote violent jihadism on the ground in Muslim lands and online in the Virtual Afghanistan.

Last week, five men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan, where they went, they told Pakistani police, to join the jihad against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. They first made contact with two extremist organizations in Pakistan by e-mail in August. As The Washington Post reported on Sunday: “ ‘Online recruiting has exponentially increased, with Facebook, YouTube and the increasing sophistication of people online,’ a high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official said. …

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Dan Verton of Homeland Security TV ‘HSTV’ Presents another view.

The War on Terror’s Western Front Doesn’t Run Through The Internet

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently published an OP-ED that argued the “virtual” terrorist threat in the form of “hundreds of jihadist Web sites that inspire, train, educate and recruit young Muslims to engage in jihad against America and the West,” is as dangerous as anything currrently happening in the “real Afghanistan.”

Stop. Think.

I’ve written about national security in the cyber realm for more than a decade, including an entire book on the emerging threat of cyber-terrorism. So I’m well-versed in the label of fear-monger, as many of the narrow-minded have labled me over the years. However, Friedman’s argument that the virtual world of online propaganda is a central front in the war on terrorism threatens to lead us on yet another dangerous path — one of misconception and miscalculation.

The tools of propaganda — of which the Internet is but one — have never been the central problem facing the United States and the West in this war on terrorism. If the Internet did not exist, there would be other tools of the trade. The real underlying problem that truly threatens our success against Islamic extremism is the systematic indoctrination and brainwashing of Muslim youth around the world and the outright reluctance — bordering on refusal — of mainstream, peace-loving Muslims to stand up and cleanse their religion of haters and murderers.

For those who fear I may be overstating the case, I encourage you to watch Palestinian television or any number of Saudi television broadcasts. To your horror, you will see children as young as four and five being lectured on the evils of Jews and Christians, and the virtues of violent struggle against them. You will see self-proclaimed religious scholars and academics chuckle about the thought of killing millions of Americans with weaponized Anthrax.

What you won’t see is any organized, large-scale attempt by Muslims in any corner of this world condemning such indoctrination or, better yet, taking actions to stop it. The frontlines of this war run through the minds of children and young people throughout the Muslim world and we are doing very little to ensure the destruction of the system of indoctrination.

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Homegrown Terror Cases Increase Significantly In 2009

Fox news  reports that out of 30 homegrown terror plots discovered in the US since  9/11,  ten were discovered in 2009 representing a significant increase that has terror experts concerned.

The five young Americans accused last week of traveling from Washington to Pakistan to wage jihad cap what appears to be a record year for homegrown terror plots, exposing a dangerous trend that experts say poses the biggest challenge America’s security officials have ever faced.

Not including the Pakistan case, the Rand Corporation says that of the nearly 30 homegrown terror plots uncovered in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001, 10 surfaced in this year alone, including two actual attacks, in Little Rock, Ark. and Fort Hood, Texas.

That puts “the level of activity in 2009 much higher than that of previous years,” Rand Senior Adviser Brian Jenkins told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month.

“There’s definitely a rise in jihad recruits and volunteers in the United States, whether they’re concerning plots here in the U.S. or whether they involve material support to terror plots overseas,” says counterterrorism analyst Steve Emerson, author of “American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us.”

Danny Coulson, former deputy assistant director of the FBI, agrees.

via Homegrown Terror on the Rise in 2009 – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News – FOXNews.com.

Why Are Ayman al Zawahiri and Adam Gadahn Still Alive

While this article from ABC News points out that despite an increase in US drone strikes, many high-value targets such as Adam Gadahn and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still walking around, increased intelligence and capability in the areas where they are believed hiding suggests they may not be for much longer.

The reappearance of two of al-Qaeda’s best known figures this weekend overshadowed last week’s news that an unmanned U.S. drone had killed a behind-the-scenes al-Qaeda operative named Saleh al-Somali in a remote northern region of Pakistan.

Both Adam Gadahn and Ayman al-Zawahiri popped up alive and well on the internet, showing once again that CIA drone attacks have not managed to knock out the high-visibility, high-value Taliban and Al Qaeda targets the U.S. has been seeking in the region since the 9/11 attacks.

Gadahn, a Southern California Muslim convert turned al-Qaeda propagandist, criticized America and its allies in a 17-minute video released Saturday morning. On Sunday, Zawahiri, long considered Osama Bin Laden’s top lieutenant, released an audio statement, blasting Arab government figures as “Obama’s henchmen” and slaves of “the new world order.”

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Chicago Terror Suspect Knew Mumbai Attacks Were Coming

WLS News reports that a Chicago travel agent and terror suspect had advance knowledge of last year’s deadly three-day attack on Mumbai, India, according to newly filed documents by federal prosecutors in Chicago.

Tahawwur Hussain Rana Rana, a Chicago travel agency owner and owner of an Illinois goat slaughterhouse, is heard on a secret tape recording admitting that he knew Pakistani terrorists were going to assault hotels and public buildings according to the government.

Rana, whom prosecutors note “has even gone so far as to claim to this Court that his beliefs are akin to those of Gandhi” is portrayed as a supporter of violent Johad who needs to remain in custody without bond states the court motion.

Prosecutors write: “On September 7, 2009, Headley and Rana took a long car ride and discussed several topics. This conversation was recorded. During their conversation, Headley and Rana discussed the attacks that occurred in late November 2008 in Mumbai, India, in which approximately 170 people were killed. It is clear from the conversation and extrinsic corroboration that Rana was told just days before the Mumbai attacks that the attacks were about to happen. Elsewhere in the conversation, Rana asked Headley to pass Rana’s compliments directly to the specific Lashkar e Tayyiba member they both knew who had coordinated the attacks.”

via 2nd Chicago terror suspect knew about Mumbai attack – 12/14/09 – Chicago News – abc7chicago.com.

Pakistan To Deport 5 U.S. Terror Suspects

Pakistan is planning to deport five Americans held on terror links to the United States after they were grilled by a special FBI team in the capital Islamabad, local media reported Saturday.

The five-member team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) along with Pakistani intelligence officials, a legal advisor and a political counsellor of the U.S. embassy to Pakistan is engaged in grilling the five Americans about their alleged links with militant organizations and future plans, a senior interior ministry official told media.

“As soon as the investigations are over, they will be deported to their country,” the official said.

Pakistani authorities arrested the five people on Wednesday in the northeastern city of Sargodha, about 180 km south of Islamabad.

Police said that the suspects were arrested from a house of a local leader of banned militant organization Jaish-e-Muhammad.

Their local host has been handed over to police on a remand by a local court.

Pictures of the detainees shown on the private TV station Friday showed the five young men, most of them clean-shaven, in Western clothing.

It’s not a matter concerning to the U.S. only, said the interior ministry official.

“We too are concerned about this. Therefore, our interrogators are also grilling them to know about their aides here, and their future plans,” he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has promised an investigation into how and why the five men left the U.S. for Pakistan.

Pakistan is in the grip of a fierce insurgency, with hundreds of people killed in attacks in the past months.

Source

High-Ranking Al Qaeda Leader Reportedly Killed

It appears that our speculation yesterday was correct. Fox news is reporting today that a  high-ranking Al Qaeda figure reportedly was killed Thursday in a U.S. drone aircraft attack in north Pakistan.

The attack, first reported by NBC News, was officially denied by Pakistani officials, though sources told Fox News that neither Usama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri were among those killed.

Pakistani media report six militants were killed in the attack, including four foreign fighters, a classification in the tribal areas that typically refers to Al Qaeda.

The attack was part of the expanded use of Predator drones recently authorized by the White House, sources told Fox News, though the drone attacks, which began during the Bush Administration, never have been officially confirmed because of political sensitivity in Pakistan.

The Obama administration reportedly is talking with Pakistan about expanding the program from Waziristan to Baluchistan, a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas near the Afghanistan border.

Baluchistan is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding.

via Read Full Article.

Five Missing Americans Probed for Terror Links

UPDATE: Five Americans arrested at a house linked to a militant group in eastern Pakistan have told investigators they came to the country to take part in “jihad” or holy war, police said Thursday.

U.S. officials believe the five are men who were reported missing more than a week ago by their families in the Washington, D.C., area. The families asked the FBI for help after finding a farewell video left by the men showing scenes of war and casualties and saying Muslims must be defended.

Source

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Five young Americans captured in Pakistan are under investigation for possibly trying to meet up with a terror group, authorities said Wednesday. Two U.S. officials said one of the men left a “farewell” video behind saying Muslims must be defended, and showing images of U.S. casualties.

Frantic relatives and worried FBI agents have been searching for the five college-age men for more than a week, since their disappearance in late November. The missing students have family roots in the northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., area.

Two U.S. officials said one of the group _ they did not say which one _ left behind what investigators believe was a farewell video message, in which he talks about defending Muslims and shows images of U.S. casualties. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

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Two Arabs Killed In North Waziristan Drone Strike

Two Arab nationals were killed in a missile strike on a car by US drones in Spalga village in North Waziristan on Tuesday morning. An interesting aspect of this story is the number of other drones that were reported flying in the area at the time.  This has raised speculation that the men in the vehicle were HVT’s (high value targets), or other HVT’s are may be in the area.

A senior government official based in Miramshah, headquarters of North Waziristan, told The News by telephone that the drone fired two missiles on the car. He said two Arab nationals were travelling in the car when it was struck by the drone. Four drones were flying at the time of the attack over the area.

The Taliban sources also confirmed that both the men killed in the drone attack were foreigners and belonged to Saudi Arabia. Both of them had just left their homes and were on their way to the Afghan border, where they were supposed to meet their colleagues, the Taliban sources said.

They said the identity of the two ‘guest fighters’ could not be ascertained as their bodies had been blown apart. A tribesman of Spalga village, Hafiz Rasool, told The News by telephone that the car was torn into pieces after being hit by the drone. The wreckage scattered in a wide area and same was the case with the two bodies.

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Is Pakistani Terrorist Group LeT Going Global?

Excellent article appearing in Time and cause for concern according to several intelligence experts.

Among all the sensational details emerging from the terrorism charges against David Coleman Headley, the American national charged with involvement in last year’s terrorist attack in Mumbai, it’s easy to miss this one: Headley is alleged to have been working for the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). For intelligence experts in Washington, however, the LeT connection may be the most sensational allegation of them all – if the charges against Headley hold up, it will mean that the “Army of the Righteous,” originally dedicated to neighborhood jihad, is now ready to take on the world.

In charges unsealed on Monday, U.S. prosecutors claim that Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani, traveled to Mumbai several times between 2006 and 2008, photographing and videotaping some of the targets that were hit last November in a three-day rampage by 10 LeT gunmen that left 166 people dead. Headley is also accused of carrying out surveillance for a plot to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which sparked outrage across the Muslim world in 2005 by publishing cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

via Suspect Headley: Pakistani Terrorist Group Going Global? – Yahoo! News.

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