How Israel kills 2-year-old "terrorists" in Gaza

Israel is renowned for its "precision-guided missiles", fired remotely from pilotless drones with such accuracy they cause "minimal collateral damage". So the two Palestinian 2-year-olds killed within two days must have been "terrorists".

By Alison Weir
Antiwar.com
24 August 2011

Malek Sha’at, aged two, killed by an Israeli drone attack, August 2011

He looks at the camera with bright eyes and the beginning of a smile, wearing a miniature dark blue zipper sweatshirt, the cuffs folded up a bit to make it fit.

I can imagine his mother dressing him that morning, making sure he would be warm enough. I wonder if she’s the one who took the picture. Someone has written on the photo “kisses.”

It’s not a formal picture. He’s outside on a sunny day. It looks like he was probably moving when the picture was snapped; his arms seem to be swinging a little. As with most almost two-year-olds, I suspect it was hard to get him to stay still long enough for a photo.

It’s a happy picture, the kind that makes you smile; perhaps it reminds you of funny, energetic little children you know or remember.

Until you see the next picture. It was taken on his second birthday. His name was Islam Quraiqe.

Death from a drone strike is not pretty. The small body is charred, ripped apart; internal organs are pouring out.

He had been riding with his father and uncle on a motorcycle in Gaza when the missile hit them. His 29-year-old father, a member of the Palestinian resistance, and 32-year-old uncle physician were also killed. Five bystanders, including a woman, were injured.

The missile was fired remotely by an Israeli sitting in front of a video screen and operating one of the many drones that periodically fly over Gaza and shoot Palestinians like fish in a fishbowl. The operators are usually female, the preferred group for this kind of desk job.

The drones, which look like small, pilotless jets, are equipped with precision-guided missiles.

Those operating them receive real-time video feeds from sensors located on the drone: a color nose camera, a TV lens, an infrared camera for low light and night, and a synthetic radar for looking through smoke, clouds, or haze. The cameras produce full-motion video as well as still-frame radar images.

Numerous articles extol the virtues of Israeli drones. An Aug. 17 article by David Rodman reports: “The Israel Air Force (IAF) has a rich history of employing unmanned aerial vehicles in battle with excellent results.” Rodman crows that, with the possible exception of the United States, “Israel is the country most closely identified with [drone] operations in the post-World War II period.”

Islam was the second 2-year-old to be killed by Israeli forces in two days.

The first was killed by an Israeli “precision” rocket the day before. The boy’s name was Malek Sha’at. His father was also killed. The only picture available online is of a small shrouded body.

An article at WorldNetDaily.com by reporter Aaron Klein proclaims that Israeli weapons are “capable of taking out stationary and moving targets with minimal collateral damage.”

Perhaps Klein is right. Two years of life is decidedly minimal. Intolerably so.
Those who operate against us will be decapitated

During this period (Aug. 18-20, 2011) Israeli forces killed approximately 15 Palestinians, including at least one other child, a 13-year-old, and injured about 60, nine of them children. Gazan resistance forces killed one Israeli and injured about 20. Gazan hospitals, hard hit by the years-long Israeli siege, report that they have run out of 150 medicines and 160 types of medical equipment.

The Israeli assaults were allegedly triggered by attacks, by unknown gunmen on the Egyptian border with Israel, that killed eight Israelis on Thursday, Aug. 18. Israeli forces killed the attackers in Eilat, also shooting dead, according to the BBC, five Egyptian policemen. The Israeli defense minister told Egypt afterward that “Israel regrets the deaths.”

There is no evidence connecting Gazan resistance groups to the attack, and they have denied responsibility for it. Hamas and all the armed factions in Gaza had maintained a unilateral de facto ceasefire since 2009. A handful of small groups, however, have refused to abide by the ceasefire.

Groups in Egypt have periodically taken actions opposing Israel. Egyptian authorities say they have identified three of the attackers, who appear to have been based in the Sinai, there are reports that Israeli intelligence warned of the attack ahead of time, and there is mounting information suggesting that the attackers may have been Egyptian, not Gazan.

While many reports describe the Israeli actions as retaliatory, Israeli attacks on Gaza occur regularly and were already ongoing before the Eilat attack.

Two days earlier, on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed a 29-year-old Palestinian man in the morning, and Israeli ground soldiers killed a disabled teenager later in the day. The youth was shot more than 10 times, mostly in the head. On Wednesday night there were more Israeli air attacks throughout Gaza. (The Los Angeles Times called this a period of “relative calm.”)

Some analysts suggest that the recent Israeli escalation against Gaza may have been prompted, at least in part, by Netanyahu’s desire to deflect energy from the massive social protests that have been enveloping Israel recently.

The death toll among Gazans and Israelis has been notably disproportionate. In Israel’s December-January 2008-2009 “Cast Lead” assault, Israeli forces killed approximately 1,387 Gazans, while resistance forces killed nine Israelis. In the preceding year, Israeli forces killed 713 Gazans, while Gazan resistance fighters killed eight Israelis. Between Cast Lead and the end of July 2011, Israeli forces killed approximately 200 Gazans, while Palestinian resistance groups killed approximately five Israelis.

Most of Gaza’s residents are refugee families who were forcibly pushed out by Israel in its 1947-49 founding war, in which non-Jews, who originally made up over 70 percent of the inhabitants, were expelled.

In violation of international law, they have been prohibited from returning to their homes and have lived under crippling Israeli occupation for decades. Palestinian land is continually confiscated by Israel for Jewish-only use. A popular uprising against Israeli occupation began in the fall of 2000.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Aug. 21: “Those who operate against us will be decapitated.” That night at least 100 Israeli military vehicles stormed into the West Bank city of Hebron, closing the city off for hours and rounding up more than 50 Palestinians, including several academics and members of charitable associations.

On Saturday, Aug. 20, Israeli Aerospace Industries proudly unveiled its latest drone, known as the GHOST, which the company announced “is at the forefront of technology thanks to years of experience and knowledge acquired in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles.”

Israel partisan and author David Rodman reports that Israeli drones “played a substantial part” in Israel’s 1982 Lebanon War (in which Israeli forces killed at least 17,825 Lebanese, compared to approximately 368 Israelis killed by the Lebanese resistance) and that their use in what he acknowledges in profound understatement were “asymmetric conflicts” — the 2006 Second Lebanon War (Israeli forces killed at least 1,125 Lebanese, almost all civilians, a third of them children; Lebanese resistance forces killed 164 Israelis, almost three-quarters of them soldiers) and the Cast Lead operation – “sparked renewed global interest in Israeli drone operations.”

Rodman states: “In terms of the technological sophistication of its UAV force, Israel is unquestionably well ahead of the pack. Only the United States is in the same league.”

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/palestine-and-israel/732-how-israel-kills-two-year-old-qterroristsq-in-gaza

Sucide bombings in Iraq kill 48, including security forces

The bombings were the deadliest in a series of attacks across Iraq Sunday that were aimed at the Sons of Iraq, a Sunni group also known as Sahwa that works with government forces to fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The attacks highlighted the stiff challenges the country faces as the US scales back its forces in Iraq, leaving their Iraqi counterparts in charge of security.

The first attack Sunday morning — the deadliest against Iraq's security forces in months — killed at least 45 people and wounded more than 40. It occurred at a checkpoint near a military base where Sahwa members were lined up to receive paychecks in the mostly Sunni district of Radwaniya southwest of Baghdad.

"There were more than 150 people sitting on the ground when the explosion took place. I ran, thinking that I was a dead man," said Uday Khamis, 24, who was sitting outside the Mahmoudiyah hospital where many of the wounded were taken. His left hand was bandaged and his clothes were stained with blood.

"There were more dead people than wounded," he added.

There were conflicting reports as to how many of the dead were Iraqi soldiers and whether civilians — accountants responsible for handing out money — were among them, but the vast majority of those killed and injured appeared to be Sahwa members.

A military official at the base said the explosion was the work of one suicide bomber wearing an explosives vest.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

In Baghdad, Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim Al-Moussawi said the bomber struck at 7 a.m. at a checkpoint near the military facility.

Some of those injured complained about what they perceived to be a lack of protection from the Iraqi military for the men lined up to receive their paychecks. Khamis said the men used to be searched but this time they were allowed to line up without any search being conducted.

Another man who was waiting at the hospital with his wounded nephew said this was the fifth day that the men had turned up at the base to collect their paychecks.

"Every time they went to receive their salary, they told them to come the next day and they did that for four days and now in the fifth day this explosion took place," said the man, Hassan Ali.

The area was immediately closed off, and Iraqi helicopters could be seen flying over the site.

In the second attack, a suspected militant stormed a local Sahwa headquarters in the Anbar province town of Qaim, near the Syrian border, and opened fire on those inside. Sahwa fighters returned fire, wounding the attacker, who then blew himself up as they gathered around him, killing three of the fighters and wounding six others, two police officials said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

Qaim is a former insurgent stronghold.

While violence has dropped dramatically over the past two years in the country, Iraqi security forces remain a favorite target for insurgents bent on destabilizing the country and its Shiite-led government.

The Sahwa fighters have played a key role in the reduction of violence in Iraq since they first rose up against their former Al-Qaeda allies in late 2006, joining the US military and government forces in the fight against the terror group.

But their future role in the Shiite-majority country is contentious. The US used to pay the monthly salaries of about $300 to the nearly 100,000-strong Sahwa force. Last year, the Iraqi government took over paying their salaries and, after heavy pressure from the Americans, agreed to absorb up to 20 percent of the fighters into its security forces. Others were to be absorbed into government jobs.

But members of the Sons of Iraq have complained about late paychecks, and many say they have been given menial jobs.

One of the wounded Sunday, Khamis, said they were to receive two months' worth of salary on Sunday.

In another attack, roughly at the same time as that in Qaim, gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on a Sahwa checkpoint in Mahaweel, about 56 kilometers (35 miles) south of Baghdad, wounding one, according to Babil police spokesman Maj. Muthana Khalid.

Khalid said a roadside bomb went off about 30 minutes later, hitting a car driven by another Sahwa member in Haswa, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Baghdad. The Sahwa member was wounded in the attack.

More than four months after an inconclusive parliamentary election in March, Iraq has no government as politicians continue to bicker over who will lead it. The impasse has raised fears that militants will exploit the political vacuum to re-ignite sectarian violence that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007.

The attacks against the security forces and the Sahwa are especially worrying because they come at a time when the number of US troops in Iraq is dropping and Iraq's nascent security forces are taking over security in the country. All US combat units are scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of next month and the last American soldier by the end of next year.

Insurgents have used an array of attacks to intimidate and kill security forces, such as drive-by shootings, bombs attached to the undercarriage of vehicles and bombing houses where security forces live. But Sunday's attack in Radwaniya was more reminiscent of the type insurgents used in the past to discourage people from joining the security forces.

Source

At least 21 people, including members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, were killed and 100 wounded in suicide attack at a Shiite mosque in the southeast Iranian city of Zahedan on Thursday

A late night broadcast by Al Arabiya television said the Sunni Muslim rebel group Jundollah claimed responsibility for the attack on the Zahedan's Grand Mosque.

The group said the attacks were in response to the execution by Iran of the group's leader Abdolmalek Rigi in June, the Dubai-based channel said.

In an e-mail to the station, the group said the bombings targeted a gathering of the Revolutionary Guards in the southeastern city of Zahedan, Arabiya said.

"In the two explosions in Zahedan more than 20 people were killed and over 100 were injured," Fariborz Rashedi, head of the emergency unit at Sistan-Baluchestan province told IRNA.

It later quoted Zahedan prosecutor Mohammad Marzieh as saying that 21 people had died.

Iran's deputy Interior Minister said "a number of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed and injured," the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Zahedan's MP Hoseinali Shahriari told Fars that he believed Sunni rebel group Jundollah was behind the explosions.

Iran hanged Jundollah's leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, last month for his involvement in earlier deadly attacks in Iran.

Predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran arrested Rigi in February, four months after his Jundollah group claimed a bombing which killed dozens of people, including 15 members of the Guards. It was the deadliest attack in Iran since the 1980s.

Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province which shares a border with Pakistan. The province faces serious security problems and there are frequent clashes between police and drug dealers and bandits.

In 2009, the group detonated a bomb in a Shiite mosque in Zahedan, killing 30 people and wounding more than 120.

Jundallah says it is fighting for the rights of the Sunni Baluch minority, and accuses Iran's Shiite-dominated government of persecution. Tehran claims Jundallah is behind an insurgency in its southeast that has destabilized the border region with Pakistan.

In June, Iran hanged the group's leader, Abdulhamid Rigi, in Zahedan after he was found guilty of carrying out attacks against civilians, armed robbery, and engaging in a disinformation campaign against Iran.

His younger brother, Abdulhamid, was executed in May in Iran after being captured in Pakistan in 2008 and extradited to Iran.

The group gained attention six years ago after it launched a campaign of sporadic kidnappings and bombings that killed dozens. The group claims minority Sunni tribes in southeastern Iran suffer discrimination at the hands of Iran's Shiite leadership.

Iran has accused the US and Britain of supporting Jundallah in an effort to weaken the Iranian government, a charge they deny. Iran also claims the group is linked to Al-Qaeda, but experts say no evidence of such a link has been found.

Source

India: ISI behind Mumbai attacks

A senior Indian official has accused Pakistani intelligence of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

G K Pillai, India's home secretary, said on Wednesday that the perpetrators of the attacks in which 166 people died were "clients and creations" of the Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] agency of the Pakistan army".

"They [ISI] were literally controlling and co-ordinating it from the beginning until the end," the Indian Express newspaper quoted Pillai as saying.

India has in the past blamed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group for the Mumbai attacks and alleged ISI involved, which Pakistan denies, but Pillai's comments were the most direct accusation India has made against the government agency.

Pillai said the evidence against the ISI emerged from the interrogation by Indian officials of David Headley, a US citizen, who pleaded guilty to working with Lashkar to plan the attacks.

The accusation comes on the eve of talks aimed at reviving a peace process between the two countries, which was broken off after the deadly assault.

Pakistan pressure

Prerna Suri, Al Jazeera's India correspondent, said that while it was not a new allegation, the timing of the statement was very significant.

"In his confessional statement, Headley named the ISI as being behind the co-ordination and logistical support of the Mumbai attacks," Suri said.

"New Delhi is sending a clear message to Pakistan that security will be the main concern during these talks.

"They [India] would like Pakistan to crack down on those groups, who they feel are operating against Indian interests, meaning LeT as well as individuals such as [its chief] Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, who many in India feel are being given patronage by various elements in Pakistan."
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Jamaat chief rejects Indian charges

S M Krishna, India's foreign minister, said he would press Pakistan on the progress of its probe into the Mumbai attacks as he arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday for the meeting, saying he was looking forward to receiving feedback from the Pakistanis on India's "core concern of terrorism".

He said the issue was discussed during last month's visit of P Chidambaram, India's home minister, to Pakistan and he would raise it again in talks with Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, on Thursday.

"We hope to discuss all issues of mutual interest and concerns that can contribute to restoring trust and building confidence in our bilateral relationship," Krishna said as he arrived in Islamabad.

"This is an important visit as it marks the new beginning of a journey in our effort to build a peaceful, friendly and co-operative relationship between our two countries."

Resuming dialogue between the countries is crucial not only for improving their ties but also the security outlook in Afghanistan where the two countries vie for influence.

India broke off a four-year-old peace process with Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks, saying reviving the dialogue would depend on action against Lashkar and Saeed, who India says masterminded the assault.

Pakistan has put seven people on trial for the Mumbai attacks but has maintained that India has not provided enough evidence to prosecute Saeed.

Pillai said Saaed's role in the Mumbai attacks was not "peripheral", but that "he knew everything".

Somalia’s forgotten war

Al-Shabab’s celebration of the Kampala attacks is bad news for Africa
Sunday's twin suicide blasts in Kampala, which killed more than 70 people mostly football fans, are a grim reminder of the festering conflict in Somalia. The radical Al-Shabab movement has claimed responsibility and threatened to carry out more attacks against Uganda and Burundi unless the two countries withdraw their forces from Amisom, the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
Somalia has been embroiled in a bloody civil war, which has left this once promising country in tatters, for more than 20 years. The tragedy of Somalia is compounded by the fact that no one really cares about what’s happening there. Its conflict has become invisible. But this is proving to be a costly mistake, as the terrible attacks in Kampala have shown. Somalia’s disintegration as a country has produced a number of anomalies such as pirates, but the biggest threat is the rise of extremist movements in the midst of total anarchy and their quest for control.
Baghdad and Kabul are like Scandinavian cities compared to Mogadishu, Somalia’s decrepit capital. The daily reality there is made of street wars, bombings, beheadings and tribal fighting. It’s a forgotten war that now threatens to bring to power a regime that is more ruthless than the Taleban. But what is worse is that if it succeeds then Al-Qaeda and other fanatics will have a base from which they can destabilize other countries in Africa.
But getting involved is costly. Those who did were eventually chased out. The US, under President Bill Clinton, intervened briefly but left in a hurry after suffering 19 Marine casualties in Mogadishu. The UN too sent two peacekeeping missions between 1992 and 1995 only to see its coalition forces attacked by power hungry warlords. It finally abandoned the country and few months later the government collapsed.
As Somalia became engulfed by civil war, its neighbors, primarily Ethiopia, stepped in. Addis Ababa had previously supported the armed insurgency that ended the long rule of the country’s dictator Mohammad Siad Barre. But that only led to Somalia’s partition with Somaliland, the northwestern part of the country, declaring independence in 1991. By then the various Somali parties and coalitions had declared war on each other and a long and brutal fighting ensued. The result was disastrous for civilians and famine claimed the life of no less than 300,000 people in the mid-1990s.
By the onset of the 21st century Somalia had been divided largely along tribal lines with Somaliland and Puntland autonomous regions in the north and in the Horn of Africa while the south slowly fell under the control of Hizbul Islam and Al-Shabab movements. The federal government, recognized as the legitimate power in Somalia, could barely keep hold of parts of the capital and nearby regions.
When the Islamic Courts Movement briefly took over in the south, including the capital, in 2006 and imposed Shariah law, Ethiopia and the African Union quickly responded. Ethiopia invaded the south dislodging the Islamic Courts, but that only led to the birth of more radical off-shoots including Al-Shabab.
Al-Shabab was able to regroup and become a considerable force. They defeated the Ethiopians in a number of battles and finally drove them out the country. Now they have managed to neutralize the interim federal government and wage war against fellow Islamist rivals, including Hizbul Islam and others. The small African Union force is what stands in their way.
Al-Shabab movement will almost certainly take over Mogadishu and overthrow the government in the coming weeks and months. It will impose a strict Shariah law and turn what is left of the country under their control into a closed society run by arbitrary laws and ironclad rules. But that should be the least of the world’s concern.
The collapse of Somalia will have catastrophic results on all of its neighbors and most of Africa. The Kampala attacks prove that Al-Qaeda-like tactics, adopted by Al-Shabab, can easily move across borders with lethal results. The fact that the African Union peacekeeping mission there is hapless and could soon abandon the country is frightening.
Somalia is an ancient civilization and a land that has played a key part in East African history. Like many of its neighbors it has a checkered past and a complicated tribal and ethnic make-up. Now major chunks of this country have been impregnated by extremist militants. Piracy is only one face of Somalia today. This Arab League and African Union member state has been abandoned by the world community. But leaving it to its fate will not be easy or free of cost.
Somalia could prove to be more dangerous to world stability than Afghanistan and Iraq put together. It is true that it is an impoverished land, with little strategic assets, but allowing a radical Islamist movement to take over will have severe consequences on Africa and the region.

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Arrests made over Uganda bombings

Ugandan authorities have made a number of arrests in connection with explosions at two sites in Kampala that left at least 74 people dead.

Kale Kayihura, the inspector-general of police, said on Tuesday that investigators had also found a unexploded suicide bomb belt at a third site, a discotheque, in the capital.

Somalia's al-Shabab group has said it carried out the attacks on Sunday.

"We have established that what was found at the discotheque was in fact a suicide vest, and it could also be used as an IED [improvised explosive device]," Kayihura said.

The vest, laden with explosives and fitted with a detonator, was found on Monday, packed in a laptop bag at a club in the southwestern Kampala district of Makindye.

"It's possible that the person who was supposed to do this was [a coward] because the system was intact," he said.

One blast hit an Ethiopian restaurant in the south of the city on Sunday, while the other occurred at a rugby sports club as people watched the World Cup final.

Al-Shabab statement

The near-simultaneous attacks on Sunday were the first time the group, which has carried out multiple suicide attacks inside Somalia, has struck outside of the country.

"Al-Shabab was behind the two blasts in Uganda," Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage, the group's spokesperson, announced in Mogadishu.

"We thank the mujahideens that carried out the attack. We are sending a message to Uganda and Burundi, if they do not take out their Amisom [African Union Mission in Somalia] troops from Somalia, blasts will continue and it will happen."
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Uganda and Burundi currently have peacekeepers in Somalia as part of a stabilisation mission supported by the African Union.

"[Al-Shabab's] strategy is to undermine getting troops into Somalia through attacks like this," Simmons said.

Hussein Mohammed Noor, a Somalia analyst, said the Ethiopian restaurant was likely targeted because of "Ethiopia's involvement in Somalia".

However, he told Al Jazeera that these attacks were unlikely to make African countries reconsider sending troops to Somalia.

Lieutenant-Colonel Felix Kulaigye, a Ugandan army spokesman, said: "Al-Shabab is the reason why we should stay in Somalia. We have to pacify Somalia."

Kayihura that the attacks, which took place amid large crowds at the two locations, could have been carried out by suicide bombers.

"These bombs were definitely targeting World Cup crowds," he said.

Severed head found

Investigators reportedly found the severed head of a Somali national at the scene of one of the blasts.

Officials said 60 Ugandans, nine Ethiopians or Eritreans, one Irish woman, and one Asian were also among those killed.

Two people could not be identified. At least 85 people were wounded.

Source