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Iraq jihadists blow up Hazrat Yunus (A.S) shrine in Mosul-25 Jul 2014

Monday, July 21, 2014

Kenyan Coastal-Bus Attack Leaves at Least Seven People Dead - Bloomberg




Unidentified assailants killed at least seven people, including two security personnel, in an attack on a bus on Kenya ’s coast that brings the death toll in the region over the past month to 94, the Kenya Red Cross said.
The attackers targeted a bus traveling near Witu in Kenya’s Lamu county, about 420 kilometers (261 miles) southeast of the capital, Nairobi, the medical charity said in postings on Twitter. Al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked militia waging an insurgency against the government of neighboring Somalia, told Agence France-Presse today it carried out the assault.
Five injured people were treated at local hospitals, Kenya Red Cross said. The gunmen escaped into a nearby forest, the Nairobi-based Daily Nation newspaper reported, citing Lamu County Commissioner Njenga Miiri said by phone.
Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for several attacks at the coast, including one at Mpeketoni in Lamu county in mid-June that left at least 60 people dead. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government says the violence was motivated by political and land grievances.
Kenyan security forces searching for the attackers in Boni Forest, near the border with Somalia , this week destroyed at least four camps being used by the assailants, the Daily Nation newspaper said on July 17. The security forces suspect the attackers are a band of radicalized youth trained by al-Shabaab who have returned to Kenya from fighting in Somalia after losing ground to African Union peacekeepers, it said.

Retaliatory Attacks

Al-Shabaab has threatened to attack Kenya in retaliation for the country’s deployment of troops in Somalia, where the militia is trying to overthrow the government and establish Shariah, or Islamic law. Kenyatta has vowed to keep the troops in place until the threat of al-Shabaab is thwarted.
Tourism, Kenya’s biggest foreign-currency earner after tea, has been dented by attacks in the country, with arrivals of holidaymakers falling 18 percent to 1.4 million last year.
Yesterday, Mombasa High Court Judge Edward Mureithi urged Kenyan Chief Justice Willy Mutunga to form a special bench of criminal judges to handle cases arising from the attacks at the coast. Mureithi made the call as he granted a prosecution request to cancel bail for Dyana Salim Suleiman, the alleged driver of a van used in the attack on Mpeketoni. Suleiman has denied any involvement in the attack.
“In the interest of victims of the alleged crimes, the accused shall be held in custody for the course of the trial,” Mureithi ruled.

Murder Charges

Mahadi Swaleh Mahadi, a Malindi-based businessman, has also denied charges brought against him on July 9 of 60 counts of murder in Mpeketoni. His bail application will be heard on July 21.
Lamu town is a United Nations’ World Heritage site and was a popular tourist destination before the attack. Kenya’s second international seaport, which is expected to serve South Sudan , Ethiopia and Uganda, is being built in Lamu.
The Mombasa High Court on July 17 gave the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions one more month to investigate Lamu Governor Issa Timamy’s alleged involvement in the attacks. Prosecutors had sought a two-month extension, citing difficulties in finding witnesses as people in Lamu continue to be displaced by violence.
Timamy, who hasn’t been charged, denies he had anything to do with the killings and “more time to investigate will not change the fact that I’m innocent,” he said.

Al-Shabab and the origins of East Africa's recent violence | Al Jazeera America


The militant group appears resilient and on the rise, but are we overlooking local drivers of conflict?
July 19, 2014 6:00AM ET
On June 16, a group of unidentified gunmen attacked a World Cup screening in Kenya's coastal city of Mpeketoni. A few weeks later, in Arusha, Tanzania’s tourism hub, in separate strikes over four days, attackers threw hand grenades at a popular restaurant and targeted a local community leader. Authorities arrested two Tanzanian nationals in connection with the incident, but some  suspect  the attackers  are linked to the Somali militant group Al-Shabab. Last week Al-Shabab attacked Somalia’s presidential palace in Mogadishu, proving its  resilience  against an ongoing regional offensive. These and other attacks across East Africa have killed hundreds during the past month.
The new wave of violence against multinational forces in Somalia suggests the group’s apparent resurgence. But the increasingly regional pattern of the violence has much to do with local corruption and the regional stakeholders’ lack of response to local grievances.
The renewal of violence was unsurprising. Following Kenya’s swift invasion of Somalia in 2011, Al-Shabab warned , “We shall come into Kenya if you do not go back.” Two years later, after the attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall shocked Kenya’s political consciousness, the group threatened  to “strike Kenyans where it hurts the most.” Nearly three years after Kenya’s first airstrikes in southern Somalia, Al-Shabab appears to have made good on those threats.
The regional response to Al-Shabab has also escalated in kind. In July 2012, Kenya joined an existing African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) contingent of troops from Burundi, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Djibouti. In January, following years of independent operations against Al-Shabab, Ethiopian units formally joined the expanded African force, swelling its troop count to 22,000. Other regional partners such as Tanzania have also joined AMISOM in an auxiliary role while avoiding direct combat responsibilities.
In March, after a 14-month lull in operations in southern Somalia, AMISOM launched a new offensive in several Al-Shabab-occupied cities. Al-Shabab has so far proved resilient; as AMISOM’s operation deepens, accounts of mass violence attributed to the insurgent group have also increased in number.
Reports of covert local networks linked to Al-Shabab have emerged throughout the region . For example, an affiliate known as Al-Hijra has established cells  in major urban centers in Kenya. Meanwhile, regional security officials have done very little to illuminate the implicit link between the spike in violence and Al-Shabab’s ever-expanding capabilities. After the massacre at Mpeketoni, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta blamed “local political networks,” downplaying Al-Shabab’s alleged role in the attack.  
East African leaders must acknowledge the role of local grievances in engendering violent response, and seek more robust opportunities for redress.
Kenyatta’s motivations might be disingenuous, but local politics and corruption provide a significant basis for the surge in violence in Kenya and across East Africa. For example, the circumstances that preceded Al-Shabab’s raid on the Westgate Mall have as much to do with the institutional rot of Kenya’s security forces as with the nature of the group itself. Dispatches  from Westgate’s aftermath suggest that for every instance of tactical planning by Al-Shabab forces, there were willing counterparts in Kenya’s corrupt security officials. Allegedly, Kenyan police officers even leased assault rifles to the insurgents. Similarly, smuggling routes from southern Somalia across the porous border with Kenya were intentionally left undersupervised . Despite evidences of corrosive corruption, international counterterrorism partners such as the United States look on as police abuses proliferate. It is against the backdrop of these permissive security institutions that Al-Shabab’s operations are expanding across East Africa.
Unable to stem new mass violence, these institutions are adopting a different violence of their own. In March, a spate of attacks in Mombasa and Nairobi gave way to Operation Usalama Watch — Swahili for “peace watch” — a mass roundup and subsequent deportation of ethnic Somali and other civilians  by security forces. Few, if any, of those targeted boast affiliations with, much less memberships in, Al-Shabab or other groups that may have been responsible for the spike in violence across Kenya. According to Human Rights Watch , the raids are often more a commercial enterprise than a law enforcement operation. A recent Kenyan police report accused corrupt officials of demanding bribes and arresting those who could not afford the fix.
It is difficult to untangle the chain of political discontent that precedes recent violence across the region. Local grievances, such as land tenure disputes, often accompany the decay of political and economic institutions. For example, Kenya’s Lamu County, one of the sites of recent attacks, has been the locus of large protests against alleged land grabbing by Kenyan port developers. These issues alone may not prompt new violence by local groups. But if mass abuses continue unmitigated, East African governments could soon find unexpected pockets of their society a fertile recruiting ground for Al-Shabab’s terror network.
As violence spirals out of control across the region, governments will likely adopt an increasingly heavy-handed strategy against Al-Shabab and its alleged affiliates. However, selective targeting of minority civilians, as witnessed in Kenyawill not root out the threat. In fact, it will likely make matters worse. Regional leaders must acknowledge the role of local grievances in engendering violent response, and seek more robust opportunities for redress. Land ownership issues, in particular, have proved a powerful trigger for violence, particularly in Kenya and Ethiopia. As the multinational campaign against Al-Shabab falters, the resolution of these local grievances may prove to be a more fruitful path to peace.

US FAA issues strongest aviation warnings for Ukraine, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia - eTurboNews.com



US FAA issues strongest aviation warnings for Ukraine, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia
BY PROF. DR. WOLFGANG H. THOME, ETN AFRICA CORRESPONDENT | JUL 19, 2014

The US Federal Aviation Administration, in short FAA, has in their latest advisories and prohibition notices for US registered aircraft included Kenya as a potentially hostile region while Ethiopia is on the full prohibition list, after Somalia was already for a while on their no go board.
All of Ukraine was added yesterday following the shot-down of a Malaysian B777-200 with 298 on board by a surface to air missile from rebel held territory.
The following details were extracted from the latest FAA notice dated 18th of July and reads as follows:
ETHIOPIA
Flight operations are prohibited in Ethiopian airspace north of 12 degrees latitude. The FAA also warns that Ethiopian forces may fire upon aircraft crossing into Ethiopian airspace from northeastern Kenya.View document »
KENYA
The advisory states that “recent, credible information indicates a potential near-term terrorist attack against U.S. and Western interests in Kenya,” warning against attacks using MANPADS. View document »
End quote
It could not be established if the inclusion of Kenya was based on the fact that the country is bordering Somalia or for other reasons of a more domestic nature. It should be recalled that there was an attempt to shoot down an Israeli tourist charter aircraft on the 28th of November 2002 with two shoulder fired SAM’s while taking off from Mombasa’s international airport when at the same time an Israeli owned hotel in Kikambala was subjected to a suicide bombing. No such attempts were reported however since and airport perimeter security has been significantly improved and strengthened since then at both Mombasa and the country’s main airport in Nairobi.
In view of the advanced hour when filing this report no comments from aviation sources or government officials could be obtained.

US FAA Issues Strongest Aviation Warnings for Ukraine, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia



US FAA issues strongest aviation warnings for Ukraine, Kenya, Ethiopia and SomaliaUS FAA issues strongest aviation warnings for Ukraine, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia

US FAA issues strongest aviation warnings for Ukraine, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia

BY PROF. DR. WOLFGANG H. THOME, ETN AFRICA CORRESPONDENT | JUL 19, 2014
The US Federal Aviation Administration, in short FAA, has in their latest advisories and prohibition notices for US registered aircraft included Kenya as a potentially hostile region while Ethiopia is on the full prohibition list, after Somalia was already for a while on their no go board.

All of Ukraine was added yesterday following the shot-down of a Malaysian B777-200 with 298 on board by a surface to air missile from rebel held territory.

The following details were extracted from the latest FAA notice dated 18th of July and reads as follows:

ETHIOPIA

Flight operations are prohibited in Ethiopian airspace north of 12 degrees latitude. The FAA also warns that Ethiopian forces may fire upon aircraft crossing into Ethiopian airspace from northeastern Kenya.View document »

KENYA

The advisory states that “recent, credible information indicates a potential near-term terrorist attack against U.S. and Western interests in Kenya,” warning against attacks using MANPADS. View document »

End quote

It could not be established if the inclusion of Kenya was based on the fact that the country is bordering Somalia or for other reasons of a more domestic nature. It should be recalled that there was an attempt to shoot down an Israeli tourist charter aircraft on the 28th of November 2002 with two shoulder fired SAM’s while taking off from Mombasa’s international airport when at the same time an Israeli owned hotel in Kikambala was subjected to a suicide bombing. No such attempts were reported however since and airport perimeter security has been significantly improved and strengthened since then at both Mombasa and the country’s main airport in Nairobi.

In view of the advanced hour when filing this report no comments from aviation sources or government officials could be obtained.

AFRICA