Day after cabinet approves prisoner swap deal with Hizbullah, Lebanese journalist affiliated with organization says promise to retaliate assassination of top commander has not been forgotten

Roee Nahmias

It is only a matter of time before Hizbullah avenges the assassination of its top commander Imad Mugniyah, a Lebanese commentator affiliated with the organization warned Monday in his editorial in the al-Akhbar newspaper.

In an article published several hours after the Israeli government approved the prisoner exchange deal with Hizbullah, the commentaro, Ibrahim al-Amin, wrote that his organization was waiting for a good opportunity to carry out its response to the assassination. 

KARACHI: Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has threatened the government of suicide attacks on Adviser to the Prime Minister Rehman Malik and Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, intelligence agencies sources said on Sunday.

His threat also included attacks on Army installations, PPP ministers and personnel of the law-enforcement agencies as well as the Intelligence Bureau and the Crime Investigation Department in Karachi and other parts of the country, the sources said.

They said Mehsud had issued the threat after the start of the operation in the Khyber Agency.The sources added that Mehsud had sent four to five suicide bombers to Karachi from Waziristan while snipers were also sent to the provincial metropolis to attack the ministers and intelligence agencies personnel.

al Qaeda Yemen Statment: http://worldanalysis.net/smf/index.php?topic=135.msg572#new

SANAA (AFP) — The Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda said on Monday it had fired three rockets against an oil refinery east of Sanaa, but witnesses said the attack was abortive.

TANK, June 28: Pakistani Taliban on Saturday suspended peace talks and accused the government of going back on its word and continuing crackdown against militants.

Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud told Dawn: �The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan is suspending peace talks with the government. This will apply not just to South Waziristan but all areas, including Swat.�

He, however, did not go as far as announcing resumption of hostilities. �If the (security forces�) operations continue � people will see Sindh and Punjab turn into furnace.�

He said the people had voted the ANP and PPP into power on the premise that they would bring peace. �But now, they are talking about use of force and are launching operations against our people in Tank, Jandola and Darra Adamkhel.�

Zahid Hussain in Peshawar

Pakistan’s battle against the Taleban threatened to spiral out of control yesterday after Islamic militants extended their grip in the lawless North West Frontier region.

Emboldened by an increasingly weakened and demoralised security force, Taleban fighters moved in to the outskirts of the provincial capital. Peshawar, surrounding the city and placing it virtually under siege.

Army troops have increased patrols in the garrison areas and paramilitary soldiers carrying machineguns are posted at government buildings. But senior security officials said that militants, who now control the region’s main arterial roads, were in a position to cut off communications at will.

Police on the city’s outskirts have long given up patrolling at night for fear of attacks by militants, who are organised under the banner of Tehrik-e-Taleban, the group led by the notorious commander Baitullah Mehsud. Several officers have been killed in rocket attacks on police posts in recent months. “It is a highly alarming situation,” said a senior provincial government official.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government is bracing up to the prospect of a backlash as it launched offensive operations in the frontier region against militants’ hideouts on Saturday.

As paramilitaries began pounding the hideouts in the Khyber agency, Beithullah Mehsud, the South Waziristan-based Taliban commander, announced he was suspending peace talks with the government. The tribal agency is closest to the North West Frontier Province capital Peshawar and home to at least two militant groups who had been making forays into the city, spreading panic among residents that a Taliban takeover was imminent.

LANDIKOTAL, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani security forceshave secured an area in the Khyber region, where a key supplyroute passes into Afghanistan, a day after launching anoffensive to push back militants threatening Peshawar.

The offensive is the first major military action the newgovernment has launched against militants since it took powerafter February elections, and comes after growing alarm aboutthe consolidation and spread of militant influence in thenorthwest.

A senior government official in the region told Reutersthere had been no violence since Saturday night.

"The situation is under control. We have destroyed at leastthree militant hideouts and Frontier Corps soldiers arepatrolling and controlling the area," said the official, whodeclined to be identified.

27/06/2008
By Tariq Alhomayed

Any visitor to Saudi Arabia would not notice that the country has engaged in a fierce battle against terrorism since the mid-nineties and not since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Yet the security forces continue to fight terrorist networks and recently uncovered terrorist plots that would have been disastrous had they been implemented. This is a distinguished success for the Saudi security forces but one question remains: why Saudi Arabia?

There are several reasons. Terrorism has not struck Saudi Arabia alone; in the 1990s, terrorism flared up in Egypt and thrived in Afghanistan, then Sudan, and struck Saudi Arabia from time to time before 9/11.

Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, and the shock that most of the perpetrators of the attack were Saudis, and after the Al Qaeda war was launched in Saudi Arabia in 2003, there were claims that Al Qaeda had retreated to where it came from; however these claims proved to be false.

Riyadh confronted Al Qaeda’s terrorism resolutely and dismantled the organization’s cells and symbols. I still remember when Prince Naif Bin Abdulaziz said, “If we have sleeper cells, we will wake them up and arrest those who belong to them.” At the time, some people said that he was “exaggerating” but in the end, he was correct and this is what happened.