Muqtada al Sadr has returned to Iraq after sheltering three years in Iran. Security forces detained 35 wanted men in Falluah and Kirkuk, Ninewa, and Babil, and the imam of Saddam’s mosque in Tikrit. Insurgents killed a civilian in a bombing in Baghdad.
Moroccan security forces arrested 27 people accused of plotting to attack security forces and rob banks. The men belonged to a “terrorist cell” commanded by an al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operative tasked with setting up a base in the Western Sahara.
Two people were killed in a grenade attack that targeted Somali troops in Mogadishu. Shabaab cut off a hand and a foot of a young man accused of stealing in Baidoa; the punishment was carried out in public.
Mona Thwany, the wife of the failed Stockholm suicide bomber, admitted to posting on YouTube the audio of her husband claiming credit for the attack. Thwany claims she does not support terrorism. A Kurdish writer living in Sweden received death threats from Islamists in northern Iraq after he published a poem about women’s rights.
European police protect Coptic churches
Pakistani men grooming British girls for sex
To understand just how bad things are in Pakistan, read this Associated Press account of the treatment of the assassin who brutally murdered Punjab’s governor, Salman Taseer, for opposing Pakistan’s repressive blasphemy law. The lawyers showered the assassin bodyguard with rose petals, while Barelvi clerics, who are upheld as the caretakers of Pakistan’s moderate Muslims, […]
Tribe’s deal with Afghan government offers chance of peace in southwest district
Egypt church bomb hints at al Qaeda gaining toehold
Iran urged foreign powers to leave Iraq. The son of the deposed Shah of Iran committed suicide. Hardliners seek to bar pro-reform candidates from elections for legislator.
Salman Taseer: Thousands mourn Pakistan governor
Pakistan Muslim scholars praise killer of governor
Trial of suspected Tajik Islamists resumes
Surge in Britons converting to Islam
Salman Taseer assassination points to Pakistani extremists’ mounting power
Resurgent Turkey flexes its muscles around Iraq
Killing of governor deepens crisis in Pakistan
Anti-Christian drumbeat loud before Egypt attack
Security forces killed Aloviddin Davlatov and seven other fighters during a raid in the Rasht Valley. Davlatov was an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan commander; the interior minister said he was a member of al Qaeda.
Punjab’s governor was assassinated by his bodyguard for opposing the country’s blasphemy law. The Taliban killed a “spy” and chopped off the hand of a thief in Arakzai, and bombed a NATO fuel tanker in Khyber. Security forces arrested 39 suspected Taliban fighters in Mohmand.
Tajik security forces have killed an “al Qaeda member” during a recent raid in the Rasht Valley in eastern Tajikistan. From Reuters: “Aloviddin Davlatov has been destroyed. He was an al Qaeda member,” Tokhir Normatov, chief of staff at Tajikistan’s interior ministry, told Reuters, referring to the militant accused of leading the attack on government […]
Coalition and Afghan forces killed and captured several Taliban and Haqqani Network commanders and fighters in Zabul, Ghazni, Khost, Nangarhar, Wardak, Baghlan, and Kunduz. Coalition and Afghan forces brokered a peace deal with the Alikozai tribe in Sangin district in Helmand province. A policeman was killed in a bombing in Kabul.
Two civilians were killed in an IED attack in Dalouiya. Security forces detained a “gang” behind the Jan. 1 murder of a Christian in Baghdad. Iraq hopes to build new power plants and triple its output by 2013.
Shabaab fighters are said to be complicit in the rape of a woman in El Bur. Shabaab arrested a doctor in El Bur. Three civilians were wounded in an IED attack that targeted Somali soldiers in Mogadishu.
A tribe has put a camp run by Central Security in Al Jawf province under siege and is demanding the release of one of its tribesmen. Three soldiers were wounded in an IED attack in Shabwa province.
Women fighters willing to die for Gaza
What they are reading: ‘A Question of Command’
Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood ending opposition to Coptic president
Afghanistan: Sangin insurgents agree to stand up to Taliban
Violence in Afghanistan ‘had to get worst before it gets better’