Mounir and Yassin Chouka, two Germans who are operatives in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Mevlut Kar, an Islamic Jihad Union facilitator, were added to the list of Specially Designated Global terrorists. All three have ties to al Qaeda.
Mullah Abdul Bari served as the Taliban’s shadow governor for the districts of Nad Ali, Musa Qala, Baghran, and Kajaki in northern Helmand province.
Prime Minister Gilani has retracted his criticism of Pakistan’s military. The Senate called on the military to shoot down US drones. Six soldiers and 17 Taliban fighters were killed during clashes in Kurram.
Bombs in the Sinai Desert Fuel Israel Fence-Building on Border With Egypt
Security forces killed and captured several Taliban fighters in Uruzgan and Faryab. The Taliban killed an ISAF soldier in the south. Forty insurgents reconciled with the government in Baghlan.
A former al Qaeda leader who renounced the group and became an Awakening commander was assassinated in Baghdad. Insurgents decapitated a policeman and killed a civilian in a barber shop in Mosul.
Fourty-six people were killed during fighting between Houthis and Salafists in Hajjah. Security forces killed six AQAP fighters in Zinjibar. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula withdrew from Rada’a after negotiations with tribal leaders.
US Navy SEALs rescued a US and a Danish hostage being held by Somali pirates. Ten people were wounded during a grenade attack in a mosque in Mogadishu.
AQAP will get 15 key prisoners released and sharia in Rada’a in exchange for leaving the town, according to a tribal leader.
The US and Danish hostages were freed during a nighttime raid by SEAL Team Six.
France said it is not planning on withdrawing its forces this year after six of its troops have been killed by Afghan security personnel. The US denied it planned to partition Afghanistan or modify the political system.
Insurgents killed eight Iraqis in a bombing in Sadr City, a policeman in Ramadi, and a civilian in Shirqat. Muqtada al Sadr threatened to attack US Embassy employees traveling in Baghdad.
Security forces killed five al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters in Zinjibar in Abyan province. President Saleh is seeking to go into exile in Oman.
“We give you allegiance for obedience in good and bad, in difficulty and ease,” Ansar al Jihad told Ayman al Zawahiri in a statement released on the Internet.
A Shabaab suicide bomber attacked an Ethiopian base in Beledweyne; the number of casualties is unknown. The UN has opened a political office in Mogadishu.
Police said that Boko Haram killed 186 people in the attack in Kano on Jan 20. Boko Haram has killed 935 people since it launched its insurgency in 2009, according to Human Rights Watch.
Shabaab claimed a member of its “Martyrdom Brigades” killed 33 Ethiopian soldiers and officers in an attack in western Somalia.
An official Pakistani military report on the Mohmand incident said US troops fired first in an intentional, “unprovoked attack,” and called a US investigation an attempt “to contort the facts and confuse the issue.” US drones killed four “militants” in North Waziristan.
Vice President Hashemi said he would face a court in Baghdad if Prime Minister Maliki resigns. Insurgents killed a soldier in Mosul and an Awakening commander and three others in Kirkuk.
The US and the Afghan government have been negotiating with the Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin. ISAF killed five Taliban fighters in an airstrike in Kapisa. The Taliban killed two children in an IED attack in Kapisa.
An official Pakistani military report on the Mohmand incident said US troops fired first in an intentional, “unprovoked attack,” and called a US investigation an attempt “to contort the facts and confuse the issue.”
Relatives of Bilal al Berjawi think he was traced after calling his wife, who had just given birth.
The military is sending troops and armored vehicles to positions outside of Rada’a, which is under al Qaeda’s control. The leader of the Southern Movement denied reports that AQAP has captured the town of Al Habilain in Lahj province.
Kenya said its war against Shabaab is “halfway done” as it has effectively targeted logistics and command and control centers in the south. Some Shabaab and al Qaeda leaders believe that an informer divulged the location of Bilal al Berjawi, who was killed in a Jan. 21 drone strike.
Boko Haram claimed that it was receiving payments from several governors in northern Nigeria; the governors rejected the charges. Police found eight car bombs in Kano.
The four fighters were said to be from Turkmenistan. No senior leaders had been reported killed.
Shabaab pressed more than 200 young men in Afgoye into their military to wage jihad against Somali and African Union forces. “Gunmen” abducted an American engineer and beat his driver in Galkayo.
The death toll in Boko Haram’s rampage in Kano has risen to 178 and is expected to climb. Boko Haram spokesman Abul Qaqa said that the group is retaliating for government attacks against its members in Kano.
Algeria has begun the trial of Mukhtar Belmukhtar, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s leader in southern Algeria. Belmukhtar and four other AQIM fighters are being tried in absentia for acts of terrorism. Five other AQIM fighters on trial are in custody.
Bilal al Berjawi, a British citizen of Lebanese origins, “was from the early people who came to jihad in Somalia.” Shabaab said he was killed today in a US drone strike. He was second-in-command to slain al Qaeda leader Fazul Mohammed.