Category Archives: Islamic State

Afghanistan, Islamic State, Terrorism, United States

US mother of all bombs (moab) kills 36 Isis fighters

AFGHANISTAN

The GBU-43/B, also known as the Massive Ordnance Air Blast. America first tested the GBU-43, which is a GPS-guided weapon, in March 2003. It is regarded as particularly effective against clusters of targets on or just underneath the ground. Other types of bombs can be more effective against deeper, hardened tunnels.

As many as 36 suspected Islamic State militants were killed in Afghanistan when the United States dropped “the mother of all bombs,” its largest non-nuclear device ever unleashed in combat.

The heavy strike and bombardment came as U.S. President Donald Trump dispatches his first high-level delegation to Kabul, amid uncertainty about his plans for the nearly 9,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan.

The deaths have not been independently verified, but an Afghan ministry spokesman said no civilians were harmed in the massive blast that targeted a network of caves and tunnels.

“No civilian has been hurt and only the base, which Daesh used to launch attacks in other parts of the province, was destroyed,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

He was using an Arabic term that refers to the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), which has established a small stronghold in eastern Afghanistan and launched deadly attacks on the capital, Kabul.

The 21,600-pound (9,797-kg) GBU-43 bomb, which has 11 tons of explosives, was dropped from a MC-130 aircraft in the Achin district of the eastern province of Nangarhar, bordering Pakistan.

The device, also known as the “mother of all bombs,” is a GPS-guided munition that had never before been used in combat since its first test in 2003, when it produced a mushroom cloud visible from 20 miles (32 km) away.

Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai condemned the use of the weapon on Afghan soil.

“This is not the war on terror, but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous weapons,” he said on social media network Twitter.

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GBU-43 bomb detonates during a test at Elgin Air Force Base, Florida, U.S., November 21, 2003.

At a village about 3 miles (5 km) from the remote, mountainous area where the bomb was dropped, homes and shops appeared unaffected by the blast.

Residents said they saw militants climbing up and down the mountain every day, making occasional visits to the village.

Resident Raz Mohammad said: “They were Arabs, Pakistanis, Chinese and local insurgents coming to buy from shops in the bazaar.”

Following the strike, the village was swarming with Afghan and international troops, as helicopters and other aircraft flew overhead.

The mission was part of a joint operation between Afghan and international troops, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s office said in a statement.

“Afghan and foreign troops closely coordinated this operation and were extra cautious to avoid any civilian casualties,” it said.

American officials said the bomb had been positioned for possible use in Afghanistan for “some time” since the administration of former president Barack Obama.

The United States has steadily intensified its air campaign against ISIS and Taliban militants in Afghanistan, with the Air Force deploying nearly 500 weapons in the first three months of 2017, up from 300 in the corresponding 2016 period.

Achin

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Britain, Islamic State, Syria, United States

U.S.-backed forces in Syria capture key airbase from ISIS

SYRIA

U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters in Syria have seized control of a strategic airbase from the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) near the eastern city of Raqqa.

The coalition, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is battling to defeat ISIS with the support of U.S.-led coalition aircraft and U.S. Special Forces advisers. The capture of the Tabqa military airbase comes amid fears that the Tabqa dam, the largest in Syria, may be on the verge of collapse.

Clashes appear to be ongoing with militants both inside and outside of the base but the SDF claim that they are controlling as much as “70 percent” of the compound.

The base, located some 25 miles west of Raqqa, has been in the extremist group’s hands since August 2014 when it wrested control of the area from Syrian government forces. After seizing the base, ISIS fighters paraded Syrian regime soldiers in the desert before executing them.

It was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s last stronghold in Raqqa province before ISIS captured the entire territory. The province is now divided between ISIS, Syrian regime and SDF control.

Tabqa dam remains in ISIS hands, but the city is hemmed in on three sides. The SDF is fighting ISIS in the village of Karama, 10 miles east of Raqqa. According to Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the forces remain stationed at Al-Baleikh Bridge, northeast of Raqqa. The SOHR is a monitoring group with a wide network of contacts on the ground in Syria. Mr Abdulrahman says SDF fighters are 12 miles from the edge of Raqqa to the north, and 18 miles to the northwest.

The U.S.-led coalition continues with its air campaign against the Islamic State even as it draws criticism for incurring civilian casualties. U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly seeking to loosen restrictions on the U.S. military’s ability to launch airstrikes on ISIS in Syria, but the issues presented by such a decision became clear last week when a strike killed 35 civilians at a school sheltering families in Mansoura village near Raqqa, according to the SOHR. The U.S. military has also admitted that another likely airstrike killed 200 civilians in Mosul in the last few days.

The anti-Assad Syrian National Coalition said in a statement that it was “increasingly concerned” with reports of civilian casualties caused by the U.S.-led coalition in its campaign to defeat the extremist group.

The coalition was also criticised for potentially damaging the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates River, but the SDF denies that any of the coalition’s airstrikes have hit the structure.

The Syrian government claims U.S.-led airstrikes have put the dam out of service, a potentially hazardous development for the region.

“Before the latest strikes by the Americans, the dam was working. Two days ago, the dam was functioning normally,” Nejm Saleh, director of the Syrian government’s General Authority of the Euphrates Dam, told reporters at a briefing.

“There could be collapses or big failures that could lead to flooding,” Saleh said.

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Britain, Government, Islamic State, National Security, Society, Terrorism

Terrorist atrocity in the heart of London: a direct attack on democracy

TERRORISM

Police London

A security review is now underway following yesterday’s attacks within the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster. More armed police officers are to be deployed on the streets.

Terror came on London yesterday to the seat of government and Parliament for the first time since the IRA attacked Downing Street with mortar fire in 1991. Prior to that, in 1979 Airey Neave MP was murdered by a bomb planted in his vehicle which went off in the House of Commons car park. This time, people walking on Westminster Bridge were mown down by a car whose driver then proceeded to Parliament.

The assailant rushed the officers on the gate and was able to assault and kill a policeman before being shot dead. Praise must go to the officers who stopped him going any further and to the emergency services who were quickly on the scene to tend to the dead and injured.

All such attacks are appalling but especially so when the democratic process is the target and innocent people simply taking in the sights are the victims. Partly as a result of those earlier atrocities the security around the Palace of Westminster is nowadays extremely tight while allowing life to go on as normally as possible. But the days when it was permissible to move easily around government buildings – or even walk through Downing Street from Whitehall to St James’s Park unchallenged – have long gone.

The gates at the entrance to Downing Street began as removable barriers installed at the time of the IRA hunger strikes. Now they are a permanent fixture, along with all the other security paraphernalia required in these troubled times. The more recent threat posed by Islamist terrorism has seen the Westminster defences strengthened, with concrete bollards and barriers installed to stop lorries packed with explosives driving into the precincts patrolled by heavily armed police officers.

But what yesterday’s attack shows is how sophisticated weaponry is not necessary to make the sort of impact the terrorist seeks. From what we know, just a hired car and a knife was all it took. As with the lorry attacks in Berlin before Christmas in which 12 people died and in Nice last summer which killed 84, terrorists are increasingly using rudimentary and readily available methods of causing death and injury. This was seen here with the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013. The trained terrorist bomber despatched by his jihadist masters to cause carnage is being supplanted by the self-radicalised loner who is more difficult to trace.

One saving grace in this country is that our strict firearms laws make it hard for would-be terrorists to obtain the weaponry to carry out a Paris-style shooting and kill scores of people. There has not been a major attack in this country since the July 7 bombs on the London transport system in 2005 killed more than 50 people. But we cannot be complacent and, indeed, while the security agencies have thwarted many plots since then, it is not possible to stop them all. Inevitably, however, once the identity of the perpetrator is known there will be questions as to whether he was known to the authorities, which have been expecting an attack here for some time. Vigilance and good intelligence remain essential.

The Westminster incident came as new security restrictions were announced for taking laptops and tablets on certain airlines from specified airports and as foreign ministers from 68 coalition countries met in America to step up the international effort to destroy Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil). The campaign is about to reach a critical stage. The battle for Mosul, hard-fought for more than three months, is making slow but bloody progress, with Islamist fighters staging a counter-offensive and hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped.

This was the first meeting of the military coalition ranged against Isil since Donald Trump took over the White House in January. The US president has vowed to make the fight against Isil a policy priority and the Washington summit was convened by Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, to fill in the gaps and devise a plan.

But this will be easier said than done. It will require diplomatic compromises if Syria and Russia are to be part of the co-ordinated assault. Only troops on the ground will be able to dislodge Isil fighters: air attacks will not work on their own and always run the risk of killing civilians, as happened yesterday when a school harbouring local people was hit in Raqqa. The Islamists have no compunction about using human shields. The plan against Isil must also include what to do about Libya, which will become the next HQ for the fanatics after they are driven out of Syria and Iraq.

The so-called Islamic State is acting as an ideological driver for jihadist attacks in the West. They pose a real and present danger but they also want us to over-react and shut down normal life even more than it has been already. Even as we mourn those killed and wish the injured a speedy recovery we must also deny the attackers the disproportionate reaction they seek.

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