Turkey detains 12 suspected of aiding al Qaeda: official

ISTANBUL: Turkish police have detained 12 people in Istanbul suspected of providing support to al Qaeda militants fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, a senior security official told Reuters on Tuesday.

The detentions come just days after four men were arrested in west and southwest Turkey on suspicion of fundraising for militants and a fifth on suspicion of designing computer programmes to jam the controls of drone aircraft.

Istanbul police declined to comment.

Turkish police often arrest suspected Islamist militants and describe them as having links to al Qaeda, though details seldom emerge. Around 120 al Qaeda suspects were rounded up last

January in raids mostly carried out in the southeast.

Of the five arrested last week the four suspected of fundraising have since been released pending trial.

The number of Turks fighting in

Bin Laden, Zawahiri hiding in Pakistan: report

WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding near each other in relative comfort in northwest Pakistan, a senior NATO official told CNN on Monday.

The two men are believed to be living in homes near one another and are protected by members of Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, and locals, the network reported. Pakistan strongly denies protecting members of the terror network.

“Nobody in Al Qaeda is living in a cave,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.

Bin Laden is believed to have escaped from Afghanistan’s Tora Bora region, a Taliban stronghold, during a U.S. bombing raid in 2001 and has moved around Pakistan since.

The official told CNN the Al Qaeda leader is likely to have traveled in recent years throughout the country’s rugged tribal region from near the Chinese border to neighboring

Israel PM convenes inner forum ahead of Arab summit

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was on Tuesday to convene ministers in his inner circle reportedly to debate extending the settlement freeze just days ahead of a key meeting of Arab foreign ministers.

“There will be a meeting of the seven,” a senior government official told AFP, referring to the Israeli premier’s Forum of Seven top ministers.

He refused to say what the ministers would discuss during the meeting, which is expected to take place during the afternoon.

Israeli media reports said the meeting was likely to focus on the issue of a 60-day extension of the settlement freeze in exchange for a US deal offering security and other guarantees, details of which were leaked by a top US analyst last week.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu was to meet with ministers in his 15-member security cabinet, the official said, again refusing to give details of

Drone strike kills 10 in North Waziristan

Staff Report

MIRANSHAH: A drone strike killed 10 suspected militants on Saturday in North Waziristan tribal belt along the Afghan border on Saturday.

According to sources, four missiles hit a militant compound in Dashgah village near Datta Khel town, some 45 kilometres (28 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan tribal district.

“Two drones fired four missiles and destroyed the house. 10 militants were killed in this attack,” a security official said.

Two intelligence officials in Miranshah also confirmed the attack and the death toll.

“All of them were militants attached to the Haqqani group,” one intelligence official said.

The second intelligence official told that initial reports suggested the dead were Uzbek militants from Afghanistan. SAMAA

Drone strike kills 10 in North Waziristan

Staff Report

MIRANSHAH: A drone strike killed 10 suspected militants on Saturday in North Waziristan tribal belt along the Afghan border on Saturday.

According to sources, four missiles hit a militant compound in Dashgah village near Datta Khel town, some 45 kilometres (28 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan tribal district.

“Two drones fired four missiles and destroyed the house. 10 militants were killed in this attack,” a security official said.

Two intelligence officials in Miranshah also confirmed the attack and the death toll.

“All of them were militants attached to the Haqqani group,” one intelligence official said.

The second intelligence official told that initial reports suggested the dead were Uzbek militants from Afghanistan. SAMAA

Kurram: Nato choppers hit FC checkpoint; three killed

Despite severe protest and warnings by Pakistan, the Nato helicopters Thursday shelled a paramilitary checkpost and killed three soldiers in a cross border attack in Kurram Agency, security officials said.
The Nato choppers violated Pakistans airspace at 5:00am and pounded an FC checkpost at , killing three FC men and injuring as many at Mand-To-Kandao, Kurram Agency.
It was an unprovoked attack that took place early Thursday morning. Nato helicopters entered our airspace and targeted a paramilitary checkpost killing three soldiers and wounding three others, a senior security official told mediamen.
According to sources, this has been Natos third attack in Pakistani territory within a week. The Nato Spokesman in Afghanistan has not confirmed the attack.

NATO border strike in Kurram, 3 Pak soldiers killed

PARACHINAR: Three Pakistani soldiers were killed in a NATO helicopter attack in a border region with Afghanistan, security and military officials said, apparently the fourth such strike in recent days.

The attack by two NATO helicopters took place early in the morning in Teri Mangal village in Kurram, an ethnic Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border.

“The helicopters shelled the area for about 25 minutes. Three of our soldiers manning a border post were killed and three wounded,” a senior security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

He did not say whether Pakistan responded to the strike. Pakistan on Monday expressed outrage at violation of its airspace by NATO helicopters in Afghanistan over the weekend, saying it would consider “response options” to any future incursions.

Two NATO Apache helicopters killed 30 insurgents on

Ahmadinejad to attend UN disarmament meeting – Ban

UNITED NATIONS: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to attend a high-level U.N. meeting next week aimed at reviving stalled global disarmament talks, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday.

That meeting, scheduled for Sept. 24 during the annual General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York, follows 12 years of inaction at the world’s sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum in Geneva.

“The schedule has not been firmly set, but I understand he (Ahmadinejad) is going to participate in the high-level meeting on disarmament,” Ban told reporters during a monthly news conference.

He added that he had received a request from Ahmadinejad for a bilateral meeting while the Iranian president is in town.

A U.S. official told Reuters in Washington that President arack Obama would probably not attend the disarmament talks, since

Tally in Khyber blitz mounts to 55

PESHAWAR: The death toll from security force air strikes on militant hideouts in a northwestern tribal area Wednesday rose to 55, with reports of some civilian deaths, security officials said.

“Militants were using civilians and their families as human shields and there could be some civilian casualties but we do not know how many,” a senior security official told media, confirming the new toll in the Tirah valley.

Two military and an intelligence official also confirmed the incident and the death toll, while local government officials said about a dozen civilians died.

Turkish air raid in northern Iraq wounds civilian

SULAIMANIYAH: Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq overnight wounding one person in the raid, an Iraqi regional government official told foreign news agency on Saturday.

“The bombing started at 3:00 am (midnight GMT) and lasted for one hour in the area of Sidakan,” near the Iranian border, said the official from Iraq”s Kurdish autonomous region, on condition of anonymity.

“A civilian was injured and farms were damaged,” he said, adding that the raid hit villages in the Qandil mountains, an area in northeastern Iraq, which also straddles the borders of Iran and Turkey.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers” Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has been campaigning for Kurdish self-rule since August 1984.

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