The posters ask for help finding the women: Jhannet Tsakhaeva, 34, from the restive Russian region of Dagestan, and Oksana Aslanova, 26, from Turkmenistan. A third woman who was wanted, Zaira Alieva, 26, from Dagestan, was killed Saturday by Russian security forces in Dagestan, NBC News confirmed..
KARACHI, Pakistan: Pakistani police say gunmen have attacked two teams of polio workers in the south, killing three members of the teams and wounding a fourth before fleeing. Police official Pir Mohammad Shah says two female and a male worker were killed in Tuesday’s attacks in Karachi, the capital of southern Sindh province. A health official Zafar Ejaz says the vaccination campaign was canceled following the attacks. No group has claimed responsibility but Pakistani militants have killed several polio workers and police protecting them in Karachi and elsewhere in recent months. Pakistan is one of only three countries where the polio virus is still endemic. Militants oppose vaccination against polio and consider such campaigns a cover for spying. They also claim the vaccine is intended to make Muslim boys sterile.
MEXICO CITY-The startof the weeksawan unprecedentedspike in violenceattributed toorganized crime gangsinevents thatleft at least23people deadin sevenstates of the country.
HANOI: Vietnam on Monday sentenced 30 drug smugglers to death in the communist country’s largest ever narcotics case, involving scores of defendants and nearly two tons of heroin, a judge said. The 30 men and women, all Vietnamese, were found guilty of drug trafficking and given the death penalty while a further 59 defendants were handed sentences ranging up to life in prison, presiding judge Ngo Duc said. “This was Vietnam’s largest ever trial in terms of defendants, the number of death penalties given out and the amount of heroin involved,” Duc said after the verdict was read out in the northern province of Quang Ninh — which borders China. “Because of the large number of defendants and the seriousness of the case, the trial was held at the prison,” Judge Duc added after the 17-day trial.
Investigators said the defendants belonged to four international smuggling rings responsible for trafficking heroin and other drugs from neighboring Laos into Vietnam and China since 2006. “All the defendants are Vietnamese and most of them came from Vietnam’s northwestern provinces,” court clerk Nguyen Trung Hieu said. Vietnam’s remote northwestern region, which borders both China and Laos, is poor and populated by a patchwork of ethnic minority groups. There have been previous smuggling cases in the area, which is far from the control of Hanoi. According to a list of the defendants’ names seen by AFP, some of the 89 people were from ethnic minority groups but court officials could not confirm their status. One of the leaders of the four smuggling rings broken up by the police remains at large, state media reported. Police disrupted the rings in August 2013, making mass arrests and seizing large quantities of illegal drugs. They also confiscated 20 luxury cars and dozens of guns and other weapons during the raid, state media reported. Communist Vietnam has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws. Anyone found guilty of possessing more than 600 grams (21 ounces) of heroin, or more than 20 kilograms of opium, can face the death penalty
TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) -
A woman killed in a Taliban attack in Afghanistan on Friday was a graduate student at the University of Arizona.
Lexie Kamerman, 27, was among 21 people killed in a suicide bomb and gun attack at a Kabul, Afghanistan restaurant popular with foreigners.
According to media reports, Kamerman was a grad student at UA studying higher learning.
She graduated in 2012.
Kamerman was dining at the Lebanese restaurant when officials say three terrorists carried out the ruthless and deadly attack.
One set off explosives in front of the restaurant, followed by two gunmen who stormed the building and opened fire.
Afghan police put an end to the attack by killing the gunmen.
SANAA: Two days of fighting between rebels and gunmen from the powerful Hashid tribes in north Yemen have killed nearly 22 people, a tribal source said on Monday. A presidential commission had on Jan. 8 brokered a truce between the Huthi rebels and Hashid fighters, ending two days of clashes in Amran province. The fighting first erupted when Huthis tried to seize the towns of Wadi Khaywan and Usaimat, both Hashid strongholds.
But battles resumed a week ago and intensified over the past two days, the tribal source said. “There were 22 people killed on both sides during the last 48 hours,” the source said, adding that fighting was concentrated on Usaimat, 140 km north of Sanaa. The Huthis launched the attacks in retaliation for the Hashid tribe’s support for hard-line Sunni groups fighting Huthis in Dammaj, a rebel stronghold in the north. The town in Saada province has been besieged by the rebels for months. Huthi rebels have been battling the Sanaa government for nearly a decade in Saada, but the clashes with Sunni militants have deepened the sectarian dimension of the unrest. Yemeni troops began to deploy in Saada on January 11 to monitor a cease-fire between the Huthis and Salafis.
Police in Sochi have launched an urgent search for a possible female suicide bomber who may have already made it past the ring of security set up for the Olympic Games.
Hotel employees in Sochi told ABC News that posters with pictures and descriptions of a 22-year-old woman from nearby Dagestan were distributed over the weekend by authorities and a similar flyer was also seen posted at Sochi's airport.
The woman is identified as Ruzanna Ibragimova, using the nickname Salima, the widow of a militant reportedly killed in a shoot-out with police last year in Dagestan.
She is described as being affiliated with the Caucasus Emirate, the terror group led by Doku Umarov that has threatened attacks against the Winter Games in Sochi.
Ibragimova is described as having a 10 centimeter scar across the left cheek, a pronounced limp, and a stiff left arm that doesn't bend at the elbow.
