40 militants killed in northwest Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military said Wednesday it killed 40 insurgents and destroyed five of their hide-outs in fresh air attacks as part of a major offensive against the Taleban in the northwest.
Pakistan began the long-awaited push to clear the bases from North Waziristan district, on the Afghan border, in June after a bloody attack on Karachi airport finally sank faltering peace talks with the rebels.
A military statement said that “in precise aerial strikes” five hide-outs and ammunition dumps were destroyed and forty insurgents including foreigners were killed in the villages of Nawe Kili and Zaram Asar, north of Dattakhel in North Waziristan.

US strikes boost IS; more hostages possible: FBI

WASHINGTON: Support for Islamic State increased after US airstrikes began in Iraq and the militant group may take more hostages to try to force concessions from Washington, the FBI director told Congress on Wednesday.
Islamic State is “committed to instilling fear and attracting recruits” and to drawing public attention, as shown through its use of social media and in videos it released of the beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, said FBI Director James Comey.
“ISIL’s widespread use of social media and growing online support intensified following the commencement of US airstrikes in Iraq,” Comey, using an acronym for the group, said in prepared testimony for a congressional hearing on threats to the US homeland.
Islamic State and other outfits “may continue to try to capture American hostages in an attempt to force the US government and people into making concessions that would only strengthen ISIL and further its terrorist operations,” Comey said.
Islamic State draws an estimated $1 million per day from black market oil sales, smuggling, robberies, and ransom payments for hostages, according to Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
The US and UK, unlike some European nations, do not pay ransom for the release of hostages.
The group’s ability to attack the US homeland relies in part on its widespread and sophisticated use of social media to radicalize Americans, the national security officials told the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.
The group used these tools as it drew recruits from more than 15,000 foreign fighters in Syria, who may return to their countries “battle-hardened, radicalized and determined to attack us,” Olsen, the top US counterterrorism official, said in prepared testimony.
Syria remains a prime training ground for independent or Al-Qaeda-aligned groups. “The rate of travelers into Syria exceeds the rate of travelers who went into Afghanistan/Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any point in the last 10 years,” he said.
The security officials testified as the US military prepared to expand American-led action against Islamic State to Syria, striking the militant group’s safe havens in that country to knock out infrastructure, logistics and command capabilities.

ISIS video is counterpoint to Obama's 'dismantle' and 'destroy' speech

The production is slick. The imagery: ominous.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is out with a new video from its Al Hayat Media Center. ISIS also produced the videos of the beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker.

It took nearly a week, but this appears to be the terror group's response to President Barack Obama's speech in which he said the U.S. objective in expanded airstrikes would be to "degrade, and ultimately destroy" ISIS.

The President is expected to speak Wednesday about the U.S. strategy for combating ISIS, which also calls itself the "Islamic State."

RELATED: What's the world going to do about ISIS?

The 52-second video plays much like a trailer for an action-adventure movie.

There are plenty of slow-motion explosions, and flames are shown engulfing American troops.

There are cameos from President George W. Bush and his "Mission Accomplished" banner, along with plenty of menacing fighters with masks over their faces, ready to execute civilians.

The producers even toss in a clip from Obama at the White House: "American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq," he says.

A lingering explosion puts an exclamation point on the whole thing.

And then the logo, fit for a Hollywood blockbuster: "Flames of War -- fighting has just begun ... Coming soon."

The video fades to black.

An ISIS magazine

Named after a town in northern Syria, Dabiq magazine publishes stories portending a battle between Islam and the West. It has portrayed Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona as "crusaders" who will "bring about the complete collapse of the modern American empire."

It also carries images evoking apocalyptic battles between the Sunni extremist group's fighters and the rest of the world, including American soldiers enveloped in flames.

ISIS is taking a page from the playbook of al Qaeda, a former ally that has praised and advocated terrorist attacks in its glossy magazine, Inspire.

But experts say the terrorist groups don't appear have the same propaganda goals.

Inspire focuses more on practical advice for terrorists planning attacks, publishing guides on how to make bombs and get them onto planes.

Dabiq is a vehicle intended to spark desire in its readers to join and fight with ISIS, said Seth Jones, a security analyst at the RAND Corporation.

Kurds say they killed an ISIS commander

The Kurdish fighting force known as the Peshmerga killed an ISIS commander during battle Tuesday, according to a senior Peshmerga official who took part in the operation.

The Peshmerga killed ISIS commander Abu Abdullah during a Kurdish operation to push ISIS farther from Irbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region, the official said on condition of anonymity Wednesday.

In the battle, the Peshmerga reclaimed five Iraqi villages as well as a bridge along the main highway linking Irbil to Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, according to a senior Peshmerga official taking part in the operations.

The Peshmerga said the battle was meant to push ISIS fighters back toward Mosul, to the west of Irbil -- and part of the Peshmerga's larger plan to reclaim areas that ISIS claimed this year.

ISIS destroyed the bridge linking the two cities a month ago, hoping to prevent any opposing force from advancing on Mosul, but the Peshmerga said its forces went around the bridge for Tuesday's attack.

U.S. air power appeared to play a role in the offensive. Two U.S. airstrikes targeted an armored vehicle and ISIS fighting position northwest of Irbil, according to the U.S. military. That's the same area where the Peshmerga operation was under way.

ISIS has seized large swaths of land as part of its effort to create a caliphate -- an Islamic state -- that stretches from western Syria to eastern Iraq.

Pakistan court orders first civilian execution in six years

ISLAMABAD: A judge in Pakistan has ordered a murderer to be hanged next week, officials said Friday, in what would be the country’s first civilian execution in six years.
The country has had a de facto moratorium on civilian hangings since 2008. Only one person has been executed since then, a soldier convicted by court martial and hanged in November 2012.
“A judge has passed an order that a murder convict be hanged,” an official at Adiyala Prison in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjoining Islamabad, told AFP.
“Arrangements for the execution on September 18 are being made,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Shoaib Sarwar was given the death penalty in July 1998 for murdering Awais Nawaz in January 1996. All his appeals in the high court and Supreme Court were rejected, as was a mercy petition to the president, the official said.
Sarwar is currently being held in a jail in the northwestern town of Haripur, some 25 kilometers from Islamabad, but authorities there told AFP they had not yet been informed about the execution.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said it was dismayed at the news.
“HRCP wishes to remind the government that the reasons that have caused the stay of executions since 2008 have not changed,” the group said in a statement.
“These include the well-documented deficiencies of the law, flaws in administration of justice and investigation methods and chronic corruption.”
Last June the newly elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif scrapped the moratorium in a bid to crack down on criminals and Islamist militants.
But two weeks later it announced a further stay of executions after an outcry from rights groups and the then-president Asif Ali Zardari.
All execution orders in Pakistan must be signed by the president.
European Union officials indicated last year that if Pakistan resumed executions, it could jeopardize a highly prized trade deal with the bloc.
An EU rights delegation warned it would be seen as a “major setback” if Pakistan restarted hangings.
Rights campaign group Amnesty International estimates that Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted the appeals process.

43 Israeli soldiers protest ‘abuses’ against Palestinians

JERUSALEM: Forty-three reservists and former members of an elite Israeli army intelligence unit condemned alleged “abuses” against Palestinians in the occupied territories, in an open letter published on Friday.
The letter, addressed to Israel’s prime minister, armed forces chief and head of military intelligence and distributed to media, said information gathered by Unit 8200 was used by civilian intelligence agencies to coerce Palestinians uninvolved in militant activity.
The signatories of the letter said they would refuse to be party to such acts in future.
“There’s no distinction between Palestinians who are, and are not, involved in violence,” an English language copy of the letter says.
“Information that is collected and stored harms innocent people. It is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself.”
“We cannot continue to serve this system in good conscience, denying the rights of millions of people,” the 43 soldiers and officers wrote.
The signatories gave just their ranks and first names or first initials.
“Those among us who are reservists, refuse to take part in the state’s actions against Palestinians,” the letter, seen by AFP said.
“We call for all soldiers serving in the Intelligence Corps, present and future, along with all the citizens of Israel, to speak out against these injustices and to take action to bring them to an end.”
The letter, published less than three weeks after the Israeli military’s fierce military offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, slammed the “collective punishment of inhabitants” of the coastal territory.

2,100 killed
It did not specifically mention the July-August war which took the lives of more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, 67 of them soldiers.
The army on Friday questioned the accuracy and motivation of the protesters’ accusations.
“The Intelligence Corps has no record that the... violations in the letter ever took place,” it said in a statement.
“Immediately turning to the press instead of their officers or relevant authorities is suspicious and raises doubts as to the seriousness of their claim.”
Members of Unit 8200, considered among Israel’s best and brightest, carry out electronic communications monitoring and surveillance, similar to work performed by the US National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ.
The unit is one component of the broader military intelligence corps and shares information with Israel’s civilian intelligence agencies.
A former commander of the unit, reserve Brig. Gen. Hanan Gefen, accused the letter’s authors of a grave breach of trust.
“If this is true and if I were the current unit commander, I would put them all on trial and would demand prison sentences for them, and I would remove them from the unit,” he was quoted as saying by Maariv newspaper on Friday.
“They are using information that reached them in the course of their duties to promote their political position.”
One of the signatories, speaking on condition of anonymity, told top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper: “I think that all of us who signed the letter did so because we understood that we are unable to sleep well at night.”
Most Israeli men perform three years of compulsory military service after school, and women two years, followed by regular spells of reserve duty for years afterwards.

a man was executed outside his home

Pénjamo, Gto.- A man was shot dead when he was outside his home in the company of friends; the suspects aboard a motorcycle fleeing after committing her murder. 

The facts in Santa Ana Pacueco. The attacked man was identified as Martin "N", 31, residing at the corner of Rio Grande and River Shore streets in Santa Ana Pacueco, who was killed by shots to the chest, abdomen and head. Witnesses reported that three men face circulated aboard a motorcycle approached the same spot where Martin was and, without a word, pulled out handguns and began shooting to cause his death, after which they managed to flee the area.

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