Sunday, July 31, 2011
Syrian security forces shell city at heart of anti-Assad protests, surround major hospital to prevent the wounded from reaching it.
Over 124 people were killed Sunday in a fresh government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters across Syria, activists said.
At least 97 people were killed when the Syrian army stormed the flashpoint central city of Hama, activists told the German Press Agency.
“Hama is used to massacres by the Assad family, but we tell this tyrant the more you kill us the more we are determined to oust you,” the activist, who requested anonymity, told the German Press Agency by phone.
In 1982, a government crackdown caused the deaths of up to 20,000 people in the city, when the town’s Sunni population attempted to revolt against then president Hafez Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
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Friday, July 29, 2011
In a move that self-styled Caucasus Emirate head and insurgency commander Doku Umarov has hailed as marking “a new page” in the ongoing jihad against the Russian presence in the North Caucasus, several of the senior Chechen commanders who one year ago split with Umarov have reaffirmed their allegiance to him.
Their reasons for doing so remain unclear, however, as does the position of several of their most respected fellow commanders.
The catalyst for the split in the ranks of the Chechen insurgents was Umarov’s retraction last August, just days after it was posted to the Internet, of an announcement that he was stepping down as emir, and proposing as his successor veteran commander Aslanbek Vadalov.
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Thursday, July 28, 2011
The head of the Libyan rebel’s armed forces and two of his aides were killed by gunmen Thursday, the head of the rebel leadership said.
The death of Abdel Fattah Younes was announced at a press conference in the de facto rebel capital, Benghazi, by the head of the rebels’ National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil. He told reporters that rebel security had arrested the head of the group behind the killing.
Rebel security had arrested Younes and two of his aides early on Thursday from their operations room near the rebels’ eastern front.
Security officials said at the time that Younes was to be questioned about suspicions his family still had ties to Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
A Kosovo policeman seriously injured during a border clash on Monday night has died.
The 31-year-old officer was shot in the head when a police convoy came under fire in a Serb dominated area.
The violence occurred during a botched bid by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian government to take control of two border posts in an ethnic Serb area.
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The Armed Forces has arrested the commander of the Justice and Equality Movement - South Kordofan Sector (Hamad) who formed a military faction of the movement at the Nuba Mountains area after the rebel movement was defeated in Al-Tais area.
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