December 8, 2015 | Morning Headlines
Pentagon Says Airstrike Killed Terror Leader In Somalia
07 December – Source: Associated Press – 127 words
A Pentagon official says the U.S. killed a senior leader of the Al-Shabaab extremist group in an airstrike last week in Somalia. The December 2 strike that killed the three was announced Monday by Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis.Davis identified the targeted Al-Shabaab senior leader as Abdirahman Sandhere (ab-deera-mon sond-heer) and said he is also known as Ukash.
Davis also said the U.S. has confirmed that a Nov. 13 airstrike killed a senior Islamic State leader in Libya known as Abu Nabil. U.S. officials had said shortly after the attack that Nabil likely had died. By coincidence, that airstrike happened just as the Paris terrorist attacks were underway. Al-Shabaab, an Islamic extremist group, is responsible for numerous attacks in East Africa, particularly Kenya.
Key Headlines
- Pentagon Says Airstrike Killed Terror Leader In Somalia (Associated Press)
- Soldier Shoots Dead Senior Commander In Northern Somalia (Hiiraan Online)
- US Al-Shabaab Militant Held In Somalia (BBC)
- Mandera Mass Grave With 12 Bodies Revives Extrajudicial Killings Claims (The Star)
- Over 145000 Affected By Floods In Somalia: UN (Xinhua)
- Terror: Before The White Widow There Was A German Blonde (Sunday Nation )
NATIONAL MEDIA
Soldier Shoots Dead Senior Commander In Northern Somalia
07 December – Source: Hiiraan Online – 211 Words
A soldier in the Puntland region has killed his commander in a shooting rampage in northern Somalia on Monday. The unidentified soldier reportedly opened fire on Col. Hassan Shire, the commander of Bossaso airport security before escaping. Security officials told Hiiraan Online that security forces are pursuing the renegade soldier, who is at large with his weapons in the region’s commercial hub of Bossaso town. They however ruled out initial reports that the incident was linked to terrorism.
The development follows an earlier incident in which another soldier in Puntland went on a shooting spree, killing three comrades at a military post in the outlying flashpoint town of Galgala, where troops are fight off the threat from Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab fighters. The Al-Shabaab militants are fighting to set up a key base in the strategic town of Galgala to provide safe haven for their group’s fighters, who are often targeted by aerial attacks, mostly by the US forces.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
US Al-Shabaab Militant Held In Somalia
07 December – Source: BBC – 157 Words
An American member of Somali Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab has been arrested in Somalia, an official has told the BBC.He said the man had been stopped while he was trying to escape from Al-Shabaab after some his friends were killed in an internal rift.
The cause of the dispute is not clear.Al-Shabaab is part of Al-Qaeda but the so-called Islamic State has been trying to persuade the militant group to join it, leading to divisions.Barawe District Commissioner Hussein Barre Mohamed told the BBC Somali service the US militant has been in Al-Shabaab for “a very long time”.
He added that the man does not speak Somali.He was intercepted by the Somali army on his way to Barawe, 220 km (135 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu on Sunday, the commissioner told the BBC.He is being investigated by the police who are working with the army and the African Union’s Mission in Somalia’s (AMISOM) forces.
Mandera Mass Grave With 12 Bodies Revives Extrajudicial Killings Claims
07 December – Source: The Star – 350 Words
A mass grave with at least 12 bodies, including that of a mother of five, was found in a thicket in Mandera county on Sunday.It is believed the victims were among 59 people who have been reported missing in the county.They are allegedly victims of what are suspected to be forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by security agencies.Of the 12, only the woman was identified – as Isnina, a tea vendor in Mandera town. Her freshly buried body was found naked, with broken bones and missing teeth, alluding to torture.Isnina was was reportedly picked from her kiosk opposite Al-Furqan mosque last Wednesday by people in an unmarked Probox who identified themselves as police officers.
Witnesses who sought anonymity said two military vehicles followed the car.The Kenya Defense Forces, Rapid Deployment Unit, Anti-Terror Police Unit and the National Intelligence Service have been accused of kidnapping and killing terror suspects. Police spokesperson Charles Owino defended security agencies saying anyone with proof they were involved should present it.“No one has reported anything to us. Let them officially report to us for forensic investigations to be carried out and victims identified,” he said“I can invoke my mother’s name in saying that we did not send any security officer to kill any innocent person.”
Mandera Senator Billow Kerrow said the killings are “utterly disgusting” and “a clear indication that this evil process of the extermination of suspects in total disregard of due process is the norm rather the exception”.“This has clearly gone too far and must stop. It is time we said ‘no’, not just as leaders but also as a society,” he said, adding county leaders will meet to plan action.
Over 145,000 Affected By Floods In Somalia: UN
07 December – Source: Xinhua News – 260 Words
At least 145,200 people have been affected by flash floods since the onset of rainy season in October in Somalia, the UN humanitarian agency said. The UN office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest report received Monday that there has been a further reduction in rainfall in most areas of Juba and Shabelle basins inside Somalia as well as the Ethiopian highlands compared to the previous week. However, a few areas in Middle and Lower Shabelle regions received moderate rains.
“While the situation in many areas has returned to normal, an estimated 145,200 people have been affected by floods since the onset of the rainy season in October,” OCHA said. The report says that the risk of flooding along the lower reaches of Shabelle and Juba Rivers has been downgraded to moderate and minimal, respectively. Health partners and facilities in some flood-affected regions have, however, reported increased cases of acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) and malaria.
OCHA and relief partners are ramping up efforts to reach people in the flood-hit areas despite bad road conditions caused by flooding. Chlorine and hygiene kits, as well as essential drugs are either already distributed or being delivered to the outbreak-affected communities, OCHA said. Some water wells in affected locations will also be chlorinated for disinfection, according to OCHA. Experts have warned that the floods, which have made roads impassable and cut thousands off from aid, could reverse many of the humanitarian gains made in southern Somalia since 2011 when the Horn of Africa nation was devastated by famine.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“Haddad had an ally in East Africa – Uganda’s President Idi Amin. With such sympathy, the Palestinian terrorists — whom Monica was looking for — had managed to receive two SAM-7 missile launchers with an explosive warhead capable of blowing up the plane. The arms were delivered to Nairobi by Amin’s agents.”
Terror: Before The White Widow, There Was A German Blonde
06 December – Sunday Nation – 1,757 Words
As her accomplice, Jermaine Grant, was jailed for nine years by a Mombasa court last week, one of the world’s most-wanted women terrorists, Samantha Lewthwaite, remained at large. But the story of Jermaine and Samantha might never match the forgotten tale of another terrorist leader, a beautiful 23-year-old German blonde named Monica Haas, who in 1976 almost brought Kenya and Uganda to war.
It is also the story of Venezuelan terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, now in prison in France. In many ways, Monica was like Samantha and both shook Kenya’s intelligence system. Another parallel is that both were radicalised in Yemen: – Monica by the Palestine guerrillas in 1976 and Samantha by Al-Qaeda’s most prolific recruiter, the late Anwar Lewthwaite. Interestingly, too, both were arrested in Kenya and both were freed!
Samantha was in 2011 arrested in Mombasa together with Jermaine but she managed to convince the police that she was an innocent tourist. She was let go and she vanished into frenzied Somalia with her fictitious name – Natalie Faye Webb – never to be seen again. Monica was not as lucky in 1976 – or put another way, she was never jailed in Kenya. But her terror sprees changed the way Israel protected its installations in foreign countries and accelerated Kenya’s dalliance with Mossad on intelligence gathering.
While little is known about Samantha’s stay in Mombasa, a few years after her husband Germaine Lindsay blew himself up in a London underground train in July 2005, it is clear that she used a fake South African passport and had married a Kenyan named Fahmi Jamal Salim -whom she met in Johannesburg in 2008. Salim was a brother-in-law of Musa Dheere – Al Qaeda’s strongman in Somalia who was killed in 2011 in Mogadishu. That is how she got her Al-Shabaab connections – and that is the woman believed to have planned the September 2013 Westgate attack.