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Nigeria: How My Father Turned Me to a Pipeline Vandal At 14 – Suspect

A 15-year-old boy, who was arrested alongside four others by operatives of the Inspector-General of Police Special Task Force on Anti-Pipeline Vandalism, Thursday, disclosed that he was pestered by his father until he joined the illicit act of pipeline vandalism. The suspect, Sani Musa and others were arrested with 200 kegs filled with diesel allegedly siphoned from a pipeline belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, along Shagamu/Ibadan expressway. Also recovered was a truck with number plate KMC 111 XW. Their arrest, according to the Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of the task force, Friday Ibadin, followed a tip-off that some vandals were leaving the NNPC pipeline in Shagamu. Policemen, led by the Sector Commander, Onaghaise Osayande, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, intercepted them. Reinstating the task force’s resolve to curb the menace of pipeline vandals, Ibadin however noted that it would be achieved with the collaboration […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraqi PM to ask Obama for more aid to stop attacks

AP Photo WASHINGTON (AP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (NOO’-ree ahl-MAHL’-ih-kee) is expected to appeal to President Barack Obama for more U.S. assistance in beating back the bloody insurgency consuming his country. Obama and al-Maliki will meet at the White House Friday. The Iraqi prime minister’s new aid requests come nearly two years after his government refused to let American forces stay in Iraq with legal immunity after the nine-year war formally ended. Violence started rising in Iraq within months of the U.S. troop departure at the end of 2011. The State Department says at least 6,000 Iraqis have been killed in attacks so far this year. The White House says Obama will raise concerns about the violence in Iraq and ways to reduce it during his meeting with al-Maliki. © 2013 The Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or […]

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Israel launches attacks on military sites in Syria

Israel’s air force attacked two military sites inside Syria on Wednesday evening, US military sources confirmed, marking the latest of several such covert strikes on the country’s northeastern neighbour this year. The sites are near the port city of Latakia and the capital Damascus, according to a person briefed on the matter, who said the US military believed that it was Israel that attacked. Confirmation of the attack late on Thursday followed earlier reports of sightings of Israeli jets in Lebanon and at least one explosion in Syria. Israel’s military, which has struck targets in Syria several times this year, declined to confirm or deny that it carried out the strikes. “We never comment on foreign reports,” an Israel Defence Forces spokeswoman said. Nagham Ghadri, a member of the Syrian National Coalition, the Turkey-based opposition group, said that activists in Latakia had reported hearing a huge explosion coming from […]

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Islamist Rebels Take Fight to Suburbs of Syrian Capital

DAMASCUS, Syria—Islamist rebels, including some with links to al Qaeda, are fast gaining strength in suburbs encircling the Syrian capital, despite a chemical-weapons attack two months ago on one of their strongholds. Since early September these groups have claimed responsibility for several suicide-bomb attacks against regime targets in and around Damascus. They have dramatically increased mortar and rocket attacks on regime-held residential neighborhoods within the capital and have raided nearby towns and villages inhabited by minorities, including Christians. Last week, these rebels blew up a gas pipeline feeding a power plant on the outskirts of Damascus, causing a complete blackout in the capital and most of Syria for several hours before the damage was repaired, according to government officials and residents. While riven by leadership rivalries and competing agendas, the Islamist rebels share the goal of toppling President Bashar al-Assad and establishing Islamic rule. Their strengthening around Damascus further […]

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Largest camp for Syrian refugees becoming a city

AP Photo ZAATARI CAMP, Jordan (AP) — The manager of the region’s largest camp for Syrian refugees arranges toy figures, trucks and houses on a map in his office trailer to illustrate his ambitious vision. In a year, he wants to turn the chaotic shantytown of 100,000 into a temporary city with local councils, paved streets, parks, an electricity grid and sewage pipes. Zaatari, a desert camp near Jordan’s border with Syria, is far from that ideal. Life is tough here. The strong often take from the weak, women fear going to communal bathrooms after dark, sewage runs between pre-fab trailers and boys hustle for pennies carting goods in wheelbarrows instead of going to school. But with Syria’s civil war in its third year, the more than 2 million Syrians who fled their country need long-term solutions, said Kilian Kleinschmidt, who runs Zaatari for the U.N. refugee agency. “We […]

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Iraqi PM: US aid needed to battle al-Qaida

AP Photo WASHINGTON (AP) — A bloody resurgence of al-Qaida in Iraq is prompting Baghdad to ask the U.S. for more weapons, training and manpower, two years after pushing American troops out of the country. The request will be discussed during a White House meeting Friday between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Barack Obama in what Baghdad hopes will be a fresh start in a complicated relationship that has been marked both by victories and frustrations for each side. Al-Maliki will discuss Iraq’s plight in a public speech Thursday at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington. “We know we have major challenges of our own capabilities being up to the standard. They currently are not,” Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. “We need to gear up, to deal with that threat more seriously. We need support […]

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U.S. General Decries Spiraling Iraq Violence

TAMPA, Fla.—The top U.S. commander in the Middle East said Iraq has entered a downward spiral of violence that threatens to drive the country’s leader further into the hands of Iran and heighten sectarian tensions across the region. With Iraqi security forces responding inadequately, U.S. officials are concerned that al Qaeda will develop a haven stretching from western Iraq into Syria. “If left unchecked, we could find ourselves in a regional sectarian struggle that could last a decade,” Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview here. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met with Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders on Wednesday, at the start of a visit to Washington and is set to meet President Barack Obama on Friday. The Washington visit comes at a pivotal moment. Gen. Austin and other U.S. officials have blamed […]

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In Iraq, Sunni attacks spark Shiite calls to arms

AP Photo BAGHDAD (AP) — The wave of attacks by al-Qaida-led Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis this year, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense. They generally insist they’ll do it legally, under the banner of the security forces. But Iraq’s young democracy is still struggling, nearly two years after U.S. troops withdrew, and the specter of armed Shiite and Sunni camps revives memories of the sectarian fighting that took the country to the brink of civil war in the mid-2000s. Since April, bombings and shootings have killed more than 5,500 people. Averaging at least two a week, they target outdoor markets, cafes, bus stations, mosques and pilgrimages in Shiite areas. Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who will meet with President Barack Obama on Friday, says he wants American help in quelling the violence. Departing […]

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Suicide bombers kill 11 military, police in Iraq dinner attack-police

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two suicide bombers killed at least 11 military and police officers and wounded 19 late on Tuesday by blowing themselves up outside a Sunni militia leader’s house in northern Baghdad as he was hosting dinner. Police in the Sunni neighborhood said the leader of the Sunni "Sahwa" militia, Saeed Jassim, was not hurt, but the commander of the military battalion deployed in the region and his deputy were among those who were killed. In Mosul, a suicide bomber driving a vehicle packed with explosives detonated the car near a police checkpoint in the west of the city late on Tuesday, killing at least eight people, including three policemen, police and medical sources said. Mosul, capital of the predominantly Sunni province of Nineveh, is a stronghold for Islamist insurgents who have been reinvigorated by growing resentment of the government that came to power after the U.S.-led invasion […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple