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India air force base attack leaves 4 gunmen, 2 troops dead
PATHANKOT, India (AP) —
Suspected militants infiltrated
an Indian air force base near
the border with Pakistan on
Saturday and exchanged fire
with security forces for hours,
leaving at least four gunmen
and two Indian troops dead,
officials and news reports said.
Although it was unclear who
staged the attack, it was being
seen as a possible attempt to
undo recent progress made in
relations between archrivals
India and Pakistan, coming just
a week after the first visit to
Pakistan in 12 years by an
Indian prime minister.
The attack at the Pathankot
air force base in Punjab state
began a couple of hours before
dawn, and by late morning it
appeared that the violence had
ended with the killing of the
gunmen by Indian forces. But
two hours later, more gunfire
erupted and an air force helicopter was seen firing at an area
of the base, a major installation
located about 430 kilometers
(267 miles) north of New Delhi.
Air
force
spokeswoman
Rochelle D’Silva said Saturday
night that troops were combing
the entire base to fully secure it.
She said that the combing operation was expected to continue
through the night, and that the
full number of casualties would
be clear once the base was completely secured.
By 9 p.m., no gunfire had
been heard around the base for
more than three hours.
Indian
Prime
Minister
Narendra Modi made an unannounced visit to Pakistan on
Dec. 25 to meet with his
Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz
Sharif. The visit was seen as a
potential sign of thawing relations between the two nucleararmed neighbors. The two leaders also held an unscheduled
meeting at the Paris climate
change talks last month.
Ahead of Modi’s visit to
Pakistan, the national security
advisers of both countries had
met in Thailand. The foreign
secretaries of both nations are
scheduled to meet in Islamabad
later this month.
The Indian defense ministry
said there had been intelligence
reports about a likely terror
attack on military installations
in Pathankot, and that the air
force had been prepared to
thwart any attackers.
“Due to the effective preparation and coordinated efforts by
all the security agencies a group
of terrorists were detected by
the aerial surveillance platforms
as soon as they entered the Air
Force Station at Pathankot,” the
ministry said in a statement.
Despite the intelligence on a
possible attack, at least two air
force troops were killed in the
gunbattle, the Press Trust of
India news agency reported. PTI,
citing police, also said at least
four gunmen had been killed.
The attack began at around 3
a.m., when a group of gunmen
entered the section of the base
where the living quarters are
located, the defense ministry
said. The attackers, however,
were unable to penetrate the
area where fighter helicopters
and other military equipment
are kept, it said.
Police said they suspected the
gunmen were militants, and
were investigating whether they
had come from the Indian portion of Kashmir or from
Pakistan. The Himalayan region
of Kashmir is divided between
India and Pakistan, but is
claimed in its entirety by both.
Rebels routinely stage attacks
in Indian-held Kashmir, where
they’ve been fighting since 1989
for an independent Kashmir or
its merger with Pakistan.
India accuses Pakistan of
arming and training Kashmir’s
insurgents, a charge Islamabad
denies, and the attack was
viewed by many in India as an
attempt to unravel recent
progress in the country’s relationship with its archrival.
In the past, the contentious
issue of Kashmir has halted
talks between India and
Pakistan.
“These kinds of attacks are
nothing new and have generally
been the outcome of the dispute
of India and Pakistan over
Kashmir,” said Noor Ahmed
Baba, a political scientist at
Central University in Indian
Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar.
Baba said that there were elements in both countries that
would like to see the peace
process fizzle out, and that all
sides must “exhibit political
maturity and sagacity to defeat
the vested interests.”
Modi, a t a speech in the
southern city of Mysore, said: “I
congratulate the nation’s security forces for turning the intentions of our country’s enemies
into dust. They didn’t let them
succeed. And I salute the martyrdom of the soldiers who sacrificed their lives.”
Pathankot is on the highway
that connects India’s insurgency-wracked Jammu and
Kashmir state with the rest of
the country. It’s also very close
to India’s border with Pakistan.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry
condemned
the
attack.
“Building on the goodwill created during the recent high level
AP Photo
contacts between the two counAn IndIAn Armored vehicle moves near an Indian air force base in Pathankot, 267 miles north of
tries, Pakistan remains commit- New Delhi, India, Saturday. Gunmen attacked the air force base near the border with Pakistan on
ted to partner with India as well Saturday morning and exchanged fire with security forces, officials said.
as other countries in the region
to completely eradicate the that India wants peace with the chiefs of the army, navy and Gurdaspur, a border town in
menace of terrorism afflicting Pakistan, but “if there is any air force met Saturday to dis- India’s Punjab state. The three
our region,” it said in a state- kind of terror attack on India, cuss the situation.
attackers then killed four
ment.
In July, gunmen staged a policemen and three civilians
we will give it a fitting reply.”
Indian
Home
Minister
India’s defense minister, similar attack at a police station before being shot dead by secuRajnath Singh told reporters national security adviser and and a moving bus near rity forces.
Somali extremists use Donald
Trump clip to recruit followers
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) —
Al-Qaida’s East African affiliate
has released a recruitment
video targeting American blacks
and Muslims that includes a
clip of presidential candidate
Donald Trump calling for
Muslims to be banned from
entering the United States.
The 51-minute video by the
Somalia based al-Shabab militant group presents the U.S. as
a country of institutionalized
racism against blacks that also
persecutes Muslims. The video
presents radical Islam as the
solution.
The clip of Trump on the
campaign trail consists of his
infamous proposal for the “total
and complete shutdown of
AP Photo
Muslims entering the United
IrAqI securIty forces and allied Sunni tribal fighters help trapped civilians get to safer areas, in States” to protect the country.
Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday. Iraq’s military says Islamic State militants launched
Presidential candidate Hillary
suicide attacks on Friday with seven suicide car bombs in two areas on the outskirts of Ramadi days Clinton had earlier claimed that
after troops drove them out of the city center.
the Islamic State group, another extremist organization, was
IS counterattacks target troops in Ramadi
BAGHDAD (AP) — Islamic
State group militants continue
to launch a series of counterattacks against Iraqi government
forces on the edges of the western city of Ramadi days after the
militant group was driven out of
the city center, according to the
U.S.-led coalition.
“The majority of these are outside downtown Ramadi to the
north and east,” and so far Iraqi
government forces have successfully repelled every attack,
said Baghdad-based coalition
spokesman Col. Steve Warren.
“We haven’t seen ISIL mass
enough combat power to move
Iraq off their positions,” Warren
added, using an alternative
acronym for the Islamic State
group.
Iraq’s military says Islamic
State militants on Friday
launched multiple suicide
attacks on the outskirts of
Ramadi.
Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Belawi
told The Associated Press on
Saturday that the militants
stuck security forces with seven
suicide car bombs in two areas
outside Ramadi.
Al-Belawi says there were
casualties among the government troops, but did not provide
a specific figure. He says the
troops repelled the attacks and
did not lose territory.
Iraqi officials say gains in
Ramadi lay the groundwork for
an eventual assault on Mosul,
Iraq’s second largest city that
fell to IS in June of 2014.
On Friday coalition planes
launched five airstrikes near
Ramadi targeting IS tactical
units, heavy weaponry and
fighting positions. Near Mosul,
three airstrikes destroyed an IS
fighting position and a facility
used to make car bombs, a
coalition
statement
said
Saturday.
Ramadi, the provincial capital
of the sprawling Anbar province,
fell to IS in May, marking a
major setback for U.S.-backed
Iraqi forces. Iraqi troops retook
the city center on Monday with
heavy coalition air support, but
insurgents are still holed up in
parts of the city.
using such quotes to recruit followers, prompting Trump to call
her a “liar.”
The quotes from Trump are
bracketed by a recorded speech
from Yemeni-American cleric
Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the
most prominent English-language recruiters for al-Qaida
who was killed by a U.S. drone
strike in Yemen in 2011, warning that the U.S. would turn
against its Muslims.
The video was released on
Twitter Friday, according to the
SITE Intel monitoring group
and tells the story of several
Americans from Minnesota that
joined al-Shabab and were
killed in the fighting in Somalia,
holding them up as examples to
be followed.
Using footage from recent
racial conflicts in the U.S. as
well as historic quotes from
Malcolm X, the video lays out
the argument that blacks and
Muslims will always face discrimination in the U.S. and
should join jihadi movements to
fight back.
Al-Shabab is fighting the
internationally-backed Somali
government. It was pushed out
of Mogadishu in 2011 with the
help of African Union troops.
The militants have still carried out numerous guerrilla
attacks in Somalia and the
countries contributing troops,
including Kenya, Djibouti and
Uganda.
Trump, who is leading in
polls in the race to be the
Republican candidate in next
year’s presidential election, has
been
rebuked
by
both
Democratic and Republican
candidates for their parties’
nomination, for his proposed
ban on Muslims in early
December.
Clinton’s campaign declined
to comme nt on the video.
2016
Saudi-led coalition says Yemen truce ends
SANAA, Yemen (AP) — The
truce in Yemen between Shiite
rebels and a Saudi-led military
coalition has formally ended,
according to Saudi Arabia’s
state-run news agency.
The truce technically came
into effect on Dec. 15, 2015 as a
mutual show of good faith during peace negotiations taking
place in Switzerland.
But the truce never truly took
hold on the ground in Yemen,
with both sides ignoring it. The
United Nations said on Dec. 20
there were “numerous violations” of the cease-fire agreement from the very start.
Yemen’s conflict pits the
internationally recognized government backed by a Saudi-led,
U.S.-supported coalition against
the rebels, known as Houthis,
who are allied with a former
president. Local affiliates of alQaida and the Islamic State
group have also exploited
Yemen’s chaos to grab land and
exercise influence.
According to U.N. figures, the
war in Yemen has killed at least
5,884 people since March, when
fighting escalated after the
Saudi-led
coalition
began
launching airstrikes targeting
the rebels.
In Taiz, Yemen’s third largest
city, independent security officials said 14 civilians including
four children were killed since
Friday by shelling from the
rebels, who have the city under
a siege. The Houthis have been
indiscriminately shelling the
war-devastated city and blocking the delivery of humanitarian
aid for months, according to
residents and aid groups.
Eleven anti-rebel fighters
were killed west and south of
Taiz province, where the city
with the same name is located,
since Friday, according to the
officials.
The officials said more than
22 Houthi and allied fighters
were killed in airstrikes by the
Saudi-led coalition between
Friday and midday Saturday in
the provinces of Marib and
Jawf.
The officials, who back neither side in the conflict, spoke
on condition of anonymity
because they weren’t authorized
to brief reporters.
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