Alert IDF troops nab 4 Palestinians with firebombs
September 29, 2020
Alert IDF troops nab 4 Palestinians with firebombs. Palestinians prepare molotov cocktails
in the city of Hebron, March 29, 2019. (Flash90/Wisam Hashlamoun)
IDF observers spot suspicious movement near settlement,
troops intercept terrorist squad armed with firebombs.
By Paul Shindman, World Israel News
A group of four Palestinian terrorists armed with molotov cocktails was intercepted moving towards a Jewish community in Samaria, the IDF announced Monday.
The four were spotted Monday evening just after the end of Yom Kippur by army observers near the town of Elon Moreh, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Jerusalem, using remote video cameras. A squad of soldiers sent to intercept the Palestinians apprehended the four after firing into the air, the IDF Spokesperson’s office said in a statement.
The suspects were arrested with prepared gasoline firebombs in their possession.
Last month the General Security Service, Israel’s equivalent of the FBI, reported an increase in terrorist incidents in Judea and Samaria over the previous month, including 85 firebomb attacks by Palestinians using molotov cocktails – glass bottles filled with gasoline into which a rag is stuffed as a wick. The bottle is then thrown and explodes in a fireball when it hits.
Over the years, scores of people have been killed or seriously injured with horrific burns by firebomb attacks on vehicles.
In August, the GSS reported one Israeli was killed and three injured in three different stabbing attacks by Palestinians. Rabbi Shai Ohayon, 39 and a father of four young children, was stabbed to death August 27 by a Palestinian while walking home in the city of Kfar Saba.
Three Israelis were wounded in stone throwing attacks in Judea and Samaria. In addition to 85 firebomb attacks and the stabbings, there were six incidents of pipe-bombs, seven incidents involving small arms fire by Palestinians, and eight incidents of arson.
In the same month, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired 25 rockets at Israel. The GSS numbers do not include hundreds of incendiary balloons launched from Gaza that are triggered to land in Israel, where they caused scores of brush and forest fires.
The numbers also do not include hundreds of rock-throwing incidents on the roads and highways of Judea and Samaria.
French police clear Calais migrant camp in biggest op since ‘jungle’ dismantling
29 Sep 2020
French police evacuate some 800 migrants after they dismantled their camp located near the hospital in Calais, northern France, on September 29, 2020. © AFP/Bernard BARRON
Police on Tuesday dismantled a camp of at least 700 migrants in the French port city of Calais, the biggest such operation since the ‘jungle’ shantytown was broken up four years ago.
Police officers began the operation before sunrise on Tuesday, and some 200 people had been removed in the first two hours. Some 21 migrants were arrested, according to local authorities.
“We want to avoid a concentration and a new gathering point in Calais,” Louis Le Franc, the government’s top official for the northern Pas-de-Calais department, told reporters at the scene. It was the biggest dismantling of a Calais camp since the ‘jungle’ was cleared of some 9,000 migrants between 2015 and 2016, according to the official.
The majority of the migrants and would-be asylum seekers in the camp are men, mainly from the Middle East and Africa. Authorities plan to send about 150 of the evacuated people to reception centers in Pas-de-Calais. Also, 150 migrants will be brought to other departments in northern France, and the remainder to other regions in the country.
Le Franc claimed that the operation was above all to give people a safe haven before the winter period because the migrants “are living in this forested area in extremely difficult conditions.”
Migrants see the Calais camp as a launch point to cross the English Channel for Britain. People traffickers help them to get to the UK in small rubber boats or in trucks and cars that travel between the two countries on ferries and trains.
London has repeatedly demanded that the French government take more steps to prevent the migrants leaving France, calling the high numbers who made the illegal crossing this summer unacceptable.
French authorities say they have intercepted at least 1,317 migrants since January 1, as they tried to reach Britain’s shores.
Covering up ’their own failed efforts’: Tehran debunks Saudi claims
of busting Iranian-trained terrorist cell
FILE PHOTO: Saudi special forces practice and anti-terror raid during training in Darma, Saudi Arabia, March 26, 2014
© Reuters / Faisal Al Nasser
29 Sep 2020
Saudi Arabia claims to have uncovered an Iranian-trained terrorist cell, arresting 10 people and seizing a stash of weapons and explosives in a farmhouse. However, Tehran has dismissed the report as “complete fabrication.”
The alleged terror cell was discovered last week, Saudi security officials told the state-run SPA news agency on Monday. The identities of those arrested are being kept secret, but officials said they had seized a large amount of weapons, explosives, chemicals, and electronic devices from a farmhouse within the kingdom.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry hit back at Riyadh on Tuesday, calling the news a “complete fabrication,” and a new twist on Saudi Arabia’s “non-credible and repetitive” stance.
“Saudi rulers have chosen false frame-ups against Iran as a weapon to deflect public opinion and a method to cover up their own failed efforts,” exclaimed Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh. The diplomat said such behavior will put Saudi Arabia in harm’s way unless it chooses “the path of honesty and wisdom.”
The Saudi authorities shared pictures of an array of seized weapons with the media.
Cell members “received military and field training” in Iran, including in “how to make explosives” by the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2017, a Saudi spokesman alleged.
Arguably the two most powerful states in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia and Iran have long competed for influence in the Middle East. The Sunni Muslim Saudi kingdom is currently embroiled in a five-year war in Yemen against Houthi rebels aligned with Shi’ite Iran.
Riyadh has also blamed Iran for a series of attacks against its oil facilities, including a massive missile and drone strike last year. Iran denies responsibility.
The kingdom severed diplomatic ties with Tehran following the 2016 attacks on its missions in Iran, amid local demonstrations against the execution of the revered Shia leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr by the Saudi authorities.
Ten Azerbaijani civilians killed in Nagorno-Karabakh clashes as death toll rises & fighting intensifies – President Aliyev
29 Sep 2020
FILE PHOTO: An ambulance in Baku, Azerbaijan © RIA Novosti / Murad Orudzhev
Civilian casualties among Azerbaijanis are rising as intense hostilities continue over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, Baku claimed on Tuesday, reporting that several adults and some children have perished in the fighting.
Fierce battles in the ethnic-Armenian-controlled mountainous region continued for the third day in a row, with numerous deaths reported in clashes between Armenian and Azeri forces. But, in Azerbaijan itself, civilians have borne the brunt of border violence, President Ilkham Aliyev has insisted.
"We have had casualties during these two days, including among the civilian population," he said upon receiving credentials from a newly-appointed Pakistani ambassador on Tuesday.
"Unfortunately, the number of civilian deaths in our country is growing," Azerbaijan's president alleged. A total of 10 civilians have been killed, including "five members of the same family, [and] two children," he outlined.
Baku and Yerevan have both reported civilian casualties since the outbreak of hostilities along the border of Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday. Both sides – which quickly resorted to heavy weaponry during the initial fighting – have likewise accused each other of indiscriminately targeting non-combatants.
Earlier on Tuesday, officials in Yerevan said at least one person was killed in an Azeri bombardment of the Armenian border town of Vardenis. A drone strike also hit a passenger bus which burnt out completely, but no one was hurt in the incident.
The rising death toll among civilians has caused concern outside the conflict-ridden South Caucasus. The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has urged the warring parties "to take all necessary measures to guarantee the protection and respect of civilian infrastructure and civilian lives," the aid agency said in a statement obtained by Russian media.
UN chief Antonio Guterres also condemned the use of force and regretted "the loss of life and the toll on the civilian population." Echoing calls from other world leaders, he demanded that Baku and Yerevan cease fire and resort to dialogue without delay. The Security Council is poised to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict later today.
From another story, it appears that a Turkish F-16 shot down an Armenian SU25. Ankara denies it. F-16s are American made and SU25s are Russian made.
Vardenis is not even in Nagorno-Karabakh. (See second story in post immediately below for map).
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