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Arrests in UK over Texas synagogue hostage situation
The men were detained as part of an ongoing probe into the Colleyville attack
Police in Birmingham and Manchester arrested two men on Thursday as the authorities continue their investigation into last week’s Texas synagogue hostage incident.
“As a result of this ongoing investigation, two men have been arrested this morning in Birmingham and Manchester. They remain in custody for questioning,” Greater Manchester Police said, announcing the development.
“Officers from Counter-Terror Policing (CTP) North West continue to support US authorities with their investigation into the events in Texas,” it added.
The police also encouraged members of the public to come forward if they had any information and urged citizens to “remain vigilant.”
The arrests come after the hostage situation at the weekend in Colleyville, Texas. Malik Faisal Akram, 44, was shot dead by police after bursting in on a service at a synagogue on Saturday and holding people hostage during a 10-hour standoff. All four hostages escaped unharmed.
Two teens arrested following the incident were released on Tuesday without charge.
Akram, who was from Blackburn in the north of England, was known to MI5, Britain’s internal intelligence service, and had been under investigation for four weeks, according to British media, citing government sources.
It was decided that there was no jihadist terrorist risk and no need to prevent him from traveling.
Perhaps MI5 needs to review their terror assessment risk process.
Hundreds injured & killed in Saudi strikes
Saudi-led coalition’s bombing left hospitals in Yemen overwhelmed
with dead and wounded victims
Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, Jan. 18, 2022 © AP / Hani Mohammed
Scores of people have been killed and potentially hundreds have been injured by airstrikes in Yemen, the latest escalation in the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s war against Houthi rebels in the shattered country.
Targets struck on Friday reportedly included a prison and an airport in the northern city of Sa’ada, various government facilities and a telecommunications building in Hodeidah. Many of the victims were rushed to Al-Gumhourriyeh Hospital in Sa’ada, which received 138 wounded and 70 dead, according to the aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Al-Gumhourriyeh is so overwhelmed that it can’t accept any more patients, and at least two other hospitals in the city have received large numbers of casualties, MSF said. There are still many bodies at the scene of the most devastating strike, at the prison in Sa’ada.
“It is impossible to know how many people have been killed,” said Ahmed Mahat, MSF’s head of mission in Yemen. “It seems to have been a horrific act of violence.”
The Red Cross said it sent medical supplies to two of the hospitals that were flooded with casualties. The bombing in Hodeidah knocked out internet service nationwide and allegedly killed at least three children. The online blackout has reportedly hampered efforts to deliver aid and gather information about the airstrikes.
The Saudi-led coalition said it had struck the port of Hodeidah and “military targets” in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital. According to the state-owned Saudi Press Agency, the strikes were carried out “in response to the threat of hostile attacks.”
The coalition intensified airstrikes in Yemen earlier this week in response to Houthi drone attacks in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s partner in the war.
Houthi spokesman Yahya Sare’e claimed the attacks in Dubai and Abu Dhabi were retaliation for the coalition’s escalating aggression in Yemen. After Friday’s devastating airstrikes, Sare’e signaled another cycle of retaliation, saying “we advise the foreign companies in the Emirates to leave because they invest in an unsafe country, and the rulers of this country continue in their aggression against Yemen.”
Raytheon - keeping the inventory of war moving
US bomb fragment found in rubble of Yemen airstrike – reports
The numbers on it match a Raytheon manufacturer’s cage code
© Getty Images / Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)
A missile fragment discovered in the debris after Friday’s devastating airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition on the Yemeni city of Saada has been identified as having come from a bomb produced by a US weapons manufacturer.
The January 21 attack on a migrant detention facility in a Houthi rebel stronghold claimed several dozen lives, including those of a number of children, and prompted UN General Secretary António Guterres to call for an “effective and transparent investigation.”
Sure, like that's going to happen!
Video footage filmed in the aftermath of the airstrike by members of the Houthi rebel movement, which is in conflict with the Saudi-backed government, and shared on YouTube, shows distressing scenes of rescue workers removing bodies from the rubble. At one point, a fragment allegedly from a lethal weapon used in the raid is shown, with part of its identifying text and numbers visible.
“That’s the manufacturer cage code for Raytheon,” Marc Garlasco, a military adviser from the Netherlands-based PAX Protection of Civilians NGO wrote on Twitter, referring to the US’ Raytheon Technologies Corporation, one of the world’s largest aerospace and intelligence services suppliers.
Raytheon describes itself on its website as being focused on “creating breakthrough technologies in fields such as artificial intelligence, advanced propulsion, electrification, and thermal management.” Its list of cage codes includes the number 96214, which matches that seen on the fragment found in Saada.
A CNN investigation also listed the same Raytheon cage code found on shrapnel after coalition airstrikes in Yemen in 2015, 2016 and 2018.
This is not the first time that bomb fragments from American-made weapons have been discovered among the rubble in Yemen. The US has continued to supply weapons and logistical and intelligence support to Saudi Arabia, despite numerous calls from human rights organizations to cease its exports.
In August 2018, a Yemeni journalist identified missile fragments found after an attack on a bus carrying children as having derived from a Raytheon Mark 82 general-purpose free-fall bomb.
The Saudi-led coalition has recently intensified airstrikes in Yemen in response to Houthi drone attacks in the United Arab Emirates, an ally of Saudi Arabia in the conflict.
Dozens killed in fighting after ISIS attack on prison – reports
Thousands have had to flee the Syrian city where Kurdish-led militias
are battling terrorists after an attempted prison break
The Syrian northeastern city of Hasaka has seen large-scale clashes between Kurdish-led militias backed by the US, and Islamic State terrorists since Thursday evening.
The terrorists had sought to break into a major prison in the south of the city, where IS members are among thousands of inmates being held, including some of the terrorist group’s leaders.
Terrorist “sleeper cells” infiltrated the surrounding areas before detonating a car bomb near the detention facility, Reuters reported, citing the loose Kurdish-led association of militias known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Hundreds of inmates reportedly fled in the ensuing chaos but many have since been recaptured, according to local media reports. Some inmates were also killed during the attempted prison break.
Fighting in the city has been continuing for three days as the SDF militias seek to root out the terrorists still entrenched in the surrounding areas. The scale of the battle has prompted US forces in the region to support the SDF with airstrikes, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby confirmed on Friday.
The Kurdish-led forces said on Saturday that dozens of IS terrorists had been killed and some ammunition and equipment was seized. A number of media reports also suggested that dozens of Kurdish fighters had also died in the clashes.
The fighting has sparked an exodus of civilians from the city, Syrian media reported. The displaced families were assisted by the Syrian Army and the Red Crescent, SANA news agency said on Sunday, adding that people are continuing to flee to safe areas “due to the clashes and chaos” in neighborhoods surrounding the prison.
The developments have also prompted Damascus to accuse both IS terrorists and the US-backed militias of “committing massacres” against the locals and causing “massive destruction” of the local infrastructure.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry has called on UN agencies, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Program, and UNICEF to provide “thousands” of the displaced people with humanitarian aid. It also demanded that the US forces remaining on Syrian soil be withdrawn.
The USA was not invited onto Syrian soil, and so, is there illegally.
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