Sweden suffers surge in bomb attacks
as gang violence rises
Some may dispute that gang violence is terrorism; certainly Swedish authorities will not count it as such considering they have been protecting Swedes from knowing the real violence that Muslim migrants brought with them. Drug gangs who commit extortion and blow up cars and businesses are not native to Sweden; they have been imported like other terrorist attacks.
Simon Johnson
STOCKHOLM
(Reuters) -
A surge in drug-linked gang-violence in Sweden led to a 60% increase in bomb blasts in 2019, government statistics showed on Thursday, as police work to rid the streets of explosives and guns with more officers on patrol.
FILE PHOTO: Police work on the site where an explosion damaged a residential building in central Stockholm, Sweden January 13, 2020. Janerik Henriksson/TT News Agency/via REUTERS
Sweden has been hit by a wave of shootings and bombings over the past couple of years which police have linked to gang conflicts in major cities, shocking Swedes, who have long considered their country one of the safest in the world.
Some 257 bomb attacks were reported to police last year, up from 162 the previous year, the statistics from the National Council for Crime Prevention showed.
That's about 2 every 3 days, up from 1 every 2 days. At this rate there will be one every day this year.
The agency did not give any information about the types of explosives used most frequently or any other details, but Swedish media have reported
some attacks using make-shift bombs made from vacuum flasks packed with explosive material.
The figures were part of a report on crime rates which showed that
overall, the number of crimes reported to the police was slightly down last year.
A total of more than 1.5 million crimes were reported in Sweden in 2019, representing only a very slight overall change from the previous year. But there were still significant changes, including an increase in rapes, drugs-related crimes, vandalism, and a decrease in home break-ins and thefts. The Local
The public outcry over increased violence has forced the government to boost spending on the police and to launch a programme to fight organised crime as law and order becomes one of the main political battlefields.
“The government has provided extra resources and the police are taking concerted measures now against gang violence,” Minister for Home Affairs Mikael Damberg said in an emailed comment to Reuters. "With the efforts we are making, I am convinced that we can turn this around.
Society is stronger than these criminal gangs.”
You guys keep saying that and then you invite in those completely foreign to your society. Your society is not what it once was; you have changed it forever.
Opposition politicians, however, have blamed the government for years of inaction.
“
This government has lost control over crime in Sweden. We have seen in recent years how the number of fatalities has increased. Now bomb blasts are also increasing in a way that lacks international equivalence,” said Ulf Kristersson, leader of opposition party the Moderates.
Police have identified around 60 deprived areas, mainly in and around larger cities, where unemployment is high, incomes low and where drugs and gangs have gained a firm foothold.
In November, they set up the task force to fight violent crime following the death of a 15-year-old boy in Malmo when a gunman open fire on a pizza restaurant.
At the time, the police said the task force would focus on getting criminals off the streets, reducing access to guns and explosives and increasing the police presence in affected areas.
However, they said the problems were impossible to solve by the police alone. “There is no silver bullet. There is no simple solution to complex problems,” Stefan Hector, the head of the task force, said in November.
An explosion on Sunday in one of Stockholm’s most high-end neighbourhoods destroyed part of a residential building and several cars parked outside. The blast could be heard several kilometres away. No one was injured.
In a separate incident, in June, 20 people were wounded when a bomb exploded on a residential street in Linkoping in southern Sweden.
Reporting by Simon Johnson; Additional reporting by Anna Ringstrom; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Alison Williams
Explosive balloon cluster reaches Jerusalem,
devices upgraded, more deadly
Explosive balloon cluster reaches Jerusalem, devices upgraded, more deadlyGaza terrorists prepare fire balloons.
(TPS/Majdi Fathi)
The explosive devices are upgraded and are equipped with elements to increase casualties among the civilian population.
By Aryeh Savir, TPS
A cluster of balloons tied to an explosive device that was launched by terrorists from the Gaza Strip landed on Monday in the town of Mesilat Zion, just a short drive away from Jerusalem.
A police sapper who was alerted to scene safely dismantled the explosive charge, with no injuries or damage.
Police again reminded the public that extreme caution should be exercised when encountering such suspicious objects, kites and balloons, which may be connected to explosives or flammable materials and may “endanger public peace if it is not dealt with responsibility.”
The explosive and flammable balloon attacks have returned to haunt Israel’s residents in the south in the past week after several months in which such attacks from Gaza ceased.
The explosive devices are upgraded and are equipped with elements to increase casualties among the civilian population.
The IDF estimates that the
Islamic Jihad terrorist organization is responsible for the renewed rocket fire and the explosive balloons attacks.
The terrorists have vowed to continue with these airborne attacks.
The IDF responded to Thursday’s attacks with a strike against Hamas targets in Gaza but has since not responded to the attacks in the following days.
Norwegian libertarian party quits government leaving coalition without majority over ISIS bride repatriation
Norway's Progress party leader and Finance Minister Siv Jensen speaks during a news conference in Oslo © Fredrik Varfjell
Norway’s Progress Party has quit the country’s coalition government after a jihadist bride and her children were allowed to return from Syria. The move leaves the remaining coalition partners ruling in a minority.
Finance Minister Siv Jensen announced the resignation of her Progress Party on Monday, after
a woman suspected of marrying two Islamic State jihadists in Syria was given assistance to return to Norway over the weekend. The Norwegian government aided the woman’s return out of concern for the welfare of her children, but Jensen’s party had vehemently opposed any repatriation for Islamist fighters or their spouses.
“I brought us into government, and now I’m bringing the party out,” Jensen told reporters on Monday, adding that her Conservative, Liberal, and Christian Democratic coalition partners had forced her to make “too many compromises” to her platform of tax cuts and immigration restrictions.
Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg said that she will remain in office as head of a minority coalition, and will fill the seven cabinet posts left vacant after the Progress Party’s departure. Early elections are not allowed by Norway’s constitution, and voters will decide the next government in September 2021.
The alleged IS bride is of Pakistani origin, and left Norway for Syria in 2013. She is believed to have married a Norwegian-Chilean IS fighter that year. The fighter, Bastian Vasquez, threatened the Norwegian government in a video he posted to YouTube. Another IS propaganda video shows Vasquez admitting to multiple murders and blowing up a police station, supposedly with Iraqi soldiers inside.
The woman remarried after Vasquez’s death in 2015. She has been held in a refugee camp in northern Syria since last March, along with her five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. The eldest child has a long-term illness, believed to be cystic fibrosis.
The decision to bring the woman and her children back to Norway was made last week on
“humanitarian grounds,” Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said.
Progress Party members greeted that announcement with derision.
“The government negotiated with a terrorist,” lawmaker Roy Steffensen tweeted last week. “Terrorists won.”
Norway is not the only country to welcome back its IS spouses.
Former Irish soldier Lisa Smith, who married an IS jihadist and moved to Syria in 2015, was returned to Dublin last month from Istanbul, where she had been living since her capture by Turkish forces. Smith was arrested upon arrival.
Other European countries have been more reluctant to repatriate jihadists and their families – to the consternation of American and Turkish authorities, who are holding many of the captured fighters in Middle-Eastern prison camps.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly chastised European leaders for not taking back the captured jihadis. “Would you like some nice ISIS fighters?” he asked at a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron last month. "I can give them to you. You can take everyone you want.”
The Norwegian woman was arrested upon her return, and faces up to six years in prison if found guilty of participating in a terrorist organization.
Wreckage found - likely bombed Korean Air flight from 1987
By Elizabeth Shim
Korean Air Flight 858 was not recovered following its midair explosion on November 29, 1987,
but a South Korean network said Thursday they may have found the wreckage. File Photo by UPI
(UPI) --
A South Korean television network says the wreckage of Korean Air Flight 858, which exploded midair on Nov. 29, 1987, may have been found in the Andaman Sea near Myanmar following a yearlong investigation.
MBC reported Thursday
the plane carrying 115 passengers and crew, bombed by North Korean spy Kim Hyon-hui, was never recovered following the attack.
The wreckage was detected using a 3D sonar. The South Korean television crew focused on an area after local fishermen spoke of a "large object" located about 164 feet beneath the water's surface.
The crew was able to identify a 33 foot-long wing-shaped object in the shadows of the seabed. An object that appeared to be an engine was also found, according to the report.
The fuselage of a plane, measuring about 90 feet long, was nearby as well, MBC reported. Other objects were crushed beyond recognition, but appeared to be debris and machine parts.
Kim Sung-jeon, a former civil aircraft pilot and aviation expert, told the network the wing-like object was likely the outside portion of the left wing of the plane.
Kim Hyon-hui, the
North Korean terrorist who was captured then attempted suicide, confessed to planting the bomb on the flight. She later resettled in the South.
Kim was in the news in 2018 for attacking the families of perished victims, calling them pro-Pyongyang collaborators.
Seoul pardoned Kim more than three decades ago, but civic groups want more information on the attack, which is classified, according to Yonhap.
South Korean news service Tongil News has sued Seoul's national intelligence service for not disclosing more information. Plaintiffs say they want to know whether the attack was used for political purposes ahead of a presidential election in 1987.
Yikes, that's quite an accusation!
Grenades thrown at wedding party in Afghanistan wound 20
By Allen Cone
(UPI) --
Twenty wedding guests, including children, were wounded by hand grenades in eastern Afghanistan, police said Sunday.
The incident took place late Saturday in the Waris village of Ali Shir district in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province, which borders Pakistan, provincial police spokesman Haider Adi said in a report by Xinhua.
Unknown men entered the building.
The official said that an investigation had been initiated but
no suspects or motive have been given.
Last August, a suicide bomber from the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan killed 63 people at a wedding in Kabul. That was the most deadly attack in the capital in 2019.
Elsewhere Saturday, a bystander was killed and four other civilians were wounded when a police vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in the capital, Kabul. Police said Sunday no group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Taliban has been linked to previous attacks on Afghanistan security forces.
19 Malian soldiers killed by armed men: Military
6 more killed last week
Al Jazeera
Malian soldiers have come under repeated attacks from armed groups [File: Luc Gnago/Reuters]
At least 19 soldiers were killed in an attack on a military post in central Mali on Sunday.
The attack took place in Sokolo military camp in the Segou region, where armed fighters linked to al-Qaeda are known to operate.
"The provisional toll is 19 dead, five wounded," Malian Armed Forces said on Twitter.
A local politician told AFP news agency
all those killed were troops or paramilitary police officers, adding he saw "two other bodies outside the camp".
"They were well-armed. They entered the Sokolo camp. They took away a lot of material," he said, adding some were able to escape the camp.
The assault comes after
a similar attack on Thursday by armed men in Dioungani, an area in the country's volatile Mopti region near the border with Burkina Faso, killing at least six soldiers.
"There were more than 100 attackers," said Sokolo resident Baba Gakou.
"They arrived at five in the morning. They cut off any withdrawal by the gendarmes. The firing stopped at 7am," he said, adding
the assailants left with all the weapons and vehicles at the camp.
"They picked up all their dead. They did not touch anyone in the village."
Struggle with armed groups
Mali has struggled to contain an armed uprising that erupted in the north in 2012 and has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians in the years since.
More than 140 Malian soldiers reportedly died in attacks between September and December alone.
The conflict has engulfed the centre of the country and spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger - despite the presence of 4,500 French troops in the Sahel region, plus a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force.
On Wednesday, Mali announced it would hold legislative elections in late March after repeated postponements because of insecurity and political infighting.
The conduct of the elections was a key recommendation from crisis talks in December aimed at exploring non-military solutions to the worsening violence.
Three Jordanians charged for IS-inspired attack
City News, Vancouver
AMMAN, Jordan —
Three Jordanian men appeared in court Sunday to face charges connected to the stabbing of eight people at a popular archaeological site in northern Jordan in November in an attack allegedly inspired by the Islamic State group.
The military judge presiding over the trial accused the men of
supporting Islamic State ideology and carrying out the attack at Jerash to avenge the death of late IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
November’s incident took place in
Jerash, one of Jordan’s most visited archaeological sites, an ancient city whose ruins include a Roman amphitheatre and a columned road.
Jordan relies heavily on incoming tourism.
Islamist militant groups have repeatedly targeted the country’s tourist sites to impact the economy and embarrass the government.
Mustafa Abu Tuameh, 22,
is accused of stabbing eight people, including one Swiss and three Mexican tourists, and four Jordanians. None of the victims suffered life-threatening wounds. Gruesome footage of the attack was captured by bystanders.
At the time of the attack, the Jordanian army’s news site identified
Abu Tuameh as a resident of the nearby Palestinian refugee camp.
Family members said he had recently become very religious and apparently planned to die in the attack.
But, apparently, they didn't bother to tell anyone.
Abu Tuameh and the two other defendants allegedly planned to carry out another attack on a church in northern Jordan.
Osama Abu-Amra, 22,
faces charges of plotting a terrorist act, and attempting to join a terrorist organization. Khaled al-Soufi, 21, was charged with promoting the ideas of a terrorist organization.
The three defendants pleaded innocent to the charges. If convicted, they could face up to 15 years in prison.
The Associated Press
