Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 171

The recent assertion by the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, the official Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, that the militant group has now formally established a presence in Lebanon appears to have confirmed fears – already fuelled by over a dozen deadly attacks and explosions, including suicide bombings – that the violent extremism engulfing Syria poses a growing danger to its small western neighbor.

Just days before Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani made his claim during his first-ever interview, videos circulated online showing a group calling itself “Jabhat al-Nusra in Lebanon” firing Grad rockets at the northeastern Beqaa town of Hermel, resulting in three injuries. And on Monday, unconfirmed reports emerged of Hezbollah ambushing and killing dozens of Jabhat al-Nusra gunmen in a border region east of Baalbek.

Despite these incidents, however, security analysts told NOW Jabhat al-Nusra’s presence in Lebanon likely took the form of only a few, geographically scattered individuals, rather than a physical base or a unified battalion.

“I doubt that Jabhat al-Nusra, or any terrorist organization, really has an official representation in Lebanon,” said Nizar Abd al-Qader, a former Lebanese army general. “Though I feel that in some places there are probably some individuals who sympathize with it or have been fighting along with them in certain battles, either in Iraq or Syria.”

“This needs to be verified. Jawlani’s statement is not enough,” concurred Riad Kahwaji, founder and CEO of the Institute for Near East & Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA), who nevertheless added that it would be unsurprising if it turned out to be true.

On December 27 2013 17:30 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Breaking News: Car bomb has killed four in Beirut one being the former economic minister of Lebanon.

A senior aide to the former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri has been assassinated by a large car bomb in central Beirut. Fifteen other people were injured in the blast, which destroyed part of a neighbourhood near Hariri's compound.

Hariri-linked media reported that Mohamad Chatah, a key adviser to the now exiled leader died in the blast. He was believed to have been en route to a meeting at the nearby headquarters, where he kept an office. Chatah was an outspoken critic of the Syrian regime and of Hezbollah, which has held sway over the Lebanese government since Hariri was ousted as leader three years ago.

Chatah, 62, is the second senior opposition figure to have been killed in the past 14 months. The political killing of figures linked to the Hariris dates back nine years.

In October last year, Wissam al-Hassan, the head of the Internal Security Forces intelligence branch, was also killed by a car bomb. He was buried several hundred metres from the scene of Friday's blast in a shrine alongside former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, the patriarch of the western-leaning 14 March alliance whose assassination in February 2014 sparked a new era of instability in post-civil war Lebanon.

BEIRUT: Eight villages in northeastern Syria have been seized by Kurdish fighters, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday.

The Observatory said that units of the YPG, or People’s Protection Units, took over the villages in fighting with militants from ISIS that flared up Thursday night and continued into the following day. The Kurdish militants, who say they have mobilized to confront both regime forces and rebel groups, have now seized a total of eight villages near the town of Qamishli, which is located in the province of Hassakeh. Islamist rebel groups also fought against Kurdish groups in other locations, the Observatory said, citing reports from local activists.

BAGHDAD — Radical Sunni militants aligned with Al Qaeda threatened on Thursday to seize control of Falluja and Ramadi, two of the most important cities in Iraq, setting fire to police stations, freeing prisoners from jail and occupying mosques, as the government rushed troop reinforcements to the areas.

Dressed in black and waving the flag of Al Qaeda, the militants put out calls over mosque loudspeakers for men to join their struggle in both cities in western Anbar Province, which were important battlegrounds during the American-led war in Iraq and remain hotbeds of Sunni extremism.

The violence in Ramadi and Falluja had implications beyond Anbar’s borders, as the Sunni militants fought beneath the same banner as the most hard-line jihadists in Syria — the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.