Al-Qaida growing in strength and numbers in Africa

Image via Wikipedia

clipped from news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON – Al-Qaida's terror network in North Africa is growing more active and attracting new recruits, threatening to further destabilize the continent's already vulnerable Sahara region, according to U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials. The North African faction, which calls itself Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is still small and largely isolated, numbering a couple hundred militants based mostly in the vast desert of northern Mali. But signs of stepped-up activity and the group's advancing potential for growth worry analysts familiar with the region. The Mali-based militants have yet to show a capability to launch such foreign attacks, but are widening their involvement in kidnapping and the narcotics trade, reaping profits that could be used to expand terror operations, officials and analysts said. "For too long, al-Qaida's growth in this critical region of Africa has been overlooked,"

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sahelian Foreign Ministers Discuss al-Qaida Threat (starting-points.blogspot.com)
• Al-Qaida growing in strength and numbers in Africa (chinadaily.com.cn)
• French president visits freed hostage in Mali (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Al-Qaida growing in strength and numbers in Africa (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Al-Qaida growing in strength and numbers in Africa (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• French hostage freed in Mali (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Senior official: Al-Qaida leader believed killed (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Cocaine, kidnapping and the Al-Qaeda cash squeeze

Image via Wikipedia

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Hit by a global crackdown on their wealthy financiers, Bin Laden's followers have been forced to abandon their Koranic principles to pursue their holy war. The three al-Qaeda agents assured the Colombians that they would have no problem moving their shipment of European-bound cocaine through the Islamist badlands of the Sahara. The trio, all from the impoverished desert nation of Mali, thought they were setting up a deal with representatives of Colombia's Marxist FARC guerrillas to smuggle up to 1,000 kgs of cocaine. Anti-terrorism officials believe the case may prove a crucial landmark in the battle against al-Qaeda: it is the first time that anyone linked to the terror group has faced prosecution for its newest money-spinning activity, narco-terrorism. But in some regions al-Qaeda is still struggling to garner all the cash it needs to operate as effectively as it would like. Nonetheless, al-Qaeda still raises some funding from individuals and charities in the Persian Gulf

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cocaine, kidnapping and the Al-Qaeda cash squeeze (telegraph.co.uk)
• US al-Qaeda spokesman 'arrested' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• The newest addition to Canada's terror watch (cbc.ca)
• Al-Qaeda Leader Not Really Captured (manolith.com)
• You: US al-Qaeda spokesman Adamn Gadahn 'arrested in Pakistan' (telegraph.co.uk)

Report: France exposed soldiers to radiation

Image via Wikipedia

clipped from news.yahoo.com PARIS – France's military purposely exposed soldiers to a 1961 nuclear test in the Sahara Desert to study how the atomic bomb would affect their bodies and minds, a French news report said Tuesday, citing a classified defense document. The defense report said soldiers emerged from their shelters 20 minutes after the explosion "and looked with apprehension at the cloud," Le Parisien said. Soldiers on foot advanced toward the epicenter, stopping 700 meters (765 yards) away, the report said. Armored reconnaissance vehicles advanced to 275 meters (300 yards) from the site. The men wore gas masks, but military officials concluded that such protection slowed down maneuvers and decided that in the future, foot soldiers should replace them with simple anti-dusk masks, Le Parisien said, citing the report. France's parliament last year passed a law to compensate victims who acquired health problems following the tests, with sums to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Related articles by Zemanta

• French soldiers 'deliberately exposed to radiation' during nuclear tests (guardian.co.uk)
• French 'exposed to nuclear tests' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• French soldiers ordered to play war games yards from nuclear test point zero (telegraph.co.uk)
• 3 world powers criticize Iranian enrichment (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• 3 World Powers Criticize Iranian Enrichment (abcnews.go.com)