Just thought I would drop this load on you early this morning (sound of plane then banking away).....
"Al Shabab say they overran African Union base in Somalia, killing dozens" by Mohammed Ibrahim New York Times January 15, 2016
That's the NYT phonetic spelling of what is widely known as Al-CIA-Bob.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The militant group Al Shabab said Friday that it had overrun an African Union base in a village in southern Somalia and killed dozens of peacekeepers.
Residents described what appeared to be a suicide car bombing, followed by a ferocious firefight that lasted at least five hours. The African Union confirmed an attack on its troops. But central details, including the identity of those killed, were not immediately clear.
Sheikh Abdulaziz Abu Muscab, a spokesman for the Al Shabab, which is affiliated with al-Qaida, said the group had killed 63 Kenyan soldiers at the African Union base near the village of El-Adde and had seized ammunition and military vehicles.
A Kenyan military spokesman said that the attack had targeted a Somali military camp, next to the African Union base, and that most of the dead were Somalis, contrary to claims by the Al Shabab.
But President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya said, “Some of our patriots in uniform paid the ultimate price.” He described their loss as “heartbreaking.”
The African Union Mission in Somalia, known as Amisom, said on Twitter that “Amisom can confirm that there was an attack on our troops in El-Adde,” but it did not provide further details.
Residents in the surrounding region of Gedo said that they had seen Kenyan military jets conducting airstrikes in the area after an assault by Al Shabab fighters.
“They have taken over the base and the village, and nobody knows the whereabouts of the KDF forces at the base,” a resident of Garbahaarrey, the capital of the Gedo region, who gave only his middle name, Khadar, said in a phone interview, referring to the Kenyan Defense Forces. “This is a disaster unfolding, which is threatening to our peace.”
The Daily Nation, a newspaper in Nairobi, Kenya, quoted a Kenyan military spokesman, David Obonyo, as saying that it was a Somali National Army camp that was overrun, not the African Union base.
“Shabab attacked the SNA camp, which is in close proximity to the KDF camp at El-Adde,” Obonyo said. “The SNA camp was overrun, and KDF troops under Amisom counterattacked in support of SNA. The fighting is still going on. KDF will provide more information once it becomes available.”
Al Shabab, a fundamentalist group that wants to impose Shariah law in the country, has waged a decade-long insurgency against the Somali government.
So which candidate are they backing in the U.S. elections, Trump or Sanders?
The group has increasingly targeted Kenya, which intervened in Somalia in 2011 in support of the government and the African Union peacekeeping mission. It was behind an assault on a Nairobi shopping mall in September 2013 that killed 67 people and an attack on a university in Garissa, in northeastern Kenya, in April, that killed 147 people.
I hate to say it, but both of those are crisis drill crap reported as real, an increasingly common phenomena with the agenda-pushing war pre$$.
Al Shabab fighters killed dozens of Burundian forces in June and Ugandan soldiers in September in attacks on African Union bases outside the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Already took care of Uganda and Burundi is coming up soon.
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Right near the border we are:
"Kenya rattled as Al Shabab turns sights on Somalia military targets" New York Times January 20, 2016
NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali and Western officials say that 80 to 100 Kenyan soldiers — and possibly more — were massacred during an attack by scores of Al Shabab militants on a Kenyan military base place Friday. The militants overran the base, held it for several hours and made off with sensitive communications equipment, artillery pieces that can fire 10 miles and several U.S.-made armored Humvees.
But since then, Kenya’s leaders have refused to disclose the number of dead or other details, trying to soften the blow of what may be the worst military disaster in this country’s history.
“This has been a shock,” said Yusuf Hassan, a member of Kenya’s parliament. “We’re not Burundi, we’re not Ethiopia, we’re not Uganda. Our country does not have a history of war.”
Is that a shot at them?
The attack could mark a turning point for Al Shabab, one of Africa’s most violent militant groups.
I've seen a million "turning points" in my paper since March 2003.
In recent years, Al Shabab have lost much of their territory, reduced to small bands of famished fighters creeping around Somalia’s rural areas and attacking soft targets in Kenya.
I was told they were stealing food aid and selling the surplus, but that was months if not years ago. Now they look like a mercenary army that has been abandoned by its patron.
Now, it seems, they are training their sights on the hardest targets out there — military bases. In the past months, Al Shabab fighters have staged assaults against Ethiopian, Ugandan and Burundian troops.
Yeah, that's weird. Must have been fed.
There have been reports that small bands of Kenyan soldiers fled into the desert and survived the attack, but so far only four from the El-Adde base — all of them wounded — have made it back to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. The rest are dead, missing or captured.
“I have a wife and two children back home,” said one Kenyan prisoner of war in a recording that Al Shabab released. “On 15 January, 2016, the camp was raided by the Al Shabab, whereby they overpowered us.”
That's a violation off international law and a war crime (and likely pure propaganda for public perception, too).
Before the recording cut out, the soldier said: “Most of our friends were killed.”
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I think I strayed over.....
"A Kenyan police official says an Islamic extremist died in Kenya’s north when a roadside bomb he was planting exploded. Suleiman Rashid, a senior officer in the northern town of Mandera, said Saturday that officers on patrol came across five suspected members of Somalia’s Al Shabab extremist group planting a roadside bomb. Rashid said the officers shot at the suspected rebels who panicked and detonated the bomb, killing one insurgent while the others escaped. Mandera has experienced several attacks in this month that officials attribute to a group that has splintered from Al Shabab, who are allied to Al Qaeda, and have instead pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Al Shabab has vowed retribution on Kenya for sending troops to Somalia to fight extremists."
Time to get back and relax:
"Somalia attack turns symbol of resurgence into one of grief" by Abdi Guled Associated Press January 22, 2016
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Among the survivors of Al Shabab’s attack on a beachside restaurant in Somalia’s capital was Mohamed Abdiqani Kheyre. He is only 3 years old, and his mother was killed.
Witnesses said the Islamic extremists entered the restaurant from the beach Thursday evening, shouting ‘‘Allahu akbar,’’ Arabic for ‘‘God is great,’’ as they fired at people indiscriminately.
That, my friends, is code for covert western intelligence agency operations.
Once you know what the kitchen looks like, the experience is never the same.
On Friday, relatives were identifying the dead, who numbered around 20. The bodies were laid out on the sand, their heads covered by yellow tablecloths, many soaked with blood. Some family members burst into tears upon discovering the body of a loved one.
Unfortunately, I think the war dead are all too real.
The beach, which symbolized the resurgence of Somalia’s capital in recent years with people flocking to the shore and swimming in the Indian Ocean, had become a scene of bottomless grief.
One woman beat her chest, whispering the name of her son who was killed in the attack. She collapsed as his bloodied body was transported into an ambulance.
‘‘They randomly fired at people sitting near the beach before entering the restaurant,’’ said Ahmed Nur, who was strolling along the shoreline when the attack happened. A party had been taking place when the attack started.
After identifying the dead, relatives carried bodies away.
The Liido Seafood restaurant was littered with blood-stained, overturned chairs, tables, shoes and bullet casings, the walls scarred from bullet impacts and blackened with soot.
I'll have to look at the photos provided.
The attack came a week after Al Shabab overran a Kenyan army base in Somalia, signaling the group’s resilience despite military setbacks inflicted by a U.S.-backed regional force operating in the country.
That's what happens when the U.S. plays both sides of a war to further advance its geopolitical goals.
I mean, Russia comes in and smashes 'em in Syria a year-and-a-half after the ineffectual U.S. campaign?
C'mon!
On a normal Friday, Liido Beach would be packed with hundreds of people surfing, swimming and strolling along the white sand. On this day, armed soldiers stood guard near the beach. Fishing boats that would normally transport picnickers drifted at anchor in the blue waters.
Whatever happened to all those Somali pirates, anyway? World still patrolling?
‘‘It’s a sad day, whenever a hope comes up it gets dashed by such attacks. This city’s future is precarious,’’ said Mumina Ahmed, a Somali-American who returned to Mogadishu last week after 14 years in Virginia.
Somali Security Minister Abdirizak Omar Mohamed said the suspected leader of the attack has been arrested.
The assault on civilians relaxing along the beachfront echoed an attack by an Islamic extremist at a tourist beach in Tunisia last year. Several dozen people, mostly Britons, died in that slaughter.
Now I am again starting to have questions regarding the false flag nature of this thing.
Survivors of the Liido Seafood attack said that militants forced restaurant’s guests onto the ground before randomly killing them.
Mohamed was wounded in the attack, and on Friday the little boy’s right arm and neck were bandaged as he lay on a hospital bed, as a new generation came to know the violence that has afflicted this Horn of Africa nation for more than two decades.
His aunt, Halima Hassan, tended to Mohamed, who gazed up at her with big eyes.
The security forces took control of the restaurant just before dawn, said Capt. Mohamed Hussein, speaking from the scene.
Al Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, in a broadcast on its online radio late Thursday.
That's when the printed paper turned it off.
Some people spent terrifying hours at the scene, not knowing if they would live to see the dawn.
‘‘I was intending to go out but suddenly we heard a heavy explosion followed by gunfire. ... I saw a militant fighter shooting indiscriminately at everybody. Then I locked myself inside a room until we were evacuated peacefully by the security forces,’’ said Abdulkadir Mohamed Somow, who had been trapped inside the restaurant.
Blasts and bursts of gunfire could be heard as Somali special forces went from room to room, pursuing the Al Shabab gunmen.
Hussein, the police official, said security forces rescued many people who had been trapped.
Yes, people become grateful for their own repression.
While Al Shabab fighters fled Mogadishu in 2011 under pressure from an African Union military force, they have managed to carry out sporadic bombings and shootings in the capital and launch coordinated attacks against AU forces in the countryside.
Al Shabab attacked Kenyan peacekeepers in southwestern Somalia last week, and overran their base. The al-Qaida-linked group said it had killed about 100 Kenyans and seized weapons and military vehicles. The Kenyan government has given no death toll.
Oh, right, the CIA-Duh group was able to rearm.
Are they eating good yet?
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Time to jet out of Somalia:
"Explosion forces plane to make emergency landing in Somalia" Associated Press February 03, 2016
MOGADISHU, Somalia — An explosion and fire blew a gaping hole in a commercial airliner Tuesday, forcing it to make an emergency landing at Mogadishu’s international airport, officials and witnesses said.
The pilot said he believed the explosion was caused by a bomb. An aviation expert who looked at photographs of the hole in the fuselage said the damage was consistent with an explosive device.
Uh-oh!
‘‘I think it was a bomb,’’ said the Serbian pilot, Vladimir Vodopivec, who was quoted by Belgrade daily Blic. ‘‘Luckily, the flight controls were not damaged so I could return and land at the airport. . . . We lost pressure in the cabin. Thank God it ended well,’’ he said.
Also see: Somali plane explosion recounted by pilot
Awale Kullane, Somalia’s deputy ambassador to the UN who was on board the flight, said on Facebook that he ‘‘heard a loud noise and couldn’t see anything but smoke for a few seconds.’’ When visibility returned he realized ‘‘quite a chunk’’ of the plane was missing, he wrote....
Was he worth assassinating?
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Related:
"A suicide bomber is suspected to have set off the explosive that blew a hole in a jetliner, sucked the man out of the plane and forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing on Tuesday in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, Somali officials said Saturday. "Experts who were investigating the cause of the blast in the plane concluded that a bomb was the cause," said Ali Jama Jangali, Somalia's transport minister at a press conference in Mogadishu. One passenger, Abdullahi Abdisalam Borle, died, according to Somali officials who did not give any details. A man's body was found in the town of Balad, about 18 miles north of Mogadishu, according to police who said he might have been blown from the plane. The man killed in the incident is suspected to have been a suicide bomber, the Associated Press was told by a senior Somali civilian aviation official."
Al-Shabab did not claimed responsibility for the incident?
"Pilot in Somalia emergency says airport security was zero" by Dusan Stojanovic Associated Press February 08, 2016
BELGRADE, Serbia — The Serb pilot who landed a jetliner in Somalia with a gaping hole in its fuselage said Sunday he never doubted that it was caused by a bomb and described the security surround the airplane at Mogadishu Airport as ‘‘zero.’’
I'll bet it was -- once again -- an Israeli firm that handled it.
A suicide bomber was suspected to have set off the explosive inside the Daallo Airlines plane, Somali officials said Saturday. The blast sucked a male passenger out of the plane and forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing Tuesday in Somalia’s capital, they said.
The explosion happened about 15 minutes after the plane, with 75 passengers on board, took off from the airport and was at 11,000 feet ascending toward 31,000 feet.
‘‘When we went past 10,000 feet, we switched off the fasten belts sign and the cabin crew started serving passengers,’’ pilot captain Vlatko Vodopivec said. ‘‘When we climbed past 11,000 feet, it exploded. At first, I thought it was a window breaking. However, we soon sensed the smell of the explosives when smoke came rushing into the cockpit.’’
‘‘All lasted very shortly,’’ he said. ‘‘We immediately demanded an emergency return to the airport because that was the only solution. With a heavy heart, because there the security is minimal and we had to remain there for a couple of days afterward.’’
If the explosion happened at a higher altitude, the hole in the fuselage might have caused more severe structural damage, he said.
Because the plane was at a lower altitude, he was able to land safely, he said.
‘‘The plane acted normally and we virtually returned normally,’’ he said. “Engines and hydraulics worked normally.’’
The explosion killed one passenger, Abdullahi Abdisalam Borle, according to Somali officials who did not give further details. A man’s body was found in the town of Balad, 30 about 18 miles north of Mogadishu, according to police who said he might have been blown from the plane.
Borle is suspected to have been the suicide bomber, according to a senior Somali civil aviation official who insisted on anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. Six people have been arrested in connection with the blast after examinations of close-circuit images in the airport, a senior Somali intelligence official said.
The flight was bound for Djibouti, which is the base for Daallo Airlines.
The pilot blamed the incident on the lack of security around the plane at Mogadishu Airport, describing the facility as chaotic.
‘‘The security is zero. When we park there, some 20 to 30 people come to the tarmac,’’ said Vodopivec, a veteran pilot who has made numerous flights to the airport. ‘‘No one has a badge or those yellow vests. They enter and leave the plane, and no one knows who is who ... They can put anything inside when passengers leave the aircraft.’’
Somalia’s government has said it will tighten security at the airport.
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This next flight was cancelled by my printed Globe:
"Video shows laptop handed to Somalia bomb suspect" Associated Press February 08, 2016
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Security video footage taken at Mogadishu airport shows two men handing what looks like a laptop computer to a suspected suicide bomber after he passed through the security checkpoint, Somalia’s government spokesman said Sunday.
At least one of the men delivering the laptop was an airport employee, government spokesman Abdisalam Aato said.
Authorities suspect that the man who received the laptop later exploded a bomb aboard the Daallo Airlines jet, killing himself and blowing a gaping hole in the fuselage on Tuesday. The pilot made an emergency landing back at the Mogadishu airport.
It is believed the laptop-like device was the bomb that caused the explosion. The plane’s pilot said that if the explosion happened when the aircraft was at a higher altitude it could have caused the jet to crash.
‘‘At least 20 people, including the two men in the CCTV footage who handed over the laptop to the suspected bomber, were arrested in connection with the explosion in the aircraft,’’ said Aato.
‘‘It was a deliberate act of terrorism,’’ he said. ‘‘Investigations are still ongoing.’’
Somalia’s government has said it will tighten security at the airport.
The video shows two men, one in a bright orange airport security vest, handing the bag to a passenger waiting to board. The video of the apparent security lapse fits with the description of lax security by the pilot of the plane.
‘‘The security is zero,’’ pilot Vlatko Vodopivec said.
The explosion happened about 15 minutes after the plane, with 75 passengers on board, took off from the airport and was at 11,000 feet, ascending toward 31,000 feet.
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And then we are just left sitting there.
I suppose you could scroll around Somalia to kill time.
