Saturday, December 27, 2014

Slow Saturday Special: Saddam is Alive!

He's been found in Pakistan (where many corpses go, it seems):

"One of suspected attack planners killed in Pakistan" Associated Press  December 27, 2014

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Security forces killed an alleged planner of the recent deadly attack on a school in Peshawar, officials said Friday, and a suspected US drone fired missiles at two compounds in the North Waziristan tribal region, killing at least seven alleged militants.

Alleged, suspected, alleged.

Shahab Ali Shah, head of police administration in the Khyber tribal region, said security forces, acting on intelligence information, conducted a raid in the Bara area late Thursday night. They fought a gun battle with the militant commander known as Saddam and his accomplices.

Shah said Saddam was killed in the hourlong shootout; his six accomplices were injured and arrested. He said Saddam helped plan the school attack and was also involved in attacks on health workers giving polio vaccinations in the Peshawar valley.

On Dec. 16, militants strapped with explosives broke into a military-run school in Peshawar and killed 148 people — most of them children.

Four intelligence officials said Friday’s drone strikes hit the compounds of the Punjabi Taliban and a group of Uzbek militants in North Waziristan.

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Also see: Pakistan's Public Schools 

And there is something else you must read about Saddam's capture.

You learn anything?

NEXT DAY UPDATE:

"Pakistani military kills 39 militants near Afghan border" by Zarar Khan, Associated Press  December 27, 2014

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani warplanes and troops killed 39 militants as part of an ongoing operation in a volatile tribal region near the Afghan border, the Pakistani military said.

The airstrikes were carried out Friday evening in the Datta Khel area of the North Waziristan tribal region, an army statement said Saturday, adding that an underground tunnel system and a large underground cache of weapons and ammunition were also destroyed.

The military claimed several important militant commanders were among the dead but didn’t provide further details on the identities of the slain militants.

Also late Friday night, Pakistani troops ambushed a large assembly of militants on the border between the Orakzai and Khyber tribal regions, the statement said.

It said an intense battle took place in which 16 militants were killed and another 20 injured. Four army soldiers were injured in the shootout, the statement said.

The army says it has killed more than 1,200 militants since the start of a massive offensive launched June 15 against militants in North Waziristan. The military offensive was launched after a terrorist attack on Pakistan’s largest airport in Karachi.

The North Waziristan tribal region is one of seven tribal regions near the Afghan border where local and foreign militants have found safe haven for years.

In a separate development, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday urged Pakistan’s leader to stop the execution of convicts and reimpose a moratorium on the death penalty. The moratorium was dropped after the recent deadly school attack in the northwest region of the country.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Ban made the appeal during a telephone call with Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

In the wake of the Pakistani Taliban school massacre on Dec. 16 that killed 149 people, most of them students, the government reinstated the death penalty and has already executed six people.

Was it real or a Sandy Hook style hoax?

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