UK raises terror threat level after concert carnage

British police patrol through Trafalgar Square in central London on Tuesday, a day after a deadly terror attack at the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena. (AFP / Daniel Leal-Olivas)
Updated 24 May 2017
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UK raises terror threat level after concert carnage

MANCHESTER, England: Britain is imminently facing another terror attack, Prime Minister Theresa May warned Tuesday as she deployed soldiers at key sites after a suicide bomber killed 22 people at a pop concert in Manchester.
May said the national terror threat level was being raised from severe to critical, which means another attack is expected “imminently.”
Her dramatic statement came after 22-year-old Salman Abedi, reportedly a Briton of Libyan descent, was identified as the perpetrator behind Monday’s deadly attack, whose victims included an eight-year-old girl.
“It is a possibility we cannot ignore that there is a wider group of individuals linked to this attack,” May said at her Downing Street office.
She announced that the army would be deployed on the streets to support armed police under a plan codenamed Operation Temperer, which was developed in the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris terror attacks.
“This means that armed police officers responsible for duties such as guarding key sites will be replaced by members of the armed forces, which will allow the police to significantly increase the number of armed officers on patrol in key locations.”
“You might also see military personnel deployed at certain events such as concerts and sports matches, helping the police to keep the public safe,” she said.
Started in 2006, the terror threat level is set by a unit based in the MI5 domestic security service.
“Critical” is the highest of five levels and has only been briefly reached twice before and “means an attack is expected imminently.”
Police named Abedi as the suspected suicide bomber, as the Daesh jihadist group claimed responsibility for the carnage.
British media said he was born in Manchester, northwest England, and that his Libyan parents had fled the regime of dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
Monday’s attack came just over two weeks before Britain votes in a general election and is the latest in a series of deadly incidents across Europe.
Earlier attacks, including vehicle-borne assaults in Berlin and Stockholm, have coincided with an offensive on Daesh redoubts in Syria and Iraq by US, British and other Western forces.
Threatening more attacks, Daesh said in a statement published on its social media channels: “One of the caliphate’s soldiers placed bombs among the crowds.”
The suicide bombing came at the conclusion of US pop star Ariana Grande’s concert at the 21,000-capacity Manchester Arena, one of Europe’s largest indoor venues.
Witnesses described the horror when the bomber blew himself up.
“When we left, down the stairs there was probably early teenagers lying on the floor covered in blood and blood on the walls where they’d been laid, so it was just horrifying,” female concert-goer Alex Grayson told AFP.
Police staged an armed raid on a Manchester address believed to be where Abedi lived, carrying out a controlled explosion to gain entry after arresting a 23-year-old man earlier Tuesday in connection with the attack.
In an earlier statement following an emergency ministerial meeting, May said: “A single terrorist detonated his improvised explosive device near one of the exits of the venue, deliberately choosing the time and place to cause maximum carnage and to kill and injure indiscriminately.”
She said during a visit to victims in Manchester that police would look at the security of such venues.
Police promised extra measures at showpiece events coming up such as Saturday’s FA Cup football final.
Campaigning for the June 8 election was suspended by the main parties after the attack and May insisted the country stood tall as defiant chants of “Manchester! Manchester!” broke out at a vigil held in the city center.

'Broken'
Terrified fans, many of them teenage girls, fled the arena in panic after the explosion in the foyer as they began to leave at the end of Monday’s performance by Grande, a 23-year-old former child television star who described herself as “broken” by the attack.
US President Donald Trump and European leaders issued vows of defiance.
Eight-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos and teenager Georgina Callander were among the first of the 22 victims to be confirmed.
Another 59 people were taken to hospital, many with life-threatening conditions.
Witnesses reported seeing bodies on the floor after the blast around 10:30 p.m. (2130 GMT) on Monday, and some fans were trampled as panicked crowds tried to flee the venue.
Families were separated, with dozens of young people taken to nearby hotels overnight, and some parents were still desperately searching for their children on Tuesday.
“I’m just hearing nothing — her phone’s dead,” Charlotte Campbell, whose 15-year-old daughter Olivia was at the concert, told BBC radio.
The attack was the deadliest in Britain since July 7, 2005 when four suicide bombers inspired by Al-Qaeda attacked London’s transport system during rush hour, killing 52 people and wounding 700 more.
It revived memories of the November 2015 attack at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in which armed men wearing explosive belts stormed in and killed 90 people.
That attack was also claimed by IS, as was one in March by a knifeman at the gates of the British parliament — although police downplayed that claim.

'Act of barbarity'
Queen Elizabeth II condemned the Manchester attack as an “act of barbarity” and observed a minute’s silence at a Buckingham Palace garden reception.
Trump said during a visit to Bethlehem: “So many young, beautiful, innocent people living and enjoying their lives murdered by evil losers.”
In a city famed globally for its musical traditions and football teams, showbusiness stars and teams expressed their horror at the carnage.
“We are deeply shocked by last night’s terrible events,” said Manchester United.
A support center for people caught up in the attack was set up at the Etihad Stadium, the home of their rivals Manchester City.
Britain’s third biggest city was hit in 1996 by a massive car bomb planted at a shopping center by Irish Republican Army paramilitaries which wounded more than 200 people.


Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram jihadists

Updated 18 sec ago
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Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram jihadists

N’DJAMENA: Chad’s military inflicted “many dead and wounded” in air strikes against Boko Haram jihadists, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said on Thursday.
“We carried out several air strikes on enemy positions that resulted in many dead and wounded,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, without giving specific numbers.
Deby, who gave an interview in full military fatigues, said he had “personally” launched the counter-attack against Boko Haram, which targeted the Chadian army in an attack last month in the western region, close to the border with Nigeria.
The Chad government had vowed to “obliterate” Boko Haram when launching its operation in late October after the jihadists killed around 40 people and wounded dozens more in a raid on a military garrison.
The operation “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out and obliterate the capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates to cause harm,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters last week.
In a vast expanse of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who carry out regular attacks on the country’s army and civilians.
Chad and its neighbors Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon set up a multinational force of some 8,500 soldiers in the area in 2015 to tackle the jihadists.
Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead, and the organization has since spread to neighboring countries.
In March 2020, the Chadian army suffered its biggest ever one-day losses in the region, when around 100 troops died in a raid on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.
 


Undocumented immigrants in US ‘terrified’ as Trump returns

Updated 08 November 2024
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Undocumented immigrants in US ‘terrified’ as Trump returns

  • Trump repeatedly rail against illegal immigrants during the election campaign
PHOENIX: Since learning that Donald Trump will return to the White House, undocumented immigrant Angel Palazuelos has struggled to sleep.
The 22-year-old, a graduate student in biomedical engineering who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, is haunted by the incoming president’s promises of mass deportations.
“I was terrified,” said Palazuelos, reflecting on the moment he heard the news.
“I am in fear of being deported, of losing everything that I’ve worked so hard for, and, most importantly, being separated from my family.”
Born in Mexico, he has lived in the United States since he was four years old. He is one of the country’s so-called “Dreamers,” a term for migrants who were brought into the country as children and never obtained US citizenship.
Throughout the election campaign, Palazuelos heard Trump repeatedly rail against illegal immigrants, employing violent rhetoric about those who “poison the blood” of the United States.
Trump has never specified how he intends to go about his plan for mass deportation, which experts warn would be extremely complicated and expensive.
“What do mass deportations mean? Who does that include?” Palazuelos asked.
“Does it include people like me, Dreamers, people that came here from a very young age, that had no say?“
Compounding the stress, the southwestern state of Arizona has just approved by referendum a law allowing state police to arrest illegal immigrants. That power was previously reserved for federal border police.
If the proposition is deemed constitutional by courts, Palazuelos fears becoming the target of heightened racial profiling.
“What makes someone a suspect of being here illegally, whether they don’t speak English?” he asked.
“My grandma, she’s a United States citizen, however, she doesn’t speak English very well. Meanwhile, I speak English, but is it because of the color of my skin that I would possibly be suspected or detained?“
Jose Patino, 35, also feels a sense of “dread” and “sadness.” His situation feels more fragile than ever.
Born in Mexico and brought to the United States aged six, he now works for Aliento, a community organization helping undocumented immigrants.
He personally benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigrant policy brought in by Barack Obama, offering protections and work permits for those in his situation.
But for Patino, those safeguards will expire next year, and Trump has promised to end the DACA program.
Indeed, Trump already tried to dismantle it during his previous term, but his decree was scuppered by a US Supreme Court decision, largely on procedural grounds.
Faced with this uncertainty, Patino is considering moving to a state that would refuse to report him to federal authorities, such as Colorado or California.
He remembers well the struggle of being undocumented in his twenties — a time when he could not obtain a basic job like flipping burgers in McDonald’s, and could not apply for a driver’s license or travel for fear of being deported.
“I don’t personally want to go back to that kind of life,” Patino said.
For him, Trump’s electoral win is not just scary, but an insult.
“We’re contributing to this country. So that’s the hard part: me following the rules, working, paying my taxes, helping this country grow, that’s not enough,” he said.
“So it’s frustrating, and it’s hurtful.”
Patino understands why so many Hispanic voters, often faced with economic difficulties, ended up voting for Trump.
Those who are here legally “believe that they’re not going to be targeted,” he said.
“A lot of Latinos associate wealth and success with whiteness, and they want to be part of that group and to be included, rather than be outside of it and be marginalized and be considered ‘the other,’” he said.
Still, he is angry with his own uncles and cousins who, having once been undocumented themselves, voted for Trump.
“We cannot have a conversation together, because it’s going to get into argument and probably into a fight,” he said.

Putin says Ukraine must remain neutral for there to be peace

Updated 08 November 2024
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Putin says Ukraine must remain neutral for there to be peace

  • “If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin said
  • Putin said Russia had recognized Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders based on the understanding that it would be neutral

SOCHI, Russia: President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine should remain neutral for there to be a chance for peace, adding that the borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the wishes of the people living in Russian-claimed territory.
“If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin said.
Putin said Russia had recognized Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders based on the understanding that it would be neutral. The US-led NATO military alliance has repeatedly said that Ukraine would one day join.
If Ukraine was not neutral, it would be “constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine after more than two and a half years of war. Putin on
June 14
set out his terms for an end to the conflict: Ukraine would have to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from all of the territory of the regions claimed by Russia.
Ukraine rejects those conditions as tantamount to surrender and President Volodymyr Zelensky has presented a “victory plan” for which he has requested additional Western support.
“We are determined to create conditions for a long-term settlement so that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state, and not an instrument in the hands of third countries, and not used in their interests,” Putin said.
Asked about the future borders of Ukraine, Putin said: “The borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the sovereign decisions of people who live in certain territories and which we call our historical territories.”
Ukraine says that it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory though even US generals say that such an aim would take massive resources that Ukraine currently does not have.


Russian attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia kills four, wounds 40

Updated 07 November 2024
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Russian attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia kills four, wounds 40

  • Russian forces have stepped up their attacks in Zaporizhzhia in recent days
  • “The death toll as a result of Russia’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia has risen to four,” the emergency services said

KYIV: Russian aerial attacks on the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded another 40, including children, officials said.
Another two were killed in a separate attack on the eastern Donetsk region, strikes that followed a wave of overnight drone attacks, including on the capital Kyiv.
Russian forces have stepped up their attacks in Zaporizhzhia in recent days and are making rapid advances in the industrial territory of Donetsk, both of which the Kremlin says are Russian territory.
“The death toll as a result of Russia’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia has risen to four,” the emergency services said in a statement on social media.
“Forty were wounded, including four children,” governor Ivan Fedorov said in a separate statement.
Officials said earlier that a hospital had been damaged in Zaporizhzhia, which had a pre-war population of more than 700,000 people and lies around 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the nearest Russian positions.
A four-month old girl and boys aged one, five and 15 were wounded in the attacks, Fedorov said.
Officials posted images showing rescue workers pulling victims from the rubble and holding back distressed locals from getting to the destroyed buildings.
The strikes later in the Donetsk region killed two people and wounded five more in the village of Mykolaivka, the region’s governor Vadym Filashkin announced on social media.
“One of the shells hit a five-story building and four buildings nearby were damaged,” he wrote on social media.
He posted a photo of a Soviet-era residential building on fire, dozens of its windows blown out with debris littering the ground beneath it.


Grenade attack targeted Israeli embassy in Denmark: report

Copenhagen Police investigated two explosions near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen last month. (AP)
Updated 07 November 2024
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Grenade attack targeted Israeli embassy in Denmark: report

  • The grenades landed on the terrace of a house adjacent to the embassy
  • Two Swedes aged 17 and 19 have been detained

COPENHAGEN: Israel’s embassy in Denmark was likely the target of grenades thrown nearby last month, Danish media reported Thursday, citing the pre-indictment of two teenage suspects detained in the case.
Two Swedes aged 17 and 19 went before a judge in Copenhagen who remanded them for another 20 days.
Their pre-indictment, citing investigations, said they were suspected of violating terrorism laws by “throwing hand grenades at the Israeli embassy in Denmark on October 2,” the Ritzau news agency reported.
The grenades landed on the terrace of a house adjacent to the embassy, where they exploded, causing no injuries.
The two suspects were arrested at a Copenhagen railway station hours later initially on suspicion of violating gun laws.
They have since been accused of a terror offense and police, who have arrested a man in his fifties in connection with the incident, are also looking for other accomplices.
“It makes no sense to imagine this is an act they committed alone. There must be accomplices,” Ritzau quoted prosecutor Soren Harbo as saying at the start of the hearing.
The teens deny the accusations.
The case comes against a backdrop of severe tensions in the Middle East, with conflict in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as increasing gang violence with Danish criminal gangs suspected of recruiting underage Swedes to settle scores.