DAKAR: Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Mali claimed responsibility on Saturday for an attack on the country’s main military base, which it said was a response to governmental collaboration with Russian mercenaries.
Friday’s raid on the Kati base 15 km (10 miles) outside the capital Bamako killed at least one soldier and represented the first time in Mali’s decade-long insurgency that Islamist militants have hit a military camp so close to Bamako.
The raid, carried out using two car bombs, also wounded six people, while seven assailants were killed and eight arrested, Mali’s military said.
The media unit for Al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), said in a statement its Katiba Macina branch had carried out the attack, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist statements.
The Malian military had blamed Katiba Macina for the attack in a statement on Friday.
The JNIM statement said a Malian fighter had detonated a car bomb at the base’s gate and a fighter from Burkina Faso detonated another inside the base, allowing additional fighters to enter the camp.
It justified the attack by citing the presence in Mali of mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group, which began supplying hundreds of fighters last year to support the Malian military and has since been accused by human rights groups and local residents of participating in massacres of civilians.
“We say to the Bamako government: if you have the right to hire mercenaries to kill the defenseless innocent people, then we have the right to destroy you and target you,” it said.
The Russian government has acknowledged Wagner personnel are in Mali but the Malian government has described them as instructors from the Russian military rather then private security contractors. Wagner has no public representation and has not commented on the accusations of human rights violations.
In a separate statement on Saturday, JNIM also claimed responsibility for attacks in five central and southern Mali towns on Thursday, which the Malian military said had killed one soldier and wounded 15.
Al Qaeda affiliate claims attack on Mali’s main military base
https://arab.news/gzfjb
Al Qaeda affiliate claims attack on Mali’s main military base
- Raid on Kati base represented the first time in Mali’s decade-long insurgency that Islamists hit a military camp close to Bamako
- The attack killed at least one soldier and wounded six
Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital
More than ten thousand protesters armed with sticks and slingshots took on police in central Islamabad on Tuesday afternoon, AFP journalists saw, less than three kilometers (two miles) from the government enclave they aim to occupy.
Khan was barred from standing in February elections that were marred by allegations of rigging, sidelined by dozens of legal cases that he claims were confected to prevent his comeback.
But his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has defied a government crackdown with regular rallies. Tuesday’s is the largest in the capital since Khan was jailed in August 2023.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said “miscreants” involved in the march had killed four members of the paramilitary Rangers force on a city highway leading toward the government sector.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the men had been “run over by a vehicle.”
“These disruptive elements do not seek revolution but bloodshed,” he said in a statement. “This is not a peaceful protest, it is extremism.”
The government said Monday that one police officer had also been killed and nine more were critically wounded by demonstrators who set out toward Islamabad on Sunday.
The capital has been locked down since late Saturday, with mobile Internet sporadically cut and more than 20,000 police flooding the streets, many armed with riot shields and batons.
The government has accused protesters of attempting to derail a state visit by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arrived for a three-day visit on Monday.
Last week, the Islamabad city administration announced a two-month ban on public gatherings.
But PTI convoys traveled from their power base in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the most populous province of Punjab, hauling aside roadblocks of stacked shipping containers.
“We are deeply frustrated with the government, they do not know how to function,” 56-year-old protester Kalat Khan told AFP on Monday. “The treatment we are receiving is unjust and cruel.”
The government cited “security concerns” for the mobile Internet outages, while Islamabad’s schools and universities were also ordered shut on Monday and Tuesday.
“Those who will come here will be arrested,” Interior Minister Naqvi told reporters late Monday at D-Chowk, the public square outside Islamabad’s government buildings that PTI aims to occupy.
PTI’s chief demand is the release of Khan, the 72-year-old charismatic former cricket star who served as premier from 2018 to 2022 and is the lodestar of their party.
They are also protesting alleged tampering in the February polls and a recent government-backed constitutional amendment giving it more power over the courts, where Khan is tangled in dozens of cases.
Sharif’s government has come under increasing criticism for deploying heavy-handed measures to quash PTI’s protests.
“It speaks of a siege mentality on the part of the government and establishment — a state in which they see themselves in constant danger and fearful all the time of being overwhelmed by opponents,” read one opinion piece in the English-language Dawn newspaper published Monday.
“This urges them to take strong-arm measures, not occasionally but incessantly.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said “blocking access to the capital, with motorway and highway closures across Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has effectively penalized ordinary citizens.”
The US State Department appealed for protesters to refrain from violence, while also urging authorities to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to ensure respect for Pakistan’s laws and constitution as they work to maintain law and order.”
Khan was ousted by a no-confidence vote after falling out with the kingmaking military establishment, which analysts say engineers the rise and fall of Pakistan’s politicians.
But as opposition leader, he led an unprecedented campaign of defiance, with PTI street protests boiling over into unrest that the government cited as the reason for its crackdown.
PTI won more seats than any other party in this year’s election but a coalition of parties considered more pliable to military influence shut them out of power.
stm-jts/sco
Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine
MOSCOW: Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.
The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.
“American politicians and journalists are seriously discussing the consequences of the transfer of nuclear weapons to Kyiv,” Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said on Telegram.
Medvedev said that even the threat of such a transfer of nuclear weapons could be considered as preparation for a nuclear war against Russia.
“The actual transfer of such weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country,” under Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine, he said.
China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait
- The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait
BEIJING: China’s military said on Tuesday it deployed naval and air forces to monitor and warn a US Navy patrol aircraft that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, denouncing the United States for trying to “mislead” the international community.
Around once a month, US military ships or aircraft pass through or above the waterway that separates democratically governed Taiwan from China — missions that always anger Beijing.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and says it has jurisdiction over the strait. Taiwan and the United States dispute that, saying the strait is an international waterway.
The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait “in international airspace,” adding that the flight demonstrated the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
“By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations,” it said in a statement.
China’s military criticized the flight as “public hype,” adding that it monitored the US aircraft throughout its transit and “effectively” responded to the situation.
“The relevant remarks by the US distort legal principles, confuse public opinion and mislead international perceptions,” the military’s Eastern Theatre Command said in a statement.
“We urge the US side to stop distorting and hyping up and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability.”
In April, China’s military said it sent fighter jets to monitor and warn a US Navy Poseidon in the Taiwan Strait, a mission that took place just hours after a call between the Chinese and US defense chiefs. (Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting and writing by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight
KYIV: Russia staged a record number of drone attacks overnight over Ukraine, damaging buildings and “critical infrastructure” in several regions, the air force said Tuesday.
“During the night attack, the enemy launched a record number of Shahed strike unmanned aerial vehicles and unidentified drones,” the air force said, referring to Iranian-designed drones and putting the figure at 188.
President of Chile denies sexual harassment complaint
- Chilean President Gabriel Boric denies claims he sexually harassed a woman over a decade ago
Santiago: Chilean President Gabriel Boric was accused in a criminal complaint of sexually harassing a woman over a decade ago, an allegation he “categorically” denies, a lawyer said Monday.
“The president ... rejects and categorically denies the complaint,” attorney Jonatan Valenzuela said in a statement, referring to an alleged event in 2013.
The complaint was filed on September 6 in the local prosecutor’s office of Magallanes, in the far south of Chile where Boric is from.
Cristian Crisosto, who heads the Magallanes prosecutor’s office, confirmed “there is a criminal case related to the facts listed,” adding that there was a special team at the agency investigating the complaint.
According to Valenzuela, the complaint was filed by a woman who at the time sent Boric 25 emails that were “unsolicited and non-consensual,” including one with explicit images.
More than 10 years later, the woman “filed a complaint without any basis whatsoever against now-president Gabriel Boric.”
Boric, now 38, was 27 at the time and had just completed his law degree.
“My client never had an emotional relationship or friendship with her and they have not communicated since July 2014,” Valenzuela added.
The accusation against Boric comes as his administration is dealing with a separate scandal over sexual abuse after former crime czar and ex-deputy interior minister Manuel Monsalve was arrested this month on suspicion of raping his subordinate.
Boric, who is ineligible to run for reelection after his four-year presidential term ends in 2026, has special immunity and must first be subject to an impeachment trial by the justice department to be formally investigated.
