MOGADISHU, Somalia: A leader with the Islamic extremist group Al-Shabab with a $3 million bounty on his head has announced he has quit the insurgency and renounced violence perpetrated by the Al-Qaeda-linked group.
Zakariya Ismail Hersi, who was Al-Shabab’s intelligence chief, called for reconciliation Tuesday while speaking to the media for the first time since his surrender last year. Hersi surrendered to Somali authorities late December.
Some analysts say Hersi defected fearing for his life due to friction with colleagues loyal to Ahmed Godane, the Al-Shabab leader who was killed in a US air strike last year.
Hersi was one of seven top Al-Shabab officials the Obama administration offered in 2012 a total reward of $33 million for information leading to their capture. It’s not clear who gets the bounty.
Somalia: Al-Shabab leader says he has quit terror group
Somalia: Al-Shabab leader says he has quit terror group
Shootout in western France wounds five: minister
- 15-year-old boy is between life and death after the gunbattle erupted in front of a restaurant overnight
The 15-year-old boy is between life and death after the gunbattle erupted in front of a restaurant overnight, Retailleau told BFMTV/RMC radio.
Drone crashes on oil depot in Russia’s Stavropol region
- There were no casualties in the incident at the Svetlograd oil depot, Vladimirov said on Telegram
MOSCOW: A drone fell on an oil depot in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, local governor Vladimir Vladimirov said on Friday.
It was the second suspected Ukrainian attack in consecutive days on Russian fuel and energy targets, following a lull of about seven weeks since a fuel facility in Tula was attacked on Sept. 10.
There were no casualties in the incident at the Svetlograd oil depot, Vladimirov said on Telegram.
Baza Telegram channel, which is close to Russia’s security services, posted a CCTV video purportedly showing the attack on the oil depot. The video showed that at least one of several fuel tanks was swiftly engulfed by a fireball.
On Thursday, several fuel and energy facilities were targeted in a Ukrainian drone attack on the central Russian region of Bashkortostan, home to Bashneft, a major oil company controlled by Russia’s leading oil producer, Rosneft .
Bashneft operates several refineries in the region, playing a significant role in Russia’s energy infrastructure.
The attacks come days after the Financial Times reported early-stage talks between Ukraine and Russia about potentially halting airstrikes on each other’s energy facilities. The Kremlin dismissed the report.
Russia has called such attacks terrorism, while Ukraine, which stepped up the drone strikes on Russian energy facilities since the start of the year, has said it is striking back in retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament’s defense committee, said in comments to Life media channel earlier this week, that there were no talks on halting the attacks.
“We are not going to spare anyone,” he said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in September that Russia had knocked out the gigawatt equivalent of over half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The European Union aims to restore 2.5 GW of capacity, about 15 percent of the country’s needs, she said, referring to proposed EU-funded repairs.
Eight dead as huge fire engulfs cooking oil factory near Jakarta
- The factory is operated by PT Primus Sanus Cooking Oil Industrial (Priscolin)
JAKARTA: Eight people died in a large fire at a cooking oil factory near the Indonesian capital Jakarta, local fire authorities said on Friday.
Around 20 firefighting trucks are at the site and have contained the blaze in most areas of the factory, authorities said.
Footage from Metro TV showed flames and billowing black smoke coming out of a building in the center of an industrial complex in Bekasi, a city on Jakarta’s eastern edge. The report said roads had been closed around the factory.
All of the bodies had been evacuated from the site, Suhartono, head of Bekasi’s fire department SAID, adding that three other people were injured.
But the number of casualties could still rise, he said.
Local authorities are investigating the cause of the fire.
The factory is operated by PT Primus Sanus Cooking Oil Industrial (Priscolin), said Suhartono.
Schoolgirls, policeman among five killed in roadside blast in Pakistan’s Balochistan
QUETTA: At least five people, including three schoolgirls and a policeman, were killed in a roadside blast in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Friday morning, police said, in the latest incident of violence to hit the restive region.
The blast appeared to target a police van passing by a girls school in the Mastung district of the province, according to police and local administration officials.
Fateh Baloch, in-charge of the Mastung police station, said the police mobile van came under attack when it was on a routine patrol on Friday morning.
“Five people, including a police constable and three minor schoolgirls, were killed and 13 others injured in the blast,” Baloch told Arab News.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.
“We have cordoned-off the area and are shifting the injured to the hospital,” Baz Muhammad Marri, the Mastung deputy commissioner, told Arab News.
Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan and is home to major China-led projects such as a strategic port and a gold and copper mine, has been the site of a decades-long separatist insurgency by ethnic Baloch militants. The province has lately seen an increase in attacks by separatist militants.
On Tuesday, five people were killed in an attack by armed men on the construction site of a small dam in Balochistan’s Panjgur district. The outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups, claimed responsibility for the attack along with killing of two other persons in Kech and Quetta districts.
This month, 21 miners working at privately run coal mines were killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen.
The separatists accuse the central government of exploiting Balochistan’s mineral and gas resources. The Pakistani state denies the allegation and says it is working to uplift the region through development initiatives.
Besides Baloch separatists, the restive region also has a presence of religiously motivated militant groups, who frequently target police and security forces.
Islamabad says militants mainly associated with the Pakistani Taliban frequently launch attacks from Afghanistan and has even blamed Kabul’s Afghan Taliban rulers for facilitating anti-Pakistan groups. Kabul denies the allegation.
Australian judge rules senator broke race law by telling rival legislator to return to Pakistan
- Sen. Mehreen Faruqi, a 61-year-old engineer, moved to Australia with her husband in 1992 as skilled economic migrants
- Justice Angus Stewart found that Sen. Pauline Hanson had engaged in ‘seriously offensive’ and intimidating behavior
MELBOURNE: An Australian judge ruled on Friday that anti-immigration party leader Sen. Pauline Hanson breached racial discrimination laws by crudely telling Pakistan-born Sen. Mehreen Faruqi to return to her homeland.
Faruqi sued Hanson in the Federal Court over a 2022 exchange on the social media platform X, then called Twitter, under a provision of the Racial Discrimination Act that bans public actions and statements that offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, color or national or ethnic origin.
Following the news that Queen Elizabeth II had died, Faruqi, deputy leader of the Australian Greens party, posted: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized peoples.”
The 70-year-old leader of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party replied that Faruqi had immigrated to take “advantage” of Australia, and told the Lahore-born Muslim to return to Pakistan, using an expletive.
Hanson has been known for her views on race since her first speech to Parliament in 1996 in which she warned Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians” because of the nation’s non-discriminatory immigration policy. She once wore a burqa in the Senate as part of a campaign to have Islamic face coverings banned.
Faruqi, a 61-year-old qualified engineer, moved to Australia with her husband in 1992 as skilled economic migrants.
Justice Angus Stewart found that Hanson had engaged in “seriously offensive” and intimidating behavior.
The post was racist, nativist and anti-Muslim, Stewart said.
“It is a strong form of racism,” he said.
Stewart ordered Hanson to delete the offensive post and to pay Faruqi’s legal costs. Stewart expected those costs would “amount to a fairly substantial sum.”
Faruqi welcomed the ruling as a vindication for “every single person who has been told to go back to where they came from. And believe me, there are too many of us who have been subjected to this ultimate racist slur, far too many times in this country. Today’s ruling tells us that telling someone to go back to where they came from is a strong form of racism,” Faruqi told reporters.
“Today is a good day for people of color, for Muslims and all of us who have been working so hard to build an anti-racist society,” she said.
Hanson said she was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling and would appeal.
The verdict demonstrated an “inappropriately broad application”of the section of the Racial Discrimination Act that she had breached, particularly in how that section impinged upon freedom of political expression, Hanson said in a statement.
Hanson’s lawyers argued that that her post was exempt from the law because of constitutionally implied freedom of political communication.
Hanson said she considered the queen’s death a matter of public interest and that Faruqi’s views on the death were also a matter of public interest.
Stewart found that Hanson’s tweet did not respond to any point made in Faruqi’s tweet.
“Sen. Hanson’s tweet was merely an angry ad hominem attack devoid of discernible content (or comment) in response to what Sen. Faruqi had said,” Stewart wrote in his decision.
Stewart described Hanson’s testimony as “generally unreliable,” rejecting her claim that she did not know Faruqi’s religion when she posted.
Hanson told the court she had called for a ban on Muslim immigration in the past, but she described that as her personal opinion rather than her minor party’s policy.
She conceded she had once said in a media interview she would not sell her house to a Muslim, but would not say whether she had meant what she had said.
Australia is an increasingly multicultural society. Australians born overseas or have at least one overseas-born parent became a majority in the latest census in 2021.
