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Police interrogate ‘lovers’ of woman cardboard bomber
Police interrogate ‘lovers’ of woman cardboard bomber Amira Agarib / 4 September 2013 Police are interrogating a number of potential former and current lovers of the woman who threatened to blow up herself, her son and the Dubai Public Prosecution headquarters on Sunday. The woman, 32-year-old Uzbeki Zulfiya Hamraeva who is now in police custody along with her five-year-old son, was engaged in a 13-hour standoff with a Dubai Police negotiating team, which lasted from midday on Sunday till 1.30am on Monday. She entered the building, with what appeared to be a belt of explosives, which she threatened to detonate unless officials recognised her son was fathered by an Emirati man she was in an unofficial Urfi marriage with. However, once the woman was arrested, it transpired the ‘belt’ was a cardboard carton, with two softdrink cans. Officials negotiating with the woman. – Courtesy Twitter Police have been investigating Hamraeva’s background in an effort to determine whether the woman was aided by any person and in what manner, a police source told Khaleej Times . The police have arrested a 33-year-old Emirati man — a captain in one of the country’s services — who was discovered at a flat in Dubai’s Discovery Gardens. The man, understood to be married with children, was the last person Hamraeva was in contact with before committing the stunt. Police have also arrested a Pakistani man who was tracked through CCTV footage, after he dropped Hamraeva off at the Public Prosecution building prior to the incident. The man has reportedly told police he had no romantic connection to the woman, but just dropped her off places from time to time. Police have also allegedly detained a number of other men who Hamraeva had connections to and may have been in relationships with. Police are conducting paternity tests on all the men, as well as interrogating them to determine whether they played any part in helping Hamraeva conduct the bomb scare. Police still have her and her son in custody, while investigations continue, though it appears likely she will be charged with offences relating to affecting UAE security and inciting panic. news@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
Wave of bombings, attacks in Iraq kill at least 67
Iraq bombing wave claims 33 lives (AP) / 4 September 2013 A series of coordinated evening blasts in Baghdad and other violence killed at least 67 people in Iraq on Tuesday, officials said, the latest in a months-long surge of bloodshed that Iraqi security forces are struggling to contain. Many of those killed were caught up in a string of car bombings that tore through the Iraqi capital early in the evening as residents were out shopping or heading to dinner. Those blasts struck 11 different neighbourhoods and claimed more than 50 lives in a span of less than two hours. The evening’s deadliest attack happened when two car bombs exploded near restaurants and shops Baghdad’s northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing nine people and wounding 32. A row of restaurants was also hit in the eastern neighbourhood of Talibiyah, killing seven and wounding 28. Another car bomb hit the nearby neighbourhood of Sadr City, killing three and wounding eight, according to police. At around the same time, authorities say back-to-back car bombs blew up near a police station in the western neighbourhood of Sadiyah, killing six and wounding 15. Another blast hit a central square in the commercial district of Karradah, killing six and wounding 14. The force of the blast shattered the windows of Karim Sami’s nearby clothing shop. Like many Iraqis in recent months, he expressed frustration with the Shia-led government’s inability to stop repeated attacks despite assurances that it is tightening security. “We started to feel a little bit safe over the past few days because they were relatively calm, but the violence is back today,” he said. “Whenever the government assures us that security is being tightened, we see attacks like these.” Car bombs also struck shopping streets in the religiously mixed western neighbourhood of Shurta, killing five people and wounding 12; the southeastern neighbourhood of Zafaraniyah, killing four and wounding 11; the southern neighbourhood of Abu Dashir, killing two and wounding nine; the New Baghdad area, killing six people and wounding 17; and the Dora neighbourhood, killing two and wounding five, according to police. Another car bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the village of Maamil, in the eastern suburbs of the capital, killing 3 people and wounding 41. No one claimed immediate responsibility for the attacks, but coordinated car bombings and attacks on civilians and Iraqi security forces are a favorite tactic of the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda. It typically does not lay claim to attacks for several days, if at all. Iraqi officials say the lawlessness roiling neighbouring Syria, where the civil war has taken on sharp sectarian overtones similar to those that nearly tore Iraq apart, is fueling the upsurge of violence inside Iraq. “The recent threats of a military operation against Syria have encouraged the insurgents to wage more attacks inside Iraq. We have warned of this, but unfortunately, nobody is listening,” said Ali Al Moussawi, the spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki. The evening blasts added to a death toll that had been mounting throughout the day. Authorities awoke to find four bodies with gunshot wounds to the back laying in the streets in different locations around the Iraqi capital. Gunmen shot two other people dead in Baghdad’s southern Dora neighborhood, police said. In Baghdad’s southern suburbs, gunmen stormed the house of a member of a Sunni militia opposed to Al Qaeda, killing him and his wife and three children in a southern suburb of the capital, according to police. Elsewhere, a car bomb blew up early Tuesday at a restaurant in the town of Jbala just south of the capital, killing two people and wounding seven. Continue reading
Top US Republicans back Syria strike
Obama wins key backing for military action in Syria (Reuters) / 4 September 2013 US President Barack Obama won the backing of two top Republicans in Congress in his call for limited US strikes on Syria to punish President Bashar Al Assad for his suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians. Speaking after the United Nations said 2 million Syrians had fled a conflict that posed the greatest threat to world peace since the Vietnam war, Obama said the United States also has a broader plan to help rebels defeat Assad’s forces. In remarks that appeared to question the legality of US plans to strike Syria without UN backing, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the use of force is only legal when it is in self-defence or with UN Security Council authorisation. He said that if UN inspectors confirm the use of chemical weapons in Syria, the Security Council, which has long been deadlocked on the 2-1/2-year Syrian civil war, should overcome its differences and take action. Having startled friends and foes alike in the Middle East by delaying a punitive attack on Assad until Congress reconvenes and agrees, Obama met congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday to urge a prompt decision and assure them it did not mean another long war like Iraq or Afghanistan. John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor both pledged their support for military action after the meeting. Votes are expected to be held in the US Senate and House next week, with the Republican-led House presenting the tougher challenge for Obama. The Republican House leadership has indicated the votes will be “conscience votes,” meaning they will not seek to influence members’ votes on party lines. All the same, it would have been a big blow to Obama if he had not secured the backing of the top two Republicans. “I believe that my colleagues should support this call for action,” Boehner told reporters. The president said strikes aimed at punishing the use of chemical weapons would hurt Assad’s forces while other US action would bolster his opponents – though the White House has insisted it is not seeking “regime change.” “What we are envisioning is something limited. It is something proportional. It will degrade Assad’s capabilities,” Obama said. “At the same time we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition.” Assad denies deploying poison gas that killed hundreds of civilians last month. The Syrian opposition, which on Tuesday said a forensic scientist had defected to the rebel side bringing evidence of Assad forces’ use of sarin gas in March, has appealed to Western allies to send them weapons and use their air power to end a war that has killed more than 100,000 and made millions homeless. The presence in rebel ranks of Islamist militants, some of them close to Al Qaeda, has made Western leaders wary, while at the same time the undoubted – and apparently accelerating – human cost of the conflict has brought pressure to intervene. The chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee said on Tuesday he was confident after talking with Obama that the United States would step up its support for “vetted” elements of the Syrian opposition. Senator Carl Levin said he urged the president, a fellow Democrat, to arm the Syrian rebels a day after two influential Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, sought similar assurances from Obama. Levin said he told the White House that the United States should provide rebels with arms such as anti-tank weapons “which cannot be turned on us.” Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi also voiced support for military strikes after meeting Obama on Tuesday, but Obama will still have to persuade some lawmakers, including Democrats, who have said they are concerned the president’s draft resolution could be too open-ended and allow possible use of ground troops or eventual attacks on other countries. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel took the administration’s message to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday. Kerry said the world was watching to see what the United States would do. “They want to know if America will rise to this moment and make a difference,” he told senators at the hearing. After two and a half years of war, nearly one Syrian in three has been driven from home by violence and fear. The UN refugee agency UNHCR said there had been a near tenfold increase over the past 12 months in the rate of refugees crossing Syria’s borders into Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon – to a daily average of nearly 5,000 men, women and children. This has pushed the total living abroad above 2 million. That represents some 10 per cent of Syria’s population, the UNHCR said. With a further 4.25 million estimated to have been displaced but still resident inside the country, close to a third of all Syrians are living away from their original homes. Comparing the figures to the peak of Afghanistan’s refugee crisis two decades ago, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, said: “Syria has become the great tragedy of this century – a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.” Speaking of the acceleration in the crisis, he said: “What is appalling is that the first million fled Syria in two years. “The second million fled Syria in six months,” Guterres said. “The risks for global peace and security that the present Syria crisis represents, I’m sure, are not smaller than what we have witnessed in any other crisis that we have had since the Vietnam war,” said Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister. Russia, backed by China, has used its veto power in the UN Security Council three times to block resolutions condemning Assad’s government and threatening it with sanctions. Assad, like Russia, blames the rebels for the August 21 gas attack. Obama has said he is “comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that so far has been completely paralysed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable.” Ban questioned whether the use of force to deter Syria or other countries from deploying chemical arms in the future could do more harm than good. In an interview in Tuesday’s Le Figaro , Assad told the Paris newspaper: “Everybody will lose control of the situation when the powder keg blows. There is a risk of a regional war.” The rebels have been struggling to hold ground in recent months, let alone advance. According to one opposition report, government forces took the strategic northwestern town of Ariha on Tuesday, though others said the battle was not over. Continue reading
