Page 573 - War Conflict

Army conducts fourth flag march in Shillong

The army on Tuesday conducted its fourth flag march in Shillong in the wake of violence after clashes broke out between two groups following the escalation of an argument between a woman and a bus conductor.Security has been beefed up in the region, as curfew remains imposed and internet services stopped to prevent further escalation of violence in the matter.Though officials have said that the situation is under control, panic among people in the region is evident.On Sunday night, giving rise to a fresh incident of violence, around 400 protesters pelted stones at a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp near Mowlai Bridge.Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said that the issue between the groups will be amicably resolved at the earliest.

Bodies of slain J&K militants exhumed, handed over to families

Bodies of two militants, killed by the army as it foiled an infiltration bid on the LoC last month, were Tuesday exhumed in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara and handed over to their families following an order by the local District Magistrate, police said.

Militants attack army camp in J&K

Militants attacked an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir's Bandipora district on Tuesday evening, sparking of a gunfight, police said.

Suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers kill nine in Niger

Three suicide bombers killed at least nine people in separate attacks in the southeastern Niger city of Diffa near the border with Nigeria, shattering several months of calm in the troubled region. The attacks occurred late today in the city, a regional capital that is a frequent target of the Boko Haram jihadist group, a local official who requested anonymity told AFP. He said "two young women and a man" blew themselves up at three different sites including an Islamic school. "For the moment there are nine dead, as well as wounded," he said. Ibrahim Amadou, a resident, said the three detonations were "almost simultaneous" in Koura, an old district of the city, with one near the Koranic school, one near a mosque and the third by a shop. People are afraid, "but they aren't giving in to panic," Amadou said. According to accounts on social media, three explosions were heard at around 10 pm. Another resident, Ari Maman, said he and others were surprised the attacks happened in the ...

Police foil bid to snatch weapons in J-K

Alert policemen,posted on guard duty at a shrine in the Hawal area of the city, today foiled a weapon snatching bid by militants, police said. Unknown militants opened firing near the guard post at the Mirza Kalil Sahib shrine, a police official said. He said the alert sentry retaliated the firing, forcing the militants to flee from the spot. No one was injured in the incident, the official said, adding that all arms and ammunition at the guard post are safe.

Armed forces repository of big data, need to carry out analytics using AI: Army Chief

Armed forces are the repository of big data and there is a need to record and institutionalise the information and carry out predictive analytics using artificial intelligence, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat has said. He also laid stress on the need for collaboration with industry and academia, pitched for leveraging various technologies available in the geo-spatial field to find solutions for the challenges faced by the Indian Army. "The armed forces are the repository of big data and there is a need to record and institutionalise the information and carry out predictive analytics using AI," Rawat said. He was delivering the key note address at the 11th edition of GEO Intelligence Asia, organised by GeoSpatial Media and Communication with Directorate General of Information System as Knowledge Partners and Military Survey as Co-organisers. The two-day seminar held at the Manekshaw Centre here concluded today. The theme of the seminar was GeoSpatial: A Force Multiplier for Defence and .

Weapon-snatching attempt in Srinagar foiled

An attempt by militants to snatch a rifle of a policeman here on Tuesday was foiled by the alert security personnel, police said.

Bangladeshi national arrested for possessing forged Indian passport

A Bangaldeshi national, who had a forged Indian passport and was living in the country using different identities, was arrested by the Special Cell, police said today. The accused, Mohammed Umar Farukh, was arrested last month, following intelligence inputs, they added. So far, police have not found him having any terror links, an official said. He was arrested from the Anand Vihar bus terminal. During interrogation, he told police that he made the fake Indian passport so that he could visit Riyadh for work. He had come to India in 2007 from Bangladesh to study Mufti, Hadith and Ardi Adab at Deoband. Police was probing how he got the fake passport made and whether he was here to carry out any terror activities.

US Marines commander at Japan base sacked

The commanding officer at a US Marine base on the Japanese island of Okinawa has been fired over a "loss of trust", the US Marines said today. A brief statement said Colonel Mark S. Coppess had been relieved of duty as commanding officer of the Futenma base "due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead his command." There was no immediate comment or further detail from the Marines on why Coppess had been dismissed. It follows the sacking announced in February of the commander of the Marines' Japan-based Osprey squadron, after a series of accidents involving the hybrid aircraft. The most serious, in 2017, involved the crash of an MV-22 Osprey off the east coast of Australia. A major search and rescue operation eventually found 23 of the crew involved, but the search for three others was called off. A series of issues involving US military aircraft in Japan has stoked tension over the US military presence in the country. In January, US Defence Secretary James Mattis ...

Armed forces not reeling under shortage of funds: Sitharaman

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today rejected a parliamentary panel's findings that the three services were reeling under severe shortage of funds, saying adequate financial resources have been allocated to them in the last four years. Sitharaman, at a press conference, also asserted that there was no shortage of ammunition for the armed forces which had been the case during the previous government. "The defence expenditure has been highest in 2017-18 if you look at it since 2004-05. In the same manner, it was second highest in 2016-17 and third highest in 2015-16. The fourth highest defence expenditure since 2004-05 was in 2014-15," she said. In March, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, headed by BJP MP Maj Gen (retd) B C Khanduri, had come down hard on the government for inadequate allocation of funds to the Army, Navy and the Air Force. The Army had told the panel that it was reeling under severe financial crunch and struggling to even make emergency procurements

Army's Northern Command chief visits forward posts at Siachen Glacier

Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh, the General Officer Commanding in Chief of the Army's Northern Command, visited the forward posts at Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, today. The Army Commander was briefed on the operational preparedness and the current situation, a defence spokesman said. The GOC-in-C interacted with troops at the Siachen Base Camp and complimented the tenacious resolve, unstinting commitment of the 'Siachen Warriors' deployed in extreme harsh weather and inhospitable terrain, the spokesman said.

Northern Command chief visits Siachen

Indian Army's Northern Command chief Lt Gen Ranbir Singh on Tuesday visited the Siachen Glacier to review the preparedness of troops at the world's highest battlefield, a defence spokesman said.

'Likely' jihadists kill 7 in northern Mozambique: police

Seven people were killed by suspected jihadists today in northern Mozambique, an area that has been rocked by a spate of attacks in recent months, police said. "The bandits used machetes to kill the seven persons. We think this group is likely part of the same that beheaded 10 (people on) May 27," a police spokesman told AFP, referring to an attack last month in the same region that was also blamed on jihadists.

IS kills 45 pro-regime fighters in east Syria assault: monitor

An offensive by the Islamic State jihadist group in eastern Syria has left at least 45 pro-regime fighters dead, a monitoring group said today. IS fighters launched the operation Sunday against Euphrates Valley villages seized last year by government forces and their allies, and have retaken four of them, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The villages are located on the road between the provincial capital of Deir Ezzor and the city of Albu Kamal, which lies further south on the border with Iraq. Near those villages is the small town of Hajin, the single largest populated hub still under the control of IS jihadists. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said at least 26 IS fighters were also killed since "fierce" fighting started on Sunday. He said there had not yet been any intervention by Russian aircraft supporting pro-government forces in the area. The Observatory said the casualties on the pro-regime side were mostly fighters from Shiite militias present in the area, ...

India assisted housing project expands for Lanka's Indian origin Tamils

India has laid the foundation for the construction of 250 more houses for Sri Lanka's Indian-origin Tamils in the country, the High Commission said here today. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Sri Lanka in May last year announced the construction of additional 10,000 houses in upcountry areas and the extension of Emergency Ambulance Service. India has committed a total of 14,000 houses in the plantation areas in the Southern Province. Around 1000 houses out of these are nearly complete. The UN Habitat is the implementing agency for the housing, the High Commission said.

Toll in Nicaragua protests reaches 127

The death toll in Nicaragua from protests against President Daniel Ortega's rule has increased to 127, authorities said.

Brother of suspected Paris attacks mastermind transferred to France

The brother of the suspected mastermind of the Paris terror attacks of 2015 has been handed over by Belgium to French authorities, Belgian prosecutors said today. Yassine Atar is the brother of Osama Atar, who is suspected to have planned the Paris massacre from Syria and has never been arrested. The 31-year-old Yassine was imprisoned in Belgium after his arrest in Brussels at the end of March 2016. "He was extradited to France under an international arrest warrant (issued in Paris) and will remain there in pre-trial detention," Eric Van Der Sypt, the spokesman for Belgian federal prosecutors told AFP. The French arrest warrant means that magistrates in charge of investigating the Paris attacks, that killed 130 people, wish to interrogate Yassine Atar with a view to a probable indictment. Atar is also cousin to Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, brothers who set off suicide bombs in Brussels in March 2016, which killed 32 people. Media reports said Atar was found at the time of his ...

NIA makes third arrest in Nagrota terror attack case

National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday arrested a man for his alleged involvement in 2016 Nagrota terror attack, wherein seven soldiers were killed.The accused, identified as Ashiq Baba, is a resident of Allochi Bagh area in Srinagar.He was produced before a special NIA court in Jammu today, confirmed NIA Spokesperson Alok Mittal to ANI.In total three people have been arrested until now.Last week, Tariq Ahmad Dar, 34, a timber dealer in Pulwama district was arrested by the NIA.During interrogation, Tariq had revealed that the terror attack was carried out by the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).A week prior to that, NIA apprehended Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) operative Syed Muneer -Ul-Hassan Qadri, a resident of Kupwara district.The terrorist attack at the army camp in Nagrota, Jammu, took place on November 29, 2016, in which seven army personnel were killed and three others injured.Three Pakistani terrorists were killed in the operation following the attack and a huge cache of firearms, ...

Rohingya say Myanmar targeted the educated in genocide

Mohammed Hashim hid in the hills and watched as his brother begged for his life, his arms bound behind his back as soldiers marched the 35-year-old teacher away. It was the last time he saw him alive. It was August 26, the day after Rohingya Muslim separatist attacks on military outposts in the Rohingya homeland in western Myanmar. In their wake, Myanmar's military and local Buddhists would respond with a campaign of rape, massacre and arson that has driven about 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. But more than a dozen Rohingya teachers, elders and religious leaders told The Associated Press that educated Rohingya already subject to systematic and widespread harassment, arrests and torture were singled out, part of Myanmar's operation to drive the Muslim Rohingya from majority Buddhist Myanmar. Soldiers targeted the educated, they said, so there would be no community leaders left willing to speak up against the pervasive abuse. It's an old tactic, according to those who study ...

No news of clash in 12 hrs, life limping back to normal in Shillong: Top official

The situation in the violence-hit Meghalaya capital has "improved" with no fresh clash reported from any part of the city over the past 12 hours, a top district official said. Barring the 14 "vulnerable" localities, where the 24-hour curfew continued to remain in force, life was limping back to normal in other parts of Shillong, he said. "Over 90 per cent shops in Police Bazaar, and parts of Bara Bazaar opened this morning. People were seen buying supplies at the two marts. Taxis were also plying on thoroughfares, but buses still remained off roads," he added. East Khasi Hills Deputy Commissioner P S Dkhar said the home department was yet to take a call on restoring internet and messaging services in the state capital. "There was no report of any untoward incident in the past 12 hours, but curfew would be imposed on the entire city from 4pm to 5am, just like yesterday," he said. The hill town has been in the grip of violence since Thursday following a fight between the Sikh residents