Blast in home of Gaza militant leader kills one

GAZA (Reuters) - A Palestinian man who had been preparing an attack on Israeli targets was killed on Saturday in an explosion at the home of a militant leader in the Gaza Strip, his group said.

The explosion took place at the Rafah home of Zuhair Al-Qaissi, chief commander of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), an armed Palestinian faction that often operates independently of Gaza's Hamas rulers.

The PRC confirmed the man killed was a member of the group and that he was preparing an attack on Israelis when the blast occurred. Al-Qaissi himself was not hurt in the explosion.

Al-Qaissi's predecessor, Kamal al-Nairab was killed in an Israeli air strike in August.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Maayan Lubell)

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Opposition leader Gets the imminent elections in Iran Bill: report

Tehran (Reuters) - an Iranian opposition leader since February under house arrest accused the Islamic establishment plan has to hold the "Yes" parliamentary elections in March his website Sahamnews reported on Monday.

Registration began candidates on Saturday March 2 voices, that the first litmus test for the spiritual leadership public standing since a disputed presidential election 2009, triggered months of unrest.
Mehdi Karoubi was together with his wife, Fatemeh, imprisoned, when he urged to gather supporters for a Tehran rally in support of the riots in the Arab world. His wife was later out allows for medical treatment, but he remains under house arrest.

"Officials vote believe in people and they prepare themselves for a rubber-stamp election," his wife quotes him during their weekly meeting, according to Sahamnews.

Candidate will be an account one last week and then the participants be reviewed elections watchdog for their political and Islamic qualifications through the hard-line Guardian Council.

The Council has completed hundreds of reformist candidates in the past from participating in elections. A grandson of late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the Council for a parliamentary vote 2008 running is prohibited.

"The authorities want to repeat what they did in the presidential election of 2009.... disqualify candidates and fill the ballot boxes with fake votes and an atmosphere of fear in this country" Karoubi of the woman quoted him as talking as his Web site reported.

The election of 2009 was suspended followed by eight months of opposition protests, which, while ultimately suppressed, Iran in its deepest internal crisis since the Islamic revolution pitched, and divisions within the ruling elite.

The 73 year-old Karoubi and former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, who also under house arrest with his wife, the 2009 vote against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Were figureheads of the protests, according to the elections by many who believed that the vote to back President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been tampered with. Iranian authorities deny the charge and the protests as a bid have foreign-backed the Islamic government system undermines shown.

Thousands of people, including senior reformers, were according to the 2009 stir up unrest vote recorded. Since then, most of them have published was, but more than 80 people have for up to 15 years has been arrested and five to death were convicted.

Analysts say that Ahmadinejad's allies want to win to find the presidential election in 2013 a majority at the next general elections.

Reformist leaders said that no separate list of candidates will present reform-oriented groups, because the basic needs "free and fair" vote not have been observed which.

Authorities fear that a low turnout would be the establishment of legitimacy issue, and so hard-line conservative rulers have urged voters to take part in the March elections.
(Reporting by Mitra Amiri;) (Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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N. Waziristan militant leader threatens Pakistan government

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
By Haji Mujtaba

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan | Sat Nov 12, 2011 3:23am EST

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - The most powerful militant leader in Pakistan's North Waziristan border region has threatened to tear up a peace accord and turn his fighters against the Islamabad government.

Hafiz Gul Bahadur has an unofficial non-aggression pact with the military, focusing instead on attacking U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

Pakistan can't afford new militant enemies. The army's hands are full with the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, blamed for many of the suicide bombings across the South Asian country.

Bahadur is known to have links with notorious militant groups in tribal North Waziristan, including the Haqqani network, which has emerged as the most high-profile threat to U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Bahadur criticized Pakistani leaders for allowing the United States to conduct drone missile strikes in North Waziristan and said the council of militant groups he heads would no longer hold talks with the government.

"We have been showing patience because of problems being faced by common people but now the government has also resorted to repression on our common people at the behest of foreigners," Bahadur, who heads a Pakistani Taliban faction, said in a statement distributed in North Waziristan.

He accused the government of firing mortar bombs and cannons on civilians and demolishing a hospital and other buildings in North Waziristan. Army officials were not immediately available for comment.

Local military officials said "terrorists" had used public buildings to launch rocket attacks at military checkpoints.

"We are disbanding the jirga (council) set up for talks with the government. If the government resorts to any repressive act in the future then it will also be very difficult for us to show patience," said Bahadur.

Pakistan has come under intense pressure to tackle militancy since U.S. special forces in May killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town, where he had apparently lived for years.

Admiral Mike Mullen said before retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September that the Haqqani network -- blamed for several attacks on U.S. targets in Afghanistan recently -- was a "veritable arm" of Pakistani intelligence.

Islamabad denies the allegation.

The United States wants Pakistan to encourage militants to pursue peace in Afghanistan, and go after groups who don't cooperate.

But the government must tread cautiously in a country where anti-American sentiment over issues such as the CIA-operated drone campaign runs deep.

Pakistani leader criticize the drone attacks, saying they play into the hands of militants. But analysts say strikes which kill high-value al Qaeda and Taliban figures would not be possible without help from Pakistani intelligence agencies.

Bahadur, believed to have thousands of fighters, reached a peace agreement with the Pakistani government in 2007. But it has been strained lately.

Two clerics who are leaders of the committee that overseas the pact, Maulana Gul Ramazan and Hafiz Noorullah Shah, suggested the army had violated the deal.

(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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8:27 PM | 0 comments

Colombia says the FARC rebel leader killed

 1 out of 2. Colombian rebel Alfonso Cano, Chief ideologue of the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia (FARC), del Caguán in this photo of 2 February 2001 file speaks to the media in the vicinity of San Vicente.Credit: Reuters/Eliana Aponte / files

Luis Jaime Acosta and Jack Kimball

BOGOTÁ | Saturday, 5th November 2011 1: 22 am EDT

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's armed forces top FARC rebel leader Alfonso Cano on Friday in the biggest blow yet to Latin America longest uprising and a triumph for President Juan Manuel Santos killed, the Defense Ministry said.

While unlikely, that a rapid end to almost five decades of war in the Andes nation to bring, will his death further damage of the rebels ability to collect and coordinate the high-profile attacks that it have brought worldwide fame.

There were few immediate details about the killing, which occurred during the fight, an official of the Ministry for.

"It is true that he is dead," he told Reuters.

Before his beheading the FARC or the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, had broken was that of a U.S.-backed military campaign, which in 2002 and the decreasing uprising has lost several other key commanders in the past four years.

"This us closer to victory and peace, so that we can stop killing each other", said Jorge Cordero, 19-year-old soldier in the North of Bogotá

The death of Cano, 63, who took over as head of the rebels after the death of its founder, 2008, was a major strategic victory for Santos, who came into Office last year, to keep an uncompromising stance against the guerrillas promises.

The Government had offered up to $3.7 million for information leading to his capture.

The death of the bespectacled and bearded rebel commander, a former student and Communist Youth Member, followed the killing end last year of one of his main henchmen, Mono-Jojoy, in a bombardment and attack on his camp.

REBELLEN WEAKEST IN DECADES

"It's always hard for them to get over the next years," said Alfredo Rangel, an independent security analyst.

"There is no leader with the intensity, the Cano has and it will be difficult to replace someone around him." In the short term, there is a lack of leadership. "At the end of non-automatic or immediate but we come to the end of the FARC."

Cano went away, a middle-class youth in the capital, Bogota on the Supreme Leader of the FARC after taking part in peace talks in the neighbouring Mexico and Venezuela in the 1990s.

The strike, which killed him underlined how now the leader of the able to attack Colombia's military deep in the mountains and jungle. Once a powerful force is control large swaths of Colombia, the FARC the weakest in decades.

Violence, the bombings and the kidnapping of the conflict have greatly eased, Colombian forces, better intelligence and U.S. education and technology, use the fight to bring the rebels.

Foreign investment in Colombia has increased since the military crackdown in 2002, in particular began oil and mining. But the FARC and other armed groups continue to have a threat in rural areas, where the State presence is weak and trafficking cocaine to the rebels to finance their operations.

Leaves and military operations have cropped rebel ranks about 7,000 fighters, but the FARC has survived for more than 40 years, and has still a cadre of experienced mid-level commanders. Rebels rely increasingly on hit and-run tactics and ambushes in rural areas.

The FARC, whose Rebellen have made incursions into Venezuela and Ecuador at times to escape the Colombian army, are on the US list of terrorist organisations.

(Additional Nelson Bocanegra and Helen Murphy;) Written by Daniel Wallis. (Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Todd Eastham)

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