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19 Killed In Suicide Bombing At Shiite Mosque In Saudi Arabia

19 Killed In Suicide Bombing At Shiite Mosque In Saudi Arabia

By Shabtai Gold, dpa (TNS)

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A suicide bomber killed 19 people during Friday prayers at a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, residents and officials said, raising fresh concern about sectarian strife in the kingdom.

Around 100 people were injured in the attack, according to Saudi-owned broadcaster Al Arabiya.

The suicide bomber apparently had an explosives belt that he detonated in the mosque in al-Qadaih village, in the Qatif region, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki.

Residents described emergency crews working at the blood-soaked site of the attack, which took place on the birthday of Husayn ibn Ali, a figure from the 7th century who is revered by Shiites.

There were tense scenes on the streets of the region, with angry crowds protesting against the attack, according to residents.

Videos posted on social media by local people showed crowds chanting Shiite slogans.

The government pledged to find the perpetrators of the attack.

In November, seven Shiites were killed in a shooting attack, which Saudi security forces blamed on the Islamic State Sunni extremist group. Four alleged masterminds were arrested.

There have long been tensions between the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia and the government of the Sunni kingdom, including crackdowns on residents of the oil-rich region, who say they are victims of discrimination.

Sectarian tensions are also being fuelled by the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen against the Shiite Houthi rebels.

The Saudi monarchy adheres to the Wahhabi doctrine, a strict form of Sunni Islam.

(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)

Photo: An entrance to a mosque in Riyadh. Edward Musiak via Flickr

Suicide Bomber Kills 48 High School Students At Nigeria School

Suicide Bomber Kills 48 High School Students At Nigeria School

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

Dozens of schoolboys were killed Monday in a suicide bomb attack on a high school in the town of Potiskum in Nigeria’s Yobe state, Nigerian police confirmed Monday.

Monday’s attack happened at about 8 a.m. as students gathered for school assembly, according to local media.

Dozens were killed and injured, with 48 killed in the attack, carried out by an attacker disguised in a school uniform, according to AP. A police spokesman, Emmanuel Ojukwu, said 47 were dead and 79 injured.

“Many bodies of students are presently on the ground in pools of blood. We are running home now,” an unnamed witness told Nigeria’s Premium Times newspaper.

“We were waiting for the principal to address us, around 7:30 a.m., when we heard a deafening sound and I was blown off my feet, people started screaming and running, I saw blood all over my body,” 17-year-old student Musa Ibrahim Yahaya told AP, speaking in a hospital.

Since 2013, multiple attacks on schools and colleges in Yobe state in Nigeria’s troubled north-east have targeted schoolboys, students and teachers, often killing dozens at a time. The attacks are believed to be the work of the extremist Islamist militia, Boko Haram, which is bitterly opposed to Western-style secular education.

Boko Haram emerged about a decade ago, fighting for an Islamic state, but has stepped up attacks in recent years, killing thousands of Nigerians in the north east. Nigeria’s military, often accused of fleeing attacks or abandoning its posts, has been criticized for failing to halt the insurgency.

In north eastern Nigeria, extremists have also abducted hundreds of women and girls, including 279 abducted from a school in Chibok town earlier this year.

Nigerian authorities have repeatedly claimed progress in the fight against insurgents in the northeast of the country, only to be proven wrong. Boko Haram, or Islamist militia splinter groups have seized control of dozens of towns and villages in neighboring Borno and Adamawa states in recent months.

Last month, Nigerian authorities claimed to have reached a ceasefire deal with Boko Haram, but attacks and abductions have continued. A video purporting to be from the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau recently repudiated any deal and said the Chibok girls had been married off to fighters. (The authenticity of the video hasn’t been established.)

In June last year, gunmen suspected to be from the extremist Islamist militia, Boko Haram, invaded a government high school in Damaturu, the Yobe state capital, shooting down eight boys and a teacher in the dining room. A month later, gunmen attacked a boys boarding school in Mamudo village, Yobe state, killing 42 people. The victims were shot to death or burned alive in their dormitories.

In September last year, gunmen invaded a dormitory at an agricultural college in the Gujba district of Yobe state, in the early hours of the morning and shot dozens of students in their beds, killing at least 42 students.

In February this year, gunmen attacked a school in Buni Yadi, Yobe state. They sent female students away, before killing 59 boys. The attackers threw petrol bombs into dormitories were students were sleeping, and sprayed the rooms with gunfire. Some students had their throats cut as they tried to flee.

Monday’s attack follows a suicide attack last week in Potiskum on a Shiite religious procession, killing 30 people.

AFP Photo

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Haider Al Abadi Named To Replace Maliki As Troops Take To Baghdad’s Streets

Haider Al Abadi Named To Replace Maliki As Troops Take To Baghdad’s Streets

By Adam Ashton, McClatchy Washington Bureau

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s political crisis deepened Monday, with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki entrenching himself in the capital’s International Zone while the coalition his political party belongs nominated a rival to succeed him as head of the government.

The country’s highest court reportedly ruled against a demand by Maliki that his State of Law party, and not the National Iraqi Alliance coalition, be given the task of choosing the prime minister.

That ruling cleared the way for the alliance, parliament’s largest Shiite Muslim political bloc, to nominate former Maliki ally Haider al Abadi to become prime minister. The alliance forwarded the nomination to Iraqi President Fouad Massoum Monday afternoon, and Moussam announced the nomination shortly afterwards.

Abadi, who is a member of Maliki’s State of Law party and a former party spokesman, was named only hours after Maliki announced in a late-night address that he would file a legal complaint against Massoum for failing to appoint a prime minister from Maliki’s party by an earlier constitutional deadline.

At the same time, Maliki called on elite special forces to reinforce the sprawling government complex known as the International Zone, which houses parliament and Maliki’s home.

Main roads in the city were closed and troops were out in force both on foot and in trucks mounted with machine guns. Nicholay Mladenov, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq, released a statement Monday urging Iraq’s military to stay out of the political dispute.

Maliki’s moves also drew a sharp rebuke from Secretary of State John Kerry, who is traveling in Australia. U.S. officials have lobbied for weeks for Maliki to step down, contending the country needs a new leader to unite Iraq against the threat posed by militants in the Islamic State.

“We stand absolutely squarely behind President Massoum (who) has the responsibility for upholding the constitution of Iraq,” Kerry said.

Kerry said Maliki’s actions could lead the United States to withhold further military assistance just days after American jets and drones began launching air strikes against Islamic State positions in northern Iraq.

“One thing all Iraqis need to know, that there will be little international support of any kind whatsoever for anything that deviates from the legitimate constitution process that is in place and being worked on now,” he said.

By tradition, Iraq chooses a Kurd to be president, a Shiite lawmaker to be prime minster and a Sunni to be speaker of parliament. Massoum, a Kurd, asked the National Iraqi Alliance to nominate a prime minister but the broad coalition failed to settle on a candidate until Monday. The deadline was Sunday.

Maliki has become a divisive figure in the country. Sunni Arabs accuse him of becoming a dictator while favoring the country’s Shiite majority over the large Sunni population that dominates Iraq’s west and north. Sunni extremists in the Islamic State have taken large swaths of territory in that region.

Maliki counters that he’s defending the country from Sunni terrorists who launch suicide bombing attacks and attempt to seize territory from his government.

Thousands of young men marched through central Baghdad Monday morning, chanting their support for Maliki while toting portraits of the prime minister. Many of them appeared to take buses to the city’s Firdos Square to participate in the rally.

“All of the nation is with you, Nouri al Maliki,” they chanted.

They were encircled by Iraqi soldiers and police, some on foot and some in trucks with mounted machine guns. The security forces tried to stay out of photos and videos being taken by Iraqi reporters at the rally.

The Supreme Court ruling against Maliki recalled a 2010 decision when Maliki clung to office despite not having won the most votes. In that case, Maliki argued that the National Iraqi Alliance, and not his party, should be selected to choose the prime minister because its coalition of Shiite parties had more seats than a rival bloc.

In deciding Monday’s case, the court let the 2010 decision stand.

McClatchy special correspondent Laith Hammoudi contributed to this report.

AFP Photo/Amer Al-Saedi

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U.N. Warns Of ‘Tragedy’ As Militants Seize Iraqi Towns

U.N. Warns Of ‘Tragedy’ As Militants Seize Iraqi Towns

By Patrick J. Mcdonnell, Los Angeles Times

The U.N. is warning of a humanitarian “tragedy” in Iraq as thousands flee advances by Islamist militants.

The United Nations is warning of a humanitarian “tragedy,” saying hundreds of thousands of civilians are fleeing the latest advances by Islamist militants in northern Iraq.

In recent days, fighters of the so-called Islamic State, an al-Qaida breakaway faction, and allied forces have overrun new stretches of territory in the Nineveh plains of northwestern Iraq, including the town of Sinjar. The town and its environs had previously provided shelter for vulnerable ethno-religious groups escaping the Sunni Islamist advance.

As many as 200,000 civilians, many from the Yazidi minority — who follow a pre-Islamic faith linked to Zoroastrian beliefs — have fled to nearby mountains and elsewhere, the U.N. says.

The Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim jihadist group, views as “infidels” both Yazidis and Shiite Muslims, who have also fled the area in huge numbers as the jihadists and their allies continue their onslaught. There have been reports of executions of Yazidis and Shiites and destruction of their places of worship.

Thousands of Christians have also fled the area in the wake of the Islamic State advance and its capture in June of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, long a hub of Christianity.

“A humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar,” Nickolay Mladenov, the top U.N. official in Iraq, declared in a statement on Sunday, citing an “urgent need” for food, water, and medicine. “I call on all Iraqi authorities, civil society, and international partners to work with the United Nations to ensure the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance.”

The new Islamic State thrust drove out Kurdish peshmerga forces who swept into the area in June after the Iraqi military retreated south, leaving a security vacuum. The disputed zone is close to Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The latest jihadist territorial gains, after weeks of a relatively stable front line in northwest Iraq, raise questions about how long Kurdish forces can hold off Islamic State and allied fighters in northwestern Iraq. Many Sunni Muslims tribal groups and other Sunnis disaffected with the Shiite-dominated central government in Baghdad have formed alliances with the Islamic State, bolstering jihadist strength.

The Islamic State has vowed to march on to Baghdad, but the capital remains firmly in the hands of the central government and is heavily defended by the Iraqi military and allied Shiite militiamen.

Meanwhile, Islamic State forces have also overrun two small oil fields in northwest Iraq and threatened a major dam in the area, according to various reports. The jihadists have seized oil and gas fields in Iraq and neighboring Syria and have been reportedly selling oil on the black market.

AFP Photo/Safin Hamed

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