Hoplite Group

#Somalia / #terrorism - Somalia suicide attack kills seven, al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab claims responsibility. From The Arab Weekly and AFP: A suicide bomber blew himself up near a police academy in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Thursday, killing at least seven people including civilians, police and witnesses said. Officers said the assailant walked into a crowd of people enjoying tea under the shade of a tree, before detonating a device at around 3:30 pm (1230 GMT). “The apparent casualty information we have is the death of seven people, including police and civilians, and six people were wounded,” a police statement said. “The explosion occurred under trees where residents of the area spend time to rest,” it added. Witnesses said rescuers rushed to the scene after the blast. There were dead bodies and wounded people strewn under the trees, the whole area was in a mess,” witness Ahmed Adan told AFP, describing how people tried to help the injured. “This was horrible, the explosion occurred as people were spending time, some of them enjoying with their tea,” said another witness, Mohamed Salad. A renowned Somali poet was believed to be among the dead, according to those at the scene. The al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab Islamist militant group claimed responsibility for the bombing in a statement. Al-Shabaab has carried out numerous attacks in Mogadishu and other parts of the country, as the government presses on with an offensive aimed at eradicating the extremists. In August, at least 37 people were killed in an Al-Shabaab attack on a busy beach in the capital, prompting demonstrations against the group. https://lnkd.in/gFprcMmX

#Israel / #Gaza #Hamas / #Lebanon #Hezbollah / #Iran - After Sinwar's death, Israel aims to lock in strategic gains before U.S. election - from Reuters News Agency: The killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the attack that ignited the war in the Gaza Strip, marked a major triumph for Israel. But Israeli leaders are also seeking to lock in strategic gains that go beyond military victories – to reshape the regional landscape in Israel's favour and shield its borders from any future attacks, sources familiar with their thinking say. With U.S. elections approaching, Israel is rushing to inflict maximum damage on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon and seizing the moment to carve out de facto buffer zones in a bid to create an irreversible reality before a new president takes office in January, eight sources told Reuters. By intensifying its military operations against Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel wants to ensure that its enemies and their chief patron, Iran, don’t regroup and threaten Israeli citizens again, according to Western diplomats, Lebanese and Israeli officials, and other regional sources. U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to use Sinwar’s killing to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wind down the war in Gaza. But the Israeli leader may prefer to wait out the end of Biden’s term and take his chances with the next president, whether the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, or Republican rival Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu has had close ties. Before considering any ceasefire agreements, Israel is accelerating its military campaign to push Hezbollah away from its northern border while thrusting into Gaza’s densely packed Jabaliya refugee camp in what Palestinians and U.N. agencies fear could be an attempt to seal off northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave. It is also planning a response to a ballistic-missile barrage carried out by Iran on Oct. 1, its second direct attack on Israel in six months. Hamas-led fighters killed around 1,200 people and seized more than 250 hostages during the assault in southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's subsequent offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health authorities in the enclave. Netanyahu said in a statement on Thursday that Sinwar’s death "settled the score", but he warned that the Gaza war would continue with full force until Israel's hostages were returned. More on Israel's broader ambitions, border considerations, and shaping of the Middle East, see rest of article here: https://lnkd.in/gkYYVBG2

#Russia / #Ukraine - Russia flaunts its many doomsday weapons to keep the West from ramping up support for Ukraine - The Associated Press: This year has seen President Vladimir Putin repeatedly brandish the nuclear sword, reminding everyone that Russia has the world’s largest atomic arsenal to try to deter the West from ramping up support for Ukraine. He ordered his military to hold drills involving battlefield nuclear weapons with ally Belarus. He announced Russia will start producing ground-based intermediate range missiles that were outlawed by a now-defunct U.S.-Soviet treaty in 1987. And last month, he lowered the threshold for unleashing his arsenal by revising the country’s nuclear doctrine. Putin is relying on those thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles as an enormous doomsday machine to offset NATO’s massive edge in conventional weapons to discourage what he sees as threats to Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. A look at Russia’s atomic arsenal and the issues surrounding it: Russia’s strategic weapons: The Federation of American Scientists estimated this year that Russia has an inventory totaling 5,580 deployed and non-deployed nuclear warheads, while the U.S. has 5,044. Together, that’s about 88% of the world’s nuclear weapons. Most of these are strategic, or intercontinental-range weapons. Like the U.S., Russia has a nuclear triad of ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range bombers and ICBM-armed submarines. Since Putin came to power in 2000, the Kremlin has worked to upgrade the Soviet-built components of the triad, deploying hundreds of new land-based missiles, commissioning new nuclear submarines and modernizing nuclear-capable bombers. Russia’s effort to revamp its nuclear forces has helped prompt the U.S. to launch a costly modernization of its arsenal. Russia has reequipped its land-based strategic missile forces with mobile Yars ICBMs and recently began deploying the heavy, silo-based Sarmat ICBMs — designated “Satan II” missiles in the West — to gradually replace about 40 Soviet-built R-36M missiles. Sarmat has had only one known successful test, and reportedly suffered a massive explosion during an abortive test last month. Story continues: https://lnkd.in/gHWSeNTQ

#Lebanon / #Iran / #Israel / #UN - Lebanese PM Rejects Iranian Comments On Helping Implement UN Resolution - Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: The caretaker prime minister of Lebanon, Najib Mikati, has rejected any move by Iran to hold talks on implementing a UN resolution concerning southern Lebanon, calling it "blatant interference" in his country's internal affairs. Responding to comments a day earlier by Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Qalibaf that Tehran was ready to negotiate on the UN resolution that calls for the border area of southern Lebanon to be free of international weapons or troops, Mikati said on October 18 that the Lebanese government was "surprised by this position." This "constitutes a blatant interference in Lebanese affairs and an attempt to establish a rejected guardianship over Lebanon," he said in a statement. Qalibaf made the comments in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro. "The issue of negotiating the implementation of Resolution 1701 is the responsibility of the Lebanese state, and everyone is required to support it in this direction, rather than seeking to impose new guardianships that are rejected on all national and sovereign grounds." The UN resolution authorizes a peacekeeping mission, called UNIFIL, to help Lebanon keep the border area secure. The Israeli army launched a ground incursion into the southern border area earlier this month, saying it was pushing out militants from Iran-backed Hezbollah, a militant group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon, and that UNIFIL has failed in its mission. Several UN peacekeeping positions in southern Lebanon have since come under fire, but a UNIFIL spokesperson on October 18 said the mission would remain in Lebanon despite the attacks. "We need to stay, they asked us to move," said UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti by video link from Beirut. "The devastation and destruction of many villages along the Blue Line, and even beyond, is shocking," he said. The Blue Line refers to a demarcation created by the UN to separate Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, while the European Union blacklists its armed wing but not its political party. Hezbollah’s political party has seats in the Lebanese parliament. https://lnkd.in/gjpaaBEe

#Yemen - U.S. Aircraft Carrier's Near Miss With Missile Fired by Middle East Rebels - from Newsweek: Yemen's Houthi rebels, which are supported by Iran, reportedly nearly hit a United States aircraft carrier in the Red Sea with a missile earlier this year. The incident was reported in the October issue of CTC Sentinel, a monthly publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, officially known as the United States Military Academy. The center is an academic institution that was created after the 9/11 attacks. In the article, Michael Knights, the Jill and Jay Bernstein Fellow with the Military and Security Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote about how the Houthis achieved some "impressive feats of marksmanship" against ships with weapons. "By some accounts, an ASBM [anti-ship ballistic missile] or other missile arrived at a very shallow trajectory, with minimal warning, without a chance for interception, and splashing down around 200 meters [656 feet] from" the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Newsweek has contacted the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, for comment by email. The author said the details of the incident were gathered from interviews with Yemen-focused American and British intelligence officers. In May, the Houthi rebels claimed to have conducted a missile attack on the Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea. The aircraft carrier and its strike group, which returned home in July, engaged in combat in the Middle East from November last year to June. "There is no truth to those rumors," a duty officer from the Defense Press Operations of the Pentagon told Newsweek at the time. Following the news, images appeared online that were said to show strike damageto the aircraft carrier, but they were proved to be false. The Iran-backed rebels began attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden after the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October last year. The U.S. and its European allies sent warships to protect civilian ships. The Houthis used a wide range of weapons to carry out attacks, such as unmanned aerial, surface and underwater vehicles, as well as ballistic and cruise missiles. They employed the ship-based Automatic Identification System to "find, fix, and finish" the target. According to the U.S. Navy, the Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group expended 155 surface-to-air missiles, 135 land-attack cruise missiles, nearly 60 air-to-air missiles and 420 air-to-surface weapons during what it called a "historic" combat deployment. Besides the Dwight D. Eisenhower, the carrier strike group was composed of cruiser USS Philippine Sea, destroyers USS Gravely and USS Mason, as well as nine carrier-based aircraft squadrons. They were augmented by destroyers USS Laboon and USS Carney. Story continues click below.

#BrakingNEWS // #Gaza / #Hamas / #Israel - Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, killed in Gaza, Israeli official confirms. Sinwar planned last year’s deadly assault on southern Israel, setting off a devastating war in Gaza that has rippled across the Middle East. He was killed by the Israeli military in Gaza after eluding their forces for more than a year, and his body was identified after DNA testing in Israel, an Israeli official said. Hamas did not immediately confirm his death. Information from The Washington Post and The New York Times

#Hamas / #Gaza - Israel says it may have killed Hamas leader in Gaza - from Voice of America: The Israeli military said Thursday it is investigating the possibility that it has killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar following an operation in the Gaza Strip where it had targeted three militants. "At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed," it said in a statement. Israel said there were no signs that hostages had been present in the building where the three militants were killed. Sinwar, the chief architect of the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war, was named leader of Hamas following the August assassination of then-leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s killing. Meanwhile, health officials in northern Gaza said Thursday an Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians killed at least 14 people, including five children. The Israeli military said it was targeting dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had gathered at the school in Jabaliya, where Israeli forces had been carrying out a major air and ground offensive for more than a week. The Israeli military provided a list of about a dozen names of people it identified as militants at the site, but the names could not be immediately verified. Fares Abu Hamza, head of the Health Ministry's emergency unit in northern Gaza, confirmed the death toll and said dozens of people were wounded. He said the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was struggling to treat the casualties. “Many women and children are in critical condition," he said. Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli military says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children. Hamas-led militants triggered the war when they stormed into southern Israel on October 7 a year ago, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The Israeli military says the death toll includes thousands of militants. Hamas is a U.S.-designated terror group. Elsewhere, Israel’s military said Thursday it killed a Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon, while also announcing a new round of evacuation orders in the Bekaa Valley. The Israel Defense Forces identified the commander killed as Hussein Awada and said he was responsible for firing projectiles across the border into Israel. Israel has issued multiple rounds of evacuation orders for parts of Lebanon, saying people need to get out of those areas due to their proximity to Hezbollah militant sites. The orders typically precede Israeli airstrikes. The latest orders Thursday included the Saraaine, Tamnine and Safri areas. Story continues click below.

#Ukraine / #Russia - War Update - Zelenskiy Presenting His Ukraine 'Victory Plan' To EU, NATO Leaders - from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: The Israeli military said Thursday it is investigating the possibility that it has killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar following an operation in the Gaza Strip where it had targeted three militants. "At this stage, the identity of the terrorists cannot be confirmed," it said in a statement. Israel said there were no signs that hostages had been present in the building where the three militants were killed. Sinwar, the chief architect of the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war, was named leader of Hamas following the August assassination of then-leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s killing. Meanwhile, health officials in northern Gaza said Thursday an Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians killed at least 14 people, including five children. The Israeli military said it was targeting dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had gathered at the school in Jabaliya, where Israeli forces had been carrying out a major air and ground offensive for more than a week. The Israeli military provided a list of about a dozen names of people it identified as militants at the site, but the names could not be immediately verified. Fares Abu Hamza, head of the Health Ministry's emergency unit in northern Gaza, confirmed the death toll and said dozens of people were wounded. He said the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was struggling to treat the casualties. “Many women and children are in critical condition," he said. Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli military says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children. Hamas-led militants triggered the war when they stormed into southern Israel on October 7 a year ago, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The Israeli military says the death toll includes thousands of militants. Hamas is a U.S.-designated terror group. Story continues: https://lnkd.in/eJFW-P7P

#Yemen - U. S. Central Command (USCENTCOM)Conducts Multiple Strikes on Underground Iran-Backed Houthi Weapons Facilities - SEE NOTE: Use of B-2 bombers: U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted multiple, precision airstrikes on numerous Iran-backed Houthi weapons storage facilities within Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen that contained various advanced conventional weapons used to target U.S. and international military and civilian vessels navigating international waters throughout the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. These actions were taken to degrade the Houthi's capability to continue their reckless and unlawful attacks on international commercial shipping and on U.S., coalition, and merchant personnel and vessels in the Red Sea, Bab Al-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden, and to degrade their ability to threaten regional partners. CENTCOM forces targeted the Houthi's hardened underground facilities housing missiles, weapons components, and other munitions used to target military and civilian vessels throughout the region. U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy assets, including U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit long-range stealth bombers, were part of the operation. The employment of the B-2 bomber demonstrates U.S. global strike capabilities to reach these targets, when necessary, anytime, anywhere. Our battle damage assessments are underway and do not indicate civilian casualties. We will provide updates as information is confirmed. https://lnkd.in/eUCsmhwH

#Russia / #China / #Pakistan - Moscow and Beijing announce further cooperation during international group meeting in Pakistan - from The Associated Press: Leaders and top officials from an international group founded to counter Western alliances met in Pakistan’s capital Wednesday, with Moscow and Beijing announcing they will boost cooperation. The 23rd meeting of the China-and Russia-founded Shanghai Cooperation Organization was held amid tight security in Islamabad, virtually on lockdown, and attended by leaders including Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and the prime ministers of Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Mongolia. According to Russian state news agency Tass, Mishustin said during a meeting with Li on the sidelines of the gathering that “despite unprecedented external pressure,” both countries are “increasing the volume of mutual trade and launching joint investment projects.” He also said they are “creating new international transport corridor ... and strengthening food security in Russia and China.” The Chinese premier said Beijing was willing to work with Moscow to strengthen strategic coordination, expand cooperation and contribute to the development and revitalization of the two countries, reported the official Xinhua News Agency. The member state leaders attending the SCO meetings called for enhanced cooperation in the fields of security, trade, and health, minimizing the impacts of climate change and boosting people-to-people contact. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister said the objective of the SCO is to “strengthen mutual trust, friendship and good neighborliness,” adding that “if trust is lacking or cooperation inadequate, if friendship has fallen short and good neighborliness is missing somewhere, there are surely reasons to introspect and causes to address.” The two countries have had a history of bitter relations since the end of British colonial rule on the Indian subcontinent in 1947, which led to the India-Pakistan Partition. Story continues: https://lnkd.in/ecyXxuTe