Islam in the News

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” – Blaise Pascal
(philosopher and mathematician 1623-1662).
The News-Journal - Sept 24, 1997 Algiers, Algeria. – Massacre leaves more than 200 dead near Algiers,
Algeria. Brutal Killings belie government assurances. Attackers with machine guns, firebombs and knives
invaded a neighborhood out side the Algerian capital and methodically killed scores of men, women and
children in one of the worst episodes in nearly six years of political bloodshed by Islamic insurgents. Although
the government reported 85 people killed, medical workers, gravediggers and eye witnesses said they counted
more than 200 bodies in the suburb of Baraki, just south of Algiers…Large groups of armed men attack at night,
often close to police and military barracks. They appear able to carry out horrendous murders undisturbed, then
melt away with the daylight. …the incidents are reported in newspapers – but frequently are not confirmed by
the government… Meanwhile, the scale of death has spiraled. A few months ago, when attackers were hitting
isolated villages, a raid might have left several dozen people dead. But in the past two months, massacres have
moved into greater Algiers, and death tolls have risen correspondingly. On Aug. 29, in what was apparently the
worst single massacre of the insurgency, about 300 people were slaughtered in Rais, a village 15 kilometers
from the capital. Tuesday’s massacre occurred less than 48 hours after Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia appeared
on national television Sunday to announce that because of “the increased vigilance of the population, the
determination of the security forces and the end of political bargaining, the country now faces only residual
terrorism.” He proclaimed. Those words meant little Tuesday. The heavily armed attackers arrived shortly after
midnight surrounding the neighborhood, then systematically forced victims out of their homes, where they were
gunned down or had their throats slit, according to news agency accounts. Homemade grenades and Molotov
cocktails were thrown into houses, said survivors quoted by the French news agency AFP. “They even tossed
children from the terraces,” one man said. The recent massacres have fueled demands for an intentional effort to
end the conflict. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who condemned the Tuesday massacre as a ‘brutal act of
terrorism”, offered three weeks ago to mediate between the government and the Islamic insurgents but was
sternly rebuffed by the Algerian leadership”.
The News-Journal (AP) – Dec 10, 1998 Algiers, Algeria – 45 Killed in Algeria’s Latest Massacre An armed
band killed 45 people in a pre-dawn attack that was the bloodiest massacre in Algeria in months, security forces
said. Separately, authorities said they had pulled 46 bodies from a 180-foot-deep well used as a mass grave.
Many more victims remain in the mass grave, which could be as much as two years old. Security forces said in a
statement that Wednesday’s massacre in the mountain town of Tadjena, about 125 miles west of the capital,
Algiers, was committed by a “terrorist band” – language signifying Muslim insurgents blamed for many such
massacres in recent years. The last massacre of this magnitude was in March, when 52 people were reported
killed at Had Sahary Youb, 150 miles southwest of the capital. In the past, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan,
which starts Dec. 20 this year, has brought an increase in violence, and the trend appeared to be continuing this
year. The massacre raised the death toll since the start of the month to at least 115 people. Meanwhile, south of
the capital, in an area referred to as the “Triangle of Death,” security forces said they had dug 46 bodies from a
well at a farm in Meftah, 10 miles from central Algiers. It is not known how many more people may have been
thrown into the mass grave, which specialists date to 1996 or 1997.
The Associated Press – Mar 17, 2002 Islamabad, Pakistan – A grenade attack on a Protestant church packed
with Sunday worshippers killed five people including the wife and daughter of an American diplomat, in an
assault clearly aimed at Pakistan’s foreign community. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, in which
at least 1-2 young men in black ran through the center of the church hurling grenades. But suspicion fell on
Islamic extremists. Ten Americans were among the 45 people injured, most of whom were foreigners, police
and hospitals said. The attack occurred at 10:50 a.m. during a sermon before 60 to 70 worshippers. Dozens of
police and soldiers rushed to the scene. The church, about 400 yards from the U.S. Embassy, is located in the
guarded diplomatic quarter in the heart of Pakistan’s capital and primarily serves the foreign community. The
overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are Muslim and few Pakistani Christians live in Islamabad. Survivors
spoke of deafening blasts, choking smoke and pandemonium. They said terrified parents screamed for their
children and stunned worshippers dived beneath chairs and behind cement pillars as bits of flesh were hurled
through the air. Parents groped to find their way downstairs, where their children were attending Sunday School.
Other parishioners feared touching the wounded, because unexploded grenades lay near their bodies. “There was
blood, blood, blood, intestines lying on the floor,” said Elisabeth Mundhenk, 54, of Hamburg, Germany as she
awaited treatment for shrapnel wounds at a hospital. “It was horrific. There was a horrible smell and we could
barely breathe.” Mark Robinson of San Clemente, Calif., who was being treated at a clinic for a minor leg
injury, described “total pandemonium.” “Everyone panicked,” Robinson said. “I saw one woman on the steps
with a piece of shrapnel in her carotid artery. She bled to death right there.” The U.S. Embassy identified the
dead Americans as Barbara Green and her daughter Kristen Wormsley, a senior at the American School in
Islamabad. Green and her husband, Milton Green, worked at the U.S. Embassy she in administration and he in
the computer division. Milton Green and the couple’s young son were also injured but not seriously, according
to police. In addition to the Americans, 12 Pakistanis, five Iranians, one Iraqi, one Ethiopian and one German
were injured, police said. The government said the injured also included Sri Lankans, Afghans, Swiss, Britons,
Australians and Canadians. The kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl was seen as
part of an extremist campaign to embarrass the government and undercut its support in the West. The attack was
the 2ND against Christians in Pakistan since the war on terrorism began. On Oct. 28, gunmen killed 15 Christians
and one Muslim guard in an attack on a church in the town of Behawalpur.
Associated Press- Jul 31, 2002 Beirut, Lebanon – A disgruntled Education Ministry employee opened fire at
colleagues at a ministry office, killing eight people and wounding five before he was apprehended by police,
police officials and witnesses said. Muslim police chief Maj. Gen. Walid Koleilat claimed a financial dispute
was behind the shooting, and dismissed any sectarian motives. But others, noting the gunman was Muslim and
his victims Christian, questioned whether religious divisions contributed to the violence. Koleilat said the
gunman, who had worked for the fund for 23 years, went methodically through offices, shooting. Some of the
victims ran out onto a balcony to escape the gunfire, but the gunman shot through the windows, killing two,
whose bodies rested on the edge of the railing. Mansour’s family said he worked as a clerk and “fixer,” a term
used for people who help cut through red tape at government ministries in return for a tip. He is married with
four children. As news of the shooting reached Mansour’s village of Loubieh in south Lebanon, relatives and
friends gathered at the family house for support. His wife, Mona Khalil, cried out: “This is a catastrophe. … I
can’t believe Ahmed would do something like this.” She said Mansour is a diabetic who also took tranquilizers.
The building housing the fund is a few hundred yards from the main Education Ministry compound and across
the street from the literature department of Lebanese University. About 200 police sealed the area.
About 20 relatives waiting outside wept as the bodies were being removed from the scene nearly three hours
after the attack. They wailed whenever a body was carried out and tried to rush through the police cordon to
remove the sheet to identify the victim. Colleagues of the gunman who were in the building at the time of the
shooting said the 43-year-old man arrived at midmorning armed with two pistols and a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
He went to the third floor, where the teachers’ compensation fund has its offices and began shooting. One
witness, a government worker who refused to give his name, said after the gunman ran out of ammunition, he
dropped his weapons, walked down the stairs and lit a cigarette. At about the same time, police arrived at the
scene and arrested him. Koleilat, the police chief, told reporters at the scene that the attacker tried to conceal
himself by mixing in the crowd but later tried to run. The police chief dismissed concerns that the attack may
have been sectarian-motivated. “It is tragic. It was personal and isolated. We hope that no one makes of this
incident more than its isolated nature,” he said. But George Saade, the Christian head of the teachers’ union
whose daughter-in-law was among the dead, was yelling outside the building: “He killed the Christian
employees. How can we live in this country?” Muslim Education Minister Abdul-Rahim Murad, who rushed to
the scene, said money was the reason behind the shooting. Murad said the gunman was angry that the
compensation fund sought repayment of a loan of $12,000 he had taken earlier. “They asked him to sell his car,
he sold it, got upset and consequently came and committed his crime,” Murad said.
The Associated Press – Aug 01, 2002 Newark, N.J. – A Jersey City man charged with killing his pregnant wife,
mother-in-law and sister-in-law was arrested by Canadian authorities as he tried to cross the border into Canada,
officials said. A fugitive warrant for the arrest of Alim Hassan issued by the Hudson County prosecutor’s office
indicated there had been a dispute over his desire that his wife convert to Islam, according to Lt. Larry Baehre of
the Buffalo, N.Y., police department, which took custody of Hassan from the Canadians. “The warrant said that
he and his wife had previous disputes that she convert to the Muslim religion,” Baehre said. The victims were
Hindu, he said. Hassan, 31, was taken off a Greyhound bus after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police received
an anonymous phone call Tuesday evening, said Edward J. DeFazio, the Hudson County Prosecutor. The caller
warned that a man who had stabbed the three women to death in their Jersey City home earlier in the day was
headed to Toronto from New York City, DeFazio said. On Tuesday morning, Bernadette Seajatan, 49, and her
daughters, Sharon Yassim, 30, and Marlyn Hassan, 29, who was married to the defendant, were found dead in
the house they shared on Fox Place with their husbands and Yassim’s two sons. The two boys, ages 3 and 6,
discovered the bloody bodies of their mother, aunt and grandmother, after the three men had left the house
Tuesday morning.
The Associated Press – Aug 05, 2002 Islamabad, Pakistan – Five unidentified gunmen stormed the gates of a
Christian school in a popular mountain resort Monday, killing at least six people and wounding two others
before escaping. The attack occurred at the Murree Christian School in Murree Hills, about 35 miles north of
Islamabad in the Himalayan foothills. The school was founded in 1956 to train the children of missionaries here
and in neighboring countries. A statement by the school said there had been “several deaths and injuries”.
Federal officials in Islamabad said they did not know the identities or the motive of the attackers. The dead were
identified as two security guards, two school employees, one unknown person and a retired teacher who was at
the school to collect his pension. It was the third fatal attack against Christian institutions in this predominantly
Muslim country since President Pervez Musharraf joined the U.S.-led war against terrorism last year. Sixteen
people were killed in October when gunmen opened fire on a Protestant congregation in the city of Behawalpur.
The Associated Press – Aug 9 2002 Taxila, Pakistan – Three attackers hurled grenades Friday at women
leaving a church on the grounds of a Presbyterian hospital in Pakistan, killing three nurses and wounding 23 in
the second attack this week against Christians. The attack is the latest in a series of terrorist incidents here since
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sided with the United States against the Afghan Taliban, outraging
extremists. Police said they believed the attack in Taxila, 25 miles northwest of Islamabad, was linked to an
assault four days ago against a school for children of Christian missionaries in which six Pakistanis were killed.
“It is clear that terrorists are targeting the Christian community in Pakistan,” said S.K. Tressler, the government
minister in charge of minority affairs. Chief investigator Raja Mumtaz Ahmad told The Associated Press that
the attackers wanted to kill Christians or Westerners to express anger over Pakistan’s support for the U.S.-led
war against terrorism. The attack occurred as worshippers were leaving a church on the hospital grounds,
according to Dr. Ernest Lall, a former hospital director who was in the church. The service was attended mostly
by women and children, and women traditionally exit first. Doctors said 23 people, mostly female nurses, were
wounded and two were in serious condition. Three men had been waiting by the hospital gates for the daily
morning service to end before they struck, according to police at the scene in Taxila, 12 miles west of the capital
Islamabad. S.K. Tressler, a Christian who is Muslim Pakistan’s minister for minority affairs, told Reuters the
dead assailant was shot by an accomplice after being wrestled to the ground by a hospital worker, possibly to
prevent him revealing the group’s identity. His account was based on police information. “I was still inside the
church when I heard explosions,” said staff member Margif Tariq. “Windowpanes were falling on us, everyone
was crying, everyone was in pain. … When I came out, I saw dozens of women were lying on the pavement and
most of them were bleeding.” The hospital, which is supported by the Presbyterian Church USA and the
Presbyterian Church of Pakistan, was founded in 1922 and treats mostly poor Muslim patients. “We have been
here since 1922, and someone throws a bomb,” Lall said. “I don’t know why. It is somebody who must be
against Christianity. We never thought we would be a target like that.” Shah, the regional police commander,
said he believed the assailants were linked to the Murree shootings because the attacker who died was wearing
clothing similar to that of the school attackers. One day after the Murree attack, three men believed to have
carried out the school raid blew themselves up with grenades after being stopped by police in Pakistan-
controlled Kashmir. Before killing themselves, the three men in Kashmir admitted to attacking the school and
warned that other groups like them “plan to carry out similar attacks on Americans and nonbelievers, and you
will soon hear about it,” Shah said. Extremists have vowed revenge against both Musharraf and his Western
supporters since the Pakistani government broke with the Taliban and began a crackdown on hard-line Islamic
groups. “If immediate steps are not taken by authorities to provide protection to Christians, I fear that it will lead
to the start of genocide in Pakistan,” said Shahbaz Bhaddi, leader of the All-Pakistan Minorities Alliance. In
October, 16 people were killed in an attack on a Christian church in Behawalpur, a city in south-central
Pakistan.
The Associated Press – Aug 12, 2002 Islamabad, Pakistan – A man in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore
allegedly killed his wife and four children because he suspected her of adultery, police and residents said.
Investigators said Mohammed Sadiq was taken into custody and that unspecified weapons were seized. The four
children were between 7 and 14 years old, police said. Hundreds of women and children in Pakistan are killed
by their husbands or other male members of their family every year when the woman is suspected of having an
immoral character. In most of the cases, the murder suspects are acquitted due to a lack of evidence [in what
some say is tacit state approval of extreme private applications of Sharia (Islamic) Law] . The slaying follows
the highly publicized case of a woman who was allegedly gang-raped on the order of a tribal council as
punishment for her teenage brother having sex with a woman from another clan.
The Associated Press – Aug 16, 2002 Algiers, Algeria – Islamic insurgents reportedly killed 26 people early
Friday, including women and children, in a rural hamlet in western Algeria, the official APS news agency
reported. The agency, citing security sources, said the victims were members of three families in Bokaat
Laakakcha in the region of Chlef, 155 miles west of the capital, Algiers. The attack was carried out by a
“terrorist group,” APS said, language used to refer to Islamic extremists who have been locked in a bloody 10-
year battle with security forces. The Chlef killings were the latest in what has proved a bloody summer for
Algeria. A marketplace bombing on July 5 in Larbaa, just south of Algiers, left 35 people dead. About 170
people were killed in July alone, according to an unofficial count by the press. The violence was sparked by an
army decision to cancel legislative elections in January 1992 that a now-banned Muslim fundamentalist group
was poised to win.
The Associated Press – Sept 23, 2002 Cario, Egypt – Two assailants killed a recently engaged 89-year-old
woman and stole the jewelry her fiancé gave her at their engagement party, police said. Police found Hekmat
Hanna dead with her neck slashed Monday, a day after she was attacked. Hanna lived alone in an apartment in
Shoubra, a low-income district in Cairo. Her fiancée, George Demyan, also 89, presented the jewelry, worth
about $3,000, to Hanna at their engagement party, police said. The Coptic Christian couple were to be married
in October. It was to be Hanna’s first marriage.
Reuters- Sept 25 2002 Karachi, Pakistan – Two gunmen burst into the offices of a Christian charity in the
Pakistani city of Karachi and tied up and gagged Christians before shooting them at point blank range, police
said. The attack was the latest in a series of bloody assaults on Christian or Western targets. Doctors said an
eighth man faced permanent paralysis of his left side from a head wound and needed an operation, while a ninth
was under sedation after being beaten up in the attack. The gunmen fled the scene and were being hunted. The
attack took place at the city center offices of the Idare-e Amn-O-Insaf, or the Organization for Peace and Justice.
“The gunmen first roped all the people inside the room, they also taped their mouths,” a police officer told
Reuters. “After, they fired straight at their heads.” “The dead bodies were found lying on chairs,” said provincial
police chief Syed Kamal Shah. “It appeared that they were forced to sit there. Their hands were tied and their
mouths were also taped. We found eight empty bullet shells of a TT pistol which means that they were shot
point blank,” he said. The attack came a day after two gunmen attacked a Hindu temple in Gujarat state in
western India and killed at least 29 people. Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani has implicitly
blamed Pakistan for that attack.
Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told state-run Pakistan Television authorities would track down those
responsible. “It’s a very sad incident,” he said. “We condemn it and whosoever has done it, it is matter of time,
we will unmask them. But that certainly is not helping Pakistan.” Leaders of the country’s tiny Christian
community, however, said the government was not doing enough to protect them. “It seems that nobody except
Muslims will live in Pakistan,” Salim Khursheed Khokhar, a local leader of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance
told Reuters by telephone. “Fundamentalism is taking root in Pakistan, and Christians’ places of worships and
welfare institutes are being targeted one after the other.” The charity has its offices, which are unmarked, on the
third floor of Rimpa Plaza, a 12-storey block in downtown Karachi. A doctor in the next-door office said he had
seen two gunmen. “They were wearing shirts and trousers and were clean shaven,” he said. As a large crowd
gathered around the office, the bodies were brought out wrapped in white sheets. Blood dripped off the
stretchers carrying the dead men, and there were large bloodstains around their heads. At the hospital female
relatives of one victim, Edwin Foster, wailed and beat themselves in grief. “We were already shattered,” said his
mother, Salima. “His father died just a few months back. And now my son… We are ruined, we are ruined.”
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Lopsided statistics citing only the number of deaths of each side do not answer the
question of the parties’ moral culpability and standing for acts causing the casualties. Consider that, of the
current causalities in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, 2.5% of Palestinian deaths were female, all unintended
targets (or female homicide bombers). Contrast that with 36% of Israeli victims being female, and targeted.
There have also been hundreds of other shooting, vehicular, mortar, bomb, and stabbing attacks not listed here.
The following is a chronology of only the Palestinian homicide/suicide bombing attacks since Palestinians chose
violence September 2000:
1. Oct 26, 2000 – Homicide bomber strikes near an IDF post in the Gaza Strip, wounding a soldier.
2. Dec 22, 2000 – Homicide bomber at Restaurant in Jordan River Valley; no Israelis killed, 3 wounded.
3. Jan 1, 2001 – Homicide bomber, Netanya no Israelis killed, 60 injured.
4. Mar 1, 2001 – Homicide bomber in taxi near Mei Ami, 1 killed, 12 wounded.
5. Mar 4, 2001 – Homicide bomber, rush-hour bus stop in Netanya, 3 killed, 51 wounded.
6. Mar 27, 2001 – Homicide bomber, next to a bus in Jerusalem’s French Hill area, injured 30 Israelis.
7. Mar 28, 2001 – Homicide bomber, Neve Yamin gas station (near Kfar Saba) kills 2 schoolboys, hurts 4.
8. Apr 22, 2001 – Homicide bomber kills a doctor and wounds 41 in a rush-hour attack in Kfar Saba.
9. Apr 29, 2001 – Car homicide bomber near Israeli school bus outside Nablus; no Israelis killed, none hurt.
10. May 18, 2001 – Homicide bomber kills five people and wounds around 60 at a crowded Netanya shopping mall.
11. May 25, 2001 – Homicide bomber in Truck at military Junction in Gaza Strip; no Israelis killed, none hurt.
12. May 25, 2001 – Homicide car bomber, attack in Hadera, 0 killed, 20 Israelis wounded.
13. June 1, 2001 – Homicide bomber among teenagers at a Tel Aviv nightclub, 22 killed, 120 wounded.
14. June 22, 2001 – Homicide attack, Jeep at Dugit in Gaza Strip; 2 soldiers killed, 1 wounded.
15. July 9, 2001 – Homicide car bomber near Kissufim Junction; no Israelis killed, none wounded.
16. July 16, 2001 – Homicide bomber, bus stop in Binyamina, 2 IDF soldiers killed, several wounded.
17. Aug 8, 2001 – Homicide bomber stopped at military checkpoint in Jordan Valley; no Israelis killed, 1 wounded.
18. Aug 9, 2001 – Homicide bomber in Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, 15 killed, dozens wounded.
19. Aug 12, 2001 – Homicide bomber, restaurant in Kiryat Motzkin (northern Israel), wounds 15 people.
20. Sept 4, 2001 – Homicide bomber outside a Jerusalem hospital., wounds 15.
21. Sept 9, 2001 – Israeli Arab blows himself up at a railway station in Nahariya, killing 3, many wounded.
22. Sept 9, 2001 – Homicide Car bomb next to a bus at Beit Lid Junction; no Israelis killed, 13 wounded.
23. Oct 7, 2001 – Homicide attack near Kibbutz Shluhot; one killed, others wounded.
24. Oct 17, 2001 – Homicide bomb attack at Nahal Oz kibbutz, no Israelis killed, 2 wounded.
25. Nov 8, 2001 – Homicide bomber foiled at Baka al-Sharkiyeh, West Bank, no Israelis killed, 2 soldiers wounded.
26. Nov 26, 2001 – Homicide bombing at Erez crossing, Gaza Strip; no Israelis killed, 2 wounded.
27. Nov 29, 2001 – Palestinian blows himself up on a bus in Hadera, killing three, wounding many.
28. Dec 1, 2001 – Double homicide car bombing, central Jerusalem Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, 11 killed, 150+ hurt.
29. Dec 2, 2001 – Homicide bomber on a bus in Haifa kills 15 people and wounds 40.
30. Dec 5, 2001 – Homicide bomber outside a Jerusalem hotel wounds three people.
31. Dec 9, 2001 – Homicide bomber, hitch-hiking post near Haifa, wounds eight people.
32. Dec 12, 2001 – 2 Palestinians blow themselves up at a Gaza Strip settlement, wounding 3 people.
33. Jan 25, 2002 – Palestinian blows himself up near a café in Tel Aviv, wounding 25 people.
34. Jan 27, 2002 – Female homicide bombing on the Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. 2 people killed, 111 injured.
35. Jan 30, 2002 – Homicide bomber, Shin Bet security service near Taibeh, wounds two.
36. Feb 16, 2002 – Homicide bomber, shopping center in Karnei Shomron (West Bank), kills 2, wounds 20.
37. Feb 18, 2002 – Homicide car bomb at Al-Zaim checkpoint on Jerusalem-Maale Adumim road, 1 policeman killed.
38. Feb 19, 2002 – Homicide bomber kept from boarding Bus near Mehola., none killed.
39. Feb 22, 2002 – Homicide bomber thwarted, Efrat supermarket in West Bank; no Israelis killed, one wounded.
40. Feb 27, 2002 – Female homicide bomber at an IDF checkpoint near Modi’in. 5 people wounded.
41. Mar 2, 2002 – Homicide bomber, Jerusalem Orthodox neighborhood kills 11 (5 children) wounds many more.
42. Mar 5, 2002 – Homicide bomber, on bus in the Galilee city of Afula killed 1, wounded at least 5.
43. Mar 7, 2002 – At Ariel, café homicide bombing thwarted, no Israelis killed.
44. Mar 7, 2002 – Homicide bomber at entrance to West Bank settlement, 4 wounded.
45. Mar 8, 2002 – Homicide bomber intercepted and killed at Beit Hanina; no Israelis killed.
46. Mar 9, 2002 – Homicide bomber, crowded Moment Café in Jerusalem, kills 13 people, injures more than 50.
47. Mar 17, 2002 – Homicide bomber near bus in French Hill in Jerusalem; no Israelis killed, 25 wounded.
48. Mar 20, 2002 – Homicide bomber on bus near town of Umm al-Fahm, killing 7, wounding 27.
49. Mar 21, 2002 – Homicide bomber King George Street in heart of Jerusalem kills 3.
50. Mar 22, 2002 – Homicide bomber at Roadblock interception near Jenin; no Israelis killed, 1 soldier wounded.
51. Mar 26, 2002 – Homicide bomber near Malha Mall in Jerusalem; no Israelis killed, only accomplices wounded.
52. Mar 27, 2002 – Homicide bomber, seaside Park Hotel lobby in Netanya, killing 29, wounding more than 100.
53. Mar 29, 2002 – Female homicide bomber, Jerusalem Kiryat Yovel suburb supermarket, killed 2, injured 20.
54. Mar 30, 2002 – Homicide bomber, busy Tel Aviv Coffee shop on Allenby Street, 1 killed, at least 20 hurt.
55. Mar 31, 2002 – Homicide bomber, Matza restaurant in Haifa, 15 people are killed and 44 are injured.
56. Mar 31, 2002 – A second homicide attack wounds 6 at West Bank Ambulance station of Efrat.
57. Apr 1, 2002 – Homicide Car bomb in Jerusalem, policeman who approached car killed, 4 others hurt.
58. Apr 10, 2002 – Homicide bomber, commuter bus near Haifa, kills eight and wounds 12.
59. Apr 12, 2002 – Female homicide bomber, Jerusalem’s main Mahane Yehuda market, killed 6, wounded 104.
60. Apr 19, 2002 – Homicide car bomb at Kissufim checkpoint in Gaza Strip; no Israelis killed, 2 soldiers wounded.
61. Apr 20, 2002 – Checkpoint near Qalqiliya in West Bank, no Israelis killed.
62. May 7, 2002 – Homicide bomber, snooker club in Rishon Letzion south of Tel Aviv, killing 16, wounding 55.
63. May 19, 2002 – Homicide bomber rocks a market in Netanya killing 3, 59 wounded.
64. May 20, 2002 – Homicide bomber at Taanakhim Junction exploded when approached. No Israelis killed.
65. May 22, 2002 – Homicide bomber at Park in town of Rishon Letzion kills two people, wounds 27.
66. May 24, 2002 – Terrorist attempted to ram a car bomb into the Studio 49 Disco in Tel Aviv. Bomber killed, 5 injured.
67. May 27, 2002 – Homicide bombing Petah Tikva shopping center Ice-cream parlor, 2 people dead, 37 wounded.
68. June 5, 2002 – Homicide car bomb, Tiberias bus at Megiddo road junction, 17 dead, 37 hurt.
69. June 11, 2002 – Homicide bombing, restaurant in Herzliya; one killed, 15 others wounded.
70. June 17, 2002 – West Bank, north of Tul Karm, Palestinian youth blows himself up as Police approach him.
71. June 18, 2002 – Homicide bombing, Jerusalem commuter/high-school bus. 20 killed, 50 injured.
72. June 19, 2002 – Homicide bombing at French Hill bus stop in Jerusalem; 7 killed, 35 wounded.
73. July 16, 2002 – Explosive detonated next to Dan bus #189. Terrorists with IDF uniforms then opened fire. 9 killed, 20 injured.
74. July 17, 2002 – Two homicide bombers kill 5 and wound 40 in Tel Aviv’s foreign worker neighborhood.
75. July 30, 2002 – Homicide bomber wounds 5 Israelis in a fast-food store in Jerusalem.
76. July 31, 2002 – Bomb in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University student cafeteria 9 dead (5 American) 85 wounded.
77. Aug 4, 2002 – Series of violent events, including homicide bomb on bus near Safad. 10 killed, many hurt.
78. Aug 5, 2002 – Car at the Umm al-Fahm junction in northern Israel, killing the terrorist and wounding the driver.
79. Sept 18, 2002 – Bomber, waiting for bus, kills policeman who approached him at Umm al Fahm junction. 3 wounded.
80. Sept 19, 2002 – A homicide bomb attack on a bus in Tel Aviv kills 6 injuring more than 50.
81. Oct 10, 2002 – Denied boarding, homicide bomber at bus stop near Tel Aviv, killing elderly woman, wounding 30.
82. Oct 13, 2002 – Tel Aviv Café homicide bomber thwarted/arrested by security, none hurt, belt unexploded.
83. Oct 21, 2002 – A homicide car bomb exploded next to bus between Hadera/Afula, killing 16, wounding 40.
84. Oct 27, 2002 – Jerusalem, homicide bomber at a gas station, killing 3, and injuring 20 more.
85. Nov 2, 2002 – Thwarted at Tappuah junction checkpoint in the West Bank, 2 carrying explosive belt in car.
86. Nov 4, 2002 – Homicide bomber in shopping mall in Kfar Saba kills 3, wounds 70 (including 2 infants).
87. Nov 7, 2002 – Homicide bomber killed rushing guards at checkpoint near Jewish settlement of Kedumim.
88. Nov 10 2002 – Kibbutz Metzer, car exploded killing Palestinian homicide bomber when Israeli police moved to stop it.
89. Nov 21 2002 – Homicide bomber, Jerusalem bus packed with students/elderly/commuters, killed 11, wounded 50.
90. Jan 5, 2002 – Tel Aviv, dual homicide bombers killed 23 bystanders and injured more than 100.
91. Mar 5, 2003 – Haifa, homicide bomber on a bus filled with students/commuters, killing 17, injuring 53.
92. Mar 30, 2003 – Pedestrian mall at Café entrance in the center of Netanya. Bomber killed, over 40 wounded.
93. Apr 24, 2003 – Security man killed confronting bomber outside railway station in the town of Kfar Saba.
94. Apr 30, 2003 – Popular café in Tel Aviv, just after a new Palestinian cabinet wins approval. 4 killed, dozens injured.
95. May 17, 2003 – Hebron, bomber disguised as a religious Jew kills an Israeli man & his pregnant wife. 3 killed
96. May 18, 2003 – Homicide bomber in Egged bus #6 near French Hill in northern Jerusalem. 7 killed, 20 wounded.
97. May 18, 2003 – A second bomber kills self, minutes after bus bombing as emergency crews arrive. 0 killed
98. May 19, 2003 – Gaza Strip, homicide bomber riding a bicycle detonated his explosives. 3 soldiers injured.
99. May 19, 2003 – Woman bomber in shopping mall, northern town of Afula. 3 killed, 70 injured.
100. Jun 11, 2003 – Homicide bomber in Egged Bus #14 in Jerusalem (Jaffa Road). 17 killed, 100 wounded.
101. Jun 19, 2003 – Grocer killed approaching homicide bomber in his store waiting for commuters, south of Beit Shean.
102. Jul 7, 2003 – Islamic Jihad homicide bomber in a home near Tel Aviv, killing a 65-year-old Israeli woman.
103. Aug 12, 2003 – Homicide bomber at a Rosh Haayin strip mall, one dead, 9 wounded.
104. Aug 12, 2003 – Homicide bomber at Ariel settlement Bus stop, one dead, 2 seriously wounded teenagers.
105. Aug 19, 2003 – Homicide bomber in Jerusalem Bus, 22 Killed including 8 children and infants, 135 wounded.
106. Sep 9, 2003 – Homicide bomber at a Tel Aviv bus stop serving hospital workers and soldiers, 8 killed, 15 wounded.
107. Sep 9, 2003 – Homicide bomber at a popular Hillel Café on Jerusalem’s Emek Refaim Street, 7 killed, 30 wounded.
108. Oct 4, 2003 – Woman homicide bomber in Haifa restaurant, 21 dead including several children, 60 wounded.
109. Oct 9, 2003 – Suicide bomber at the entrance to Tulkarm, injuring two IDF soldiers and a Palestinian.
110. Oct 15, 2003 – Bomb demolishes armor-plated jeep in Gaza Strip convoy carrying U.S. diplomats (3 dead, 1 wounded).
111. Dec 25, 2003 – Homicide bomber at a bus stop outside Tel-Aviv kills 4.
112. Jan 14, 2004 – Homicide bomber, mother of 2, at Gaza Strip Erez crossing kills 4, wounds 15.
113. Jan 29, 2004 – Homicide bomber in a Jerusalem bus kills 10, seriously maims 50, including several children.
114. Feb 22, 2004 – Homicide bomber on a morning Jerusalem bus crowded with children, killing 8, maiming 59.
115. Aug 31, 2004 – Two Be'er Sheva buses explode almost simultaneously, killing 16 and wounding 86.
116. Sep 22, 2004 – Woman homicide bomber near a hitch-hiking post in Jerusalem, killing two and wounding 15.
117. Nov 1, 2004 – Palestinian boy (16) in Tel Aviv crowded outdoor market, killing three, wounding 32.
The Associated Press – Oct 25, 2002 Moscow, Russia – Armed assailants from Chechnya stormed a theater
Wednesday and took hundreds of people hostage Muslim Chechen rebels threatened to begin killing their 600+
hostages at dawn Saturday. The head of the Russian Federal Security Service, Nikolai Patrushev, said the
approximately 50 rebels’ lives would be guaranteed for the freedom of all hostages including 30 children and 75
foreigners. The terrorists, including women who claim to be widows of ethnic insurgents, have demanded that
Russia withdraw its troops from the Caucasus province of Chechnya. Earlier, a Web site linked to the rebels said
they would blow up the theater if the Russians did not withdraw in seven days. On Thursday, two women raced
to freedom under fire from a grenade launcher. Their escape came after medics dragged the body of a young
woman from the theater. She was shot in the chest, reportedly killed as she tried to move around inside the
theater after the attack began. The hostages include Americans, Britons, Dutch, Australians, Austrians and
Germans. In the initial minutes of the hostage taking, the rebels released some children and those identified as
Muslims. Russian NTV crews were allowed inside with a doctor Friday and videotape was broadcast showing
three male captors in camouflage and carrying Kalashnikov-style rifles. Two wore black masks. The television
identified a third man, who wore no mask, as group leader Movsar Barayev, a nephew of rebel warlord Arbi
Barayev, who reportedly died last year. Two women in the group of rebels wore robes with Arabic script on the
head coverings. Only their eyes were exposed, and they cradled pistols against their chests. The women had
what looked to be explosives wrapped in tape around their waists. The packages were wired to a small button
the women carried in their hands. A hostage, said the situation inside the theater was tense and conditions were
worsening. The captives had not received food or water and were using the theater’s orchestra pit as a toilet.
Yelena Malyonkina, also a spokeswoman for the “Nord-Ost” musical being staged in the theater, said captive
production official Anatoly Glazychev told her a bomb was placed in the center of the theater and the stage and
aisles were mined. “Both the terrorists and hostages are nervous,” Malyonkina said. Putin said the audacious
raid was planned by terrorists based outside Russia, and the Qatar-based satellite television channel Al-Jazeera
broadcast statements allegedly made by some hostage-takers and apparently prepared well in advance of the
incident. “I swear by God we are more keen on dying than you are keen on living,” a black-clad male said in
recorded remarks. “Each one of us is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of God and the independence of
Chechnya.” Over the past decade, Chechens or their sympathizers have been involved in a number of bold, often
bloody hostage-taking situations in southern Russian provinces, especially in Dagestan. Nearly 200 hundred
hostages and rescuers died in two of operations. Nov 4th, 2002 update, 120 hostages killed (most by gas),
hundreds saved, most terrorists killed.
Other recent Russian terrorist incidents perpetrated by Muslim Chechen rebels or their supporters:
 Jun 14, 1995: Chechen gunmen took 2,000 hostages at hospital in southern Russian town of
Budyonnovsk, near Chechnya. After failed attempts at force, Russia negotiated hostages’ release
after week in exchange for gunmen’s escape. More than 100 dead.
 Jan 9, 1996: Chechen militants seized 3,000 hostages at hospital in southern Russian town of
Kizlyar. Rebels released most, then headed for Chechnya with about 100 hostages. Stopped in
village and attacked by Russian troops. At least 78 dead in weeklong fight.
 Jan 16, 1996: Six Turks and three Russians held 255 hostages on ferry in Black Sea, threatening to
blow up ship if Russia didn’t halt battle near Kizlyar. Surrendered after three days.
 Mar 9, 1996: Turkish sympathizer hijacked jetliner flying out of Cyprus to draw attention to situation in
Chechnya. Surrendered after plane landed in Munich, Germany.
 Sep 4, 1999: Bomb destroyed building housing Russian military officers and families in Buinaksk in
Russia’s Dagestan region. Sixty-four dead. Russian officials blamed Chechen terrorists.
 Sept 9, 1999: Explosion wrecks nine-story apartment building in southeast Moscow. At least 93 killed.
Authorities suspect Chechen bomb.
 Sep 13, 1999: Suspected bomb destroyed apartment building in southern Moscow, killing at least 70.
 Sep 16, 1999: Bombs sheared off front of nine-story apartment building in Volgodonsk, 500 miles
south of Moscow, killing 20.
 Mar 16, 2001: Three Chechens hijacked Russian airliner leaving Istanbul and diverted it to Saudi
Arabia. Saudi forces stormed plane, killing one hijacker and two hostages.
 Apr 22, 2001: Some 20 gunmen held about 120 people for 12 hours at hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, to
protest Russian actions in Chechnya. Surrendered to police and released hostages unarmed.
 Dec 27, 2002: Suicide truck-bomb attack destroys headquarters of Chechnya's Moscow-backed
government, killing 72 people.
 Oct 23, 2002: Chechen militants take some 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater. Two days later,
Russian special forces storm building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters are killed, mostly
from effects of narcotic gas Russian special forces used to subdue the attackers.
 May 4, 2002: Lone gunman held 13 people hostage at hotel in Istanbul to protest situation in
Chechnya, later surrendered.
 May 12, 2003: Suicide truck-bomb attack kills at least 60 people at a government compound in
northern Chechnya.
 Aug 1, 2003: Suicide bomber rams truck filled with explosives into a military hospital near Chechnya,
killing 50 people, including Russian troops wounded in Chechnya.
 Sep 3, 2003: Two bombs were planted on the track under a commuter train of the railway line linking
Kislovodsk to Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus region. There were about 50 people in the third car
of the six-car train which was directly hit by the blast. The bombs killed five people, and 30 people
were wounded. An officer at the headquarters of the Caucasus Military District, which oversees
Chechnya, said that the military had received intelligence information that Chechnya rebels
(terrorists) were preparing a series of attacks in southern Russia.
 Dec 5, 2003: Suicide bombing on commuter train in southern Russia kills 44 people. Putin condemns
attack as bid to destabilize the country two days before parliamentary elections.
 Feb 6, 2004: Explosion rips through a subway car in the Moscow metro during rush hour, killing 41
people.
 Aug 24, 2004: Two airliners crash within minutes of each other after taking off from the same airport,
killing a total of 90 people. Officials say explosive traces were found in the wreckage and President
Vladimir Putin calls the crashes terrorist acts.
 Sep 1, 2004: Many men and women militants carrying guns and wearing suicide-bomb belts seize an
elementary school in the Russian region of North Ossetia bordering Chechnya, taking up to 1200
hostages, half of them children. Ended with hundreds killed and hundreds wounded.
The Associated Press - Oct 2, 2002 Jammu, India – Islamic Militants Kill 11 in Kashmir. Suspected Islamic
militants opened fire on supporters of the pro-India governing party in Indian-controlled Kashmir and a bomb
exploded on a bus filled with Hindu pilgrims on a day of violence that left at least 11 people dead. The attacks
came a day after voters went to polls in the third of four phases of Jammu-Kashmir state elections, which
separatist Islamic militants have vowed to disrupt, saying they are rigged in favor of pro-India politicians. In the
first attack, a bomb exploded on a bus filled with Hindu pilgrims after it left Jammu, the state’s winter capital,
killing at least two passengers and injuring 22 others, police and hospital officials said. The worshippers were
bound for the starting point of a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Hindu goddess of power, Vaishno Devi. Hours
later, five paramilitary soldiers were killed when suspected insurgents triggered an explosive device while the
soldiers were checking a road for land mines in the village of Pashtoon, about 40 miles south of Srinagar, a
police officer said. Voting for the state legislature was held in that area. The Pakistan-based Hezb-ul
Mujahedeen, the largest guerrilla group in Kashmir, claimed responsibility for the attack. Also Wednesday,
suspected guerrillas shot and killed three political activists with the ruling National Conference party in
Haihama, a small town about 65 miles north of Srinagar, the officer said. And police said one officer was killed
and another injured in a remote-controlled explosion in Bhaderwa, 127 miles northeast of Jammu. Nine people
were killed in a raid on a bus near the Pakistan border in Kashmir’s Kathua district, just before polls opened for
the third round of state assembly elections, and six paramilitary soldiers were also killed in an explosion
Tuesday. The militants have waged a 12-year insurgency for the independence of Indian-controlled Kashmir or
its merger with Muslim Pakistan. More than 60,000 people have been killed and thousands are missing.
Reuters – Oct 9, 2002 Kuwait – Kuwait said it had arrested up to 50 people suspected of aiding two Kuwaitis to
kill a U.S. Marine and wound another in what the government said was a “terrorist attack”. The two Kuwaitis
approached the Marines in a pick-up truck, stepped out of the vehicle and opened fire on troops during the
annual U.S. Eager Mace exercise on Failaka Island. U.S. defense officials, who asked not to be identified, said
the Kuwaitis had attended training camps in Afghanistan run by Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden’s al
Qaeda network. The attackers, killed by the Marines in Tuesday’s incident on a Kuwaiti island, were buried in
what witnesses said turned into an anti-Western rally amid loud chants of “Allahu Akbar,” or God is Greatest.
Writer Mohammad al-Mulafi, who attended the burial of the two Kuwaitis, said: “A dispute erupted when the
brothers (fellow Islamists of the attackers) chanted that they were martyrs and in Islam it is not right to pray
ahead of burying martyrs.” Mulafi said a clergyman addressing hundreds of people at the burial had said “The
Jews and Christians must exit from the peninsula of the Arabs” – a long-standing demand by bin Laden. The
clergyman also said “what the attackers did was their duty.” The security source said the attackers were known
to authorities as Islamic activists who had been questioned about visits to Afghanistan. “When we held them
before, they said they were there (in Afghanistan) for humanitarian efforts and that kind of talk,” the source said,
adding that direct links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda group were being investigated. Abdullah al-Kandari, the
brother of attacker Anas Kandari, told Reuters he was not aware if Anas was linked to al Qaeda, but he had
earlier asked to be buried as a “martyr.”
Reuters – Oct 17, 2002 Zamboanga, Philippines – Bombs ripped through the main shopping district of a
mostly Christian city in an area of the southern Philippines at the heart of Muslim insurgency Thursday, killing
six and wounding about 150. It was the second major bomb attack in southeast Asia in less than a week and
suspicion immediately focused on a radical Muslim group also being investigated for Saturday’s explosions on
the Indonesian island of Bali, in which more than 180 people died. Shouts of “There’s a bomb,” “Another
explosion,” “Run…Run” rent the air in the city of Zamboanga as terrified shoppers and shopkeepers ran on to
narrow streets littered with wreckage, glass and mutilated bodies from the twin midday blasts. The military
blamed radicals fighting for an Islamic state in the south of the Roman Catholic nation and said investigators
were looking into the possible involvement of the militant Jemaah Islamiah group. “All threat groups are suspect
in this incident, including the Jemaah Islamiah…and others,” armed forces deputy spokesman Lieutenant-
Colonel Danilo Servando told reporters in Manila, referring to the Indonesia-based group linked by some to
Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. The twin explosions in Zamboanga came amid a heightened security alert
across the country after the Bali bombings, in which carnage Jemaah Islamiah is also suspected. Police said they
were questioning 16 people, including two Turkish nationals and a Malaysian, over the Zamboanga explosions.
The blasts occurred about two weeks after a homemade bomb exploded near a karaoke bar in the city, killing a
U.S. soldier and two Filipino civilians. Police blamed that explosion, on October 2, on the Abu Sayyaf. Asked if
Muslim extremist groups might be involved, Zamboanga Mayor Maria Clara Lobregat said: “Most probably.
They are the only ones who would do this. One can only weep at what these terrorists have done.” She said six
people were killed and that at least 20 of the 143 injured were in critical condition. The dead included at least
three women and a child. One man’s head was blown off. At least one man had his limbs blown off. Police were
seen later dragging away bodies, some horribly disfigured. The first bomb, which exploded around noon in the
Shop-o-Rama, one of the most popular malls in Zamboanga, wrecked cars, flung motorcycles down the street
and tore open shuttered shops. One man was thrown through a plate glass window. Thirty minutes later, an
explosion rocked a store nearby. Troops found and defused at least two other bombs. “The bombings are
apparently coordinated,” newly installed southern military command chief Lt. Gen. Narciso Abaya told
reporters. “They are targeting crowded places where there are plenty of civilians.” Blood smeared the floors of
the hospital where doctors and paramedics worked furiously to save lives. Zamboanga has been the scene in
recent years of bombings blamed on the Muslim Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, whom the United States has linked to al
Qaeda. The region is home to most of the four million Muslim minority in an overwhelmingly Christian country
of 76 million.
Reuters – Oct 17, 2002 Karachi, Pakistan – Authorities are questioning eight post office employees about a
series of parcel bombs that exploded in quick succession in Karachi, injuring nine people, police and postal
officials said. At least one of the packages had “From Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal,” written on it, a reference to the
United Action Front, a coalition of anti-American religious parties that made unprecedented gains in last week’s
national elections. E-mails claiming responsibility on behalf of a militant Muslim group called Lashkar-e-
Jhangvi were later received by a Pakistani daily newspaper and a local news agency. The e-mails said 35
packages containing 5 ounces of explosives each had been mailed from three different post offices. Four went
off and six others were defused. It was not clear what happened to the others, or if they were ever sent. The e-
mail said the bombs were “a warning to those police officers involved in operations against ‘Mujahedeen’ (holy
warriors) at the behest of the Americans.” It said guerrilla operations would soon start against “anti-Islam police
officers and other infidels.” Other Muslims are planning a mass attack on the United States, it said. Police said
the e-mails claiming responsibility for the parcel bombs appeared authentic.
Reuters – Oct 17, 2002 Bali, Indonesia – Indonesian police questioned four men Thursday over the weekend
bomb blasts in Bali as Australia warned it had disturbing information of new threats against Westerners in the
troubled country. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the information emerged just hours ago,
and he urged Australians to leave the world’s most populous Muslim nation if they felt unsafe. An international
team of investigators is hunting for clues to the devastating Saturday night attacks which killed more than 180
people, including up to 119 Australians, and wounded hundreds more. Under increasing international pressure,
President Megawati Sukarnoputri’s government has spoken of enacting emergency anti-terror measures but
there was no indication when these might go into effect. Indonesia is considered a weak link in the U.S.-led war
on terror in Southeast Asia, with critics saying the government is reluctant to crack down on radical Muslim
groups for fear of upsetting the moderate mainstream. Australian Prime Minister John Howard flew to Bali for a
one-day visit to attend a memorial service for the victims and assess the situation. In an earlier interview with
the BBC, Howard described Islamic extremism as “dangerous and evil,” but urged his compatriots to show
tolerance toward moderate Muslims in the wake of the bombings that stunned Bali and its three million people.
Australia bore the brunt of the casualties from the car bomb blast that ripped through several nightclubs. Two
smaller bombs went off in Bali around the same time Saturday night. “I hope in a small way to express the
feelings of the rest of the Australian community toward those people who have suffered and lost so much,”
Howard said of his visit to Bali. … suspicion has fallen on Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda and an Indonesian-
based group, Jemaah Islamiah, which some link to al Qaeda. Australia said it could take weeks to identify many
of the charred and mutilated victims and Howard said his one-day trip would give him a chance to assess the
situation as criticism mounts about the slow pace of identification. In her strongest move yet against extremist
Islamic groups, Megawati is planning to bypass parliament and issue the anti-terrorism decree that would give
police stronger powers to act against suspects. With Washington and jittery Asian neighbors piling pressure on
Indonesia to take firm action, a presidential aide said the anti-terror decree would be issued “as soon as
possible.” Asian countries point a finger at a Muslim cleric living in Indonesia, Abu Bakar Bashir, as leader of
Jemaah Islamiah which they say has planned acts of terror throughout the region. Bashir denies any knowledge
of the group or links to terrorism and told reporters “the bombings were engineered by infidels to launch war
against Islam.” He has previously blamed the United States.
The Associated Press – Oct 17, 2002 Jakarta, Indonesia – The government seeks expanded power to fight
terrorism which could put it on a collision course with Islamic extremists widely blamed for the bombings that
claimed more than 180 lives Saturday, including 7 Americans. Human rights protections were written into law
after the overthrow in 1998 of President Suharto, whose 32-year dictatorship saw hundreds of thousands of
people sent to prison camps for long periods without trial. Megawati met Parliamentary Speaker Akbar
Tandjung to discuss the decree, based on legislation that has been stalled in Parliament for months over fears it
could give the security forces too much power. Indonesia has come under enormous pressure from the United
States, Australia and other countries to strike against Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant group whose alleged spiritual
leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, runs an Islamic boarding school. The government has long feared that taking action
against Bashir could fuel a backlash by Islamic extremists. Ministers for the first time — delicately — said this
week that Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah exist in the world’s most populous Muslim country, but have tiptoed
around the issue of moving against it and Bashir. Australia, which is believed to have scores of its citizens
among the 183 killed in the bombing, said that it had new information about possible threats in Indonesia and
urged Australians to leave the country. New Zealand issued a similar advisory. Malaysia has pressured
Indonesia without success for months to take stronger action against Jemaah Islamiyah. A Malaysian
government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that a long-sought suspect,
Azahari Husin, 45, may be involved in the attack. Azahari received extensive bomb-making training in
Afghanistan before late 2001 and was among seven militants who fled to Indonesia in January as Malaysia and
Singapore arrested scores of suspects allegedly plotting to bomb the U.S. and other Western embassies in
Singapore. “Our intelligence shows that Azahari is likely to have had a hand about the bombing” in Bali, the
Malaysian official told AP. “Azahari is well trained in all types of bombs, especially remote-controlled
explosives.” An Indonesian cleric who was long the right-hand man of Bashir, Riduan Isamudin, or Hambali,
may also have been involved in the attack, said the official. Both lived in Malaysia in exile in the 1980s.
Hambali is accused by Malaysia of arranging a meeting of two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and Al Qaeda operatives
in Malaysia in January 2000, as well as organizing the Singapore bombing plot. His whereabouts are unknown.
The Associated Press – Oct 17, 2002 Kuwait – Kuwaiti authorities arrested a 17-year-old male teenager
Thursday who had fuel explosives in his car near a shopping center and residential high-rise where some U.S.
soldiers live just outside Kuwait City, near the Alia and Ghalia towers in Fintas. The youth had 10 bottles
holding gasoline-with soaked cloth fuses in his car and told police he had received orders from Pakistan via the
Internet to place the explosives in the towers.
The Associated Press – Oct 18, 2002 Manila, Philippines – A bomb ripped through a bus in suburban Manila
late Friday, killing at least three people and injuring 23 others, hours after a grenade blast in the capital’s
financial district and a day after two deadly bombings in the southern Philippines. There was no immediate
claim of responsibility for the bus blast, but officials have said the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group was the
most likely suspect for Thursday’s noontime bombings in downtown Zamboanga city that killed seven people
and injured more than 150. The bus explosion took place at 10 p.m. on the EDSA highway, one of the capital’s
main thoroughfares, in Quezon City, despite tightened security following the earlier attacks. The explosion in
the back of the blue Golden Highway company bus ripped off its roof and part of its sides and sent debris flying
20 to 30 yards away. Two hours later, workers still had not managed to retrieve one badly mangled body from
the vehicle, which had roughly 50 to 60 seats. “This is the handiwork of people with evil minds,” national police
operations chief Vidal Querol said.
The Associated Press – Oct 20, 2002 Zamboanga, Philippines – A bomb on a parked bicycle exploded near a
crowded Roman Catholic shrine Sunday in the southern Philippines, killing a soldier and injuring 18 people. It
was the fifth bombing this month. The blast demolished stalls selling food, candles and other religious items
outside the historical site of Fort Pilar in Zamboanga, a predominantly Christian port city about 530 miles south
of Manila. The ground was splattered with blood. Sunday’s bomb was concealed in either a box or a tin can and
placed on a bicycle, witnesses said. The vehicle was parked near a gate to an open-air worship area where Mass
is celebrated. “There was a loud explosion and everybody was screaming,” worshipper Fe Sanctuario said. “I
knew that it was a bomb because the explosion was so loud and many stalls selling Christian icons had been
destroyed.” Although the area was crowded with worshippers, the turnout was not as great as past Sundays
because of rainy weather and fears of another attack. The blast injured 18 people and killed a Filipino marine
corporal assigned to guard the shrine’s gate, police said. Two other bombings happened Friday in Manila. A
grenade went off in Makati, the Philippines’ main financial district. No one was hurt in that blast. But later, a
bomb ripped open a bus in the capital and killed two people and injured 20. Security officials suspect that the
Zamboanga blasts may have been staged by the Abu Sayyaf which Philippine and U.S. officials have linked to
al-Qaida or Muslim separatists to divert ongoing military offensives. A police official, Napoleon Castro, said
investigators were looking at the possibility of the involvement of the Jemaah Islamiyah, believed to be al-
Qaida’s main ally in Southeast Asia, in Friday’s bus bombing. The attack was similar to a Dec. 30, 2000, bomb
attack on a passenger bus, one of five almost simultaneous blasts in metropolitan Manila which killed 22 people.
The Associated Press – Oct 24, 2002 Seattle, WA – West Coast investigators are digging into the lives of two
men named in connection with 13 sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area, searching for clues as to what
may have motivated a killing spree. John Allen Muhammad, 42, one of the men, is a former soldier at Fort
Lewis and said to be sympathetic to the Sept. 11 hijackers, The Seattle Times reported Thursday, quoting
unidentified federal officials. He and John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican citizen believed to be his stepson, may
have been motivated by anti-American sentiments, the officials said. Neither was believed to be associated with
the Al Qaeda terrorist network, authorities said. “It appears that they are and have acted on their own,”
Bellingham Police Chief Randy Carroll said. Muhammad had been targeted for conversion while serving in Iraq
in 1991 after divorcing his first wife 17 years ago. He changed his name last year from John Allen Williams,
investigators told the Times. Muhammad had helped provide security for Nation of Islam Minister Louis
Farrakhan’s “Million Man March” in Washington, D.C., according to Leo Dudley, a former Marine who lived a
block from Muhammad. [National of Islam officials in Chicago admitted he was a member]. Muhammad, who
was stationed at Fort Lewis in the 1980s and served in the Gulf War, had four children by two marriages that
ended in divorce. Both involved bitter custody battles and at least one accusation that he abducted the children,
the Times reported. [Muhammad has since been tied to the murder of a woman in Washington State who was
sympathetic to his X-wife.] Fox News learned from police sources that some people who knew both men said
that 17-year-old John Lee Malvo, a Jamaican citizen, was nicknamed “Sniper” by Muhammad, who would call
him that in public. The Seattle Times quoted federal sources saying Muhammad and Malvo had been known to
speak sympathetically about the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
The Associated Press – Oct 25, 2002 Algiers, Algeria – Attackers killed 21 members of the same family,
including a three-month old baby, in a massacre that bore the hallmarks of Islamic extremists, Algeria’s official
news agency said. The assailants stabbed and shot to death the victims in rural Ouled Abdallah, about 125 miles
west of Algiers in the Chlef region, the APS agency said. Five people were in critical condition in Sobha
hospital after being shot in the head. APS referred to the killers as a “terrorist group,” language used in Algeria
to refer to Islamic extremists. The radical Armed Islamic Group is present in the Chlef region and known for
massacres of civilians. It was the fourth large-scale killing this month in Algeria, where the government has
been trying to end a decade-long Islamic insurgency. In the most recent attack, Algerian militants killed at least
seven people on Oct. 20 at a highway roadblock. Extremists are trying to topple the military-backed
government and set up an Islamic state.
The Associated Press – Oct 30, 2002 Jerusalem, Israel – Tarek Abu Safaka 22, a Palestinian gunman, crawled
under a fence and opened fire at about 10:30 p.m. and killed two teenage girls as they were walking and a
woman at home with her husband in the Hermesh Jewish settlement in the West Bank before being shot dead in
a firefight with soldiers and residents. The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade claimed responsibility.
The Associated Press – Oct 31, 2002 Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesian officials said it was possible that
soldiers were behind the killings of two American teachers and an Indonesian in troubled Papua province, and
the military chief promised justice if that is proven. Indonesian military commanders initially blamed separatists
who have been fighting a low-level insurgency in Papua for the Aug. 31 ambush on a convoy of teachers that
killed the three. Ten others were wounded in the attack. The Free Papua Movement, which has a led the
insurgency against Indonesian rule, denied any role. The Free Papua Movement members are overwhelmingly
Christians and animists. … Indonesian troops have a long history of attacks on civilians in Papua, a vast jungle
territory forcibly incorporated into Indonesia in 1963. Ten Special Forces soldiers were charged in last year’s
assassination of the province’s top political leader, Theys Eluay.
Reuters – Nov 11, 2002 Jerusalem, Israel – Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the
removal of Yasser Arafat’s “terror regime” after a Palestinian gunman killed five Israelis, including a mother
and her two children, in a kibbutz. … A gunman slipped overnight into Kibbutz Metzer, near the dividing line
between northern Israel and the West Bank, and opened fire outside a dining hall, killing a woman visitor and
the kibbutz’s chief administrator. The militant then burst into a house, shooting dead a 34-year-old woman in the
doorway of her children’s room and killing her two young sons, aged four and five, as they clutched covers over
their head. On Monday, Avi Ohayon staggered through the toy-filled room where his ex-wife and children died,
then collapsed on a mattress when he spotted several small objects on one of the beds. “God help me,” he
screamed. “They killed a child who had a pacifier.” The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of
Arafat’s Fatah group, claimed responsibility. It said it was avenging Israel’s killing of an Islamic militant leader,
and vowed “more martyrdom attacks until occupation leaves our land.”
BBC News – Nov 22, 2002 Nigeria, Africa – ‘Riots spread to capital’: Hundreds of Muslim youths have gone
on the rampage in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, following Friday prayers. BBC’s Haruna Bahago in Abuja says
people armed with sticks, daggers and knives set fire to vehicles and attacked anyone they suspected of being
Christian. Earlier rioting in the northern city of Kaduna, in protest at the Miss World beauty contest, left at least
100 people dead, according to Red Cross officials Thousands of Muslim youths went through the suburbs of
Kaduna, putting up barricades of burning tires, setting fire to buildings, and attacking churches. Kaduna is one
of Nigeria’s most volatile cities; more than 2,000 people died there in clashes between Christians and Muslims
two years ago. The Kaduna rioters demanded the cancellation of the Miss World contest. Muslim groups say it
is immoral and degrading to women, and are also angry that preliminary events began during the holy month of
Ramadan. The protests began after a newspaper suggested that the Prophet Mohammed would have probably
chosen to marry one of the Miss World contestants if he had witnessed the beauty pageant – which Nigeria is
currently hosting. The holding of the Miss World contest in Nigeria has also provoked international controversy.
It had been threatened by a boycott by beauty queens after a woman convicted of adultery, Amina Lawal, was
sentenced by a Sharia court to death by stoning.
Reuters – Dec 5, 2002 Karachi, Pakistan – An explosion and the slaying of three people at Macedonia’s
consulate offices whose bodies were found inside may have been the work of al-Qaida taking revenge for the
killing of seven militant suspects in the Macedonian capital, police said. Investigators found messages scrawled
on a wall referring to al-Qaida and warning against “infidels”. The victims two men and a woman had their
hands and feet bound and their throats slit. Doctors at Karachi’s Jinnah Medical Center who performed
autopsies on the victims said their hands and legs were tied, their mouths gagged and their throats slit, and the
weapon used was still in the body of one victim. One of the dead was the night watchman, a Christian, police
said. The other bodies were not immediately identified. The Macedonian Foreign Ministry called the assault “a
professionally prepared terrorist attack” and instructed its embassies and consular offices worldwide to boost
security. In a statement, the ministry also expressed “strong bitterness and deep condolences for the victims,” all
believed to be Pakistani. Counter terrorism police were investigating the possibility that the slayings and
subsequent explosion may have been in retaliation for the killing of seven Pakistanis in Macedonia on March 2.
Macedonian police opened fire on a van that tried to drive through a roadblock in the capital, Skopje, killing
seven Pakistanis inside. Police said they found seven Kalashnikov assault rifles, several hand grenades and
ammunition in the van. Macedonian officials said the seven had planned attacks on Western embassies. One of
them was identified as Ahmet Ikaz, 24, a Pakistani listed as a known criminal by Interpol.
Associated Press – Dec 26, 2002 Lahore, Pakistan – Mourners buried three girls – aged 6, 10 and 15 – killed in
a Christmas grenade attack on a tiny church in eastern Pakistan, and police detained an Islamic cleric, Afzar,
who in a sermon at a nearby mosque called on followers to kill Christians 3 days before the bombing. Afzar
reportedly told his congregation that “it is the duty of every good Muslim to kill Christians,” according to Nazir
Yaqub, a police officer in Daska. “Afzar told people ‘you should attack Christians and not even eat until you
have seen their dead bodies”. Afzar’s son, Attaullah, was also detained for questioning. The two are open
supporters of the banned group Jaish-e-Mohammed, a violent anti-India organization with ties to the al-Qaida
terrorist network, said a police officer in Chianwala, Mohammed Riaz. Police also detained three other people
Thursday for questioning in the attack which injured 13 people in Chianwala, about 40 miles northwest of
Lahore. Two assailants covered in burqas – the all-encompassing garment worn by women in some Islamic
countries – tossed a grenade into the middle of worshippers at a Christmas service. Security had been increased
in churches ahead of Christmas celebrations around, but a policeman who was to guard the church failed to
show up for work, according to his superiors. The policeman, identified as Shah Nawaz, was being questioned,
but it was not yet clear whether he was simply negligent or was party to the attack, said Yaqub. About 40
people, mostly women and children and all Pakistanis, were attending the Christmas Day service. There have
been four other deadly attacks on Christians in Pakistan this year. The last was on Sept. 25, when gunmen
entered the offices of a Christian welfare organization in Karachi, tied seven employees to their chairs and shot
each in the head.
Reuters – Mar 7, 2003 Rabat, Morocco – A court in Casablanca Thursday handed out prison sentences ranging
from one month to one year to 14 heavy metal music enthusiasts, the official MAP news agency reported. The
trial followed articles in some newspapers which described the accused as "Satanists" who recruited for an
international cult of devil-worship. The 14 men, aged between 22 and 35 years, were found guilty of "possessing
objects which infringe morals" and of "acts capable of undermining the faith of a Muslim." Morocco's penal
code allows a maximum sentence of three years for attempting to convert a Muslim to another faith. Nine of
those sentenced are musicians in three Moroccan heavy metal groups. The judge remarked during the trial that
"Normal people go to concerts in a suit and tie," rather than in a black T-shirt with heavy-metal symbols which
was shown to the court. The judge also found suspicious the fact that one of the musicians chose to pen lyrics in
English rather than Arabic.
Associated Press – Apr 23, 2003 Tehran, Iran – An Iranian actress was given a suspended sentence of 74
lashes for kissing a young actor on the cheek, the actress said. Gowhar Kheirandish was prosecuted after she
shook hands and kissed Ali Zamani at a public festival in the city of Yazd in September, provoking organized
protests. Iran’s strict Islamic laws ban socializing between unrelated men and women. Public kissing between
men and women is considered un-Islamic and taboo. “I’ve been sentenced to 74 suspended lashes,” Kheirandish
told The Associated Press. She said the kiss was an “emotional, motherly gesture.” Earlier this week, Yazd’s
public court found Kheirandish guilty and sentenced her. The verdict means that she will be lashed 74 times if
the offense is repeated.
Associated Press – May 7, 2003 Beirut, Lebanon – A bomb exploded outside the home of a Christian
missionary couple in northern Lebanon, killing an Arab neighbor as he attempted to dismantle it, officials said.
Police said the bomb exploded Tuesday night outside the home of a Dutch missionary and his German wife in
the predominantly Sunni Muslim port city of Tripoli. The neighbor victim, Jamil Ahmed Rifai, a Jordanian who
converted from Islam to Christianity, was visiting the couple when they heard a noise outside and he went to
investigate. He found the 4 pound bomb in a bag and it exploded as he tried to dismantle it, authorities said.
Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, is home to Sunni fundamentalist groups. Qubba, the neighborhood,
where the attack occurred, has a small Christian population. It was the second attack on Christian missionaries
since November, when an unidentified gunman killed an American missionary in southern Lebanon. That
victim, Bonnie Penner, 31, who grew up in Vancouver, Wash., worked as a nurse at an evangelical center in
Sidon, also a predominantly Muslim town. Several explosions have ripped through American fast-food
restaurants and a British cultural center in Tripoli and Beirut in recent months.
Reuters – May 25, 2003 Algiers, Algeria – Islamic militants killed seven people in western Algeria Sunday,
including two children whose throats were slit, state radio and neighbors said. Between 100,000 and 150,000
Algerians have been killed in violence that erupted in 1992 after the government canceled elections that
fundamentalist Islamists were poised to win. The attack took place in the Chlef region, some 200 km (125 miles)
west of the capital Algiers, as the country grappled with the aftermath of an earthquake that has killed more than
2,100 people.
Ten armed men slit the throats of a woman and her two children before moving to a school where they shot dead
four students and wounded a fifth, neighbors said. About 25 students escaped the attack early Sunday, they said.
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) are fighting
Algerian authorities to create a purist Islamic state. The GIA became infamous for slitting the throats of their
victims, carving unborn babies out of the bodies of pregnant women and wiping out entire families. The GSPC,
on a U.S. list of terrorist groups, was set up in 1998 by a dissident of the GIA. The GSPC split with the GIA was
reportedly over discontent with the massacres of civilians, the GSPC advocating a higher level of brutality
against all non-Muslims civilians, which the area has since witnessed.
Associated Press – Aug 1, 2003 Mozdok, Russia – A vehicle packed with explosives crashed through hospital
gates with a homicide bomber behind the wheel and exploded outside a Russian military hospital
near Chechnya, killing and wounding scores, according to officials and Russian news agencies. The evening
blast completely demolished the four-story red brick hospital in the city of Mozdok in Russia’s North Ossetia
region, the region’s Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev told The Associated Press. Mozdok is the
headquarters for Russian forces fighting in Chechnya and has been targeted by attackers before. The building,
which had 115 people inside, including medical workers and patients, collapsed like a house of cards, Dzgoyev
said. It follows several homicide bombings that have killed more than 100 people in and around Chechnya and
in Moscow since May. The number of dead and wounded was still being determined as rescuers searched
through the debris for survivors. Alina Totykova, deputy head of the North Ossetian regional hospital in the
regional capital Vladikavkaz, said all available ambulances were sent to Mozdok. There was a serious shortage
of medicine, anesthetics and bandages and a severe shortage of blood, she said, adding that an appeal for people
to give blood would be broadcast on television in the region. President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to
relatives of the victims and urged the North Ossetian leadership to tell federal authorities in Moscow what was
needed to aid the victims, the Kremlin said. Putin also ordered law enforcement officials to investigate the blast.
In June, a female homicide attacker detonated a bomb near a bus carrying soldiers and civilians to work at a
military airfield near Mozdok, killing at least 16 people. In May in Chechnya, a homicide truck-bombing also
killed 72 people and a woman blew herself up at a religious ceremony, killing at least 18 people. A double
homicide bombing at a rock concert in Moscow on July 5 also killed the female attackers and 15 other people.
Soon afterward, a bomb in a downtown Moscow street killed a bomb disposal expert, authorities said a woman
from Chechnya planted the device.
Reuters – Aug 5, 2003 Jakarta, Indonesia – A huge car bomb tore through one of the top US owned hotels in
Indonesia’s capital, killing 14 people and wounding 150 in the second major attack to shake the world’s most
populous Muslim nation in a year. The Marriott, popular with foreign businessmen, is on a major road through
the city’s business district, close to where many Western embassies and consulates are based. Management said
the hotel was 70-80 percent full. The blast was timed as workers poured out of offices for lunch. It came just
two days before the first verdict is due in the trials of Muslim militants accused in the Bali bombings that killed
202. Diners were eating lunch in restaurants and cafes in the hotel and in a nearby office tower when the blast
blew out windows and showered people with shards of glass. Wreckage from the charred lobby was strewn over
a wide area. Police said a Dutch banking executive was among the dead, while four Singaporeans, two
Americans, two Australians and a New Zealander were among those wounded.
Fox News - Nov 15, 2003 Istanbul, Turkey – Two nearly simultaneous homicide car bombs rocked two of
downtown Istanbul's Jewish synagogues on Saturday, killing at least 23 people and wounding at least 303 of
Turkey's 25,000-member Jewish community. One of the attacks blasted the city's largest synagogue, Neve
Shalom, while hundreds convened to celebrate a bar mitzvah, the coming of age ceremony for a young man.
Three miles away in an affluent neighborhood, the other blast hit the Beth Israel synagogue, where some 300
people were marking the completion of a remodeled religious school. Fourteen Muslims were also killed --
including two security guards at Beth Israel and one at Neve Shalom. A huge crater and the twisted wreckage of
a car was left in front of the Neve Shalom, as medical teams carried away bloodied and burned victims. "There
was huge panic, glass exploding and metal pieces all over the place," said Enver Eker, who witnessed that blast.
"We saw someone put a head in a cardboard box." Security has been tight at Neve Shalom since a 1986 attack
when gunmen killed 22 worshippers and wounded six during a Sabbath service. That attack was blamed on the
radical Palestinian militant Abu Nidal. The Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim group Hizbullah carried out a bomb
attack against the synagogue in 1992, but no one was injured. In April 2002, a vehicle bombing struck a historic
synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba, killing 21 people, mostly foreign tourists, in an attack blamed
on Al Qaeda.
Reuters – Nov 20, 2003 Lagos, Nigeria – Muslim Rioters Burn 13 Churches Islamic militants burned to the
ground thirteen churches and several houses in a remote northern Nigerian town after a Christian student was
accused of blasphemy, police said. Irate youths torched churches, houses and shops in Kazaure, some 50 miles
north of Kano, a northern provincial capital where hundreds have died in religious clashes in the past three
years. The dispute began when a Christian student was accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammad and a group
of Muslims were not satisfied with the response of school authorities. Abubakar Sale, police commissioner in
the northern Jigawa state, told Reuters that the rioters attempted to invade the school but were repelled by
police. "The hoodlums then mobilized and went into town where they started looting and burning people's
property," Sale said by phone from Dutse, the state capital. "Thirteen churches were burned, several houses and
shops were torched, but there were no deaths," said Keirian Dudari, assistant inspector general of police in
Kano. The violence came after three students were killed and more than 30 injured in fighting between Muslims
and Christians at a university in northeastern city of Maiduguri earlier this month. More than 5,000 people have
been killed in religious violence in northern Nigeria in the past four years since the introduction of Islamic
sharia law in 12 states.
Online Jerusalem Post - Dec 3, 2003 Yokne'am, Israel - School Bombing Foiled: Internal Security Minister
Tzahi Hanegbi told Army Radio Thursday morning that the success of the terror operation aimed at the pupils of
a Northern junior high school would have changed the regional map totally, referring to the retaliations for the
Park Hotel bombing in Passover 2002. A massive security alert in the North was lifted Wednesday afternoon,
after IDF soldiers captured two West Bank Palestinians, who were planning a suicide bombing at a school in
Yokne’am. One security source confirmed that the would-be terrorists Munir Rabiah, 23, of Gaza City, and
Morad Zeitoun, 20, of the village of Zbubeh near Jenin, are both members of the PA security forces. Once
captured, the two revealed to security officials the whereabouts of a 10-kg explosive belt that Rabiah was to
have worn in the attack in Yokne'am, the source said. The foiled plan was for Rabiah to blow himself up near
the entrance of the school, as the hundreds of children were leaving it to go home. Morad Zeitoun worked
nearby the school and was well acquainted with its layout. The two told investigators they aimed at Israel's north
because there was no security fence there. Three days after Syrian President Bashar Assad called for renewed
talks with Israel, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose offices are in Damascus, sent two suicide bombers to
attack Israeli schoolchildren in Yokne'am and more Israelis in the northern city of Beit She'an, a senior security
official said. Speaking to Channel 1, the official said that Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus issued the
order to its Jenin cells to carry out the attacks. The order was given in the past few days, the source said. The
arrests of the two members of the Palestinian Authority security services and affiliated with Islamic Jihad came
after a daylong alert imposed on the Wadi Ara area. Security sources said the two had planned an attack on a
school near the commercial center of Yokne'am and another in Beit She'an. They said that the attempt to attack
a school was a "serious escalation." A Shin Bet source said the two men left Jenin Tuesday morning and set out
for Bardaleh, where they planned to cross into Israel. "They told investigators that they had chosen the location
as there is no security fence in the area," he said. At about 2 p.m., acting on an intelligence tip-off, security
forces arrested Rabiah after surrounding a mosque in the Israeli-controlled part of Bardaleh. Palestinians
reported there were 20 worshipers inside the mosque when it was surrounded by troops, who entered the village
and imposed a curfew. Zeitoun was arrested by security forces in a late Tuesday night and early Wednesday
morning sweep of the Jenin area. According to the source, he planned to perpetrate a suicide bombing in Beit
She'an. Security officials noted that there are a number of different cells affiliated with the Islamic Jihad and the
Fatah Tanzim in Samaria, which continue to plan attacks. On Wednesday, the security establishment registered
42 warnings of planned attacks. During the high alert, the Wadi Ara road was closed and roadblocks were set
up in the area, causing severe traffic jams.
Associated Press – Dec 5, 2003 Yessentuki, Russia – A shrapnel-filled bomb believed to have been strapped to
a suicide attacker ripped apart a commuter train yesterday near Chechnya, killing 42 persons and injuring 200.
The blast was the latest in a series of suicide bombings and other attacks that have killed about 250 people in
and around the rebellious region of Chechnya and in Moscow in the past year. The remains of the suspected
bomber were found with grenades still attached to his legs, Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev
said. Three women also were involved in the attack — two jumped from the train just before the blast, and one
was gravely injured and unlikely to survive, he said. Authorities suspect other accomplices may have been
watching from cars near the site of the blast, which threw passengers from the train and sent its second car
crashing onto its side, trapping victims beneath the buckled wreckage. The explosion tore through the train
around 8 a.m., a rush-hour attack that seemed calculated to kill and injure as many people as possible. Officials
said many passengers were students from local schools and universities. A suicide truck-bomb attack last
December destroyed the headquarters of Chechnya's Moscow-backed government and killed 72 persons, and
another killed 60 at a government compound in the region in May. Later that month, a woman blew herself up at
a religious ceremony, killing at least 18 persons. In June, a female suicide attacker detonated a bomb near a bus
carrying soldiers and civilians to a military airfield in Mozdok, a major staging point for Russian troops in
Chechnya, killing at least 16 persons. A truck bomb in August, also in Mozdok, killed 50 persons at a military
hospital. In Moscow, a double suicide bombing at a rock concert in July killed the female attackers and 15 other
persons.
ABC News – Jan 15, 2004 - Karachi, Pakistan – A car bomb exploded outside of a Christian Bible society in
southern Pakistan, leaving 15 people injured and damaging the wall of a nearby church, officials said. The
attack in the port city of Karachi occurred after police received an anonymous phone warning that the Pakistan
Bible Society would be targeted, police said. Shortly after the officers arrived, assailants in a car drove up and
lobbed a small explosive device at them. Fifteen minutes later, a bomb hidden in a nearby parked car exploded,
police said. Twelve people were injured, among them six police and paramilitary officers, said Seemi Jamali, a
doctor at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center where many of the victims were taken. Police have meanwhile
arrested "more than a dozen" suspected Islamic militants for investigation into a failed Dec. 25 bid to assassinate
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a government spokesman said. "The men belong to various militant groups…
They are being questioned about the attack," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated
Press. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and its industrial and manufacturing heart, has been the site of several
terrorist attacks in recent years, as well as bouts of sectarian and political violence. In June 2002, a suicide
bomber blew up a truck in front of the U.S. Consulate, killing 14 Pakistanis. The attack came a month after
another suicide attack outside a hotel that killed 11 French engineers.
Associated Press – Jan 15, 2004 Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Palestinians Give Suicide Bomber a Hero's Funeral;
Israel Seals Gaza Strip The first female Hamas suicide bomber was given a hero's funeral, a day after killing
four Israeli border guards. The bombing was carried out by Reem al-Raiyshi, 22, a mother with two young
children. Raiyshi was escorted into a room for a security search and then blew herself up in an attack jointly
claimed by Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Palestinian workers, among the few with jobs in the impoverished region, worried life would only become
harder - but few were willing to openly blame militants for their new hardship. In a society where consensus is
valued, criticizing armed groups openly is seen by many as a betrayal. "She's passed away and she's going to go
to heaven," said one of Riyashi's sisters-in-law. "It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel
against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists," al-Riyashi said in a
farewell video. Al-Riyashi, who wore combat fatigues with a green Hamas sash across her chest in her video,
urged her husband to enroll their two children in (Islamic) religious schools. The Islamic militant group Hamas
group threatened more violence. "She is not going to be the last (attacker) because the march of resistance will
continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe,"
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said. Israel returned Raiyshi's body to the Palestinians. Israel usually keeps the
bodies of suicide bombers, burying them in unmarked graves, to prevent the celebratory funerals often held for
the attackers. The military did not say why it decided to return Raiyshi's body. Thousands marched through
Gaza City during her funeral. Masked gunmen from Hamas and Al Aqsa carried her coffin, draped in the Hamas
green flag. "It is not enough to call her a hero. Calling her hero does not give the whole truth. This woman
abandoned her husband and children to win paradise," Zahar said in the eulogy. Hamas spiritual leader Sheik
Ahmed Yassin said the use of a woman bomber was unique for the Islamic group, but holy war "is an obligation
of all Muslims, men and women."
Fox News – Jan 29, 2004 Jerusalem, Israel – A homicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing 10 people
and wounding at least 50 just 15 yards from Ariel Sharon's residence. Ali Jarrah, the bomber, was a 25-year-old
Palestinian policeman. The blast peeled back the roof of the bus and catapulted passengers through the windows
and down the street. Body parts could be found strewn along rooftops. Eli Beer, a paramedic, said victims had
been scattered over a wide area. "There were a lot of heavy injuries, a lot of the people who were injured were in
bad condition, a lot of people had missing limbs," he said. The attack occurred as schools were opening, and
police told Fox News children were likely among the casualties.
ABC News – Jan 30, 2004 Mecca, Saudi Arabia - Annual Hajj Pilgrimage Gathers Momentum The hajj
pilgrimage began in earnest Friday as Muslims from around the world converged on their holy land. Police
forces were on alert following yesterday’s death of six Saudi security agents in a shootout with terror suspects in
the Saudi capital, Riyadh. In Mecca, the Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site, overflowed with the faithful, who
heard a sermon by Sheik Saleh al-Taleb who later led them in prayer. More than 460,000 crammed inside and
tens of thousands more prayed in the streets. "Oh God, give victory to the mujahedeen everywhere, give them
victory in Palestine. Oh God, make the Muslims triumphant and destroy their enemies and make this country
and other Muslim countries safe. Oh God, inflict your wrath on the criminal Zionists," Sheik al-Taleb said.
Fox News - Feb 06, 2004 Moscow, Russia - An explosion rocked a Moscow subway train during rush hour
Friday morning, killing 39 people and wounding more than 120. Citing police sources, the Interfax news agency
reported that the attack was carried out by a female homicide bomber. President Vladimir Putin blamed the
explosion on Chechen rebels and said it was aimed at sowing chaos before next month's presidential election.
"Russia doesn't conduct negotiations with terrorists -- it destroys them," Putin said. Moscow has been on alert
following a series of suicide bombings that officials have blamed on Chechen rebels. The latest was in
December, when a suicide bomber blew herself up outside a hotel across from Moscow's Red Square, killing at
least five bystanders. Moscow's subway system - the worlds busiest with an average 8.5 million passengers a
day - has long been seen as especially vulnerable to terrorism. Police routinely stop people in the stations who
have Chechen or North Caucasus appearance, but cheek-by-jowl crowds during much of the day make thorough
surveillance impossible. Friday's blast struck the second car of a train after it pulled away from the
Avtozavodskaya station. Most Russians are dependent on public transportation, and the spacious train wagons
are usually packed tight during rush hour traffic. The Russian capital has been on alert for terrorist attacks
following a series of homicide bombings that officials have blamed on Chechen rebels. Two homicide bombers
blew themselves up at a Moscow rock concert in July, killing themselves and 14 other people. That was
followed five days later by an aborted homicide bomb attack at a central Moscow restaurant that killed the
sapper trying to defuse the bomb.
Guardian Unlimited UK – Jos, Nigeria - Feb 26, 2004 - At least 48 people have been killed in the latest
outbreak of religious violence in Plateau state, central Nigeria, the police said to Reuters yesterday. They were
hacked down when Muslim warriors attacked Yelwa town in the mainly Christian district of Shendam. The
Plateau police commissioner, Ilozuoke, told reporters: "The victims were pursued to a church they ran to for
refuge and were killed … forty-eight of them died instantly." Security sources said the attackers' guerrilla
tactics suggested that they were hired mercenaries from Nigeria's northern neighbors, Chad and Niger. Mr
Ilozuoke said troops and police had been sent to the area to try to contain the violence, but no arrests had yet
been made. About 10,000 have died in communal and religious violence in Nigeria since 15 years of military
rule ended in 1999.
MSNBC - Feb 29, 2004 - Mariveles, Philippines - The Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf claimed
responsibility Sunday for a ferry explosion and fire that killed over 180, according to a radio report. The Radio
Mindanao Network said Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Sulaiman claimed Friday's explosion was revenge for
government attacks in the southern Mindanao area. Fire raced through the Super-Ferry on Friday shortly after it
left Manila for central and southern islands. Witnesses reported a powerful explosion that sparked an inferno.
The fire and sinking occurred the same day that two alleged Abu Sayyaf members were convicted of kidnapping
an American in 2000 and another was arraigned in a separate mass abduction.
Yahoo News - Mar 6, 2004 - Sohag, Egypt - Egyptian authorities deployed some 1,000 police around a southern
town to forestall any Muslim-Christian clashes after two Christian men were killed in a street brawl, security
sources said, saying; The Christians were axed to death after a donkey being ridden by a Muslim man slipped on
the wet roadway outside their house in the town of Salamoun, about 350 km south of Cairo, and the residents
laughed. The donkey rider was later arrested and questioned. Witnesses in the town said there had been no
further violence but the situation was tense. Salamoun, a Nile valley town of about 40,000 people, is close to 40
percent Coptic Christian but was also a stronghold of militant Islamists who fought the government in the 1990s.
Tensions between the Muslim and Christian communities are a sporadic problem in southern Egypt. The last
major outbreak of violence was in 1999, when 20 Christians were killed and 33 people wounded in the southern
village of Kosheh.
Reuters - Mar 11, 2004 - Maranatha, Indonesia - Machete Wielding Motorcyclists Kill Woman with Baby:
Motorcyclists wielding machetes have attacked Christians in Donggala Regency, Central Sulawesi, leaving one
dead and five injured. On Thursday evening, four men riding on two motorcycles sped through the village of
Maranatha, 18 miles south of the regional capital Palu, leaving death and bloodshed in their wake. Nuci, a 40-
year-old mother of two, died two hours after receiving fatal injuries to her head, neck and back. A witness to the
incident described how she heard the roar of the motorbikes, followed almost immediately by a baby’s screams.
She ran towards the cries and found Nuci, bleeding to death and crawling towards her baby. The attackers
wounded five others, Efrain, 30, Kanus, 30, Kalfin, 25, Pianus, 18, and Listin, 17 (many Indonesians have just
one name).
Reuters - Mar 29, 2004 Tashkent, Uzbekistan - Two homicide bombings, attacks on police and an explosion at
an alleged terrorist bomb-making factory in Uzbekistan killed 19 people and injured 26, the Central Asian
country's prosecutor-general. Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov said the events began Sunday night with an
explosion that killed 10 people at a house being used by an extremist in the central province of Bukhara. There
were also two attacks on police Sunday night and early Monday killing three policemen. and two homicide
bombings near the Chorsu bazaar in Tashkent's Old City, which killed three policemen and a young child, he
said. The homicide bombings were the first ever reported in Uzbekistan. Kadyrov said the attacks were carried
out by Islamic extremists, singling out the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir group and followers of the strict Wahhabi sect
of Islam. "A preliminary investigation shows all the events are interconnected and aimed at destabilization of the
country," Kadyrov said. Kadyrov said one person had been arrested and that authorities were searching for other
suspects, but declined to say how many people might have been involved in the planning or execution of the
attacks. He said the tactic of homicide bombings was previously unknown to Uzbekistan and indicated foreign
involvement in the attacks. One of the Tashkent market blasts was set off by a female homicide bomber and
targeted a group of policemen and another happened near a bus station, said Atonazar Arifov, leader of the
opposition Erk party, citing witnesses.
Fox News - Mar 31, 2004 Fallujah, Iraq - The charred corpses of four coalition civilian contractors, all
Americans, were pulled out of burning cars, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and hung from a bridge by
rejoicing residents. Five U.S. soldiers died in a separate bombing nearby. Chanting "Fallujah is the graveyard of
Americans," locals cheered during the grisly assault on two four-wheel-drive civilian vehicles, which left both in
flames. Others chanted the more standard "We sacrifice our blood and souls for Islam." The four contract
workers were killed in a rebel ambush of their SUVs in Fallujah, a Sunni Triangle city about 35 miles west of
Baghdad. The brutal treatment of the four contractors' bodies was some of the most graphic violence since the
beginning of the American occupation a year ago. It was reminiscent of Somalia in 1993, where a mob dragged
the corpse of a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu, eventually leading to the American and U.N.
withdrawal from the failed East African state. Associated Press Television News pictures showed one man
beating a charred corpse with a metal pole. Others tied a yellow rope to a body, hooked it to a car and dragged it
down the main street of town. Two blackened and mangled corpses were hung from a green iron bridge across
the Euphrates. "The people of Fallujah hanged some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep,"
resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed said. Some of the corpses were dismembered, he said. Beneath the bodies, a
man held a printed sign with a skull and crossbones and the phrase, "Fallujah is the cemetery for Americans."
APTN showed the charred remains of three slain men. One resident displayed what appeared to be dog tags
taken from one body.
U.S. News - Apr 05, 2004 - Kano, Nigeria - At least 10 churches were torched and one police station vandalized
when Nigerian Muslims rioted after a young Christian defaced a copy of Islam's holy Qur’an, a witness said.
Rioting broke out on Saturday in the religiously mixed northern town of Makarfi, hometown of Kaduna State's
Governor Ahmed Makarfi, local resident Yusuf Abubakar said. "A teenager, who is said to have a mental defect,
went into an Islamic school, took a copy of the Qur’an from one of the students and tore it. This provoked the
students and people nearby who pounced on the teenager," he said. "His mother, who recently moved to Makarfi
with her teenage son from Calabar in the south-east, managed to rescue him from his assailants and ran into the
only police station in town for safety," Abubakar said. Muslim youths attacked the police station, smashing
windows and damaging two patrol vehicles, before burning down ten churches, he said. In recent years sectarian
rioting in northern Nigeria has left thousands dead, and widened the divide between the region's rival Muslim
and Christian communities.
Fox News - May 11, 2004 Kano, Nigeria — Angry young Muslim men attacked "nonbelievers" with machetes
Tuesday, while others burned cars, stores and apartments in apparent revenge for last week's killings of Muslims
by a Christian group, that in turn a response to earlier massacres by Muslims. Three corpses lay in the streets,
one charred and another badly mutilated, with unconfirmed reports of several others killed by young men who
barricaded streets with burning tires and garbage. The violence came hours after thousands of Muslim protesters
some carrying daggers, sickles and clubs marched from the main mosque in the northern city of Kano,
traditionally a hotbed of religious tensions. Amina Usman, a 19-year-old university student, recounted seeing
two mutilated bodies next to a makeshift checkpoint where young Muslim Hausa-speaking men armed with
sticks, knives and clubs were searching cars for Christians and animists and asking passengers to recite Muslim
prayers. "It was hell," said Mohammed Aliyu, another university student, who said he saw five bodies in another
part of Kano, Nigeria's largest Muslim city, one with a burning tire around its neck. Demonstrators were
protesting attacks on Hausa-speaking Muslims by fighters from the Tarok-speaking tribe in the central Nigerian
town of Yelwa. A Red Cross official has said between 500 and 600 people died in the Yelwa attacks, while the
Nigerian government's emergency response agency estimates less than half that number. In Kano, soldiers and
police in armored vehicles were deployed in an attempt to quell what began as an angry demonstration but
quickly turned into a riot. An Associated Press reporter saw youths at a makeshift checkpoint of burning tires
strike three young women with machetes after accusing them of being "nonbelievers" for wearing Western-style
skirts and blouses. The women escaped with bleeding head wounds after several motorcycle taxi drivers
intervened. "Everywhere, people have taken the laws into their own hands. We are trying to control the
situation," said police commissioner Abdul Damini Daudu. Sule Ya'u Sule, a state government spokesman,
announced a dusk to dawn curfew and blamed the day's rioting on "disgruntled elements" he did not identify. He
stressed the earlier march had been peaceful. Muslim leaders in Kano earlier linked the Yelwa attacks to the
U.S.-led war against terror. "This violence is a calculated global Western war against Muslims, just like in
Afghanistan and Iraq," Umar Ibrahim Kabo, the most senior Muslim cleric in Kano, told protesters, some of
whom burned U.S. and Israeli flags. "Muslims are in grief." Kabo issued a seven-day ultimatum to Obasanjo to
apprehend the Yelwa killers "or be blamed for whatever happens" afterward. Kano Governor Ibrahim Shekarau
told protests that "killings of Muslims throughout the world ... will only embolden us." The Yelwa attacks
follow a deadly succession of communal violence. In February, Muslim militants were blamed for the slaughter
of almost 50 people there many of them Christians who took refuge in a church. New York-based Human Rights
Watch accused Nigeria's government Tuesday of failing to take steps to stop the "endless cycle of revenge."
MSNBC - May 30, 2004 Lahore, Pakistan - Samuel Masih, 27, was buried in Lahore, Pakistan, yesterday
following injuries he received from a Muslim policeman who beat the Christian with a hammer as he lay in his
hospital bed recovering from a bout of tuberculosis. Masih had been in jail since Aug. 23, 2003, awaiting trial
on charges of blasphemy under Pakistan's strict "Law 295" – which forbids desecrating the Qur’an and
"defiling" the name of Islam's prophet, Muhammad. On the day of his arrest, Masih was collecting garden
rubbish, which he heaped temporarily against the wall of a mosque in Lahore's Lawrence Gardens section while
collecting more that he planned to burn later. This action brought the blasphemy charge, which carries a
maximum two-year prison sentence. He had been held in the Lahore Central Jail for nine months when he had a
severe tuberculosis attack and was transferred to a local hospital. According to reports in the Lahore Daily
Times, the constable assigned to guard the prisoner's room at the hospital, Officer Faryad Ali, savagely beat
Masih with a hammer used for cutting bricks after learning he had been accused of strewing garbage near the
mosque's walls. Faryad Ali, who has been jailed and charged with murder, reportedly told investigators it was
his religious duty as a Muslim to kill the Christian man. According to Voice of the Martyrs, he is reported to
have said, "I have offered my religious duty for killing the man. I'm spiritually satisfied and ready to face the
consequences."
The Observer by Jason Burke - June 6, 2004 Khobar, Saudi Arabia; Militants give blow-by-blow account of
Saudi massacre, Leader tells how they killed, then ate, slept and prayed. Islamic militants who killed 22 people
in a shooting spree in Saudi Arabia a week ago have posted a 3,000-word account of the operation on the
internet. The account gives astonishing details of the attack, describing how the killers hunted down their
victims, then slept and prayed after decapitating Westerners. It also challenges the Saudi Arabian government's
version of events, claiming that pictures of Saudi troops storming a building from the air were stage-managed.
The attack, in the northern port city of Khobar, shook the Saudi regime and, by forcing up the price of oil,
caused economic upset globally. The statement takes the form of an interview with Fawaz bin Mohammed al-
Nashmi, the leader of the 'al-Quds [Jerusalem]' Brigade of the Arabian Peninsula, which carried out the attack.
The first site targeted was the Khobar Petroleum Centre, which houses the offices of a number of international
oil companies. The terrorists, wearing military-style clothing, arrived at the compound around 7am last
Saturday. They shot their way in, killing at least one guard, then set about hunting down Westerners. Michael
Hamilton, a 62-year-old British oil executive arriving for work, was one of the first to die. 'We saw the car of
the British director and we liquidated him,' Nashmi says, before giving gory details of other executions. 'We
were asking our brother Muslims, where are the Americans, and they showed us a building where companies
have offices. We did find an American,' said Nashmi. 'I shot him in the head [which] exploded. Then we found a
South African and we shot him too. In our search for unbelievers, we had to exchange fire with the security
forces.' Throughout the account Nashmi claims assistance from other Muslims. The militants then drove to
another complex, where light security made getting in 'a walk in the park'. They combed offices, rounding up
and interrogating people to establish their religion, even lecturing some on Islam. Nashmi describes how they
murdered a group of Roman Catholic oil workers from the Philippines, 'for the sake of our brother Muslims
[there]'. Several Filipino Muslim groups, some linked to al-Qaeda, have been fighting against the Christian-
dominated government for decades. Such international concerns feature frequently in the account. Nashmi also
describes 'finishing off' a group of Indian engineers. 'Thanks to God we cleaned our land from unbelievers,' he
says. New Delhi is seen as having brutally repressed Muslims in Kashmir. Nashmi also claims that he killed an
Italian, after forcing him to speak with al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic satellite TV channel, and demand the
withdrawal of Rome's troops from Iraq. The militants then moved into the heavily fortified Oasis Resort, which
comprises 200 villas, a hotel, restaurants and spas. There, Nashmi says, they 'went to the hotel, found a
restaurant and had a good lunch and some rest'. Then, 'we went to the first floor and we found some unbelievers.
We slaughtered them'. Nashmi denies taking hostages - Muslims were moved to the top floor of a building for
their own safety, he says. He also denies killing a 10-year-old Egyptian boy, one of four Muslims who died,
blaming the security forces. Witnesses say the boy died when the militants opened fire on a school bus. Nashmi
also claims the dawn raid by Saudi special forces was a 'publicity stunt'. Pictures of the troops landing on the
roof of a building where hostages were being held were broadcast around the world. But Nashmi says his group
had left hours earlier. Saudi Arabia has been hit by a series of violent attacks recently. Last month another
compound full of oil workers was raided and an American killed and dragged through the streets. It is clear the
militants are focusing on the country's valuable and vulnerable oil infrastructure. The militants say the Khobar
attack was orchestrated by Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, a well-known Saudi-born militant. In a separate statement,
published alongside that of Nashmi, Muqrin praised the strike for raising the price of oil. '[The price of] oil
reached $42 per barrel, the highest figure in history,' Muqrin says. 'This irks the malicious government that is
committed to guaranteeing America's prosperity and the continuation of the oil flow.' Such claims echo Osama
bin Laden's charges that the house of Saud, which has ruled Saudi Arabia for more than 70 years, allows the
West to deprive the local population of the Arabian peninsula's resources. In Nashmi’s account he says the
group was sure that the high security at the compounds would result in their deaths. 'We didn't want to survive
the attack, but God decided that our time is not up yet,' he wrote. 'We promised God that we would be back for
another battle until we die. Now the whole world knows that our goal is to clean our Muslim land.
Reuters - Jun 7, 2004 - Bangkok, Thailand - Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead a Buddhist teacher in
Thailand's restive Muslim south, the latest casualty in a spate of violence which has claimed over 200 lives since
January, police said. The 49-year-old, who was in charge of general studies at an Islamic school, was shot as he
was about to start his car parked at a school in the province of Pattani, police said. The shooting came just over a
week after an elderly Buddhist man was beheaded at a rubber plantation in nearby Narathiwat province, an
incident which heightened fears of sectarian tension between Buddhists and Muslims in the troubled region. The
teacher was killed despite stepped up security at schools, where at least 1,000 soldiers and police have been
deployed since the new school year began in mid-May. At least 100 people, mainly police and soldiers, have
been killed in ambushes since violence erupted in Thailand's three Muslim southern provinces bordering
Malaysia in January. Security authorities have blamed Muslim militants and mafia bosses for the unrest in the
region, where Islamic separatists fought a low-key insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s. The unrest exploded into
major bloodshed on April 28 when police and soldiers killed 108 Muslims who launched orchestrated attacks on
government offices and security outposts.
Fox News - Jun 10, 2004 Jalaw Gir, Afghanistan - Gunmen stormed a camp of sleeping Chinese road workers
in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 11 of them, in the deadliest attack on foreign civilians since the fall of
the Taliban. The contractors were attacked at about 1 a.m. at their desert camp near Jalaw Gir in Kunduz
province, 120 miles north of the capital, Kabul. Mutaleb Beg, the Kunduz police chief, said six to eight
assailants killed an Afghan guard at the unfenced camp and then opened fire on the Chinese men as they slept in
two tents. "They died in their beds, most of them with stomach and head wounds," Beg told The Associated
Press by telephone after visiting the scene. A spokesman for NATO-led peacekeepers who patrol the area said
the toll could rise as reports come in from local clinics. Beg said no one was arrested, but raised suspicions
about supporters of renegade Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has teamed with the Taliban and
vowed to oust the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai. The killings are the latest in a string of
deadly attacks on relief workers, private contractors and government employees which officials say is an attempt
to derail planned September elections. Road workers have been a particularly enticing target for militants. Last
week, three European medical relief workers and two Afghans were killed in an ambush in northwestern
Badghis province claimed by the Taliban.
UPI - Jun 18, 2004 Washington, CT - Alarmed by the spread of Islamist extremism in Europe, France's new
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin asked the "Renseignments Generaux," the French equivalent of the
FBI's counter-intelligence branch, for a report on what goes on in the country's mosques. Eighty percent of the
imams in the 1,000 mosques surveyed by RG are foreigners; 20 percent French nationals, but only 2 percent
born in France. Most of the imams said they are unpaid volunteers dependent on collection plates. In 40 percent
of the mosques, imams admitted they were "self-proclaimed" or "improvised" with no theological credentials.
Only the Turks could prove they had undergone religious training. A little over one tenth of the imams surveyed
said they were "self-taught" and were getting their religious training on the Internet. Asked to show what web
sites they were consulting, they were all pro-al-Qaida. France's domestic intelligence agency also reported a
steady increase in inflammatory sermons from Brest to Marseilles. Their attacks on French discrimination
against Muslims -- female scarves banned from state schools -- paled next to anti-U.S. diatribes. One of the most
important Saudi businessmen, speaking privately in a European capital this week stated; "We are reaping what
we have sown over the last 25 years," said the billionaire who is on good terms with the highest ranking
members of the Saudi royal family. The Saudi royals detained over 1,000 imams after last year's bombings in
May and November. They were warned they would go straight to jail if they so much as mentioned the word
jihad (holy war) in their Friday prayers. The Saudi billionaire, speaking not for attribution, said there are 40,000
mosques in Saudi Arabia, and the warnings go largely unheeded.
Associated Press - June 23, 2004 Baghdad, Iraq - Iraq's interim prime minister said he was determined to
confront the mastermind of bombings and beheadings who threatened to assassinate him. A recording
purportedly made by Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi threatened to kill interim Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi and fight the Americans "until Islamic rule is back on Earth." The audio was found on an Islamic
Web site from the group that claimed responsibility for the beheading of American hostage Nicholas Berg and
Kim Sun-il, a South Korean whose decapitated body was found Tuesday between Baghdad and Fallujah. In the
audiotape, the speaker thought to be al-Zarqawi told Allawi that "we will continue the game with you until the
end." The speaker said "we will not get bored" until "we make you drink from the same glass" as Izzadine
Saleem, the Iraqi Governing Council president killed last month in a car-bombing claimed by al-Zarqawi's
group. "We will carry on our jihad against the Western infidel and the Arab apostate until Islamic rule is back on
Earth," the voice said.
Associated Press - Jun 24, 2004 United Nations - NASA photos of the Darfur region of western Sudan show
destruction in nearly 400 villages, and there have been reports of fighting or threatened attacks in every camp
for displaced people, the U.S. aid chief said. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the Agency for International
Development, warned that time is running out to help 2 million Sudanese in desperate need of aid in Darfur. He
said his agency's estimate that 350,000 could die of disease and malnutrition over the next nine months "is
conservative." Fighting between Arab militias and African residents has killed thousands of people and forced
more than 1 million to flee their homes. International rights groups say the government has backed the Arab
fighters in an ethnic cleansing campaign against the African villagers. Natsios put the blame for the crisis
squarely on the Sudanese government, saying U.S. and U.N. reports from the country show clearly that the
Sudanese military is directly connected to Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, that are fighting in Darfur.
"They arm them, they use them, and now they have to stop them," Natsios said in an interview with reporters.
Natsios said that despite frequent Sudanese government announcements about "all the things they've done to
improve things," virtually nothing has changed on the ground. The latest weekly assessment of conditions in the
36 camps for displaced people in Darfur showed that in every one, security was poor and those taking refuge
faced attacks or threats of attacks, Natsios said. He did not say who ran the camps. "They've got to stop
stonewalling the relief effort," Natsios said of the government. Fighting erupted in February 2003 when African
tribes in Darfur rebelled against what they regarded as unjust treatment by the Sudanese government in their
struggle over land and resources with Arab countrymen. Natsios said the United States had NASA take
photographs of the destruction of villages in Darfur. "We've now analyzed 576 villages, 300 of which are
completely destroyed, 76 of which are substantially destroyed," he said. "When we checked them on the ground,
we confirmed what we found. We are going to watch them, using aerial photography for the duration to track
what's happening." Ambassador Michael Ranneberger, a U.S. State Department expert on Sudan, said "until
now, we have not seen any systematic action to rein in the Janjaweed." "What we've seen is a series of half-steps
by the government in response to international pressure," he said. U.S. officials have been highlighting the
plight of the displaced Sudanese, mindful that the world's inattention to Rwanda a decade ago may have
contributed to the genocide that occurred there. Natsios said the U.S. government has spent $116 million on the
relief effort in Sudan more than all other donors combined, with $188 million pledged between now and the end
of next year." The United States is moving "with a maximum sense of urgency to try to save lives," said
Ranneberger, who accompanied Natsios. "We don't have time to sit around also and decide, is this ethnic
cleansing or is this genocide, or what is it." Natsios said President Bush has made clear to Bashir that U.S.-
Sudanese relations will not be normalized "until these atrocities are stopped and until all impediments to the
relief effort are ended." The black African tribes of Darfur province in western Sudan have faced murder,
displacement, pillage, rape, razing of villages, and other crimes committed by Arab militias. [Authors note: To
faithful Muslims, this is true Islamic peace, complete silence from the dead, and the survivors subject to
whatever tax or burden their masters see fit to inflict. Because the locals chose to resist slavery, ‘ dar al-Islam’
is being established through genocide. Practicing Al-taqiyya, ‘moderate’ Muslims will say these Arab Muslims
committing the atrocities are deviants, but in fact they know they are following Islamic norms and morality. The
‘evil empire’, the ‘enemy of Islam’, strives to stop the slaughter and to provide relief to the victims, while the
worlds ‘best religion’ does nothing but provide tactic support to the Arab militants.]
WORLD TRIBUNE - July 10, 2004 Sudan - U.S. finds Sudan-militia links in 'cleansing' of black non-Muslims
The United States has determined that Sudan provided major military support to the Janjaweed militia, accused
of expelling 1.2 million black Africans from their homes in the western Darfur province. Two U.S. delegations
sent to Sudan in late June examined the link between Janjaweed and the Khartoum regime. They were said to
have concluded that the Sudanese military provided training and equipment to Janjaweed as part of Khartoum's
policy to remove black Christians and other non-Muslims from Darfur, which neighbors Chad. A congressional
delegation that returned from Sudan this week said the Janjaweed was directly supported by the military.
Delegates said Janjaweed fighters participated in Sudanese Air Force attacks on black African villages in Darfur
as well as led ground attacks that resulted in the death of at least 30,000 people and the displacement of 1.2
million people. Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, recounted testimony he heard regarding the
coordination between the Sudanese air force attacks and Janjaweed raids of black villages. Wolf told a July 6
news conference that a Janjaweed base in Darfur was adjacent to the Sudanese air base at Geneina in Darfur that
contained two Soviet-origin attack helicopters and an Antonov air transport. "The militiamen we saw did not
look like skilled pilots who could fly planes or helicopters," Wolf said. Delegates said the Antonovs and
helicopter gunships usually strafed and bombed villages to prepare for the Janjaweed assault. They said
Janjaweed fighters arrived on horseback and camels to kill, loot, rape and burn. The Janjaweed have been
heavily armed and well-supplied, U.S. officials and congressional members said. They were provided with
satellite phones to maintain constant communications with Sudanese military commanders. Sen. Sam
Brownback, chairman of the Senate Near Eastern and Southasian subcommittee, said the Janjaweed effort has
eliminated an entire generation of black Africans from Darfur, the size of Texas. Brownback dismissed a
decision by the African Union to send 279 military observers to Darfur. "We did not see any men in any of these
camps from the ages of 18 to 45," Brownback, a Kansas Republican, said. "There's a whole generation that's
missing, and it is ethnic cleansing, and I believe that clearly the seeds of genocide have been sown in Darfur."
Associated Press - Aug 6, 2004 Korhogo, Ivory Coast - Dozens of boys and men suffocated in an airless,
sweltering shipping container in which rebels locked people for days, two survivors told The Associated Press,
backing accounts of atrocities during factional fighting in Ivory Coast's Muslim rebel-held north. When the 40-
foot-long by 9-foot-high container was opened, 75 bodies were pulled out, a second survivor, Amadou, told the
AP. "We were in difficult conditions: no water, no food, no air. Sometimes they pumped tear gas into the
container," said Siaka, who also refused to allow his full name to be used for fear of reprisal. "We were 125 in
there, and it became extremely hot," Amadou said. "We were hot and hungry. Some of us began collapsing in
the container." Rebel leaders opened the container two days later - at 3 a.m. on June 22, Amadou said. By that
time, it was filled with dead. Kouakou's people immediately put inmates to work removing the corpses, Amadou
and Siaka said. "We took the dead and put them in a truck, and we counted 75 bodies," Amadou said, adding
that one of his relatives was among the dead. "When we finished counting the corpses, (Kouakou's men) took
three of us to go with them and the bodies," Amadou said. "These three never came back." The accounts - along
with others describing numerous missing men - support U.N. and Amnesty International findings on three newly
discovered mass graves in northern rebel territory. Amnesty International said it believes some of the 99 mass
grave victims had their hands tied behind their backs before being beheaded. The U.N. Security Council called
the killings a massacre. Rebels have controlled the north of cocoa-rich Ivory Coast - once one of West Africa's
most stable and prosperous nations - since launching an unsuccessful coup attempt in September 2002. The civil
war that followed split the country between the mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian and animist
south.
The Associated Press - Aug 27, 2004 Moscow, Russia - Both Russian airliners that crashed nearly
simultaneously were brought down by a terrorist act, officials said, after finding traces of explosives in the
plane's wreckage. An Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in a Web statement. The
planes, with 90 people aboard, went down within 20 minutes of each other Tuesday night. In Washington, White
House spokesman Scott McClellan said there was "mounting evidence" that both crashes "were acts of
terrorism." The Chechen women Amanta Nagayeva and S. Dzhebirkhanova bought last minute tickets for the
flights. The two Muslim women, former roomates who had previously traveled together, were the only
passengers who have not had relatives call for information.
Reuters - Aug 31, 2004 Moscow, Russia - A woman strapped with explosives blew herself up just outside a
busy subway station, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 50. The woman intended to cause even
more death in a subway, but turned back after seeing two police at the entry way and instead moved to a large
group of people and detonated.
Associated Press - Aug 31, 2004 Bagdad, Iraq - A video showing the methodical, grisly killings of 12 Nepalese
workers kidnapped in Iraq was posted Tuesday on a Web site linked to a Islamic militant group operating in
Iraq. If true, the slayings would mark the largest number of foreign hostages killed at one time by insurgents in
Iraq who have seized more than 100 hostages in recerkers to withdraw. The video of the Nepalese showed a
masked man in desert camouflage apparently slitting the throat of a blindfolded man lying on the ground. The
blindfolded man moaned and a shrill wheeze was heard. The masked man then displayed the head to the camera
before resting it on the body. Other footage showed a man firing single shots from an assault rifle into the back
of the heads of 11 others. Blood seeped from their bodies into the sand.
Associated Press - Aug 31, 2004 Be'er Sheva, Israel - Two buses exploded almost simultaneously in this
southern Israel city, the first major Palestinian attack inside Israel in nearly six months. Israel's Magen David
Adom rescue service gave the casualty toll and said many wounded were in serious condition. In the Gaza Strip,
Muslim leaders praised the "heroic operation" a phrase referring to suicide bombings over mosque loudspeakers.
"There will be no security for Israel as long as the occupation stands," said one of the leaders. In the Palestinian
refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh in southern Lebanon, gunmen fired shots into the air to celebrate the attacks, a
Palestinian official said. In the Gaza Strip, Muslim leaders praised the "heroic operation" over mosque
loudspeakers. Palestinian militants haven't carried out a major attack inside Israel since March 14, when 11
people were killed in the port of Ashdod. "Revenge is so sweet," said one Hamas activist at a rally in Gaza.
Cheering in the streets of the Gaza Strip after the bombings, thousands of Hamas supporters threw sweets into
the air and sang songs after the attack which killed 16 people, including a 3 year old boy, and wounded 86,
many shoppers returning from an open-air market.
Multiple sources - Sep 3, 2004 Beslan, Russia - Commandos stormed a school Friday in southern Russia and
battled Muslim militants holding hundreds of hostages as crying children, some naked and covered in blood,
fled through explosions and gunfire. A gang of men and women stormed into the secondary school in Beslan in
North Ossetia province during a ceremony to mark the first day of the new school year. "They had said that for
every fighter wiped out they will kill 50 children and for every fighter wounded -- 20," regional Interior Minister
Kazbek Dzantiyev told reporters. A cameraman for the British network ITN reported seeing around 100 bodies
in the gymnasium where the hostages reportedly held up to 1,500 of them, mostly women and children, for
nearly three days. Russia's Interfax news agency reported that dozens of people were killed when the school's
roof collapsed amid explosions early in the day's violence. The assault was triggered either when several hostage
takers escaping, or panicked hostages making a break for freedom, possibly driven by extreme thirst. It began
after militants had agreed to let Russia retrieve the bodies of people killed early in the raid. Explosions went off
as the emergency personnel went to get the bodies at around 1 p.m., and hostages may have taken the noise as a
signal to flee. Militants then opened fire on fleeing hostages and security forces returned fire. The Interfax new
agency reported some terrorists split into three groups to blend in with the fleeing hostages and took refuge in a
nearby home. Once the hostage-takers sought to flee, commandos moved in. Huge columns of smoke billowed
from the school, where windows were shattered, part of roof gone and another part charred. The scene around
the school was chaotic, with people running through the streets, the wounded carried off on stretchers. An
Associated Press reporter saw ambulances speeding by, the windows streaked with blood. Four armed men in
civilian clothes ran by, shouting, "A militant ran this way." Soldiers and men in civilian clothes carried children,
some naked or clad only in underpants, some covered in blood, to a temporary hospital set up behind an armored
personnel carrier. The children drank eagerly from bottles of water given to them once they reached safety. One
unidentified woman freed Thursday told Izvestia that during the night children occasionally began to cry,
adding: "then the fighters would fire in the air to restore quiet". Negotiators said the hostage-takers had
repeatedly refused offers of food and water throughout the standoff. "They are very cruel people, we are facing a
ruthless enemy," said Leonid Roshal, a pediatrician involved in the negotiations. Correspondents say many of
those released were desperate for water when they came out, and some were barely able to stand. Many of the
children were only partly clothed because of the stifling heat in the gymnasium where they had been held since
the militants took the building on Wednesday. The hostage-takers had refused to let food or water into the
school throughout the standoff. The regional health minister reported that 409 people were wounded, including
at least 218 children. Officials told FOX News that 10 of the 20 terrorists killed by Russian soldiers were Arabs.
Jihadists from the Middle East are known to have joined the Chechen uprising.
Fox News - Sep 09, 2004 Jakarta, Indonesia - A powerful car bomb exploded outside the gates of the
Australian Embassy in Jakarta, killing seven people and wounding nearly 100 in an attack police blamed on
terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. The blast flattened the embassy's gate, mangled cars on the busy commercial street
and shattered the windows of nearby high-rise buildings. Dazed survivors desperately tried to locate colleagues
and relatives. "I can't find my family," said Suharti, who had eight relatives working in the mission. "I am
terrified. I don't know where they are." A senior Indonesian police officer who asked not to be identified said
seven people died in the 10:15 a.m. blast, including three policemen guarding the building. A doctor at a nearby
hospital said 98 people were admitted with injuries, none of them foreigners. The explosion shook buildings
across a large part of the central commercial district of the city of 12 million people. A thick plume of white
smoke rose up above the embassy. Passers-by witnessed grisly scenes as security officers covered the bodies of
victims ripped apart by the blast with newspapers. A severed human leg lay on the intersection between the two
lanes of the street, its trousers torn of the by force of the explosion. Police immediately blamed Jemaah
Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terror network that is linked to Al Qaeda. The group has been accused in several
deadly bombings, including the bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in the same neighborhood last year, in which
12 people were killed. "The modus operandi is very similar to other attacks, including the Bali bombings and the
Marriott blast," Bachtiar said, "We can conclude (the perpetrators) are the same group".
Associated Press - Nov 2, 2004 Amsterdam, Netherlands - A Dutch filmmaker who had received death threats
after releasing a movie criticizing the treatment of women under Islam was slain in Amsterdam on Tuesday,
police said. A suspect, a 26-year-old man with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, was arrested after a shootout
with officers that left him wounded, police said. Filmmaker Theo van Gogh had been threatened after the
August airing of the movie "Submission," which he made with a right-wing Dutch politician who had renounced
the Islamic faith of her birth. Van Gogh had received police protection after its release. Dutch national
broadcaster NOS and other media reported that Van Gogh's killer shot and stabbed his victim and left a note on
his body. NOS said witnesses described the attacker as having an "Arab appearance." The slain filmmaker was
the great grandson of the brother of famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, who was also named Theo. In a
recent radio interview, Van Gogh dismissed the threats and called the movie "the best protection I could have.
It's not something I worry about." In addition to his film, van Gogh also wrote columns about Islam that were
published on his Web site, www.theovangogh.nl, and Dutch newspaper Metro. The short television film
"Submission" aired on Dutch television in August, enraged the Muslim community in the Netherlands. The
English-language film was scripted by a right-wing politician who years ago renounced the Islamic faith of her
birth and now refers to herself as an "ex-Muslim." Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch
parliament, has repeatedly outraged fellow Muslims by criticizing Islamic customs and the failure of Muslim
families to adopt Dutch ways.
The Associated Press - Nov 5, 2004 Bangkok, Thailand - Nine Buddhists were murdered in a series of
shootings in southern Thailand's bloodiest 24 hours since a government crackdown on a Muslim rioting last
week left 85 dead. The revenge slayings by Muslim Separatists heightened anxiety Thursday among Buddhists
in the mainly Islamic southern region, which included the beheading this week of a local official. "Buddhists are
living in a state of fear because we find that the insurgents are now targeting us. They are exacting revenge on
innocent Buddhists who have nothing to do with the ongoing violence," said Pairat Wihakarat, a teachers'
association president. The latest violence started Wednesday night with the shooting deaths of a police sergeant
in the southern province of Songkhla and two civilians in nearby Narathiwat. On Thursday, police Maj. Kaow
Kosaiyakanon was killed when a man posing as a customer entered his grocery store, shot him and fled. Kaow,
53, of Yala, was the most senior police officer to be killed recently. A gunman also shot to death a motorcycle
salesman, 42-year-old Taweesak Monthong, and seriously wounded one of his co-workers elsewhere in Yala,
police said. Also Thursday, two railway employees were fatally shot while inspecting tracks in Narathiwat. In
Pattani province, a district official was shot to death while driving to his fruit plantation, and in nearby
Songkhla, a Buddhist monk on his way to a religious ceremony was fatally wounded by a motorcycle gunman.
Since January, more than 400 people have died in the south, many in drive-by shootings by motorcyclists. But
the violence has escalated since Oct. 25, when seven people were killed when police opened fire on rioters
outside a police station and another 78 died later in military custody after being stacked on top of each other in
trucks. The government blames Islamic separatists for the violence while Muslim leaders cite discrimination and
heavy-handed tactics by officials against the religious minority. Outside the south, most Thais are Buddhists. On
its Web site last week, the Muslim Pattani United Liberation Organization urged Buddhists to leave the south
and threatened terrorist attacks in Bangkok.
ABC News - Nov 18, 2004 Brussels, Belgium - A British secretary to a rabbi in Antwerp was shot in the head
early Thursday and was in the hospital with life-threatening injuries, the prosecutor's office said. Spokeswoman
Dominique Reniers said the man was shot once in front of his home in Antwerp's Jewish neighborhood. Yehuda
Ceitlin, a local aide of Israel's Zaka rescue services, identified the victim as Moshe Naeh, a father of five. Ceitlin
said that, though racial harassment had increased in recent years in Antwerp, it was the first shooting of a Jewish
victim in a long time. Antwerp, some 30 miles north of the capital, has one of the biggest orthodox Jewish
neighborhoods in western Europe. The victim was a "devout young man" of 24 who was shot once from close
range. There were no witnesses to the shooting. There have been a series of incidents involving physical attacks
and intimidation of Jews in the city this year, often blamed on youths from the large Arab immigrant
community. In June, a 16-year-old Jewish student nearly died after being stabbed outside his school. Days later,
a 43-year-old Jewish man was beaten unconscious. Antwerp, Belgium's second city and a major seaport, boasts
a large immigrant population, with some 10 percent of its 500,000 inhabitants of North African descent. The city
is also home to a 17,000-strong Jewish community, many of whom are Orthodox and wear their distinctive
black garb. The leader of Belgium's Jewish community, Dr. Joseph Wybran, was shot to death in Brussels in
1989, and four young people were injured in 1982 when gunmen opened fire on a Brussels synagogue. Both
attacks were blamed on Palestinian groups. In 2002, 18 shots were fired into the facade of a synagogue in the
southern city of Charleroi without causing injury.
AFP - Jan 5, 2005 Algiers, Algeria - Islamic extremists killed 18 people in an ambush of an army convoy south
of the capital Algiers. The L'_Expression newspaper said some 50 extremists used a bomb to blow up the
convoy and then raked it with machine-gun fire, killing 13 soldiers and five civilians who were traveling with
them. The attack took place in the early hours of Monday in a remote area in the region of Biskra, some 420
kilometers (260 miles) south of the capital, the paper said Wednesday. Some of the soldiers were able to fire
back, reportedly injuring some of the assailants. The paper said the rebels, said to be from Algeria's extremist
Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), were later surrounded by security forces. The attack was the
deadliest in Algeria since 16 people were murdered more than three months ago in the region of Medea, also
south of Algiers. The GSPC has become the principal extremist group in Algeria's Islamist rebellion that has left
some 150,000 people dead since 1992. It was allegedly founded on the instructions of Al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden. The group was linked to the kidnapping last year of 32 European tourists, most of them Germans, in
southern Algeria. One group was freed in a raid by Algerian soldiers, but the other was forced to trek across the
desert into Mali, before they were eventually released, allegedly in exchange for a ransom.
Asia News - Feb 8, 2005 Talwandi, Pakistan - Reports of Christian persecution in Pakistan are on the rise with
one man getting his arm hacked off and a family kidnapped, assaulted and tortured. A Muslim customer
allegedly assaulted a Christian shopkeeper in the small village of Talwandi, Punjab province. After the
shopkeeper, Shahbaz Masih, refused to rent a TV to Ahmed Ali, a butcher, Ali reportedly insulted Masih for
being a Christian and left the store. He later returned with a butcher's ax and allegedly hacked off Mashi's left
arm near the elbow. As he left, Ali allegedly threatened the victim and his widowed mother with even more
"dire consequences" for the supposed insult he had endured. Asia News reported Masih, 22, spent four days in
the hospital and then closed his shop and fled the village with his mother. According to the report, a group of
Christian leaders from the area filed a complaint with the police and Ali was arrested. Local police reportedly
are under heavy pressure to whitewash the case and free Ali. In another incident, Hanifan Bibi, 55, who worked
as a domestic servant for a Muslim family, and three male relatives were abducted and abused for two days.
According to Barnabas Fund, which monitors Christian persecution worldwide, Bibi, her husband, son and
nephew were at home in Lahore Jan. 10 when they were kidnapped, allegedly by her employer's husband and
others. They were driven to an unknown destination and kept there for two days without food or water, the
organization reported. Bibi's nephew was suspended upside down naked and beaten with a hot metal pipe, while
Bibi was stripped, forced to drink wine, photographed, videotaped and severely beaten, the report states. The
other two victims also were beaten. Barnabas Fund reported that after the ordeal the family was taken to a police
station and accused of stealing money and jewelry from Bibi's employer. The family says the abduction was in
retaliation for Bibi's refusal to provide the men of her employer's family with Christian women for sex. The
human-rights group says many Christian women are illiterate and earn their living as ill-paid domestic servants,
often for affluent Muslim families. They are very vulnerable to abuse and rarely dare to complain, Barnabas
Fund says, fearing the influence of their employer in the local community.
World-AFP - Feb 14, 2005 Manila, Philippines - At least 10 people were killed and 136 wounded in
Valentine's Day bombings by Al-Qaeda-linked Muslim militants that hit Manila and two southern Philippine
cities, officials said. Six people were killed on the spot and 94 injured when a powerful bomb ripped through a
bus in the Makati financial district of Manila during the early evening rush hour, national police chief Director
General Edgardo Aglipay said. The blast set two nearby buses on fire. One person was killed and nine were
wounded when a blast hit a bus depot in the southern city of Davao on Mindanao island at dusk. Earlier Social
Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said five people had been killed, but Davao officials insisted she misspoke.
Three people were killed and 33 wounded when a bomb hit a shopping mall in the southern city of General
Santos on Mindanao at about the same time as the Davao bombing, Soliman said over DZBB radio. The three
bombings, which appeared to have been coordinated, were claimed by the Abu Sayyaf, a militant Muslim group
operating in the southern Philippines. Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Solaiman told DZBB radio in an interview
that the three bombings were "our Valentine's gift to her (President Gloria Arroyo)". "The defenders of Islam
have struck again," he said. "Our latest operations in Manila, Davao and General Santos, planned and executed
with precision by the gallant warriors of Islam, is our continuing response to the Philippine government's
atrocities committed against Muslims everywhere," he said. In a reference to an ongoing rebellion by several
hundred Muslim gunmen on the southern island of Jolo he accused the military of "massacring whole families".
And he warned every Filipino and foreigner alike that "we will not stop until we get justice for the countless
Muslim lives and properties that you people have destroyed." The Abu Sayyaf, founded in the early 1990s with
seed money from September 11 terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, has waged a bombing and kidnapping
campaign over the past decade. The latest attacks came nearly a year after the group last February firebombed a
passenger ferry with more than 800 people on board on Manila Bay, killing more than 100 people in the worst
known terrorist attack in the Philippines.
The Jordan Times - Feb 28, 2004 - Amman, Jordan - A 26-year-old man walked free from the Criminal Court
on Thursday after receiving a four-month prison sentence for murdering his younger pregnant sister in Mafraq 6
months earlier. The man was sentenced to six months by the Criminal Court for stabbing his 21-year-old sister,
however, his verdict was immediately commuted by the tribunal because his family, also the victim's family,
dropped charges against him. Court documents said the victim went missing from her family's house in
September 2002, and was later arrested by the authorities on drug possession charges. The woman was later
released from prison but never returned to her family's house, the court added. One week prior to the murder, the
court continued, the victim contacted her sister to tell her that “she was pregnant out of wedlock.” “The victim's
sister informed her brother who became enraged by the news and went looking for her,” the court said. On Aug.
14, the defendant headed to the town of Khalidieh after being tipped off by some of his friends that his sister
was in that area. “The defendant saw his sister in the street, followed her for a while then pulled a knife and
stabbed her repeatedly. He then waited for police to come and arrest him,” the court said. The defendant was
originally charged with one count of premeditated murder by the criminal prosecutor. But the court on Thursday
decided to amend the charge to a misdemeanor as stipulated in Article 98 of the Jordanian Criminal Code, “the
defendant did not plot the murder and because the victim tarnished her family's reputation.” “The defendant lost
his temper after seeing his pregnant sister and could not think rationally because of the unlawful act the victim
had committed which brought shame and disgrace to her family,” the court ruled. Pathologists had testified in
court that the victim received at least 15 stab wounds to her chest and arms and was nine months pregnant with a
baby girl. The court also acquitted the defendant of abortion charges. Also on Thursday, a second tribunal
sentenced a 24-year-old man to one-year imprisonment after convicting him of murdering his minor sister in one
of Amman's neighborhoods in July last year. Ali H. was declared guilty by the tribunal of shooting his 17-year-
old sister to death at their family home on the night of July 30, following an argument about her alleged
extramarital affairs. Court papers said the victim went missing from her home in May 2003, but was later
arrested by the authorities and returned to her family after they signed a guarantee at the governor's office that
they would not harm her. The defendant, who “only saw his sibling on the day of the murder, had a heated
argument with her over her alleged affairs and disappearance.” The victim told him that it was none of his
business and that she was free to do whatever she wanted, the court said, quoting the defendant and his mother
who was present in the house when the murder occurred. “Ali became enraged, drew a gun normally in his
possession, and shot his sister twice in the head and chest,” the court said. The victim's mother claimed in court
that her daughter informed her that she was engaged in extramarital affairs, adding “she was not shy or
embarrassed when she told me about it, as if I was not her mother. I told my son [the defendant] what she told
me.”
AFP - Mar 19, 2005 Jerusalem, Israel - Palestinian kills sister: A 17-year-old Palestinian girl, who became
pregnant after her father raped her, was strangled to death by her brother in a so-called honour killing in the
northern West Bank, a Palestinian newspaper reported yesterday. Al Ayyam daily said the teenager was
strangled by her 27-year-old brother on Wednesday in Bala’a town near the northern city of Tulkarem. Arrested
by Palestinian security forces, the brother admitted he had killed her to “erase the shame” after her pregnancy
began showing. He also admitted knowing that his sister had become pregnant because their father raped her.
Police are now hunting the 52-year-old father, who witnessed the murder, and has since disappeared. A
Palestinian women’s group said the girl had reported the rape to the police after learning she was pregnant. “The
police did not arrest or even question the father,” the group charged in an open letter published in another paper.
Signed by the Palestinian Working Women’s Society for Development, the letter called on the Palestinian
parliament to adopt laws to protect women from all forms of violence.
Associated Press - Mar 28, 2005 Kano, Nigeria - Islamic Preachers' Rejection of Vaccines Threaten Efforts to
Combat Measles Epidemic in Nigeria. Accusations by Islamic preachers that vaccines are part of an American
anti-Islamic plot are threatening efforts to combat a measles epidemic that has killed hundreds of Nigerian
children, health workers say. Government officials play down the anti-vaccine sentiment, but all the measles
deaths have been in Nigeria's north, where authorities had to suspend polio immunizations last year after hard-
line clerics fanned similar fears of that vaccine. Nigeria, whose 130 million people make it Africa's most
populous nation, has recorded 20,859 measles cases so far this year. At least 589 victims have died, most of
them children younger than 5 and all in the north, the Nigerian Red Cross and the U.N. World Health
Organization say. Southern Nigeria, which is mainly Christian, had only 253 measles cases, and no deaths.
(Islamic) clerics have added the measles vaccine to their campaign against immunizations. Nasir Mohammed
Nasir, imam of Kano's second-largest mosque, said Americans "can't be killing my brothers and children in Iraq
and at the same time claim to want to save my children from polio and other diseases. We suspect a sinister
motive," he said.
Reuters - Apr 7, 2005 Cario, Egypt - A bomb exploded in a Cairo tourist bazaar on Thursday killing one French
woman tourist and another unidentified person and wounding 17 others, Egypt's Interior Ministry said in a
statement. Police sources said a man on a motorbike threw the bomb into the busy tourist area in the center of
the Egyptian capital but the ministry statement made no mention of what caused the blast. The wounded — four
French, three Americans, an Italian, a Turk and nine Egyptians — were taken to hospital where the French
woman died, the statement added. The bomb went off on one of Cairo's streets lined with shops catering for
tourists, a Reuters reporter said. Police sealed off the road and shops were closed. The bombing was the latest in
a series of attacks on tourists in Egypt, which thousands of foreign nationals visit each year to see its ancient
treasures and pyramids. An Egyptian man stabbed and wounded two Hungarian tourists in central Cairo last
month in what police said was revenge for Western policies toward Iraqis and Palestinians. A series of
bombings on the Taba Hilton hotel on Egypt's border with Israel and two beaches further south killed 34 people
last October.
AFP - May 28, 2005 Jakarta, Indonesia - Two bombs exploded on Saturday in a busy market on Indonesia's
Sulawesi island, killing 22 people and wounding 60 others in the worst attack in the country since the October
2002 Bali bombings. Police in Jakarta said the attack bore hallmarks of Islamic militants behind a string of other
atrocities in Indonesia, including the Bali blasts in which 202 mainly Western tourists died. The latest bombs
detonated within minutes of each other in the centre of the Christian-dominated town of Tentena in the Central
Sulawesi province, which has been a flashpoint of sectarian violence in recent years. The second explosion
struck outside a police station as people rushed to help those hit by the first blast near a bank 15 minutes earlier.
A Christian cleric and an infant were among those killed. "The first bomb was placed to attract the crowd's
attention so that they would gather in the area and become the target of the second bomb," said First Inspector
Adam, a policeman on duty in the nearby city of Poso.
ABC News - Jun 24, 2005 Bangkok, Thailand - Islamic separatists in southern Thailand slashed the necks of a
couple, almost severing their heads, police said Friday. The couple, Jad Suwanchatri, 52, and his wife, Serm, 51,
had stopped their motorcycle to clear a log from a road in Yala province when assailants shot Jad and then cut
the throats of the couple, police Lt. Somporn Ritthirat said Friday. The couple's dog, which was in a sidecar,
also was slashed to death, he said. The couple were rubber plantation workers, Buddhists and members of a
local defense militia. Drive-by shootings and bombings have claimed the lives of more than 880 people since
January 2004 in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces, which are dominated by Muslims in this
overwhelmingly Buddhist country. It was unclear exactly when the couple was killed, but police were notified
early Friday of the attack, which apparently was a failed beheading, police said. On Wednesday, insurgents
decapitated a man at a teashop in one of the most brazen attacks since a wave of violence swept the provinces
near Malaysia early last year. It was the fifth beheading in recent weeks and apparently the first carried out in
daylight. The first victim beheaded, also a rubber plantation worker, was slain in May 2004. The brutal killing
caused widespread fear and prompted many workers to stop tapping rubber at night, when the work is usually
done, and go out in the morning instead. Also Friday, two unidentified gunmen shot and killed Kobkua
Ransaewa, a school principal in Narathiwat province, while she was riding a motorcycle away from the school
at lunchtime. The school temporarily closed after the incident. The upsurge in violence has been attributed to the
return of a decades-old secessionist movement believed to have faded after a government amnesty in the 1980s.
Southern Thai Muslims have long complained of unfair treatment by the central government, mainly in jobs and
education.
The Associated Press – Aug 13, 2005 Jammu, India - Suspected Islamic militants raided a remote mountain
village in India's Jammu-Kashmir state and attacked two Hindu families as they dined together, killing five
people, police said. The gun and grenade attack on Friday night in Sajroo village, 100 miles north of Jammu,
came despite stepped up security in the region to prevent militant attacks ahead of India's Independence Day
celebrations Monday. Five people were killed and nine others were wounded, said Deputy Inspector General of
Police Satbir Gupta, adding that three of the injured were in serious conditions. He said the militants attacked
the two families as they ate an evening meal together. The targeted families volunteered for a village defense
committee and the government had given them arms to help protect the village. Gupta said the killers were from
one of about a dozen Pakistan-based militant groups that have been fighting security forces in India's portion of
Kashmir for the Himalayan region's independence or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan. More than 66,000
people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Kashmir insurgency since it began in 1989.