ENGLISH NEWS

Security forces attacked in northern Egypt

Armed men have killed five Egyptian soldiers in an attack on a military checkpoint near the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya, security officials said.

Monday's attack took place north of the city, where fighters have repeatedly targeted security forces in recent weeks, the officials said.

In a separate incident, officials said a massive explosion, possibly from a car bomb, hit the security headquarters in a southern Sinai town, killing three people and wounding 47.

The security officials said the attack in the town of al-Tour significantly damaged the four-story building and set off small fires.

They said the death toll was likely to rise as rescue workers and residents search for victims under the rubble.

Fighters, some with al-Qaeda links, have been targeting security forces daily in northern Sinai in what has increasingly become a full-fledged insurgency.

But the southern part of the strategic peninsula, which includes the popular diving resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, has been peaceful.

In yet another security incident, an Amaadi Satellite Earth station in Cairo was hit by an RPG attack on Monday.

Is al-Shabab dying or resurgent?

There is a growing view both from Nairobi and the cloistered, heavily defended corridors of Villa Somalia – the Somali government’s main compound here in Mogadishu – that al-Shabab’s Westgate Mall attack was an act of desperation.

It was, says the theory, a lashing out by a movement on the ropes; a last-ditch attempt to prove its legitimacy and win supporters in the face of continued military pressure on the ground, a brutally damaging internal power-struggle, and a growing sense of irrelevance abroad.

The theory looks and sounds encouraging, particularly when it comes to an organization that all of a sudden looks very frightening indeed. And in a lot of respects, it seems to join the bits of evidence into a coherent narrative, particularly when it is seen from afar.

But up close, the theory seems dangerously optimistic. What’s happening on the ground suggests that the opposite is probably true, and that we are facing a far more dangerous organization that has used the past year of relative calm to reorganize, refinance and rearm its self.

Take Mogadishu, for example. For most of the past year, diplomats and media reports have looked at the city’s booming economy, the reconstruction and the streetlights, and seen a community in recovery. But all this has happened because there is no war. That isn’t the same as saying there is the presence of security.

The authorities won’t release official “incident reports” of alleged al-Shabab attacks in Mogadishu describing them as “classified”, but the anecdotal evidence from people who’ve lived here for the past few years suggests that security in the capital is now far worse than it has been since al-Shabab was forced out almost two years ago.

US commando raids target Islamist leaders in Africa

US special forces have carried out two separate raids in Africa targeting senior Islamist militants, American officials say.

In Libya, US commandos captured an al-Qaeda leader accused of the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Anas al-Libi was seized in the capital Tripoli.

And a leader of the al-Shabab group was targeted in southern Somalia, but that raid appears to have failed.

The al-Shabab leader - who has not been identified - is suspected of involvement in last month's attack in the Westgate shopping centre in Kenya's capital Nairobi, which left at least 67 people dead.

 
Afghans allege civilian deaths in NATO raid

At least five civilians, including three children, have been killed in a NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan, officials have said.

The civilians, aged between 12 and 20, were killed overnight on Friday while they were out hunting birds in the area of Saracha, a few kilometres from Jalalabad city, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, provincial police spokesman Hazrat Hussain Mashreqiwal told the AFP news agency.

However, the US-led coalition said that it targeted fighters and that its initial reports indicate no civilian casualties.

House passes bill on back pay amid shutdown

A partial government shutdown entered its fifth day Saturday, with Congress convening for a session that promised no progress in breaking the impasse but at least saw the passing of a bill offering back pay to furloughed federal workers.

The GOP House voted to pass the legislation, which is backed by the White House and congressional Democrats, and would make sure the 800,000 sidelined government employees would get their pay when the shutdown ends. The Senate is likewise expected to clear the bill for President Barack Obama's signature.

Later on Saturday, the Pentagon announced that it is ordering most of its 400,000 furloughed civilian staff back to work. Under a liberal interpretation of a law passed last week to ensure military personnel would continue to get paid, government lawyers concluded that the act allowed the elimination of furloughs for “employees whose responsibilities contribute to the morale, well-being, capabilities and readiness of service members.”  

The move will likely see a return to work for at least a quarter of the total number of federal employees temporarily laid off as a result of the shutdown.

But Saturday’s session in Congress gave no indication when government staff outside of the Department of Defense would be called back in.

In a news conference, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., continued to press House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to allow a vote in the House that would bring the shutdown to an end. 

Expressing satisfaction that the House voted to give furloughed workers back pay once they are allowed to return to work, Pelosi added, "Why don't we vote to pay government employees to work?"