The commander of the Azerbaijani sniping command, killed in the Armenian troops’ retaliatory attack after Friday’s subversion, was shot to death by a female sniper, the spokesperson of the Defense Ministry says on Facebook.
“The Azerbaijani side continues its obscene policies towards its own soldiers and their loved ones. This afternoon alone, they lost three servicemen in the vicinities of Karvatchar, with one sniper being gunned down in Artsakh’s south through a bullet shot by a female Armenian sniper. Let the Azerbaijani citizens know that their sons are not only killed but also disrespected by their own leadership,” reads Artsrun Hovhannisyan’s post.
Armenia says 2 killed in skirmish on border with Azerbaijan
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — The Armenian Defense Ministry says a clash with a group of Azerbaijani gunmen has left two people dead.
The ministry said the incident occurred late Sunday when a group of Azerbaijani gunmen tried to cross into Armenia. It said Monday that an Armenian civilian and an Azerbaijani intruder were killed in the skirmish. The Armenian forces let Azerbaijan recover the intruder’s body.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry denied that such incident had occurred, according to the Interfax news agency.
The two ex-Soviet neighbors have been locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, which along with some adjacent territory has been under the control of Armenian soldiers and local Armenian forces since a 1994 ceasefire that ended a six-year war. Attempts to negotiate a peaceful settlement have stalled.
Death toll in ISIL’s attack on Kurdish fighters rises to 30
An Iraqi Kurdish military official says ISIL militants have killed at least 30 Peshmerga forces during clashes between the two sides in the country’s northern region.
On Sunday, Halgurd Hekmat, the spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdish forces in Erbil, said the fighting had erupted the day before in the northern town of Gwer, adding that he did not have further details on casualties.
Earlier reports said the death toll stood at 26.
Back in August, the Kurdish forces managed to recapture Gwer, located south of Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, after ISIL militants gained control over large areas of Iraq.
Retaking Gwer would provide the militants with a new base, allowing them to target the Kurdish capital more easily.
Earlier this month, Peshmerga forces defeated the militants after launching an attack on the terrorist group’s strongholds situated between the two regions of Makhmour and Gwer, regaining control of a large area.
Iraqi soldiers, police units, Kurdish forces, Shia militiamen, and Sunni tribesmen have recently succeeded in driving the ISIL out of some areas in Iraq. The most notable of all operations came in November, when Iraqi forces retook the strategic town of Baiji and its refinery from the terrorists. The Iraqi army also managed to liberate key districts in the city of Samarra in early December.
ISIL launched an offensive in Iraq in June and took control of the country’s second-largest city, Mosul, before sweeping through parts of the country’s Sunni Arab heartland.
Jan. 9, 2013, Kurdish Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Söylemez were shot dead in Paris. “Turkish MIT & Ömer Güney?”
Two years have passed since three Kurdish women affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed in Paris, but those behind the attack are yet to be found, although the French police apprehended two suspects, one of them alleged to have links with Turkish intelligence, shortly after the crime.
On Jan. 9, 2013, Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Söylemez were shot dead at the Kurdistan Information Bureau in Paris.
The killings took place shortly after the Turkish government launched talks with the PKK, recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and EU, to resolve the country’s long-standing Kurdish problem.
A Turkish daily claimed in February of last year that the prime suspect in the crime, Ömer Güney, who was arrested for an alleged plot to murder, had close ties to the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT).
The claim was previously denied by MİT following the release in January last year of a video allegedly featuring a conversation between Güney and two MİT agents.
According to the report published on Feb. 20 in the daily, one of the 13 phone numbers on suspect Güney’s phone contact list belonged to MİT.
Karşı’s report came after Ankara rejected a request from the French Ministry of Justice to reveal the identity of Güney’s contacts. Of the 13 numbers on Güney’s phone, five were landlines, while the others belonged to mobile phones, the report claimed. Güney is the last person who saw the three victims alive.
The report said one of the numbers belongs to the Erzurum provincial branch of MİT. In addition, the number is registered as such in a Turkish telephone directory system. Although the number was in the contact list on Güney’s Nokia phone found at his Paris apartment, it is not yet clear whether Güney had contacted this number.
MİT denied allegations in January of last year that it was the instigator of the murders. A statement released by the intelligence organization also said an internal administrative investigation into the claims was launched.
A video released over YouTube in January of last year allegedly featured Güney and two MİT agents over plans to murder Cansız, who is one of the co-founders of the PKK. The voice recording included details such as where and how to obtain two guns, how to pay for them and how to leave the crime scene after committing the murder.
Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested back in January that the killing might be an intra-PKK conflict, pointing out that a code was needed to enter the building where the women were killed.
Erdoğan suggested that someone must have knocked and the women must have opened the door, but that they would not have opened the door to someone they did not know. “They opened the door to someone they knew,” he stated.
Apart from the investigation that French prosecutors opened, the deputy chief public prosecutor’s office in Ankara also launched an investigation based on the Turkish anti-terror law. Reports in the Turkish media back in 2013 maintained that French authorities did not send the case file of the slain women to Turkey amid disagreements on the extradition of terrorists to Turkey.
Güney, who was reported to have visited Turkey on three different occasions in the year preceding the killings is from Turkey like the three victims.
The murders were seen in Turkey as an effort to derail the ongoing settlement process launched at the end of 2012 to resolve the Kurdish issue between the government and the terrorist organization.
Two Charlie Hebdo suspects killed in assault: sources
Two brothers suspected of slaughtering 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine were killed Friday when elite police stormed the building they were holed up in and freed a hostage unhurt, sources close to the investigation said.
As night fell explosions rang out when heavily-armed commandos made their move on a small printing firm in Dammartin-en-Goele northeast of Paris, killing the two massacre suspects. One police officer was injured.
Snipers were deployed on roofs and helicopters swooped low over a small printing business in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, only 12 kilometres (seven miles) from Paris’s main Charles de Gaulle airport.
Ahead of the stand-off, police had already exchanged fire with the pair in a high-speed car chase. Prosecutors told AFP there had been “no casualties reported” in the immediate aftermath of the shoot-out.
Yves Albarello, local MP for the Seine-et-Marne department and member of the crisis cell put in place by authorities, told iTELE the two suspects had let it be known that they wanted to die “as martyrs”.
Turkey: English-speaking suicide bomber kills policeman in attack near Istanbul’s touristic square
ISTANBUL
The attack has targeted the tourism unit of the Istanbul Security Directorate, which is located near several touristic landmarks, including the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Basilica Cistern.
A policeman has been killed in a suicide attack by an English-speaking woman in central Istanbul, a week after another attack on Istanbul police by a far-left group.
A niqab-clad female suicide bomber targeted the building of the tourism police near the Sultanahmet Square, one of the most popular touristic places in Istanbul, on Jan. 6, NTV television reported. The assailant “exploded herself prematurely before going into the police building, as she was prevented by the guards at the entrance,” Cihan news agency reported.
Istanbul Governor Vasıf Şahin said that the suicide bomber presented herself as a tourist, telling the police in English that she had forgotten her wallet inside while attempting to enter the building moments before the attack. “One policeman is seriously wounded. The other policeman is better,” he added, while answering journalists’ questions at the crime scene.
While the body of the unidentified attacker was recovered and the injured people were hospitalized, police stopped the tram service as the area was cordoned off as a security measure. Kenan Kumaş, one of the injured policemen, died in the hospital.
Doğan News Agency footage shows the moments after the attack near the square:
Police suspect that the the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) might be behind the attack, according to NTV.
A far-left militant who served jail term for being a member of the DHKP/C had been detained in front of the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, which also houses a prime ministerial office, after throwing a bomb that failed to explode at police officers last week.
January/06/2015
Names of Turkish MIT agents killed in Kobanê and Iraq
ANF – KOBANÊ
There have been many claims of collaboration between Turkey and ISIS. On 29 November ISIS gangs launched an attack from Turkish territory at the Mürşitpınar border gate.
The AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA) has issued the names of 12 Turkish intelligence (MIT) and special forces operatives who were assumed to be ISIS members and were killed in Mosul and Kobanê.
According to ABNA amongst the Turkish personnel killed in Mosul and Kobanê on the assumption they were ISIS members were former soldiers and MIT operatives.
Names of those killed in Mosul
The ABNA said they had obtained the names of 12 Turkish operatives killed at various times in Kobanê and Mosul, adding: “In an attack during the time of the kidnapping incident in Mosul, an artillery unit of the Iraqi army targeted a MIT ‘safe house’. It was targeted ‘by mistake’ on account of the Turkish operatives being dressed like ISIS militants. It appeared that some of the MIT personnel killed in this house were working at the Turkish consulate (probably in the culture attache section), but never went to the consulate. Their names are as follows:
1- İskender Demir
2- Murat Tin
3- Serdar Karaçam (or Karaçay)
4- Hikmet Y. (found with a Jordanian passport in the name of Muhammed Hammash)
(Bodies taken by Turkey. Name not given of another person reported to have been wounded in this incident).
Killed while trying to infiltrate Kobanê
According to ABNA, 5 special forces operatives were killed as they tried to cross the railway line and infiltrate Kobanê. ABNA said: “From equipment found on these persons it was evident they were Turkish intelligence and special forces operatives, but they were dressed like ISIS militants and had long beards and short moustaches. They had satellite navigation devices and contact information of certain persons working for the MIT in Kobanê. It was understood that these persons were special forces personnel, not ISIS militants, although they were also carrying ID cards given by ISIS to their own fighters.
The names of 4 of the 5 who died are as follows:
1- Mustafa Turan
2- Halil İbrahim T.
3- Hızır K.
4- Murat Çolak (it has been established that this person also used the identity card of certain charities to cross into Iraq and Syria)
(Another corpse, the identity of which could not be ascertained, was taken away by Turkish troops)
3 people killed in Iraq
According to ABNA, 3 people killed in Iraq at various times were found to have had links to the MIT and military intelligence. “Addresses of ‘safe houses’ of Turkish intelligence or the addresses or telephone numbers of persons with direct links to the MIT were found on the bodies of these persons. The corpses were taken by Turkey the next day.”
The names of these persons are as follows:
1- Necmettin Tuna (or Turna)
2- Çağrı Ceyhan (Pilot and lieutenant. Although it was said he had died in a helicopter crash in Kocaeli, in fact he was killed while on a clandestine mission in Iraq of which even his family was not aware)
3-Deniz M.
More than 700 Iraqi Kurd fighters killed since ISIS offensive
Six months into the jihadi offensive in Iraq, the autonomous Kurds said Wednesday they had lost more than 700 fighters and argued the burden of hosting a million displaced civilians was becoming unsustainable, AFP reported.
Since ISIS launched a devastating offensive from Syria on June 9, Iraq’s Kurds have been involved in battles along a frontline stretching more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles).
A statement from the region’s military forces, known as the peshmerga, said 727 members of the Kurdish security forces had been killed and 3,564 wounded since June 10.
The dead and wounded included “officers, non-commissioned officers, members of the Asayish (intelligence agency), of the police and some peshmerga veterans,” it said.
The peshmerga ministry said 34 members of the Kurdish security forces are also still reported as missing.
The last overall toll released by an official Kurdish source was on Aug. 8, when the regional presidency’s chief of staff Fuad Hussein said 150 peshmerga had been killed.
3 Turkish soldiers killed near Syria border
Turkish authorities are denying reports that three soldiers guarding the Turkish-Syrian border were killed by gunfire from Syria, The Associated Press reported.
Turkey’s military said Tuesday that one of the soldiers shot and killed two of his colleagues before turning the gun on himself. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkish reporters during a visit to Warsaw that the soldier had a nervous breakdown.
Earlier reports said the soldiers patrolling the border near the town of Ceylanpinar were killed by shots fired from across the border in Syria. The Syrian side of the border is largely controlled by Islamic State militants.
“A terror attack or a cross-border attack is out of the question, according to the indications,” Davutoglu said.
Kurdish protester killed in clashes with Turkish police
AFP, Ankara
Sunday, 7 December 2014
An 18-year-old Kurdish protester was killed Saturday in unclear circumstances during clashes with police in the majority Kurd region of southeast Turkey, local authorities and witnesses said.
The victim, Rojhat Özdel, was killed by a bullet while anti-riot police responded to stone-throwing protesters at the rally in the city of Yüksekova, according to witnesses.
Local authorities said that the young protester was “implicated in the violence against police forces.”
An autopsy will be carried out to determine the cause of his death.
Another protester was wounded in the clashes.
The protest rally had been called to commemorate the death of three demonstrators in the same city in a confrontation with police a year ago.
Tensions remain high in Turkey’s east and southeast after violent pro-Kurd riots that left more than 30 people dead in early October.
The protesters were demonstrating against Ankara’s refusal to intervene militarily to help the Kurds defend the Syrian border city of Kobane which has been under siege by jihadists from the Islamic State group.
Last Update: Sunday, 7 December 2014 KSA 23:36 – GMT 20:3
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