Monday, August 27, 2012
N Korea warns of 'all-out war' with South Korea and US
NORTH Korea's leader has warned of an "all-out" war against the South while denouncing its ongoing joint military drill with the United States.
The US and South Korean militaries on Monday began a two-week exercise aimed at testing defences against the communist North, insisting it was defensive in nature but Pyongyang called it a drill for a preemptive nuclear attack.
More than 30,000 US troops, including most of those based in the South plus 3000 from overseas, are taking part in the annual joint drill known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the drill a grave threat and said his army was ready to deal "deadly blows" if their territory was violated during the exercise.
"If the enemies fire even a single shell on our inviolable territory ... the whole army should turn out as one and lead the battle to an all-out counter-offensive," said the leader, according to KCNA news agency.
The courageous officers ... are now waiting for a final order for charge for a life-and-death battle against the enemies," Mr Kim was quoted as saying in a speech to army officials Saturday. "There is a limit to our patience."
Mr Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, took over the impoverished but nuclear-armed nation after his late father and longtime ruler Kim Jong-Il died last December.
On the eve of the ongoing drill, the young leader visited a frontliner artillery unit that carried out a deadly 2010 bombardment of a South Korean island near the disputed western sea border.
Mr Kim praised its personnel as heroes and told them never to tolerate enemy aggression.
The two Koreas have remained technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, without a subsequent peace treaty.
Cross-border tensions have been high since the South accused the North of torpedoing one of its warships with the loss of 46 lives in March 2010.
The North angrily denied involvement but went on to shell the Yeonpyeong island in November of the same year, killing four South Koreans including two civilians.
News.com
Russian Air Force to Take Part in Antiterror Drills in U.S.
Russia’s servicemen will join efforts with their U.S. and Canadian colleagues during the Vigilant Eagle 2012 military drills to repel a hypothetical terrorist attack on a passenger airliner, the Russian Eastern Military District’s press service reported on Monday.
“The Vigilant Eagle 2012 exercises will be held on August 27-29. They are aimed at practicing interaction between the Russian armed forces and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in case of a terrorist attack on a passenger airliner,” the district’s spokesman Col. Alexander Gordeyev said.
The drills will be held for the third time. They first were held in 2010.
The exercises involve Russian, U.S. and Canadian armed forces units. Exercise headquarters are stationed in Colorado Springs (Colorado) and Anchorage (Alaska), as well as in the cities of Khabarovsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Russian Far East.
The Russian units will be led by Maj. Gen. Sergei Dronov, the commander of the Eastern Military District’s Third Air Force and Air Defense Command, and NORAD’s units by Joseph Bonnet III, NORAD’s training and exercise director.
“The first group led by Maj. Gen. Dronov will operate as part of the main headquarters in Colorado Springs,” Gordeyev said.
“The second group led by Maj. Gen. Sergei Zhmurin, the head of the Eastern Military District’s Air Defense and Aviation, will take part in the work of the secondary headquarters in Anchorage,” he said.
NORAD is a joint U.S.-Canadian organization providing aerospace warning and defense for the two countries.
According to a NORAD press release, the computer-based exercise will “consist of simulating two international flights: one originating in Alaska and traveling into Russian airspace followed by one originating in Russia and traveling into the U.S. airspace.”
“The basic premise is that a foreign flagged commercial air carrier on an international flight has been seized by terrorists. The aircraft will not respond to communications. The exercise scenario creates a situation that requires both the Russian Air Force and NORAD to launch or divert fighter aircraft to investigate and follow the aircraft,” NORAD said.
It added that the drills will focus on “the cooperative hand-off of the aircraft between fighter aircraft of the participating nations.”
“These exercises continue to foster the development of cooperation between the Russian Federation Air Force and NORAD in preventing possible threats of air terrorism,” NORAD said.
RIA Novosti
Rockets hit southern Israel towns
Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip fired three missiles at the southern Israel town of Sderot on Sunday morning.
Two of the rockets slammed into local factories, injuries two Israelis and causing extensive damage. One of the factories had been hit in previous attacks from Gaza. The third missile landed in the same area, but caused no damage or injuries.
Security officials commented to Israeli media that they were surprised by the accuracy of Sunday's attacks. The rockets fired from Gaza are usually crude or lacking in sophisticated guidance systems, and must be aimed manually. Either Gaza-based terrorists are getting better at manually aiming their rockets, or have come into possession of better guidance systems. Either way, it doesn't bode well for the residents of southern Israel.
Sunday's attacks ended weeks of quiet in the region, and suggested that the relatively calm summer period was coming to an end. Gaza-based forces regularly increase their attacks on southern Israel at the start of the school year, when Israeli are more typically congregated in public places.
Israel News
Al Qaeda targets Riyadh, Jeddah and Sderot. Saudi cell had chemicals
For the first time, a thread links the three rockets which hit the Israeli town of Sderot Sunday, Aug. 26, slightly injuring two workmen, and the two terrorist cells captured in Riyadh and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on the same day,DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report. Both events were conceived by Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. AQAP has ordered its Sinai cells and Egyptian and Palestinian offshoots to step up their attacks from Sinai and the Gaza Strip.
By three happenings Sunday, AQAP broke new and menacing ground:
1. Three Qassam missiles fired at the industrial zone Sderot shares with Shear Hanegev ushered in a Gaza-based anti-Israel offensive launched by the “Shura Council in the Jerusalem Area” - the umbrella organization of all the Salafi groups operating in Sinai and the Gaza Strip.
This group’s 6,000-strong force of well-armed terrorists is commanded by an Egyptian by the name of Hisham Saydani. Al Qaeda has dubbed him Abu al-Walid al-Maqdisi. He and his lieutenants serve as liaison between the Sinai cells and AQAP headquarters in Yemen.
2. Hamas held Saydani in a special security prison cell in the Gaza Strip until two weeks ago when, for some unknown reason, which US, Egyptian and Israeli counter-terror agencies are trying to discover, Hamas let him go. His first action was to set up the Shura Council’s attack near Rafah, in which 16 Egyptian troops were killed and the Kerem Shalom crossing barrier into Israel was rammed. The gunmen were liquidated before they reached their target: the IDF Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion’s command base nearby.
This operation was designed at the highest AQAP command level.
Suspecting that at least three of the perpetrators had gone to ground in the Gaza Strip, Egypt demanded that Hamas hunt them down and arrest them. The Shura Council’s three-missile volley against Sderot was its way of warning Hamas to call off the hunt or else the missile fire would continue and bring Israeli retribution down on the Hamas-ruled enclave.
The same tactic was behind the firing of two Grad missiles against the southern Israeli resort and port town of Eilat Friday, Aug. 17. That too was an al Qaeda warning to Cairo to call off the Egyptian military’s pursuit of Salafi terrorists in Sinai or else more missiles would be loosed against southern Israel.
Two days later, Israel placed Eilat under the guard of an Iron Dome missile defense battery.
Following these two incidents, al Qaeda’s Shura Council announced that Israeli towns would be held hostage for the halting of Egyptian and Hamas military pursuit of its members in Sinai and the Gaza Strip, which must stop forthwith.
3. Sunday, too, the Saudi Interior Minister announced the busting of two al Qaeda cells in the capital Riyadh and the Saudi summer capital of Jeddah on the Red Sea, which were plotting attacks on Western targets, and local security forces and public places in the kingdom. There were eight arrests, two Saudis and six Yemenis.
Saudi sources disclosed that they were members of AQAP, operating under the orders of the organization’s headquarters in Yemen. Found in their possession were weapons and explosives and also chemical substances for loading into explosive charges.
This is the first evidence since 2002, when a bomb packed with poison chemicals was detonated by Palestinian suicide killer in Jerusalem, of the use of chemical weapons by Middle East terrorists. It is feared that those weapons may also have found their way to Sinai.
DEBKAfile
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