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Inside the raid that killed Baghdadi
Dhaka ﻿ Tuesday﻿ ﻿October﻿ ﻿29﻿, ﻿2019﻿, kartik 13 , 1426 BS
President Donald Trump announced Sunday morning in a televised address at the White House that the “world’s number one terrorist leader” is dead.
IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “blew himself up” when cornered by US forces who conducted a daring, two-hour nighttime raid on his compound in northern Syria, Trump said, providing a detailed account of the mission.
“Last night was a great night for the United States and for the world. A brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, has violently been eliminated,” he added.
It was the most significant announcement of the death of a terror leader since President Barack Obama revealed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by US Navy Seals in a dramatic late night address in May 2011.
HOW THE RAID UNFOLDED
The covert operation started around 5 pm on Saturday evening as eight helicopters carrying teams of elite US troops, including Delta Force operators, flew exactly one hour and ten minutes over “very, very dangerous territory” towards the compound, according to Trump. Numerous other US aircraft and ships were also involved in the mission.
After arriving at the compound, US troops breached a wall to avoid a booby trapped entrance and that’s when “all hell broke loose,” the President added.
Ultimately Baghdadi, who was also wearing a suicide vest, took refuge in a “dead end” tunnel with three children.
“He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast. The tunnel had caved in on it in addition,” Trump said.
DNA tests that positively confirmed Baghdadi’s identity began “about 15 minutes after he was killed” and US teams on the ground “brought body parts back,” sources told CNN.
Mazloum Abdi, the commander in chief of the Kurdish forces in Syria, said in a tweet the intelligence operations that led to the US military raid in Syria that killed Baghdadi began five months ago.
TRUMP GIVES THE GREEN LIGHT
Drama unfolded behind the scenes in the hours leading up to the raid as US military and intelligence officials scrambled to prepare before President, Pence, Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and other military officials gathered in the Situation Room around 5 pm Saturday, moments before the helicopters lifted off.
From there, Trump said he watched the raid unfold in real time, a moment that was documented in an image released by the White House on Sunday showing Trump surrounded by top military officials.
The only hint that something may have occurred came in the form of a cryptic tweet from Trump at 9:23 pm on Saturday when most of Washington was focused on the baseball World Series taking place a few miles from the White House, saying: “Something big has just happened.”
Trump said Sunday that the some foreign nations, including Russia and Turkey, were notified ahead of time that the US was launching an operation but were not told the details of the mission itself or who the target was.
“Russia treated us great. They opened up. We had a fly over certain Russia areas, Russia-held areas. Russia was great. Iraq was excellent. We really had great cooperation,” the President told reporters Sunday.
“Turkey -- we dealt with them. They knew we were going in. We flew over some territory. They were terrific. No problem,” he added.
Universities students hold the Iraqi flag as they take part in a protest over corruption, lack of jobs, and poor services, in Kerbala, Iraq yesterday. Inset , Demonstrators run from a tear-gas thrown by police during the anti-government protest in Baghdad.
Photo: Reuters
Source: Cnn Online
China’s Communist Party elite open key conclave
China’s Communist Party elite kicked off a key meeting in Beijing yesterday, as the country’s leadership faces pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, a protracted trade war, and a slowing economy. The Fourth Plenum of the Party’s Central Committee is a closed-door meeting of high-ranking officials where the country’s roadmap and future direction is discussed. According to official news agency Xinhua, President Xi Jinping yesterday delivered a work report on behalf of the Central Committee’s Political Bureau, and “explained a draft document” of Central Committee decisions on “some major issues.”
Chile president lifts state of emergency
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera yesterday ended a state of emergency that lasted more than a week amid mass protests, but demonstrations continued nonetheless. The decision to lift the decree at midnight, just two days after more than a million people took to the country’s streets demanding economic and political change, comes after the equally unpopular week-long nighttime curfews ended on Saturday. Authorities imposed both the state of emergency and curfews last weekend after Chile was rocked by its worst civil unrest in decades. What originated as a student protest against a modest hike in metro fares quickly got out of control as demonstrations turned deadly.
Emergency declared as California fire rages
Thousands of firefighters battled into the early hours yesterday, losing ground to the huge blaze burning through the famed Sonoma wine region in northern California. California’s governor declared a statewide emergency on Sunday as the wind-driven Kincade Fire spread to more than 34,000 acres (14,000 hectares), forcing residents to flee. In Los Angeles, meanwhile the local fire department issued mandatory evacuation orders after a “very dynamic” brush fire broke out west of a major highway, US 405, near The Getty museum. Refugees from the Kincade blaze recalled hasty departures as they waited it out in the safety of a community center in Petaluma, California.
INSURGENCY IN RAKHINE
Photo: Reuters
Lebanese army soldiers pull demonstrators in an attempt to open a road blocked by them during ongoing anti-government protests in the port city of Sidon, Lebanon, yesterday. Demonstrators set up barricades across key roads to protest corruption and press their demands for a radical overhaul of their country’s sectarian political system.
MODI FLIGHT DENIAL
Source: AFP

Cannot give a guarantee on anyone’s life
Pak PM says on
Nawaz’s health
Dawn Online
Prime Minister Imran Khan yesterday said he could not give a guarantee about anyone’s life, referring to the Islamabad High Court proceedings last week in which the bench had asked government representatives to “take responsibility” for incarcerated former premier Nawaz Sharif’s health.
Prime Minister Imran, while addressing the foundation stone laying ceremony of the Baba Guru Nanak University at Nankana Sahib, said: “Today I read a news that the court has asked the federal and provincial governments whether they can guarantee Nawaz Sharif’s life by tomorrow.
“I cannot even guarantee my life by tomorrow, so how can I give a guarantee for someone else’s life?”
On Saturday, the IHC granted Nawaz Sharif post-arrest interim bail until today in the Al Azizia reference. Nawaz is currently under treatment at Lahore Services Hospital for his low platelet count.
During the proceedings, the federal government had refused to take responsibility for Nawaz’s physical well-being.
IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah had observed that if the provincial and federal governments had performed their duties, the matter would have not come before the court.
When the interior secretary had informed the IHC that the federal government would not take any responsibility of the former premier’s health, the court expressed displeasure and remarked “don’t play politics with [the] court” as the law defines certain responsibility of the state.

IS jihadist danger still lurks

Experts say militant group has ambitions to regenerate again after Baghdadi’s death
Ap, Washington
Eliminating the Islamic State’s elusive leader gives President Donald Trump a new argument for leaving Syria, but the US military campaign against the extremists is far from finished.
The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by US forces leaves the Islamic State without an obvious leader, a major setback for an organization that in March was forced by American troops and Kurdish forces out of the last portion of its self-declared “caliphate,” which once spanned a swath of Iraq and Syria.
But the militant group, which arose from the remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq after that group’s defeat by US-led forces in 2008, has ambitions to regenerate yet again. And it remains a dangerous threat in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.
“The bottom line is: This puts the enemy on its heels, but the ideology — and this sounds so cliched -- it is not dead,” said Chris Costa, a former senior director for counterterrorism for the National Security Council in the Trump administration.
Key to the Islamic States is its “kill where you are” ethos, encouraging a far-flung network of followers, including those in the United States, to commit violence however and wherever they can. That jihadist message is likely to live on, even with the death of al-Baghdadi.
That means US forces, perhaps in reduced numbers, will continue hunting and attacking key Islamic State targets, even as Trump says he’s committed to a 2016 campaign pledge to bring them home and end “endless wars” started under his predecessors.
Trump earlier this month went from declaring a near-complete withdrawal of US forces from Syria to deciding that some -- perhaps several hundred -- must stay to keep eastern Syria’s oil fields from falling back into the hands of the Islamic State. Trump also agreed to keep about 150 US troops at a base in southern Syria.
In announcing Sunday that al-Baghdadi had blown himself up after being cornered in a dead-end underground tunnel in Syria, Trump acknowledged that IS, which he often calls “100 percent” defeated, still has ambitions to make a comeback. The group is “very, very strongly looking to build it again,” he said.
Rep Mike Rogers, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said five years of US and coalition effort inside Syria have not eliminated the Islamic State threat.
According to defense officials in Iraq and Afghanistan who study Islamic State and have watched its movements, the group is growing in power and numbers outside of Syria.
Its flagship affiliate is known as ISIS-Khorasan in Afghanistan, and it is expanding into other countries, including Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Many of those affiliates have liaisons in the terror group’s hub in eastern Afghanistan.
The death of al-Baghdadi leaves the group without an equally brand-name successor and deprives would-be jihadists of a figurehead leader to rally behind.
Counterterrorism experts say that leadership void is a significant loss for a terror group that had lost the vast stretches of the physical caliphate in Syria and Iraq it had once controlled. But they also caution that they expect the group’s ideology to endure beyond al-Baghdadi.

Myanmar army frees 14 hostages from rebels
Reuters, Yangon
Myanmar’s army said it had rescued 14 people seized by insurgents in restive Rakhine state after Arakan Army rebels reported many dead in military attacks on boats carrying soldiers and police said it had taken prisoners.
The escalation in bloodshed is one of the biggest in the western state since fighting intensified early this year between the army and the rebels demanding greater autonomy for Rakhine.
“Of those abducted by the Arakan Army, 14 people have now been rescued,” the military said in a statement late on Sunday. “The military is continuing a combined air and land operation to rescue the remaining people abducted as soon as possible.”
The ethnic armed group on Saturday took prisoner more than 50 people, most belonging to the security forces. It said troops opened fire on Sunday on three vessels where the group was being held in Rathedaung township, sinking two and damaging one.
“Many were killed as there was no cover from incoming fire,” the rebel group said in a statement.
There was no independent account of casualties.
Local member of parliament Khin Saw Wai told Reuters fighting in Rathedaung had been too intense to go there on Sunday and many people had fled for neighbouring villagers after jet fighters flew overhead.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced across Rakhine state since clashes began in December, bringing fresh chaos to a region from which more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled a military crackdown in 2017.

New Delhi fights pollution after Diwali party
Afp, New Delhi
After India’s biggest firework party of the year, Delhi awoke to a pollution hangover yesterday with the capital forced to breathe hazardous levels of toxic particles.
A thick smog engulfed landmarks such as the capital’s Red Fort and India Gate while drivers had visibility cut by the haze that built up after the Diwali holiday weekend.
With the pollution threat growing over the past decade, the Supreme Court banned most fireworks for the Hindu festival of lights. However, few revellers followed the order.
Firecrackers and rockets lit up the night sky and left clouds of smoke, adding to emissions from cars and trucks and stubble fires by farmers around Delhi that have made it the world’s most polluted capital.
Tens of thousands of people set off firecrackers into the early hours of yesterday, pushing the government air quality index beyond the top recordable level of 999.

Indian rescuers try to save 2-yr-old boy stuck in well
Afp, New Delhi
Scores of workers were racing against time yesterday to try to rescue a two-year-old boy trapped for more than 72 hours down a 26-metre (85-feet) well in south India, officials said.
The boy fell into the 30-centimetre (one-foot) diameter pipe on Friday afternoon while playing near his home in Tiruchirappalli district of Tamil Nadu state.
A thermal camera was briefly used to monitor the child’s body temperature while oxygen was supplied through a pipe.
The toddler, Sujith Wilson, was unconscious but breathing until Sunday morning, but rescuers have been unable to check his condition since then.
Authorities said the child was initially wedged at around nine metres (30 feet) before slipping to the bottom in an upright standing position.
“It’s a race against time,” said Jawaharlal Nehru, a senior district officer at the site.
Workers used an oil drill to dig a hole parallel to the well on Sunday, but the rig broke down at around ten metres (33 feet) because of the rocky ground.
Attempts to use robotic devices to lower ropes to latch onto the boy’s wrist failed on Saturday.
The incident is the latest in series of mishaps that have seen children accidentally fall into disused and uncovered wells in rural India.
In 2006 the rescue of a six-year-old child made headlines when he was recovered safely in Haryana state after being stuck in an 18-metre (60-foot) well for 48 hours.

India takes Pak to world body
Pti, New Delhi
India has taken up Pakistan’s denial of use of its airspace to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flight with the International Civil Aviation Organisation, government sources said yesterday.
Modi is travelling to Saudi Arabia later in the day on a bilateral visit. India has sought overflight clearance from Pakistan for the prime minister’s aircraft to go to Saudi Arabia.
Sources said India regrets Pakistan’s decision to yet again deny overflight clearance for the VVIP special flight which is otherwise granted routinely by any normal country.
India has taken up the issue of denial of overflight clearance with the relevant international civil aviation body, they said.
“Overflight clearances are sought, and granted by other countries as per prescribed ICAO guidelines,” said a source.
India will continue to seek such overflight clearances, sources said.
Citing alleged human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan on Sunday denied India’s request to allow Modi’s aircraft to move in its airspace for his visit to Saudi Arabia.
In a statement on Sunday, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Pakistan has decided to not allow Prime Minister Modi to use the country’s airspace, state-run Radio Pakistan reported.