On the Move
ABN: Pakistani intelligence sources say they have been receiving reports for the past 12 months that some al Qaeda militants are leaving Pakistan for Sudan, Yemen and now Somalia, but certainly not on the scale suggested by the “middleman”.
ABC: The Mogadishu-based Islamists poured into Kismayo overnight to extend their grip on south-central Somalia and effectively flank the powerless central government on three sides.
Ministers accused the Islamists of mounting the offensive with fighters from Eritrea, Pakistan and Yemen. “There are foreign forces … which attacked Kismayo,” Somali Interior Minister Hussein Mohamed Farah Aideed told al Jazeera network.
Reuters Somalia 9/27 : More planes or the same planes at this airport? This sounds like different cargo.
Also in Baidoa, airport sources said a cargo plane had delivered armoured trucks for President Abdullahi Yusuf, who last week survived an assassination attempt.“Two four-wheel drive bullet-proof trucks and boxes of canned food have arrived from Yemen,” Mohamed Salad, a senior police officer in charge of Baidoa airport security, said.
“The bullet-proof trucks are for the president.”
Update: Otay, its new shipments, humanitarian assistance:
Mogadishu, 29 Sept. (AKI) - Yemen is the only Arab League nation to have so far responded to an appeal by Somalia’s government for humanitarian assistance for the drought and conflict wracked east African country. Yemen this week sent two planeloads of humanitarian aid, the local Ayaamaha newsaper reports. The first - containing foodstuffs - landed at the airport of the provincial city of Baidoa - seat of Somalia’s weak interim government, 250 kilometres north of the capital, Mogadishu. The second plane transported four bullet-proof vehicles for interim president Abdullah Yusuf who last week survived an assassination attempt.
Yahoo: Iraq-The tribes captured five militants in the Anbar province capital Ramadi on Friday, including three foreign fighters from Yemen, police and tribal leaders said. YT:
Tribal leaders have arrested three Yemenis in Iraq, while a fourth has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. From Sept. 8-14, Iraq’s Central Criminal Court issued judgments upon 22 prison detainees, including a Yemeni named Abdullah Hussein Ahmed Saleh, convicted of infiltrating and illegal passing of borders.Iraqi police and tribal leaders in Al-Ramadi said Iraqi sources promised to wage war on Al-Qaeda organization there and managed to arrest five Al-Qaeda affiliates last Friday, including three Yemenis. According to police officer Salam Obeed, the five men were arrested without incident below a bridge in Al-Ramadi in Al-Anbar province.
Occupying approximately one-third of Iraq’s total area, Al-Anbar is the stronghold of Sunni Arabs and one of the most dangerous areas for U.S. forces, according to Sattar Al-Baza’I, a sheikh of one of Al-Anbar’s tribes.
Media sources previously have mentioned that more than 500 Yemenis have gone to Iraq since the end of last year and this year. However, the same sources didn’t mention the specific party or nation behind sending them to Iraq, nor the country or countries through which they passed.
