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Belgian authorities have charged three more people in relation to the bomb attacks that rocked the capital Brussels last week. Federal prosecutors in Brussels said in a statement on Monday that the three, who were reportedly arrested a day earlier in the city, were accused of participating in a terrorist group. The statement identified the three as Yassine A., Mohamed B. and Aboubaker O., adding that officials can provide no further information about the suspects at this stage. It also said a fourth suspect had been released without charge. Police had announced on Sunday that it had made four arrests earlier in the day in 13 raids carried out across Brussels. It also said four others were questioned but later released. 

Senior officials in Belgium have admitted that the country’s security system has been negligent in dealing with potential terror-related cases over decades, allowing terrorists to carry out high-profile attacks like the recent one in Brussels. Three bombings happened last Tuesday in the city’s main airport and metro station, and were claimed by Daesh, a Takfiri terrorist group mainly operating in Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, officials said on Monday that death toll from the bombings, which initially stood at 31, has climbed to 35. “Four patients deceased in hospital. Medical teams did all possible. Total victims: 35. Courage to all the families," Belgium’s health minister, Maggie De Block, said in a tweet. The initial toll, which included the three attackers, was 31, while the attacks left some 300 people injured.

The bombings in Brussels came as as Belgian officials were in the midst of an extensive operation to hunt down suspects involved in attacks in November 2015 in the French capital Paris, which killed 130. Security forces had apprehended the main suspect, Salah Abdeslam, on March 18. Repeated raids have been carried out in Brussels and elsewhere in Belgium over the past months, resulting in dozens of arrests in connection to potential terror attacks. Belgium is viewed as the prime recruiting ground in Europe for Daesh.

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28.Mar.2016

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A road accident along the Mbanga highway on Saturday claimed the lives of 15 people. Officials of the Ministry of Transport say a passenger coach and a semi-trailer carrying agricultural products collided killing 15 and injuring 20 others. 

Cameroon Concord Douala Bureau gathered the accident occurred at Djongo some few kilometers from Njombe. The driver of the semi trailer lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a coaster belonging to the Menoua travel agency.

The truck came from Douala in the Littoral region and was heading to Dschang in the West. The remains of those who died including the injured were taken to the mortuary at the Mount Kupe hospital.

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27.Mar.2016

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Hundreds of people have flocked into the streets of the Scottish port city of Glasgow in support of Scotland’s breakaway from the UK, calling for a second referendum on the issue. Waving the Scottish flags in Saturday’s march, demonstrators carried anti-Westminster banners such as "End London Rule," "The Vow Was A Lie," and "Red Tories Out".

The protesters also chanted slogans such as "What do we want? Independence! When do you want it? Now!" An unnamed protester said, "We’ve come on the march today to fight for freedom of our country, for the future of my children and all the children in the country. For I do believe it is better for us to be out from Westminster rule.” The protest rally remained peaceful despite some heckling by pro-union supporters who were holding a Union Jack.

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27.Mar.2016

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People in Nigeria have held protest rallies in several cities across the country to demand the immediate and unconditional release of senior Shia cleric and leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zakzaky.

Peaceful demonstrations were held in the cities of Lafia, Katsina, Gombe, and Kaduna with protesters carrying posters of the cleric and other Muslims killed or detained by the Nigerian army. 

They also urged the government to set Zakzaky free, denouncing the imprisonment of the Shia cleric and a large number of his followers as a violation of the Nigerian constitution.

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27.Mar.2016

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King Abdullah II of Jordan has accused Turkey of exporting terrorists to Europe as part of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “radical” solution to conflicts plaguing the Middle East, a leaked memo shows. Abdullah made the comment during a meeting with senior US politicians on January 11, The Guardian reported Friday citing leaked notes from the meeting. "Radicalization was being manufactured in Turkey," the monarch said at the meeting in Congress attended by the chairmen and members of the Senate Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, including Senators John McCain and Bob Corker, and Senators Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, the Senate Majority and Minority leaders respectively. 

He regarded as not accidental the presence of terrorists among the scores of refugees fleeing to Europe, adding that “the fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook.” Highlighting Turkey’s role in the five-year-long Syrian crisis that has claimed some 470,000 lives according to the Syrian Center for Policy Research, Abdullah said the Ankara government was “absolutely” buying smuggled oil from Daesh Takfiri terrorists that have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country. The claims have been backed by aerial footage released by Russia last year that captured long lines of Syrian oil tankers awaiting entrance to Turkey.

The Jordanian king added that besides providing support to certain groups in Syria, Turkey has allowed extremist militants to cross its borders into the war-torn country. Despite being a member of the so-called US-led coalition against Daesh in Syria and Iraq, strong evidence suggests that Turkey is heavily involved in training and equipping the foreign-backed militants operating in the two Arab countries. According to Abdullah, Turkey’s support for extremism goes beyond Syria and reaches such African countries as Libya and Somalia.

Another highlight of the meeting was when Abdullah lambasted Israel for “looking the other way” at the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front on the border with Syria, because the Tel Aviv regime deems the Takfiri group “as an opposition to" the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. The Jordanian king also blew the covers off the involvement of British Special Air Service (SAS) forces in southern Syria. He said SAS had helped put together a mechanized battalion of tribal fighters to fight Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s armed forces. SAS forces had previously been suspected of dressing as Daesh militants and joining them in the fight against Assad forces.

The barrage of accusations against other countries comes when Jordan itself is suspected of having provided Takfiri militants with training and funds. King Abdullah also said during the secret briefing that the UK had deployed some 1,000 special forces to Libya to allegedly fight Daesh. The terror group has seized several oil fields in the country engulfed by a civil war since the 2011 ouster of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

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26.Mar.2016

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The US military says it has killed several leading militants from the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, including the second-in-command who was serving as the group’s finance minister. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday that a US special operations team killed the top Daesh terrorist on Thursday during a pre-dawn raid in Syria. “We are systematically eliminating ISIL’s cabinet,” said Carter at a press briefing at the Pentagon. He gave no details about how he died. “The removal of this ISIL leader will hamper the organization’s ability to conduct operations both inside and outside of Iraq and Syria," Carter said. 

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday that a US special operations team killed top Daesh militant Haji Iman on Thursday during a pre-dawn raid in Syria. Abdul Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, also known as Abu Ala al-Afri or Haji Iman was a former physics professor from Iraq who originally joined the al-Qaeda terror organization in 2004. After spending time in an Iraqi prison, he was released in 2012 and traveled to Syria to join ISIL. He was said to have taken temporary charge of ISIL after its top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was allegedly injured in an air strike.

Carter said this was the second senior Daesh leader successfully targeted this month, in addition to the group’s “minister of war” Omar al-Shishani, or “Omar the Chechen,” killed in a recent US airstrike. The announcement comes at a time of growing anxiety about Daesh, which claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium this week that killed at least 31 people and injured over 200. Daesh terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria. They are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control. A temporary ceasefire agreement engineered by Russia and the United States, which came into force across Syria on February 27, has been holding despite minor reports of violations by the warring sides.

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25.Mar.2016

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