Egypt: Dozens Dead After Pro-Morsi Protests

At least 50 people have been killed in Egypt in clashes between security forces and supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi.

The figure, from a health ministry official, comes as Morsi supporters protested in several cities during army celebrations to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Hundreds of people are also reported to have been wounded.

Journalist Bel Trew, in Cairo, told Sky News the military had been expecting the unrest and described seeing "chaotic side street clashes with lots of gunfire and tear gas".

She added: "There's quite a lot of anger here toward the Morsi supporters by local residents and those who wanted to go to the streets to celebrate their military on this day that Egyptians regard as one of the most proud moments of their history.

"What we're looking at is rival protests on the streets together."

A heavy security presence with tanks and armoured vehicles gathered in Cairo to try to deter the protesters, said Trew.

Supporters of Mr Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement had tried to get close to Tahrir Square, the focal point of pro-army demonstrations since the coup in June.

Protesters in Cairo

But security forces guarded entrances to the square, frisking people arriving for the celebrations.

Mr Morsi, who became Egypt's first democratically elected president, was removed from office in July.

Since then, the military-backed government of General Abdel Fatah al Sisi has cracked down on members of the Brotherhood.

Hundreds of Mr Morsi's supporters were allegedly killed in August as protest camps were cleared, while the government said around 100 members of the security forces also died.

Away from the main squares, Cairo's streets were largely deserted on Sunday, a public holiday to commemorate the October War, known as the Yom Kippur War in Israel.

The conflict is remembered proudly by the Egyptian army because it caught Israel by surprise and led to the recovery of the Sinai Peninsula in a 1979 peace treaty.

Supporters of the Army regime waved flags as warplanes flew over Cairo in a show of force and patriotic songs boomed out from loudspeakers.

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Kerry Defends Terror Suspect's Capture

Libyia Raid: US Scores Huge Success

Updated: 1:07pm UK, Monday 07 October 2013

The Americans have scored a major success in capturing one of their most wanted al Qaeda suspects in Libya, but the operation has reminded some in the UK of a time, pre 9/11, when the UK was a haven for foreign Islamists with links to violence.

The Americans got their man, Abu Anas al Libi, in an audacious daylight raid in Tripoli.

Elite forces surrounded his car and dragged him out before, according to the New York Times, flying him out to the US Navy transport ship San Antonio.

Libi is wanted by the Americans on charges of conspiring with Osama bin Laden to attack US forces in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia, and of planning the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people.

In the early 1990s Libi was with bin Laden along with dozens of other al Qaeda members in Sudan.

Colonel Gaddafi of Libya and other leaders asked the Sudanese government to expel them, and Khartoum made it clear to the group that it was time to move on. 

Many members went to Afghanistan and Libi may have been among them.

However, by the mid 1990s he was in the UK where, as an enemy of Colonel Gaddafi, he claimed asylum. This was granted by Michael Howard who was then the Home Secretary in Prime Minister John Major's government.

At the time London was home to many radicals who had fled persecution in their own countries. This was only a few years after the UK had supported the Mujahidin in Afghanistan because they fought the Russians.

The French and American security forces were troubled at the presence of so many radicals in the UK, and it was in the mid 1990s that the term Londonistan was first coined.

Both countries gave the British specific examples of how radicals in Britain were in contact with terrorists abroad.

The security services and Scotland Yard were well aware of their presence, but with finite resources, and the IRA to keep an eye on, the authorities tolerated them as long as they did not break the laws in the UK.

Libi left the UK sometime in the late 1990s. It is reported that the police later raided an address at which he had lived and found terrorist literature including a manual on how to conduct terror operations.

The Americans have now captured and killed almost all of the higher echelons of the original Al Qaeda leadership including bin Laden.

Still at large is the new leader, former deputy Ayman Al Zawahiri.

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Captain 'Plotted Fatal Sail Past For Days'

The captain of the doomed Costa Concordia cruise ship had been plotting his fatal "sail past" of the island of Giglio for days, a court has heard.

The Italian court was also told that after steering the 114,000 tonne vessel into the island's rocky coast, Francesco Schettino failed to give clear instructions to officials after they discovered sea water flooding the engines through a tear in the hull.

Schettino is on trial facing charges of manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning ship for his role in the capsizing of the Costa Concordia in January 2012 during which 32 passengers and crew drowned.

He was in court in Grosseto on Monday to hear statements from engine room officer Giovanni Iaccarino.

"Schettino wanted to sail very close to Giglio the week before," he said.

The Costa Concordia was righted last month

"It wasn't possible because the weather wasn't right, the sea was too rough and the idea was abandoned."

The following week conditions were better, and Schettino decided to risk the sail past, a manoeuvre used by captains to impress passengers and show off seamanship.

Schettino did not warn passengers of the event, or inform the ship's owner, Costa Crociere, that he was attempting the manoeuvre, said Iaccarino.

"The route was planned that night, it was not in the official programmes," he said.

Iaccarino said he was off duty playing Playstation when the ship struck the rock, causing a huge impact and making his possessions fall from shelves.

Heading for the engine room, he found the first three diesel generators and the ship's electrical generators flooded.

"Inside me I had the feeling the ship was lost," he said, adding that he communicated the state of the engine room to Schettino through an official.

As he discovered the other three diesel generators were flooded, there was a blackout, leaving on emergency lighting, he said.

In addition to hearing testimony from Iaccarino, the court also watched an earlier court-ordered video interview with him, in which he said he continued to hear "calming" announcements from the bridge as he watched the water rise up through the ship.

"Then I saw the captain (as he climbed up the bridge) who put his hands in his hair and said 'I have made a mess'."

Iaccorino is the first of over 1,000 witnesses due to be called in the trial, which is set to last for months.

One witness due to be called by the prosecution is Domnica Cermontan, the Moldovan dancer who was invited on to the bridge on the night of the sail past by Schettino.

She was due in court on Tuesday, but has been excused because her child is unwell.

After 20 months lying on its side in shallow water off the Tuscan island of Giglio, the Costa Concordia was righted last month, part of a 600m euro operation to float it off to a scrap yard on the Italian mainland.

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Egypt: Security Forces 'Targeted' In Attacks

Is Egypt Heading For Civil War?

Updated: 3:40pm UK, Monday 07 October 2013

Fifty dead overnight. Eight soldiers killed in two separate attacks. Foreign jihadis captured with their weapons. Civil war in Egypt?

No.

Not yet.

General Abdel Fattah al Sisi, the military leader who deposed Mohamed Morsi in a coup in July, could, conceivably contain the explosive formula of thwarted democratic hopes, violent Islamist ideology and extreme government brutality.

One method, which appears to be the one that General al Sisi is currently applying, is to throw a blanket of oppression and force over the cauldron of discontent.

He has banned the (so far non-violent) Muslim Brotherhood and frozen its assets. He has gunned down supporters of the president he deposed, Mohamed Morsi, with profligate intent.

He has launched a spectacular military campaign in the Sinai, the scene of a six-month-old insurrection by criminals, bandits, Hamas agents and al Qaeda supporters.

His intent is clear. To drive the Brotherhood, and by extension the violent Salafist movements that exist to its fringes, underground.

This would turn the clock back to the decades before the Arab Spring when a combination of liberals and Brotherhood supporters combined to drive the military regime out of Hosni Mubarak from power after decades of rule.

General al Sisi may succeed in this.

He has significant support from both religious and non-religious Egyptians who were dismayed, and fearful, of Mr Morsi's year in power when he rushed to Islamise Egypt's constitution and appointed a former terrorist as a regional governor.

Many Egyptians may now believe that their country is not ready for democracy – or they are not ready to accept a democratic outcome that could yield another Islamist government.

Many others, though, believed that the democratic choice they made during last year's elections, which yielded a Brotherhood presidency, should stand. Why, after all, did they take part in the revolution if not to have their say in Egypt's future?

Those elements include formerly violent groups like Jamaa Islamiya, which was behind the murder of 62 people, mostly tourists, in Luxor in 1997.

The massacre of hundreds of pro-Morsi supporters on August 14 by the military at Rabbah Square will, inevitably, have swelled the ranks of Islamists who now believe that the only way forward can be found by staring over the sights of a rifle.

These groups have not, yet, linked up with insurgents in the Sinai. These are a mixed bag of bandits, Islamist fanatics, and Hamas militants from Gaza.

If they blend in with groups deeper into Egypt, civil war or a spectacular crackdown by the military looks inevitable.

Al Sisi could take a different route. It would be hard to navigate – but it could, conceivably, draw the poison from the Egyptian body politic.

To do this he would need to open a dialogue with the Brotherhood and convince the biggest and best organised political movement in Egypt that they have a future as part of the mainstream.

Doing so would mean releasing its leadership from detention and acknowledging the fact that the movement does have some popular support.

So far there have been no signs that the general will take that route. Rather his supporters have been building a personality cult around him that bodes ill for Egypt's future.

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'Scalped' Woman's Body Found In Moscow Park

By Katie Stallard, Moscow Correspondent

A young woman has been found mutilated and murdered in a Moscow park - the second such attack in the same area in recent weeks.

The woman's body was found wrapped in tape inside a roll of cardboard, hidden in a ravine in Bitsevsky Park on Sunday evening.

She is thought to have been 20 to 25 years old.

Russian news agency Ria Novosti cited an unnamed law enforcement source as saying that the woman appeared to have been scalped.

She also had her right ear cut off, and had a severe wound to her throat, multiple broken ribs and a broken nose.

The source said a note was found in the woman's pocket with the name of a man who had allegedly raped her.

Searches are under way to locate the man.

A spokesperson for Russia's Investigative Committee later told news site gazeta.ru that due to the nature and severity of the woman's head injuries it was not yet possible to confirm whether she had been scalped or badly beaten.

Another woman was found murdered in the same park, a large forested area to the south of the city, on August 29.

She had suffered multiple injuries to her head and body, as well as reportedly having her fingers severed.

Her body was discovered by a couple out walking, who noticed a woman's hand in a bush by the side of the path.

In a statement on the latest murder, the Investigative Committee of Russia said: "On October 6 in a ravine near one of the houses on Rokotova Street was found a roll of cardboard, inside of which there was a body of an unknown woman with head and body injuries.

"The investigative committee started a criminal case based on the signs of murder.

"At the moment there is an ongoing investigation and measures are being taken to determine the circumstances of the event, the identity of the victim and the person who participated in the crime.

"The criminal investigation is continuing."

Bitsevsky Park has a notorious reputation among Muscovites as the location of scores of murders by a serial killer who became known as the Bitsevsky Maniac from 2001 to 2006.

Later identified as Alexander Pichushkin, he was convicted in 2007 of 48 murders, although he has since claimed he killed 62, and was aiming for 64 deaths to match the number of squares on a chess board.

Pichushkin is currently serving a life sentence in prison.  Investigators have not said whether they are considering the possibility of a copycat killer.

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Syria: UN Begins Destroying Chemical Weapons

Weapons experts have begun destroying Syria's chemical stockpiles and production facilities, a UN source has told AP news service.

The source said members of the team from the UN and The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) "have left for a site where they are beginning verification and destruction".

"Today is the first day of destruction, in which heavy vehicles are going to run over, and thus destroy missile warheads, aerial chemical bombs and mobile and static mixing and filling units," the source added.

A UN weapons inspector at the site of the August 21 attack

An OPCW official said earlier this week that all "expedient methods" would be used to destroy the arsenal and production facilities.

Methods used could include explosives, sledgehammers, and pouring in concrete.

The inspectors arrived in Damascus on Tuesday to begin verifying details of the weapons programme handed over by President Bashar al Assad's regime.

The UN published a report into the chemical weapons attack last month

"Phase one, which is disclosure by the Syrians, is ending and we are now moving towards phase two - verification and destruction and disabling," the UN source said.

The team is in Syria under the terms of a UN resolution, agreed after long talks between Russia and the US, for Damascus to hand over its chemical weapons for destruction.

The deal was hammered out in the wake of a sarin attack on the outskirts of Damascus on August 21, which killed hundreds of people.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's Sergey Lavrov agreed the deal

The United States has blamed Mr Assad's forces for the attack - a claim disputed by Russia, and denied by the Syrian government.

Washington threatened military strikes in response to the chemical atrocity, but action was averted following intense negotiations between US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

Under the UN agreement, Syria's chemical weapons are to be destroyed by the middle of next year.

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Monster Truck Kills Eight At Mexico Show

Eight people have died after an out-of-control monster truck ploughed into a crowd of spectators at a Mexico air show.

Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the Chihuahua state prosecutors' office, said the driver appeared to have lost control of the truck after leaping an obstacle during a demonstration at the Extreme Aeroshow on Saturday.

Footage shows the truck bouncing around after the jump and then driving into spectators standing about 10 metres (32ft) away.

At least one child is among the dead and 80 people were hurt, with 46 still hospitalised on Sunday morning, said Mr Gonzalez.

It is thought the number of people killed could rise and local health authorities have also put out an urgent call for blood donors.

Eighty people were hurt with many of them hospitalised

Prosecutors are looking into the possibility of a mechanical failure that left the driver unable to release the accelerator pedal.

Some witnesses also said the driver appeared to have hit his head on the inside of the truck during the jump, causing his helmet to come off.

The air show - at the El Rejon park near Chihuahua - is an annual festival where planes, motorbikes and monster trucks perform stunts.

The remainder of the three-day event was cancelled after the crash.

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Al Shabaab: US Forces Abort Somalia Terror Raid

US special forces have aborted a mission to capture an al Shabaab leader in Somalia after coming under heavy attack.

Their target was Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, also known as Ahmed Godane, who claimed responsibility for last month's Nairobi shopping mall massacre that killed at least 67 people, according to a Somali intelligence official.

A Navy Seal team staged a pre-dawn raid on a house in the southern town of Barawa after swimming ashore before the al Qaeda-linked militants rose for morning prayers.

Reinforcements arrived at the house and Seal Team Six, the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, encountered fiercer resistance than expected, a senior US military source told The Associated Press.

After a 15 to 20-minute firefight, the unit leader decided to abort the mission and they swam away, the source said.

Al Shabaab later claimed there was "no senior official" in the house at the time of the raid.

Al Shabaab released photos of US gear it says was left behind in the raid

The group posted pictures on the internet of what it said was US military gear left behind, including bullets, a GPS device and a stun grenade.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, in Bali for an economic summit, spoke about the failed US operation, and said terrorists "can run but they can't hide".

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed that US military personnel had been involved in a counter-terrorism operation against a known al Shabaab terrorist in Somalia, but did not provide details.

He said there were no US casualties in the raid.

Within hours of the attack, the US Army's Delta Force carried out a raid in Libya, and captured an al Qaeda leader wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 220 people.

A GPS device apparently used by the Seal team

The aborted Somalia operation came 20 years after the famous "Black Hawk Down" battle in Mogadishu, in which a mission to capture Somali warlords went wrong when militia forces shot down two US helicopters and killed 18 American soldiers.

Residents in Barawa, a seaside town some 150 miles south of Mogadishu, said they woke up to the sound of heavy gunfire.

The SEAL team killed a guard and battled their way inside a two-storey beachside house, where al Shabaab fighters reportedly lived, before being driven back.

A US official said the mission was aimed at capturing a "high-value target" while trying to avoid civilian casualties.

A Barawa resident called Mohamed Bile said militants closed down the town in the hours after the raid, and were carrying out house-to-house searches to find evidence that a spy had tipped off the US.

One of the gunmen in the Kenyan shopping centre attack

"We woke up to find al Shabaab fighters had sealed off the area and their hospital is also inaccessible," he told The Associated Press by phone. "The town is in a tense mood."

Speaking after the US raid, Somalia's Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon said his government was "collaborating with the world and neighbouring countries" in its battle against al Shabaab.

Last month, addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, he denounced the group's "cowardly attack" in Kenya, but said a military solution to their insurgency was not enough.

He praised the 17,000-strong African peacekeeping force in Somalia for improving security and fighting al Shabaab, who he said were now weakened. But he said Somalia needed economic stability to cut youth unemployment.

"This provided al Shabaab a building ground to recruit and spread their destructive ideology. It is therefore essential to create educational and economic opportunities for youth," he warned.

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Iraq: Children Killed In Playground Bombing

Suicide bombers have driven vehicles packed with explosives into a school and police station, while another blew himself up on foot among pilgrims, killing at least 27 people of whom many were children.

One drove a truck into the playground of a primary school in Qabak, near the town of Tel Afar, killing 12 students and their headmaster.

The explosion caused part of the single-storey building to collapse.

Just minutes earlier there was a similar attack on the village's police station in which two officers were killed.

The village, which is home to about 200 people and has a large Shiite population, is situated northwest of Mosul city, where al Qaeda Sunni Islamists and other insurgents have a foothold.

Tel Afar's mayor Abdul Aal al Obeidi said: "We were exposed to two big explosions today in which dozens were killed or injured."

He said a further 90 people were injured in the attacks.

"It's a tragedy," he said. "These innocent children were here to study. What sins did these children commit?"

Elsewhere, a suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims passing through a Sunni neighbourhood in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

At least 12 people were killed in the blast and 23 others injured as they walked to a shrine to commemorate the death of Imam Mohammed al Jawad, the ninth Shiite imam.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the day's violence, which followed several deadly assaults across the country on Saturday in which at least 66 people were killed.

In one, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a cafe in Balad, a largely Shiite town surrounded by Sunni communities located about 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing at least 13 people and wounding 22 others.

The attacks are the latest in a relentless wave of killing that has made for Iraq's deadliest outburst of violence since 2008.

United Nations figures released this week showed that at least 979 people, most of them civilians, were killed last month alone.

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German Embassy Worker Shot Dead In Yemen

The bodyguard of the German ambassador to Yemen has been shot dead while attempting to protect her from an attempted kidnapping, say reports.

Gunmen in a vehicle opened fire at Ambassador Carola Muller-Holtkemper and her bodyguard as they were leaving a supermarket in the capital Sana'a's southern Hada district, where foreign embassies are located.

It is understood Ms Muller-Holtkemper was not injured in the incident.

A security source told Reuters the attack bore the hallmarks of the al Qaeda terror network's Yemeni branch, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The group has attempted to attack several Western targets, including airliners.

Germany was among several Western countries which closed their embassies in August following US warnings of a major terror attack in the Middle East.

No attack took place and the embassies were later reopened.

More follows...

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