Monday 29 May 2017
Egypt launches air raids on Libya after Christians killed
Egyptian fighter jets carried out strikes on Friday directed at camps in Libya which Cairo says have been training militants who killed dozens of Christians earlier in the day.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he had ordered strikes against what he called terrorist camps, declaring in a televised address that states that sponsored terrorism would be punished.
Egyptian military sources said six strikes took place near Derna in eastern Libya at around sundown, hours after masked gunmen attacked a group of Coptic Christians traveling to a monastery in southern Egypt, killing 29 and wounding 24.
The Egyptian military said the operation was ongoing and had been undertaken once it had been ascertained that the camps had produced the gunmen behind the attack on the Coptic Christians in Minya, southern Egypt, on Friday morning.
"The terrorist incident that took place today will not pass unnoticed," Sisi said. "We are currently targeting the camps where the terrorists are trained."
He said Egypt would not hesitate to carry out further strikes against camps that trained people to carry out operations against Egypt, whether those camps were inside or outside the country.
Egyptian military footage of pilots being briefed and war planes taking off was shown on state television.
East Libyan forces said they participated in the air strikes, which had targeted forces linked to al-Qaeda at a number of sites, and would be followed by a ground operation.
A resident in Derna heard four powerful explosions, and told Reuters that the strikes had targeted camps used by fighters belonging to the Majlis al-Shura militant group.
Majlis al-Shura spokesman Mohamed al-Mansouri said in a video posted online that the Egyptian air strikes did not hit any of the group's camps, but instead hit civilian areas.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on the Christians, which followed a series of church bombings claimed by Islamic State in a campaign of violence against the Copts.
Islamic State supporters reposted videos from earlier this year urging violence against the Copts in Egypt.
At a nearby village, thousands later attended a funeral service that turned into an angry protest against the authorities' failure to protect Christians.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-security-idUSKBN18M10P
Egypt hits Libyan terror camps again after attack kills 29 Copts
Egypt
launched a fresh wave of air strikes against Libyan terrorist bases on
Saturday in response to the killing of 29 Coptic Christians south of
Cairo, with a warning of further retaliation possible.
The airstrikes follow six bombing raids in Libya that hit the north-eastern coastal town of Derna on Friday, with Cairo officials saying bombs struck terrorist training camps of the Shura Council, aligned with al-Qaida.
Pictures from Derna on social media showed devastated buildings but there were no reliable casualty numbers.
The savagery of the attack on the Copts, with at least two children, aged two and four, among the dead, has shocked Egypt. The Copts had been travelling to the monastery of St Samuel the Confessor, 85 miles south of Cairo, when their small convoy was halted on a desert road by up to 10 gunmen dressed as soldiers, who then opened fire.
Although Egyptian forces targeted an al-Qaida affiliated group, the responsibility for the attack was claimed by Islamic State, which has carried out previous atrocities against Egypt’s Copts. Libyan sources say Egypt has indicated more attacks, possibly including groundstrikes, are being considered by Cairo.
Within hours of Friday’s killings, the president of Egypt, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, declared: “Egypt will not hesitate to strike terrorist camps anywhere.” The president told Pope Towadros II, leader of the Coptic church in Egypt, that the state would not rest easy until the perpetrators of the attack were punished.
Egypt has been in a state of emergency since two suicide bombings killed 45 people at Coptic churches last month, following December’s slaughter of 29 Copts in a Cairo cathedral.
The bombing highlights Libya’s position as a haven for jihadist groups, with the civil war leaving much of the country in chaos and jihadi groups proliferating.
Neighbouring countries are also coming under attack from Libya-based jihadists. Tunisia is fighting a cat-and-mouse battle with Isis terrorists crossing back and forth from Libya. Seifeddine Rezgui, who killed 38 tourists, 30 of them British, on a beach in Sousse two years ago, was trained by Isis in the western Libyan town of Sabratha.
Isis itself is on the back foot in Libya, its main base at Sirte having been overrun in December after a bloody six-month campaign by Misrata militias backed by US airstrikes. But its response has been to withdraw further into Libya’s vast Sahara. On Friday, four Libyan soldiers were killed battling Isis near the desert town of Bani Walid.
Diplomats say airstrikes alone will not purge Libya of terrorists, and are pinning their hopes on the end of a civil war between Libya’s two rival governments to bring peace and allow terror groups to be cleaned out. That is a distant prospect, with Tripoli’s all-powerful militias fighting one of their periodic turf wars this weekend. The battle was witnessed on Friday by British ambassador Peter Millett who tweeted: “Can hear explosions & artillery fire in south Tripoli.”
The Foreign Office will not be offering consular visits to Manchester bomber Salman Abedi’s father, Ramadan, and younger brother, Hashim, who were arrested by a pro-government militia last week. Salman Abedi is believed to have spent three weeks in Libya shortly before the attack.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/27/egypt-hits-libyan-terror-camps-again-after-attack-kills-29-copts
The airstrikes follow six bombing raids in Libya that hit the north-eastern coastal town of Derna on Friday, with Cairo officials saying bombs struck terrorist training camps of the Shura Council, aligned with al-Qaida.
Pictures from Derna on social media showed devastated buildings but there were no reliable casualty numbers.
The savagery of the attack on the Copts, with at least two children, aged two and four, among the dead, has shocked Egypt. The Copts had been travelling to the monastery of St Samuel the Confessor, 85 miles south of Cairo, when their small convoy was halted on a desert road by up to 10 gunmen dressed as soldiers, who then opened fire.
Although Egyptian forces targeted an al-Qaida affiliated group, the responsibility for the attack was claimed by Islamic State, which has carried out previous atrocities against Egypt’s Copts. Libyan sources say Egypt has indicated more attacks, possibly including groundstrikes, are being considered by Cairo.
Within hours of Friday’s killings, the president of Egypt, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, declared: “Egypt will not hesitate to strike terrorist camps anywhere.” The president told Pope Towadros II, leader of the Coptic church in Egypt, that the state would not rest easy until the perpetrators of the attack were punished.
Egypt has been in a state of emergency since two suicide bombings killed 45 people at Coptic churches last month, following December’s slaughter of 29 Copts in a Cairo cathedral.
The bombing highlights Libya’s position as a haven for jihadist groups, with the civil war leaving much of the country in chaos and jihadi groups proliferating.
Neighbouring countries are also coming under attack from Libya-based jihadists. Tunisia is fighting a cat-and-mouse battle with Isis terrorists crossing back and forth from Libya. Seifeddine Rezgui, who killed 38 tourists, 30 of them British, on a beach in Sousse two years ago, was trained by Isis in the western Libyan town of Sabratha.
Isis itself is on the back foot in Libya, its main base at Sirte having been overrun in December after a bloody six-month campaign by Misrata militias backed by US airstrikes. But its response has been to withdraw further into Libya’s vast Sahara. On Friday, four Libyan soldiers were killed battling Isis near the desert town of Bani Walid.
Diplomats say airstrikes alone will not purge Libya of terrorists, and are pinning their hopes on the end of a civil war between Libya’s two rival governments to bring peace and allow terror groups to be cleaned out. That is a distant prospect, with Tripoli’s all-powerful militias fighting one of their periodic turf wars this weekend. The battle was witnessed on Friday by British ambassador Peter Millett who tweeted: “Can hear explosions & artillery fire in south Tripoli.”
The Foreign Office will not be offering consular visits to Manchester bomber Salman Abedi’s father, Ramadan, and younger brother, Hashim, who were arrested by a pro-government militia last week. Salman Abedi is believed to have spent three weeks in Libya shortly before the attack.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/27/egypt-hits-libyan-terror-camps-again-after-attack-kills-29-copts
Friday 5 May 2017
Iran´s Ballistic Missile Programme: Its Status and the Way Forward
What’s the status of Iran’s ballistic missile program? In this article,
Paulina Izewicz tackles the question by focusing on 1) the program’s
history and scope; 2) the part it continues to play in Iran’s
statecraft, national discourse and military doctrine; 3) the attempts by
others to curtail and defend against Iranian missile systems; 4) the
exclusion of missile development restrictions from the Iran nuclear
deal; and 5) what the EU and other international actors might do to
engage with Tehran in the future on its missile program.
Iran’s ballistic missile programme has long been a source of tension in Iran’s immediate neighbourhood and beyond. Providing Iran with a diverse and extensive arsenal, the ballistic missile programme plays multiple roles: it is an important element of military doctrine, a means of deterrence, and a tool of statecraft. The primary threat posed by the programme stems from its potential connection to Iran’s nuclear programme, and the international community has consequently sought to address it as such. Supply-side restrictions and missile defences have played a prominent role. Despite attempts to include ballistic missiles in an agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme, Iran’s resistance proved too difficult to overcome. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) took a compromise approach, relegating the matter to a new United Nations Security Council resolution—Resolution 2231—and imposing an eight-year conditional ban. Continued implementation of the nuclear agreement is inextricably linked to Iran’s ballistic missile programme, ensuring that, at least for its duration, Iran does not develop a nuclear warhead to mount on top of a missile. Controlling Iran’s access to sensitive goods will also remain important, but Iran’s progress to date has demonstrated the limits to what export controls alone can achieve. As a result, other approaches, though rife with difficulty,
http://www.css.ethz.ch/en/services/digital-library/articles/article.html/2e7df138-4267-4de7-8378-29e4ee01ea6d
Iran’s ballistic missile programme has long been a source of tension in Iran’s immediate neighbourhood and beyond. Providing Iran with a diverse and extensive arsenal, the ballistic missile programme plays multiple roles: it is an important element of military doctrine, a means of deterrence, and a tool of statecraft. The primary threat posed by the programme stems from its potential connection to Iran’s nuclear programme, and the international community has consequently sought to address it as such. Supply-side restrictions and missile defences have played a prominent role. Despite attempts to include ballistic missiles in an agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme, Iran’s resistance proved too difficult to overcome. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) took a compromise approach, relegating the matter to a new United Nations Security Council resolution—Resolution 2231—and imposing an eight-year conditional ban. Continued implementation of the nuclear agreement is inextricably linked to Iran’s ballistic missile programme, ensuring that, at least for its duration, Iran does not develop a nuclear warhead to mount on top of a missile. Controlling Iran’s access to sensitive goods will also remain important, but Iran’s progress to date has demonstrated the limits to what export controls alone can achieve. As a result, other approaches, though rife with difficulty,
http://www.css.ethz.ch/en/services/digital-library/articles/article.html/2e7df138-4267-4de7-8378-29e4ee01ea6d
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