Lebanese troops launched a major security operation on Monday to open all roads and force gunmen off the streets, trying to contain an outburst of violence set off by the assassination of a top intelligence official who was a powerful opponent of Syria. Sectarian clashes overnight killed at least two people.
Sporadic cracks of gunfire rang out in Beirut as soldiers backed by armored personal carriers with heavy machine guns took up position on major thoroughfares and dismantled roadblocks. At times, troops exchanged gunfire with Sunni gunmen.
Al-Hassan was a Sunni who challenged Syria and its powerful Lebanese ally, the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. The uprising in Syria is dominated by the Sunni majority fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad...
Most of Lebanon’s Sunnis have backed Syria’s mainly Sunni rebels, while Lebanese Shiites tend to back Assad.
Al-Hassan’s assassination has imperiled Lebanon’s fragile political balance. Many politicians blamed Syria for the killing and angry protesters tried to storm the government palace after al-Hassan’s funeral on Sunday, venting their rage at leaders they consider puppets of a murderous Syrian regime. But were pushed back by troops who opened fire in the air and fired tear gas.
Lebanese troops and gunmen exchanged fire in Beirut's southern suburbs on Monday, wounding five people, deepening a political crisis following the assassination of a senior intelligence official, security and medical sources said.
Four people were also killed, including a 9-year-old girl, and 12 wounded in clashes between gunmen in the northern city of Tripoli, the sources said.
The violence heightened fears that the civil war in neighboring Syria could be spreading into Lebanon, upsetting its delicate political balance and threatening to usher in a new era of sectarian bloodshed.
Opposition leaders and their supporters want Prime Minister Najib Mikati to resign, saying he is too close to Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Lebanese ally Hezbollah, which is part of Mikati's government.
The clashes in Beirut on Monday morning took place on the edge of Tariq al-Jadida, a Sunni Muslim district that neighbors Shi'ite Muslim suburbs in the south of the capital.
Residents had earlier reported heavy overnight gunfirearound Tariq al-Jadida between gunmen armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The crisis in Lebanon underscores local and international concern that the 19-month-old uprising against Assad is dragging in Syria's neighbors.
Jordan says one of its soldiers has been killed at the Syrian border in clashes with armed militants trying to illegally cross into the neighboring country to join rebels fighting Bashar Assad’s regime.
He was the first Jordanian soldier killed in violence spilling over from the Syrian civil war.
Information Minister Sameeh Maaytah said the soldier was killed early Monday. Maaytah did not say whether the militants were Jordanians or foreign fighters trying to join the fray in Syria. A number of foreign Islamists are fighting in Syria alongside the rebels.
Jordan’s banned Salafi movement — which promotes an ultraconservative brand of Islam — has sent several fighters to Syria in past months and Jordanian border patrols have caught some of them recently.
Jordanian officials uncovered plansfor a major combined islamist terrorist attack that would have included a bombing at a shopping center in Amman and assassination attempts on Western diplomats, Jordanian state television reported Sunday.
With weapons and explosives smuggled from Syria, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist cell aimed to destabilize the country by carrying out a series of assassinations and suicide bombings aimed at westerners and commercial areas.
According to officials, the plot had been in the works since June. Eleven were arrestedin connection with the planned attacks.
The plot is the first to be foiled in Jordan since Al-Qaeda, citing its rejection of Jordan's peace treaty with Israel and alliance with the United States, carried out three hotel bombings in Amman almost seven years ago, killing 60 people
Jordan has been and remains the most stable of Israel's neighbors and a key U.S. ally in the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist cells linked to Al-Qaeda have called recently for the destabilization of Jordan, following successful campaigns to overthrow the governments of Egypt and Libya, and continuing efforts to overthrow the government of Syria.
Hamas is getting stronger in the West Bank, but is focusing its activities on indoctrinating Palestinians in its extremist ideology and creating social assistance programs, an IDF source said Sunday.
The West Bank branch of Hamas is focused on Da’wa – social aid programs mixed with indoctrination – in order to build up its base of supporters, the source from the Judea and Samaria Division added.
In Gaza, however, the prisoners have joined Hamas’s efforts to channel funds to its cells in the West Bank, particularly in the area between Nablus and Jenin. Millions of shekels in terror financing have been seized by security forces in the first half of 2012.
The deal has also increased the chances of an attempt to kidnap soldiers for future prisoner releases.
IDF forces under the Judea and Samaria Division have held drill responses to the threat intensively. The army has also launched a campaign to heighten awareness among soldiers to the threat of kidnapping.
And this:
Russia plans to spend 101.15 billion rubles on nuclear weapons in 2013-2015, the head of the Defense Committee of the State Duma Vladimir Komoyedov said.
Earlier, the Commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, Colonel-General Sergei Karakayev, said that Russia was planning to pass into service a new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile in 2018, wrote KM.ru. The payload of the missile will be five tons, which is four times as large as that of solid-fuel Yars and Topol missiles.
According to the adviser of the Strategic Missile Command, retired Colonel-General Viktor Yesin, the military stage of the rocket, which he sees as the successor to the legendary Satan, is to be equipped with several autonomous nuclear warheads. Up to ten of them will be false warheads.
Komoyedov added that in 2012 the spending on nuclear weapons made up 27.4 billion rubles. The draft law “On the Federal Budget for 2013 and for the planning period of 2014 and 2015″ will be discussed in the first reading on Friday, October 19, The Voice of Russia reports.
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