Eye on Extremism
October 10, 2024
The New York Times: Nearly A Million Civilians Flee War In Lebanon, U.N. Says
“Hezbollah militants fired rockets at Israeli towns and fought ground battles with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as the United Nations warned that nearly a million Lebanese had fled the spreading war between Israel and Iranian-backed groups in the Middle East. In a sign of the war’s growing scale, Israeli evacuation orders now cover a quarter of Lebanon’s land area, according to the United Nations, which says the calls have sent people fleeing from more than a hundred villages and urban areas. “To the people of South Lebanon: Be careful!” an Israeli military spokesman, Avichay Adraee, said on Wednesday in an Arabic language warning posted online. Israeli forces, he said, were continuing “to attack Hezbollah sites in and near your village, and for your own safety you are prohibited from returning to your homes until further notice.””
Associated Press: Palestinian Officials Say An Israeli Strike On A Gaza Shelter Has Killed At Least 21 People
“An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip killed at least 21 people on Thursday, with the toll likely to rise, Palestinian medical officials said. Israel has continued to strike at what it says are militant targets across the Palestinian enclave even as attention has shifted to its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and rising tensions with Iran. The military launched a large-scale air and ground operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were brought, confirmed the toll from the strike in the central town of Deir al-Balah. It said several other people were wounded. An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances streaming into the hospital and counted the bodies, many of which arrived in pieces. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Witnesses said the strike targeted a makeshift post of the Hamas-run police inside the shelter.”
CEP Mentions
WTOP News: The Hunt: Election Day Terror Plot Foiled
“The FBI has broken up a plot to launch a terror attack in Oklahoma City on Election Day. An Afghan national who came to the U.S. in 2021 on a special visa, allegedly plotted with a relative to attack people in line to vote with automatic assault weapons. The plan was foiled when they tried to buy the weapons and were tricked by undercover FBI agents. In this episode of “The Hunt with WTOP National Security Correspondent J.J. Green,” Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, said the plot was very well planned.”
DW News: Will Israel Strike Iran’s Nuclear Program?
“Israel says it's preparing a strong military retaliation after Iran launched more than 200 missiles into Israeli territory last week. Hans Jakob Schindler, Senior Director at the Counter Extremism Project, believes that only the US military could strike nuclear underground facilities in Iran and warns of the potential fallout.”
United States
NBC News: Afghan Accused Of Plotting Terror Attack Worked As CIA Guard, Officials Say
“An Afghan man arrested on charges of planning a terrorist attack on Election Day worked as a security guard in Afghanistan for the CIA, two sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC News. Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was arrested on Monday in Oklahoma and accused of plotting to kill Americans with an assault rifle on behalf of ISIS. Court documents said he had contributed to an ISIS charity in March and accessed online ISIS propaganda, but they did not say whether he was radicalized before or after he came to the U.S. in 2021. A senior law enforcement official said the FBI is still investigating that question. The CIA declined to comment.”
Syria
Reuters: Israel Carries Out Airstrikes On Sites In Syria, State TV Says
“Israel carried out airstrikes targeting an industrial site in the Syrian city of Homs and a military site in the countryside near the city of Hama leaving only "some material damage," Syrian state TV said early on Thursday. Israel targeted a car manufacturing plant at the industrial site in Homs, which led to a fire breaking out there and firefighting teams are currently working to extinguish it, Syrian TV said, citing the director of the industrial site, Amer Khalil. Explosions were heard in the Syrian city of Daraa and they are being investigated, state media also reported. Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years, but has ramped up its raids since last year's Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israeli territory.”
Turkey
Associated Press: Turkey’s Navy Starts To Evacuate Its Citizens From Beirut As Israel Battles Hezbollah
“Over 2,000 Turkish citizens and some foreign nationals started boarding a Turkish military ship late Wednesday that brought in aid and will take them out of a country being hit by Israeli airstrikes targeting Hezbollah. Zehra Cibbin, an ethnic Arab from the southeastern Turkish city of Mardin who lives in Beirut with her Lebanese husband, got off a bus packed with the other evacuees, her two children in tow and luggage in hand. “It’s indescribable. They bombed the street below our house. From that moment on, it was over for me, I said I didn’t want to stay in Beirut anymore,” said Cibbin, 46. Cibbin said they decided to leave Beirut out of fear for their lives, putting no thought into what will happen when they arrive in Turkey. She spoke to The Associated Press before getting in line to board the TCG Bayraktar amphibious landing vessel, which along with the TCG Sancaktar will take on evacuees.”
Afghanistan
Voice Of America: Taliban Publicly Flog 9 Afghan Men, Women Despite UN Outcry
“Hardline Taliban authorities in Afghanistan reported Wednesday that nine people, including at least two women, were publicly flogged after being convicted of various crimes, such as adultery. Five of the punishments took place at a sports stadium in Kandahar, capital of the eponymous southern province. Local Taliban officials, judicial officers, and ordinary Afghans were among the onlookers. The Taliban’s Supreme Court announced the details, saying the five individuals were found guilty of adultery, sodomy, and robbery, with each of them receiving 39 lashes and prison sentences ranging from two to seven years. It did not say whether females were among the convicts. The court separately announced that two men and two women were publicly flogged Wednesday for adultery in the northern Afghan provinces of Takhar and Samangan.”
Pakistan
Associated Press: Suspected Militants Shoot Police In Vehicle In Northwest Pakistan, Killing 2 Officers
“Suspected militants riding on a motorcycle opened fire on a vehicle carrying police officers Thursday in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, killing two of them and wounding two others, police said. The attack happened in Tank, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, local police official Sher Afzal said. No group has claimed responsibility, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, who often target security forces. The TTP are outlawed in Pakistan. They are separate from but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban who control neighboring Afghanistan. The latest violence came a day after at least three people were killed in clashes in the northwestern town of Jamrud between police and supporters of a banned right group Pashtun Protection Movement or PTM, which authorities say supports TTP.”
Reuters: One Pakistani Soldier Killed As Militants Try To Storm Paramilitary Camp
“One Pakistani soldier was killed in the early hours of Wednesday when a group of militants attempted to storm a paramilitary camp in the south west of the country, the military said. A "sanitization operation is being conducted to neutralize any other terrorist present in the area," a military statement said.”
Yemen
Associated Press: Suspected Attacks By Yemen’s Houthi Rebels Target Ship In Red Sea
“A series of suspected attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted a ship on Thursday in the Red Sea, authorities said. The attack comes as the rebels continue to threaten ships moving through the Red Sea, a waterway that once saw $1 trillion in goods move through it a year, over the ongoing conflicts in the Mideast stemming from the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. A ship in the Red Sea skirting the coast of the East Africa found itself struck first by a projectile that damaged the vessel, but sparked no fire and caused no injuries, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said. The private security firm Ambrey identified the ship as a Liberian-flagged chemical tanker. At least two more projectiles later fell in the waters around the vessel, which was a distance away from Hodeida, the Houthi-controlled port from which many of the rebels’ attacks have been launched.”
Lebanon
The Washington Post: North Gaza Hospitals Ordered To Evacuate; U.S. Backs Israel’s Ground Offensive In Lebanon
“The Israeli military has ordered three hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate as it intensifies attacks on the area, according to Gazan health officials. A U.N. official described the situation in the north as “hell,” with “at least 400,000 people” trapped there. The Biden administration has dropped its support for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon and is openly supporting Israel’s ground offensive, a State Department spokesman said Tuesday, calling the Israeli actions “incursions to degrade Hezbollah’s infrastructure.” President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call Wednesday.”
Middle East
Reuters: Cyprus Arrests Eight On Suspicion Of Terrorism Funding, Say Police
“Police in Cyprus on Thursday detained eight individuals for questioning on allegations they were involved in raising funds for a designated terrorist group in a third country, authorities said. The suspects, seven men and a woman, all from Syria, were arrested in morning raids by police in the towns of Limassol and Paphos. There was no indication the suspects were plotting attacks themselves and police declined to name the group or where it was based. "There is absolutely no information these individuals were planning any terror attack in Cyprus. It's purely (related to) issues of financing a specific terrorist group based in a third country," police spokesperson Christos Andreou told Cyprus's ANT1 TV channel. One issue under scrutiny was whether funds were raised from dealing in illicit narcotics and psychotropic substances, he said.”
Reuters: Israel Police Says Forces Kill Five Palestinian Militants In West Bank
“Israeli forces killed five armed Palestinian fighters in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, Israeli police said. The Palestinian health ministry confirmed the deaths of only four men. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah party, said in a later statement on Wednesday that four of its members were "martyred after a coward assassination operation" by special forces of the Israeli army. The Palestinian official news agency WAFA earlier said that Israeli special forces had opened fire on a vehicle the men were travelling in, in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank. The Palestinian movement Hamas also said while commenting on the killing of the Palestinians in Nablus: "The resistance in Nablus and all the West Bank cities will not be broken", adding that the "policy of assassinations will not succeed in weakening the people's confrontation". Violence has surged across the West Bank since the start of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza.”
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