US Test-Fires Minuteman III ICBM at Pacific Target
US Test-Fires Minuteman III ICBM at Pacific Target
The war on terror continues as, three men who dubbed themselves the “Three Musketeers” have been found guilty of plotting a terror attack on a police or military target in the UK. Naweed Ali, 29, and Khobaib Hussain, 25, both of Sparkhill, Birmingham, and Mohibur Rahman, 33, of Stoke-on-Trent, were convicted of planning to commit terror offenses. A fourth man, Tahir Aziz, 38, from Stoke-on-Trent, was found guilty of the same offence.
British counter-terrorism police raided a London tube station in an operation last night that saw eight arrested and various items seized, including an imitation gun and a foot-long bread knife.
Australian Police have detailed two terror plots, one involving the bombing of a commercial passenger plane and the other a poison gas attack, as the "most sophisticated" ever attempted on Australian soil. A senior ISIS commander reportedly sent parts, including weapons-grade explosives, by air cargo from Turkey to build an improvised explosive device. The second plot involved a plan to release a toxic gas in public that was foiled when the accused couldn't produce the deadly gas. Two men living in Sydney, Khaled Khayat, 49, and Mahmoud Khayat, 32, were charged with terror-related offenses Thursday.
A British banker Stephen McGown, held by a Malian wing of al-Qaeda for six years after his seizure in Timbuktu in 2011 has been freed after a reported £3.2 million ransom was paid.
ISIS has been routed by the Syrian Army south of Deir Ezzor city and has called for general mobilization of all young men.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are reportedly on the verge of seizing full control of the southern neighborhoods of ISIS-held Raqqa with SDF fighters advancing from the east to within 300 meters of meeting up with those advancing from the west.
The Rand Corporation has warned that an influx of battle-hardened foreign fighters from ISIS could tip the scales in civil wars in Yemen and Libya. Yemeni troops and armor have pushed al-Qaeda militants out of main cities in Shabwa, regaining government control over the province for the first time in several years.
An ISIS suicide attack on a Shia mosque in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan has killed at least 29 people and wounded 64 others. Attacks on the Iraqi embassy and the Shia mosque in Afghanistan have fueled concern that ISIS is seeking to reconstitute itself in Central Asia.
A Taliban suicide bombing attack on a NATO convoy near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday left two US service members dead. On Thursday, a NATO soldier was killed and six others, including a translator, were wounded when a suicide bomber attacked their patrol in eastern Afghanistan.
On the international front, NATO fighter-aircraft intercepted three Russian military aircrafts near Estonian airspace and may have violated Finish airspace in the process.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine are reportedly bracing for the appearance of up to 100,000 Russian troops in Belarus and western Russia this September as part of exercise Zapad including the imposing 1st Guards Tank Army. The US has sent additional forces to the region to reinforce NATO forces already deployed there ahead of any potential Russian aggression and announced plans to hold exercises worldwide to warn off aggressors like Russia. The reconstituted and historic 1st Guards Tank Army is commanded by Major General Alexander Chaiko, and consists of 35,000 to 50,000 soldiers, 800 tanks, 600 to 800 infantry vehicles, and 300 to 400 artillery units. The tank army will reportedly be armed with T-72B3 and T-80 tanks, BPM-2 combat vehicles and 130 other kinds of combat equipment. The 1st Guards Tank Army is slated to be the first unit to receive the advanced T-14 Armata tank, but it has still not been put into mass production.
Brigadier General Ismail Ghaani, the deputy commander of Iran’s notorious Quds Force has reportedly bragged that his operatives have killed more Americans than US troops have killed Iranians. Ghaani was referring to Iran’s intervention in the Iraq war to supply Shiite militias with supercharged explosives that could penetrate US armored vehicles and it is estimated 500 Americans were killed by these munitions.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has claimed India has been building up forces and repairing roads along its side of the border near Bhutan. China has warned that India must withdraw its forces immediately.
China has accused Japan of sending frogmen to approach a Chinese warship as the vessel was docking at Djibouti in eastern Africa.
It has emerged that China carried out a series of missile tests this past weekend targeting mock US missile defense batteries and F-22 fighter-aircraft. The missile tests followed North Korea’s Hwasong-14 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) test last week.
An unidentified US Defense Department official warned that the North Koreans are working to finish development of an H-bomb or thermonuclear device in as soon as six to 18 months.
The US has successfully test-fired an unarmed Minuteman III ICBM as tensions rise with North Korea.
