ISIS Challenging Al Qaeda for Dominance in Somalia and Yemen, Zimbabwe Ready for a Coup, North Korea
In Africa, the Zimbabwean Army Commander, General Constantino Chiwenga, has warned those responsible for "purging" the country's ruling Zanu-PF Party to stop, or the military will intervene. The warning comes one week after President Robert Mugabe sacked his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa. There are now unconfirmed reports of tanks blocking routes in and out of the capital and that the main radio station has been seized. On the terrorism front, the US has carried out drone strikes against al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militants and now for the first time ISIS militants in Somalia. In the neighboring Middle East, US forces have carried out three drone strikes in Yemen on ISIS terrorist related targets on the Arabian Peninsula likely in cooperation with ISIS forces now emerging in Somalia and forcing al-Shabab into even more desperate brutal tactics.
In Southwest Asia, at least two Pakistan soldiers were killed, and four others injured in a suspected Taliban-linked militant attack on a check post near the Pakistan-Afghan border on Monday. As well, four US soldiers were wounded in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, from a Taliban vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. In Southeast Asia, Indonesian anti-terror Detachment 88 has arrested an Indonesian terrorist suspect in a small island on the Indonesia-Philippines border for planning to join ISIS in Marawi.
In the Western Pacific, the Korean crisis continues with North Korea warning that US naval exercises involving three US aircraft carrier strike groups, USS Nimitz, USS Ronald Reagan, and USS Theodore Roosevelt, in the Sea of Japan could lead to nuclear war. Meanwhile satellite imagery suggests that North Korea tested large solid fuel Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) engines at its Magunpo Rocket Engine Test Facility. A senior British military commander has warned that within 20 months North Korea will be able to put ICBMs down on London, the UK, and reports continue to swirl that North Korea will soon have the capability to strike the entirety of the continental US and North America. Finally, it has emerged that while the North Korean Pungge-ri mountain nuclear test facility remains damaged around the North nuclear test portal from the September thermonuclear weapon test and previous blasts, that there is greatly increased activity around the Western portal, and that the South portal remains in a high state of readiness to conduct a new nuclear test. It is reported that North Korea stepped up activity at the Pungge-ri site to coincide with US president Donald Trumps Asia visit.
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