Senior US intelligence official Michael Vickers said Jan. 21 that the United States is continuing attacks on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) despite ongoing violence in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and has an intelligence relationship with the Houthi insurgent group that has seized much of the capital since September.

While news reports have focused on Iranian support for the Houthis and suggested that they represent a threat to US operations against al-Qaeda’s most potent franchise, Vickers, in response to a question from Al-Monitor, stated, “The Houthis are anti al-Qaeda, and we’ve been able to continue some of our counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda in the past months.” Asked after the public event whether that included lines of intelligence ​to the Houthis, Vickers said, “That’s a safe assumption.”

Vickers also said that it was not clear that the Houthis’ intent is to take over the Yemeni government and try to rule a chronically splintered country. “I don’t know yet if their aim is to take over the state as much as it is to exercise influence and refashion it in a way that they think is more in line with their interests,” Vickers said. He pointed to a Jan. 20 speech by Houthi leader Abdel Malik al-Houthi outlining the group’s demands for an amended constitution and new presidential and parliamentary elections.

The ancestral rulers of Yemen, the Houthis follow the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam and comprise about a third of Yemen’s population of 25 million. Charles Schmitz, an expert on Yemen at the Middle East Institute, told Al-Monitor, that the Houthis “have a great deal of power and legitimacy in the far north, but that diminishes the further south they get.”

The Houthis, according to Schmitz, were happy to see the ouster of Yemen’s long-time ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011 but lost patience with the transitional government that followed and with Hadi’s current administration. Many Yemenis are dissatisfied with Hadi’s failure to implement a transitional justice scheme and to root out corruption.

There has also been a major disagreement over Hadi’s decision to divide Yemen into six states in a way that would weaken both the Houthis and a southern secessionist movement. Seeking to prevent implementation of this plan, on Jan. 17 the Houthis kidnapped Hadi’s chief of staff, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak. “That’s what began this latest crisis,” Schmitz said.

According to Schmitz, the outcome of the current crisis could depend on what happens in eastern Yemen, the site of the country’s oil resources. He believes the Houthis could conquer the region, but would not be able to hold on to it. “We may be in for months of standoff,” he said.

Supporters of Hadi, especially Saudi Arabia, have accused the Houthis of being proxies of Iran and compared them to the Lebanese group Hezbollah. Schmitz said that Iran has provided support in recent months but that the Houthis would have rebelled against the government with or without Tehran’s backing.
“From 2004 to 2010, the Houthis won wars against the Yemeni government without Iran,” Schmitz pointed out. “Iran’s role now is non-essential, and the Houthis won’t take orders from them.”

The Houthis’ anti-al-Qaeda agenda, however, in part a reaction to AQAP’s assassination of the current Houthi leader’s father, synchronizes nicely with both US and Iranian interests in the same way that the United States, Iran and Iran-backed groups are on the same side in Iraq against the Islamic State group (IS).

Many observers of the Houthis have been taken aback by their Iranian-style anti-US and anti-Israel slogans, which Schmitz rattled off: “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews and Long Live Islam.” He said the slogans as voiced by the Houthis date to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and their efforts to embarrass then-President Saleh by tarring him as an agent of the United States and Saudi Arabia.

In fact, Schmitz said, the Houthis have generally not attacked Americans, although State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed reports that Houthi gunmen at a checkpoint in Sanaa had fired on a US diplomatic vehicle Jan. 19. There were no injuries, she said.

“They are not terrorists,” Schmitz said. He called the Houthis’ backing of US attacks on AQAP “an alliance of convenience.” The tough part now, he said, is “talking sense to the Saudis” and getting them to agree to more influence for the Houthis in the Yemeni government. The Saudis may have little choice.

Psaki told reporters Jan. 21 that as far as the Barack Obama administration is concerned, the “legitimate Yemeni government is led by President Hadi” and that US officials remain in touch with him. “Clearly, we’ve seen a breakdown in the institutions in Yemen, and obviously, there’s a great deal of violence and tension on the ground,” she said. “We’re certainly closely monitoring that and continuing to encourage the parties to continue dialogue, and they are talking.”

The crisis appeared to abate slightly on Jan. 22 amid news reports that Hadi had accepted the Houthis’ demands. For Vickers, the priority is continuing to confront AQAP. He told the Washington audience that AQAP is “probably the most dangerous of al-Qaeda’s organizations in terms of the sophistication of its technology and its aim to launch sophisticated attacks.”

While the Jan. 7 storming of the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris showed that AQAP has “lowered the bar,” given its previous “penchant for very dramatic attacks,” Vickers said such actions are harder to pre-empt. He attributed the attacks in part to the growing competition for leadership of the global jihadi movement between al-Qaeda-linked groups and IS. In this competition, he said, “Attacks on the West in particular are very high on their list and increasing in priority.”

Some analysts have questioned whether AQAP was actually responsible for the assault on the Charlie Hebdo office or whether it had only claimed responsibility after the fact. Vickers seemed to accept the claim and said the long lead time between one of the attackers’ traveling to Yemen in 2011 and the strike was simply another indication of AQAP’s strategic patience and capabilities.

On dangers to US national security, Vickers said the “global jihadist threat” remains at the top and that the amount of territory across North Africa and the Middle East that comprises a safe haven for such groups is “greater than at any time in our history.” ​

The death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz puts the Yemen crisis on the front burner for the king’s successor Prince Salman. Abdullah’s death comes on the heels of the resignation of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, which is a major setback for US and Saudi diplomacy, a limited victory for Iran and a plus for al-Qaeda.

The collapse of Hadi’s government, which openly supported US drone strikes in Yemen against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for the last couple of years, makes a pro-Iranian, anti-American, Shiite militia the dominant player in a desperately poor but strategically important country. The Bab al-Mandeb, the strait between Asia and Africa, is a choke point of global energy and geopolitics. The 33-year-old leader of the Houthis, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, gave a triumphal speech Jan. 20 promising an end to corruption and repression.

Iran has been providing arms, money and expertise to the Houthis since at least 2011, if not earlier; its diplomats have hailed the Houthis’ success. But the Zaydis are not Iranian pawns nor partners like Hezbollah. They are an independent force. The Houthis’ Zaydi faith is considered by many Iranian clerics as a disguised form of Sunni Islam. The Houthis have also been getting help from former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The goals of the Houthis are unclear.

When their rebellion began in 2004 they wanted greater autonomy in their home province of Saada. Many suspect their goal now is to restore the Zaydi Imamate that ruled North Yemen until the 1962 revolution. In the civil war that followed the Saudis backed the Zaydi royalists against the Egyptian-backed republic. After 2004, the Saudis fought a series of border wars with the Houthis. In December 2009, a Royal Saudi Air Force bombing strike almost killed Abdul Malik al-Houthi.

The Houthis’ victory also ironically benefits AQAP by polarizing Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, between Shiite and Sunni with AQAP emerging as the protector of Sunni rights. AQAP is fresh off its attack on Paris and has grown since 2009 into the most dangerous al-Qaeda affiliate in the world. It has attacked Detroit and Chicago. It is dedicated to overthrowing the House of Saud.

The Saudis have spent over $4 billion trying to prop up Hadi. The rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council has provided billions more. All aid is now suspended. The Saudis are reportedly encouraging Sunni tribes to resist the Houthis, an old Saudi tactic.

The next shoe to fall may be in Aden. The south has never been comfortable with union with the north. South Yemen is Sunni and the pro-independence movement has been growing since 2011. The Saudis backed the southern rebellion against Saleh in 1994 with arms and money.

Riyadh might favor a break-away again.

Yemen does not feature often in US foreign policy discussions, so it is no surprise that President Barack Obama did not mention it in his State of the Union speech. This is all the more true when one realizes we have very little leverage to influence the outcome in Yemen. Hadi was our best bet. But it is indicative of the complex challenges the United States faces in the Islamic world and the urgent need for a smarter strategy to deal with it.

The president rightly said Jan. 20 that America needs a smarter strategy to fight terror that avoids drawing us into quagmires like Iraq. He is right to say we need local partners to fight extremism. He is right to say sending lots of American boots into civil wars is a mistake. Yemen was supposed to be a role model for this smarter approach of building local capacity and getting our allies to do more. That it is not working is a sobering reality.

The terrorists attacked Kambari village which is less than five kilometres to Maiduguri and killed 15 people and set the entire hamlet ablaze.

The killings near the embattled city took place on Friday, eve of the president’s visit, security sources and residents said.

“The terrorists attacked Kambari village which is less than five kilometres to Maiduguri around 5am. They killed 15 people and set the entire hamlet ablaze,” said a security source who requested anonymity.

“After fruitless efforts to enter Maiduguri through Konduga without success, the terrorists took a different route and attacked Kambari,” he said.

A woman from the village who simply gave her name as Kyallu said four of her children were among the dead.

“They killed four of my grown-up children when they attacked our village about the time for the morning prayers,” Kyallu, who is now in Maiduguri, said.

“They shot my children dead without any prompting. I had to leave the village with my grandchildren because we have lost our houses,” she said.

“The insurgents also killed our village head. In fact, I counted 15 dead bodies,” she said.

The latest attack came as Jonathan was due to launch his re-election campaign for the February 14 polls at a rally in Maiduguri. Security was beefed up ahead of the event with hundreds of armed police and sniffer dogs deployed at strategic areas.

Jonathan, a southern Christian, faces a tough challenge from former military ruler Mohammadu Buhari, who is believed to have a cult following in northern Nigeria.

The president visited Maiduguri on January 15, his first stop there since March 2013. The visit was shrouded in secrecy.

A previous trip to the restive region in May last year was cancelled at the last minute. He had planned to visit the remote Borno town of Chibok after Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 girls from their school in a crime that shocked the world.

Jonathan’s last visit took place before a state of emergency was declared in Borno and neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa states in May 2013.

Nigeria’s military has been criticised for failing to crush the rebellion but soldiers complain they lack the arms and ammunition to fight the better-equipped militants.

Brutal raids, massacres, suicide bomb attacks and kidnappings by Boko Haram have claimed at least 13,000 lives and driven an estimated 1.5 million people from their homes, mainly in arid northeast Nigeria.
Nigeria’s neighbours Cameroon, Chad and Niger have launched a joint regional bid to combat the militants and halt their advance, and officials from Nigeria and those three countries met this week to thrash out details of a new regional force to counter the militants.

An existing force, made up of troops from Nigeria, Niger and Chad appears to have collapsed in disarray even before a January 3 attack on its headquarters near the northeastern town of Baga.

Troops from Niger and Chad were not present during the raid, which saw Baga razed and hundreds of civilians, if not more, killed in what is feared could be the insurgents’ worst atrocity.

At this week’s meeting it was agreed to transfer the headquarters of the new force from Nigeria to the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, reflecting concern about Boko Haram’s rising transnational threat.

Source:  khaleejtimes

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces claimed 123 ISIL corpses arrived at a hospital in Mosul on Friday.
The corpses included 11 foreign militants’ bodies from Pakistan, Chechnya and Saudi Arabia.
The militants were allegedly killed in clashes with peshmerga forces on Wednesday, according to Said Mimozini, a peshmerga commander.

Peshmerga forces have taken control over the road connecting Mosul, Tal Afar and Syria. This will force ISIL to take a 400 km (249 mile) road to reach Tal Afar city in northwestern Iraq, according Mimozini.

They also seized control of a village near Mosul Dam and killed 16 ISIL militants in the clashes. Peshmerga forces advanced to Hasan Jalal village, which is 12 km (7.5 miles) from Mosul, according to Major Rashid Hajji Ali from the peshmerga forces.

Iraqi troops and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces are fighting against ISIL and are supported by a U.S.-led coalition that has been conducting airstrikes against the extremist group for five months.

– Five killed, 33 wounded across Iraq
The death toll included Ali al-Ansari, a cameraman who works for the private al-Ghadeer TV channel. The victim was killed and four other cameramen wounded in a mortar attack as he was covering the Iraqi security forces operation against ISIL in the Muqdadiyah area of the eastern province of Diyala, according to a media source.

Two people were killed and ten others wounded when an improvised explosive device exploded outside a cafe in the al-Obaidi area of eastern Baghdad, a police officer, who preferred not to divulge his name, told The Anadolu Agency.

One person was killed and five others injured in the Mahmoudiyah area of southern Baghdad, police said.
An improvised explosive device was planted in an employee’s car who works at the Hajj and Umrah organization. The employee was killed when the device exploded.

Ten civilians were wounded in mortar strikes launched by anonymous militants on the al-Shu’la and al-Ghazaliyah area in western Baghdad. The strikes damaged a number of houses.

At least four civilians were wounded in a random shooting while celebrating the victory of the Iraqi national football team over Iran in the AFC Asian football cup.

Iraq has been gripped by a security vacuum since June 2014 when ISIL stormed the northern province of Mosul and declared what it calls a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Source:  aa.com.tr

Mohamed al-Zahawi, leader of the Libyan Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, has died from wounds suffered when fighting pro-government troops several months ago, his family and officials said on Friday.

Zahawi, who founded an Ansar al-Sharia brigade in Benghazi after helping with his fighters to oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, had been in hospital for treatment since he was seriously wounded in battle, members of his family told Reuters.

Fadhl al-Hassi, a Libyan military commander with forces fighting Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi, also confirmed Zahawi had died from wounds sustained after an ambush in September. There was no immediate statement from Ansar al-Sharia.

Source:  thecairopost

Denmark’s foreign minister says the West should start talking to Syrian President Bashar Assad but “it has to be an absolute condition that Assad must not be part of Syria’s future.”

Martin Lidegaard says that stopping the nearly four-year-old civil war requires that “we then must talk with the present regime.”

Lidegaard spoke Friday ahead of Monday’s meeting in Moscow between the Syrian government and its opponents. That meeting appears to be unraveling as prominent opposition figures shun the prospective negotiations amid deep distrust of Russia.

Assad has refused to discuss a political transition before agreeing with the opposition on combating “terrorism,” the term Syrian officials use to describe rebels fighting to topple him.

Source:  indiatimes

Boko Haram fighters have kidnapped about 80 people, many of them children, in a cross-border attack on villages in northern Cameroon, the first time villagers from that country have been kidnapped by suspected militants. The latest reports say the Cameroonian army has freed about 20 of the captives.

In previous kidnappings blamed on the Islamist group in Cameroon, targets have been high-profile people or foreigners taken for ransom. Sunday’s abductions occurred around the village of Mabass in northern Cameroon. The attacks have fuelled fears that the insurgency is spilling out of Nigeria into neighbouring countries.

Increasing ruthlessness Boko Haram has grown bolder in recent years, and the recent spate of attacks has coincided with the upcoming Nigerian presidential election on February 14.

Before Sunday’s assault in Cameroon, the militants launched one of their bloodiest attacks yet in Nigeria on the towns of Baga and Doron on January 3, leaving hundreds of people dead and thousands of houses burnt or razed.

Daniel Eyre, Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International, described the Boko Haram assault as “the largest and most destructive” his organisation has analysed. “It represents a deliberate attack on civilians whose homes, clinics and schools are now burnt-out ruins,” he said.

Elizabeth Donnelly, an analyst at the Chatham House think- tank, says Baga – a small town in Nigeria’s Borno state – closes a gap in Boko Haram’s map, fulfils a strategic purpose with its proximity to the border with Chad, where it is reported to have set up camps on islands in Lake Chad, and further bolsters its resources and sense of confidence with a win over a multinational military force.

“The small town near Lake Chad was home to the base of the multinational joint task force, comprising troops from Nigeria, Niger and Chad – but despite the military presence, Baga was surrounded in the country’s northeastern corner by what has become Boko Haram territory,” she writes.

Impact on the election Nigeria’s presidential, parliamentary and state gubernatorial and assembly elections, scheduled for next month, are likely to be more contentious than usual.

According to the International Crisis Group, tensions within and between the two major political parties, competing claims to the presidency between northern and Niger Delta politicians and along religious lines, along with inadequate preparations by the electoral commission and apparent bias in security ?agencies, suggest the country is heading toward a volatile and vicious electoral contest.

If the vote is close, marred or followed by widespread violence, it will deepen Nigeria’s political and economic problems. In addition, falling oil prices are eroding government revenue, raising fears that eventually the federal authorities may be unable to pay those who work for them or even maintain essential services.

The Boko Haram insurgency and the state of emergency in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe could prevent voting in parts of those northeastern states.

The law states people must go to their home constituencies if they want to participate in the poll, but many city-based voters will be reluctant to return if they are under the control of the insurgents.

Boko Haram has repeatedly ?stated its opposition not only to Western education – its name means Western education is forbidden, in the Hausa language – but also to democracy and secular government, which it regards as a form of “paganism”, and its ?attacks could intensify to discourage voting. Some 1.5-million people have been displaced by the insurgency.

As of mid-September 2014, the insurgents had seized 25 towns in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. Nigerian media reports say Boko Haram ?has seized and established control over 20 000km2 of territory in the region.

Nigeria’s opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), which draws most of its support from the north, says it will not accept a result in which “large swaths of the citizenry” are disenfranchised.

The election pits the incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, against General Muhammadu Buhari, who has a reputation as one of the more honest and well intentioned of the country’s military rulers but not as one of the most astute.

What Boko Haram wants The insurgents’ demands have focused on two main areas: the release of Boko Haram prisoners and the creation of an Islamic state.

The group began to emerge in 2002 and 2003, when followers of a young charismatic preacher, Mohammed Yusuf, retreated to Kanamma, a remote area in the northeast. He advocated a strict, fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur’an and believed that the creation of Nigeria by British colonialists had imposed a Western and unIslamic way of life on Muslims.

The group opposes voting in elections and the wearing of shirts or trousers. Its eventual goal is to create an Islamic state. Northern Nigeria has a history of spawning militant Islamist groups, but Boko Haram has proved to be the most durable and lethal of such groups.

The Nigerian military thought it had finished off Boko Haram when it seized the group’s headquarters in 2009 in the city of Maiduguri and killed Yusuf. But Boko Haram regrouped under Abubakar Shekau, and has grown stronger and more ruthless. In 2010, it carried out assassinations and a major raid on a prison.

A suicide attacker rammed a ?car bomb into United Nations headquarters in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, in August 2011, killing 23 people.  In 2013, Boko Haram targeted pupils in a series of attacks, culminating in the raid in Chibok deep in northeastern Nigeria in April 2014, in which 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped. Of this number, 219 remain missing.

Scorched-earth tactics Despite the state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe since May 2013 and increased military offensives, the insurgents have adopted and intensified a three-pronged strategy of bombings in cities, scorched-earth tactics in rural areas and assaults on military and police bases.

These attacks resulted in more than 5 000 civilian casualties and the displacement of at least 750 000 people between May 2013 and October 2014.

The weekend abduction of Cameroonian villagers in that country’s far north will fuel fears that the group is expanding its operations into neighbouring countries. In a video posted online this month, a man claiming to be Shekau threatened to step up violence in Cameroon unless it scraps its Constitution and embraces Islam.

Boko Haram has financed itself mainly through ransom kidnappings, bank robberies and other illegal activities. The group is believed to have raided at least one Nigerian military arms depot. Illegal arms are not difficult for Boko Haram to obtain as arms trafficking is widespread in West Africa.

Nigerian response to the insurgency  Since troops were deployed when an emergency was declared, Boko Haram has withdrawn from its urban base in Maiduguri to the vast Sambisa forest, along the border with Cameroon. But the seventh division of the Nigerian army has been stretched and it lacks equipment and training.

Further complicating Nigeria’s response to the attacks is the fact that the armed forces have been criticised for corruption.  It is unclear how much has been spent to combat the insurgency. On the economic front, there is the presidential initiative for the ?northeast, pooling funds from federal departments, state governments, foreign donors and businesses to provide jobs for 100 000 youths in a region of desperate poverty, a factor that is exploited by Boko Haram.

But the programme only began in November and it will take time to have any impact. The government has also been criticised for its seeming lack of urgency in getting to grips with the crisis in the north.

After the abduction in Chibok, which triggered the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign that drew the support from such figures as Michelle Obama and Angelina Jolie, it took the president three months to meet any of the affected parents.

Source:  mg.co.za

While the world community was silently observing the events in Syria and Iraq on the other side of the Arab world, a militant group of Houthi movement (Shiite rebels) “Ansar Allah” in Yemen supported by Iran was moving ahead in the country.

As a result, Houthis seized the presidential palace in Yemen Jan. 20.

After seizing the presidential palace, a member of the political council of Ansar Allah Hassan Zaid issued a statement. He said that Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi is not detained by Shiite rebels in his residence and he can freely move.

No matter how the world community regards the Houthi movement , whether as freedom fighters or fighting for the rights of religious minorities, this is not just a coup but the Islamic revolution taking place in Yemen. Iran has been openly supporting this movement.

Well, as they saying goes, “the written word remains”; the Islamic revolution occurred in Yemen with the support of Iran.

At present, such large cities in Yemen as Sadah, Amran, Sana’a, Ibb, as well as such major ports as Hodeidah and Mokha are fully controlled by Houthis. This allows Iran to move through the Red Sea via Yemen.

In addition, a number of provinces of the country are controlled by Sunni tribes and also militants of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, so in fact, the country is divided into several parts.

But what are the consequences of the “Islamic revolution” in Yemen-where may it lead to?
It should be noted that the Houthis in Yemen pursue the same policy as “Hezbollah” in Lebanon, a powerful paramilitary force, which aims to protect the interests of Tehran in the region.

The “coup” in Yemen can be also assessed as failure of the policy of Saudi Arabia, as at the time when the authorities of Arabia were busy isolating the influence of the “Muslim Brotherhood” in the region, and including Yemen, Iran was successfully implementing the policy of ideological expansion in the region.

It should be noted that despite the similarity in positions of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood regarding the issue of political Islam, the events in Syria have led to serious disagreements .

That is, the Iranian authorities have successfully isolated the Muslim Brotherhood from active participation in political life of the Middle East.

In addition, it is expected that namely the events in Yemen will give an impetus to the revival of Shiite movements in neighboring Arab countries.

It is not ruled out that Saudi Arabia will also be among such countries.

Notwithstanding the attempts of Saudi Arabian authorities to conceal it, approximately 20 percent of the country’s population is Shiites. Most live in the oil-rich provinces.

It is worth of noting that Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that Tehran is expanding its influence from Yemen to Lebanon

And, almost all the armed conflicts in the Arab world is the result of the competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia for influence in this part of the world.

However, over time, interested forces have succeeded in presenting this competition as a Shiite – Sunni conflict aimed at reformation of new states in the region.

Although Iran became the winner of the first round of the battle for the Red Sea, and it will temporarily lay down conditions, it doesn’t mean that following this ‘victory’ the situation in Yemen will be stable.

Aside from access to the Red Sea, Yemen is another buffer zone for Iran against its ideological enemies.
The control of Yemen’s main cities by Houthis, as well as several provinces by Al Qaeda, suggests that the country will become a field for the next battle very soon.

Source:  trend.az

At least three gunmen were killed in clashes with Lebanese soldiers close to the border with Syria on Friday, a Lebanese security source said, in an area that has seen regular incursions from Islamist militants fighting in Syria’s war.

A group of gunmen launched a large-scale attack on an army outpost close to the village of Ras Baalbek, near Lebanon’s eastern frontier with Syria, wounding at least five soldiers, and the army responded with artillery, the source said.

It was not immediately clear which group the attackers belonged to but Syria-based jihadist groups such as al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the ultra hardline Islamic State have attacked Lebanon in recent months.

The army said in a statement that the clashes were continuing in the desolate area close to Ras Baalbek and that the army was shelling positions after the attack by a “terrorist group.” It did not give any details about casualties.

Ras Baalbek is near the town of Arsal where Sunni Islamist militants staged a deadly incursion in August and seized a group of Lebanese soldiers. The militants have since killed some of the soldiers and around two dozen remain captive.

Tensions along Israel’s northern border

The IDF is sending reinforcements to the north Thursday and Friday amid tensions along the border with Syria and Lebanon in wake of a deadly attack attributed to Israel by foreign media on military officials from Hezbollah and Iran in Syria.

Massive IDF movement is expected in the upcoming day within Israel’s northern communities, top IDF sources told Ynet. The forces, they said, are part of the IDF’s attempt to address growing tensions in the north, which have seen both Hezbollah and Iran vow to take revenge for the alleged Israeli attack.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander said Israel will be punished for killing one of its generals in the airstrike in Syria that also killed six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.

Nasser Soltani says “Israel will certainly pay for what it did.” He spoke during a ceremony Wednesday for Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, who will be buried in his hometown of Sirjan in southeastern Iran on Thursday.

Soltani is quoted by the state TV as saying Allahdadi was “martyred while performing his advisory mission” in Syria.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported Thursday morning that – despite an Israeli official denying the claim to Reuters – Israel was well aware of who was in the convoy and that the Iranian general was the intended target.