NATO members have assured the US they will help fund Afghan forces through to 2020 to the tune of $US1 billion a year

sbs.com.au/

14 Daesh fighters including their three Pakistan commanders were killed and a number of them were wounded following air attack conducted by NATO forces in Acheen district, eastern Nangarhar province last night.

A senior commander of police in the east of the country told BNA, NATO forces targeted the terrorist group members in their hideouts, while they were involved on organizing a series of terrorist activities.

According to another report, Daesh fighters sustained heavy casualties during a military operation launched by Afghan security forces in Koot district of the province.

A commander of National Army in the east of the country told BNA, at least 26 Daesh loyalists were killed and dozens others were wounded during the military operation.

bakhtarnews.com.a

Two Bangladeshi policeman were killed and nine other officers were wounded on Thursday in a grenade attack on a security checkpoint in a town hosting Bangladesh’s biggest congregation on Eid, officials said.

The attack on the police position was close to an area where some 200,000 people had gathered for Eid prayers in Kishoreganj town, about 140km (90 miles) northeast of the capital, Dhaka, said district administrator Zillur Rahman.

Two of the attackers were killed and one has been captured alive, a police official said.

The militants attacked police with “sharp weapons” after the grenades exploded, another senior district official said.

The attack had been brought under control.

“We are still checking for other miscreants but after this incident prayers were held peacefully and we have asked everyone to go home,” Rahman said.

The gathering in Kishoreganj is known as the Sholakia Eid prayers and is by far the biggest such congregation in Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim country that is home to around 160 million people.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, it came less than a week after Islamists killed 20 hostages and two policemen in an overnight siege at a Western-style cafe in Dhaka. All the victims, including 18 foreigners, were hacked to death with machetes.

Bangladesh has been on a heightened state of alert in the wake of the killings in Dhaka last Friday night and many Eid services included pleas from religious leaders for an end to the violence.

“Allah, protect our country … and protect our children from the evils of terrorism,” Mohammad Sadequl Islam, the local imam, told a gathering of around 5,000 devotees at Dhaka’s Mahakhali neighbourhood.

Many of those who attended services in Dhaka could be seen weeping as clerics led prayers for a more peaceful and prosperous Bangladesh.

The biggest service in the capital was at the National Eidgah Maidan where more than 50,000 people, including Bangladesh’s President Abdul Hamid, took part in prayers under a giant canopy.

Police brought in scanners and sniffer dogs to check for bombs as crowds were forced to wait for up to an hour before being cleared to enter the grounds where the service was held. No one was allowed to bring in bags.

Bangladesh has been reeling from a growing wave of attacks since the turn of the year, many of which have been claimed by the self-styled Islamic State group or an offshoot of the Al-Qaeda network.

However, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina‘s government has consistently denied international jihadist networks have gained a foothold and have said the weekend attack in Dhaka was carried out by a local Islamist group.

Bangladesh’s information minister Hasanul Haq Inu again portrayed the latest attack as being designed to topple Hasina.

“We don’t know which group they belong to but they are suspected members of extremist terrorist group. They are against the normal religious practices of the country,” he said.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

After 15 years of conflict in Afghanistan and no sign of peace, NATO members meeting in Warsaw this week are expected to confirm their support for the Kabul government, aware that they have little alternative if the country is to hold together.

Foreign ministers agreed in May to extend assistance past 2016 and at the summit in the Polish capital on Friday and Saturday, alliance partners are also expected to continue their non-combat training and assistance mission.

Total financial support is expected to be about $5 billion a year to 2020, with the United States, the largest donor, contributing about $3 billion of that.

“These decisions are very much about demonstrating NATO’s enduring and steadfast commitment to Afghanistan,” Ismail Aramaz, NATO’s senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, told a media briefing in Kabul this week.

“Afghanistan will not stand alone.”

The summit comes as President Barack Obama considers whether to go ahead with plans that would see U.S. forces in Afghanistan nearly halved from their current level of 9,800 to 5,500 by the beginning of next year.

The Taliban have made major gains since a NATO-led international force ended combat operations at the end of 2014 and now control more territory than at any time since they were driven from power in 2001.

They briefly seized the northern city of Kunduz last year and control much of the southern province of Helmand, the largest source of opium.

However, NATO officials point to signs of progress by Afghan forces. They say a better trained, better equipped force is at least holding its own against the Taliban and is building up air power while steadily improving in key areas from logistics and recruitment to operational planning.

They also say a stable Afghanistan is the best guarantee that militant networks such as al Qaeda or Islamic State cannot re-establish bases to threaten the West and that the uncontrolled flow of migrants to Europe can be slowed.

However, they are also aware that public support cannot be taken for granted and there is pressure to ensure that President Ashraf Ghani’s government uses aid effectively, bringing costs down while continuing reforms the West wants to see.

“This is a two-way street,” said Aramaz.

NATO will be looking for “demonstrable signs of continued political stability” and “tangible signs of progress” in areas like women’s rights, counter-corruption, electoral reform, and other human rights, he said.

Afghan leaders must also make sure the security services remain under civilian control and free from political interference, he said.

reuters.com

New Zealand troops will spend another two years in Afghanistan helping to train local soldiers

Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee said, since 2013, eight defence force staff had been stationed outside Kabul helping to train soldiers at the Afghan National Army Academy.

Since then, 1600 soldiers have graduated from the academy.

Cabinet has now committed New Zealand troops until the middle of 2018, and is increasing the number of trainers from eight to 10.

Mr Brownlee said the commitment by New Zealand helped support stability in the country and counter the threat of international terrorism.

The government has also extended its military training operation in Iraq by 18 months, with the existing deployment of up to 143 defence personnel to stay at Camp Taji until November 2018.

It also agreed to allow a small number of those personnel to provide training to stabilisation forces, such as the Iraqi federal police, in a second location near Taji.

radionz.co.nz

Friends and family have begun to identify the men Islamic State media say were responsible for the lethal attack on an upscale cafe in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday. The men, they say, came from wealthy families and were highly educated before disappearing to join the international jihad.

The Dhaka Tribune reports that relatives and friends on social media have begun to openly identify the men in the photos holding firearms in front of the Islamic State flag. At least three men have been sufficiently positively identified, with others posting guesses online as to who they were before they became active jihadis. The newspaper notes that those identified “came from affluent families in Dhaka and studied at top schools or universities.”

The newspaper adds that the photos the Islamic State released do not seem to match the photos law enforcement in the country have released of the alleged attackers, according to “social media users who claim to be friends and sometimes even family of the pictured men.” The Tribune struggled to identify the men, as those identified no longer appear to have publicly searchable Facebook pages.

Bangladesh’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Hassanul Haq Inna confirmed to India’s NDTV that the men came from privileged backgrounds: “The terrorists were from a top school and University in Dhaka. … Some of the terrorists were from the Scholastic School — a very well-known school and private university.” He added that the jihadis’ families have “secular credentials.”

The Tribune also notes that the men identified had all been missing for months, leading many to believe they received terrorist training in Syria or Iraq. Law enforcement have not confirmed this speculation, however; on the contrary, authorities have insisted that current evidence points to the Dhaka siege being an act of terror organized in Bangladesh by nationals.

Six attackers were killed during the siege. The Islamic State only released five photos, however.

The New York Times reports that a major source of uncertainty regarding the identities of the terrorists is that police have failed to confirm who they were in the absence of anyone coming to the morgue to identify their kin. The newspaper reached Meer Hayet Kabir, a man police called in, asking him to positively identify his son. Meer Saameh Mubasher, 18 years old, had gone missing in February, and Kabir had reached out to police immediately following his disappearance.

Meer Saameh Mubasher was a student at the Scholastic School mentioned by the Information and Broadcasting Minister as among the nation’s best.

“How will we arrange a funeral for him in these circumstances? Who will come?” Kabir told The New York Times, as a way of explaining why he had not gone to the police and identified his son yet. “I will have to apologize to the whole world on behalf of my son.”

The Islamic State has increased resources directed towards jihadist recruiting in Bangladesh. The terrorist organization’s appeal to Bangladeshi men was particularly prominent in the April issue of the English-language propaganda magazine Dabiq, featuring an interview with a local jihadi and an obituary for a slain Bengali terrorist.

Bangladesh has been the site of a growing number of Islamist attacks. Gangs of machete-wielding Muslims have hacked to death secular bloggers, professors, LGBT activists, and other “infidels” in the past six months with increasing frequency. Speaking to The New York Times in early June, police counterterrorism head Monirul Islam noted that police are struggling to contain the attacks because mainstream Bangladeshi Muslims support them. “In general, people think they have done the right thing, that it’s not unjustifiable to kill,” he said.

In remarks on Saturday, Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina asserted that the acts of the Islamic State are not Islamic. “Islam is a religion of peace. Stop killing in the name of the religion,” she demanded.

breitbart.com

It was a terror attack in Malaysia after all. Malaysian police said on Monday (July 4) they believed that there were Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) elements that were behind the grenade blast last week at a nightspot in Puchong, Selangor which wounded eight people.

Puchong is a major town in the Petaling District, Selangor, Malaysia.

The police confirmed the blast at the Movida nightclub in Puchong.Police confirm Movida bombing first ever IS attack in Malaysia

The attack occurred in the early hours of the morning as guests were at the Movida nightclub to watch a Euro 2016 match.

Eight people, including a woman tourist from China, were injured in the blast.

The police had previously ruled out terrorism as the motive for the attack, saying a more likely motive appeared to be business rivalry, or a targeted attack on someone in the bar.

But doubts were raised over the motive after a Facebook page linked to the militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.

eturbonews.com

Bangladeshi officials have named five of the men who carried out the country’s worst terror attack on Friday and said they were known to police.

Twenty hostages, most of them foreign, were killed when Islamist militants stormed a cafe in the capital, Dhaka.

Two police officers also died and 30 were injured. After a 12-hour siege commandos rescued 13 people.

The so-called Islamic State group said it was behind the attack but the government has denied this.

Bangladesh’s home minister said on Sunday that the attackers belonged to a local militant group which has been banned for more than a decade.

“They are members of the Jamaeytul Mujahdeen Bangladesh,” Asaduzzaman Khan told the AFP news agency. “They have no connections with the Islamic State.”

Police chief Shahidul Hoque only made the men’s first names public: Akash, Bikash, Don, Bandhon and Ripon.

Six attackers were killed in the raid on the Holey Artisan cafe in Gulshan. A seventh man was arrested and is still being questioned.

IS had earlier released photographs of the alleged attackers posing in front of a black IS flag.

The men were are said to belong to well-to-do families and studied in private schools and universities, not in Islamic seminaries or madrassas, where many Islamist militant groups are thought to draw recruits.

Social media has been buzzing with former classmates who have recognised some of the attackers from their pictures, says the BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder in Dhaka.

Bangladesh has declared two days of national mourning for those killed.

Nine Italians, seven Japanese, one US citizen and an Indian were among the dead. One Italian is unaccounted for.

Announcing the two days of national mourning, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina vowed to fight terror attacks in the country.

“Anyone who believes in religion cannot do such acts,” she said. “They do not have any religion, their only religion is terrorism.”

Meanwhile, extra police checkpoints have sprung up across Gulshan, which is an upscale diplomatic neighbourhood.

But many Bangladeshis feel it’s a little too late, and they are wondering how a group of heavily armed men were able to walk into the café on Friday evening, unchecked, our correspondent says.

Bangladesh has recently suffered a spate of murders of secular bloggers, gay activists, academics and members of religious minorities, blamed on Islamist militants.

bbc.com

At least 225 Islamic State, or Daesh, fighters have been killed during a week-long operation in the Kot district of eastern Nangarhar province, local officials claimed on Friday.

Ninety-four fighters of the militant group had been wounded during the counter-terrorism offensive in the district, Attaullah Khogyani, the governor’s spokesman, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

He said the dead included some important commanders and group leaders. The security personnel also destroyed a huge quantity of arms and ammunition belonging to the rebel outfit, the spokesman added.

As a result of the offensive in Kot, he continued, 45 villages had been cleared of a Daesh presence. He blamed the group for killing 20 security personnel and civilians over the past week.

The operation would continue until the entire district was purged of Daesh’s insurgency, Khogyani promised. Last week, the terrorist group killed several civilians and torched dozens of houses.

Senior Interior Ministry official Brig. Gen. Salem Ihsas, at the head of a high-level delegation, recently visited Kot and Haska Mina districts to assess the overall security situation there.

Khogyani said Gen. Ihsas was accompanied by Nangarhar police chief Brig. Gen. ZarawarZahid and Border Police Commander Brig. Gen. Wali Khan Shinwari.

Gen. Ihsas praised the sacrifices rendered by the border police personnel in defence of their homeland. Showing remarkable resilience, he said, the security forces had imposed a crushing defeat on the enemy.

Brig. Gen. Mohammad NasimSangin, leading the operation in Kot, briefed the visiting delegation on the security environment and the losses inflicted on Daesh. He commended coordination among security forces and their high morale.

He instructed the security men to ensure the protection of civilians during the anti-Daesh operation in the area. Salem also had the opportunity to take a closer look at the security situation in Haska Mina.

In order to improve security, the visiting Interior Ministry official announced 100 additional Afghan Local Police (ALP) officials would be recruited each in Haska Mina and Rodat districts.

He also vowed timely supplies, including modern weapons, to the provincial police force. A number of security personnel, who demonstrated valour during recent clashes in Haska Mina, Kot and Torkham, were given awards, cash prizes and appreciation letters.

pajhwok.com