Terrorists’ World – Flashback 2005

(1.) Peru- On the New Year Day Antauo Humalo, a retired Peruvian army major seized a police station in a small town taking 17 hostages. He called on Alejandro Toledo, Peru’s democratic president to resign; The president dismissed the incident as the work of terrorist-fascist movement funded by drug money. The rebellion was all over after 3 days of tragic-comic farce. (2.) Philippines – Three bombs ripped through three cities in the Philippines on 14th Feb. The explosions in the southern cities of Davao and General Santos and in the Makati financial district of Manila, killed at least 12 people. A spokesman of the Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic terrorist organisation described them as a ‘Valentine’s Day gift to Mrs. Gloria Arroyo’, the country’s president, in retaliation for the government’s ‘atrocities committed against Muslims’. Abu Sayyaf, a gang of Filipino Muslim kidnappers is linked with al-Qaeda. (Another is Pentagon Gang) Its motivators would appear to be less lofty than that of Osma bin Laden’s paradise seekers. For years, its main occupation has been kidnapping foreign tourists and Christian businessmen for ransom. It is fairly active since Feb. 2004 when it detonated a bomb on a passenger ferry belonging to a shipping line from which it was trying to extort money. The bomb started a fire that wrecked the ship, killing over 100 people. (3.) Canada – Two Sikh nationalists (Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri), accused of blowing up an Air India jumbo jet on Toronto-to-Delhi flight 182 on June 23, 1985, were acquitted on March 16 in the longest, most complex, most expensive trial in Canada’s history. It was the worst case of aerial terrorism before September 11, 2001. All the 329 passengers on board were killed. (4.)London; July 07 – 51 fatalities in the bombings with around 700 people injured. There were four explosions: one in a tunnel near Liverpool Street underground station; one in a tunnel between Russell Sqare and King’s Cross stations; one in a train at Edgware Road station; and the fourth on a bus near Russell Square. There were scenes of carnage and panic in the underground tunnels. The British foreign secretary described them as ‘the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda-related attack. A posting on internet claimed ‘mujahideen (holy warriors) had carried out the attacks in retaliation for Britain’s military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. (5.) Egypt; July 23 – Bombing of the Egyptian Red Sea tourist resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Series of explosions that killed 70. The bombings were the worst terrorist attacks Egypt has suffered in more than 20 years – and caused greater loss of life than the similar bombings of other Egyptian resorts in October 2004 in which 34 people died. (6.) Bangladesh; Aug 17- Bangladesh is on the edge of the knife. Many terrorist outrages have been far bloodier but few have been co-ordinated on such a vast scale as the bomb blasts that peppered Bangladesh on Aug 17th. Nearly 500 bombs went off, in 63 out of the country’s 64 districts, all within about an hour of each other. Targets included government buildings, court and press club. The bombs were no more than detonators, without explosive charges. Only 2 people were killed and about 140 injured. So it seemed more a show of strength than an attempt at mass murder. It was the handiworks of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a banned terrorist organisation, demanding Islamic law. 90 per cent of 140 million population in this country is Muslim. The process of talibanisation of Bangladeshi society and politics seems to taking shape. Again in December a bomb killed at least 7 people in the northern town of Netrokans. A week earlier, the first ever suicide bombings in the country left at least 12 dead and dozens injured in attacks on courtrooms in Gazipur, a town 20 mils north of the capital Dhaka and Chittagong, the second city. JMB in violent trail has left more than 20 people dead since mid-August. Earlier, it issued death threats to judges, lawyers, officials and journalists. (7.) Bali; Oct 01 – Almost three years after a more deadly attack on the resort, the three suicide bombers of the Jamaah Islamiah (JI) walked into restaurants on the Indonesian resort island of Bali carrying bombs packed with ball-bearing, nails and glass. At least 22 dead and 90 injured, mostly Indonesian.In Bali bombing of 2002, several Australians had lost their lives. Earlier, a number of other attacks including a bomb set off outside the Marriott hotel in Djakarta in August 2003, killing 12 people and an explosion near Australia’s embassy killing three people. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country. (8.) Delhi; October 29 – A co-ordinated terrorist attack on Delhi in which 3 bombs exploded within 30 minutes of each other, killing more than 60 people. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the banned terrorist organisation behind the incident. India has more Muslim than any country other than Indonesia (9.) Jordan; November- The vaunted tranquility of Jordan amid the seemingly permanent instability afflicting its neighbours (Israel, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia – the neighbours from hell) was bloodily interrupted by 3 suicide bombers in posh hotels frequented by westerners and Jordianian elite in Amman. The blasts in the Grand Hyatt, the Redisson and the Days Inn hotels killed at least 67 people and wounded more than 150. Al-Qaeda is believed to be behind the incident (10.) The account is incomplete without bloody incidents of Iraq. It has become synonymous with ‘Days of terror’ ‘Butchery in Baghdad’ ‘Terror of Terrorism’ ‘Al Qaeda’s allies have turned Iraq into a new Afghanistan’ ‘Cradle of war’ and ‘School of Jihad’. July 16- One blew up a petrol tanker near a mosque in the mainly Shia town of Musayib, south of Baghdad, killing at least 90 civilians. On July 19, IraqBodyCount, a group of academics published a report suggesting that almost 25,000 civilians have been killed in it so far. In other words, 34 a day, on an average. On Sept 14, the second-deadliest single terrorist attack since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. The bombing took place in the Shia district of Kadhimiya, not far from where over 1000 worshippers died earlier in the same month in a stempede. Over 100 were killed and about 400 wounded by a suicide bomber who had lured his victims towards his minivan with promises of work. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda man in Iraq said in an internet posting: ‘The battle to avenge the Sunnis of Tal Afar has begun’. It was in the northern town of Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, that American and Iraqi army units a few days earlier attacked Sunni insurgents, claiming to have killed 157 of them and capturing 440 more. For Zarqawi, there are three enemies: ‘Crusaders’, Jews and rawafidh (literally rejectionists, a derogatory term for the Shia).