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Friday, November 09, 2007 Abp. O'Brien removes priest for grave liturgical and disciplinary abuses An exclusive to the Baltimore Sun (underlining mine): Baltimore's new Roman Catholic archbishop removed a priest who was pastor of three South Baltimore parishes for offenses that include officiating at a funeral Mass with an Episcopal priest, which violates canon law.Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien personally ordered the Rev. Ray Martin, who has led the Catholic Community of South Baltimore for five years, to resign from the three churches and sign a statement yesterday apologizing for "bringing scandal to the church."Martin led the funeral Mass on...

Kenyans close border with Somalia Thousands of Somalis have sought refuge in Kenya over the years Kenya has shut its border with Somalia and will not allow more refugees into the country, says its foreign minister. Earlier the Kenyan authorities deported more than 420 Somali refugees who had crossed the border in recent days. The UN refugee agency has condemned Kenya's actions, with aid workers expressing frustration at being unable to help Somalis fleeing conflict. There have been clashes near the Kenyan border with Islamist militias being pursued by Ethiopian and Somali troops. Kenya has deployed tanks and helicopters to...

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani forces battled al Qaeda-linked militants Sunday in a fifth day of fighting in a remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan, where several army posts came under rocket attack, witnesses said. Artillery fire boomed in the Shakai area of South Waziristan, 250 miles southwest of Islamabad, where Pakistani forces were trying to flush-out foreign and local militants from their mountain hideouts, witnesses said. "Our houses shook because of the artillery fire all night," said one resident in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan. The army was hitting targets in the Shakai area. Militants fired rockets at...

It featured all the trappings of a glorified video game. Thousands of Pakistani army and paramilitary troops played the hammer. Hundreds of US troops and Special Forces, plus the elite commando 121, were ready to play the anvil across the border in Afghanistan. What was supposed to be smashed in between was "high-value target" Ayman al-Zawahiri, as Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf enthusiastically bragged - with no hard evidence - to an eager CNN last Thursday. But what happened to this gigantic piece of psy-ops? Nothing. And for a very simple reason: al-Qaeda's brain and Osama bin Laden's deputy was...

ON THE AFGHAN BORDER - Using bulldozers to slice bunkers and a helicopter landing pad out of a mountainside, U.S. special operations forces dug in Tuesday on a peak overlooking Pakistan - fortifying the area for the intensifying battle against al-Qaida and Taliban forces. Special operations forces - who include Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and CIA operatives - are playing a secretive but leading role in the battle against al-Qaida and Taliban suspects believed to be hiding out in the mountains of Pakistan's tribal areas. Remote posts like this one near the Afghan city of Orgun, scratched out of a...

ANA, Pakistan, March 20 — Viewed from a helicopter, there is little that differentiates a cluster of farming villages just outside this remote town near the border with Afghanistan from the barren surrounding countryside. Small patches of irrigated fields appear as specks of green in a sea of brown dirt and dust.Residences are mud-brick fortresses, low buildings surrounded by walls that rise 20 feet, each compound buffered from the next by distance — usually at least half a mile. This is the territory where a battle is raging between more than 7,000 Pakistani troops and 400 to 500 surrounded Islamic...

WASHINGTON - Thousands of Pakistani troops poured heavy fire into the mountain stronghold where Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, may be hiding, but American officials fretted he may have gotten away. American Predator drones hovered over the battlefield and about a dozen U.S. intelligence officers were helping the Pakistanis as the battle raged for the fourth day. Thousands of civilians poured out of the 20-square-mile area surrounded by about 7,000 soldiers, but little else was known about what was going on in the remote region along the Afghanistan border. "I don't know the situation today," Defense Secretary Donald...

KARACHI - The plan to eradicate the Afghan resistance was straightforward: US-led coalition forces would drive from inside Afghanistan into the last real sanctuary of the insurgents, and meet the Pakistani military driving from the opposite direction. There would then be no safe place left to hide for the Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants, or, presumably, for Osama bin Laden himself. The plan's implementation began with the launch of operation "Mountain Storm" around March 15. But the insurgents have a plan of their own, which they have revealed to Asia Times Online. Conceived by foreign resistance fighters of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. and Afghan troops have captured ``semi-senior'' terrorist leaders along the border with Pakistan, an Afghan government spokesman told The Associated Press on Friday. The news came as border officials said Pakistan appeared to have blocked roads leading from the showdown in the South Waziristan tribal area, where Pakistani officials said forces had trapped al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri in a massive four-day offensive. The arrests were made somewhere in Afghanistan's lawless border provinces, Jawed Ludin, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, told the AP. He said it was unclear if those detained had fled the...

Mystery Militant May Be Uzbek or Chechen - Pakistan Sat Mar 20, 2004 07:17 AM ET       By Simon Denyer WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suspected senior al Qaeda member whom the Pakistani army thought it had surrounded in a remote area on the Afghan border is probably a Chechen or Uzbek militant leader, a Pakistani commander said on Saturday. Thousands of Pakistani troops have been locked in battle with al Qaeda fighters and their tribal allies in Pakistan's wild South Warizistan tribal area since Tuesday. Dozens of fighters have been killed and about 100 suspected militants, many of them...

The US military reinforced the Afghan border on Friday as Pakistani troops fought pitched battles with suspected Al-Qaeda fighters in an ungoverned tribal area on the other side of the rugged frontier, senior US officials said. But the officials here were unanimous in saying they did not know whether the fighters were protecting a senior Al-Qaeda leader despite the Pakistani's belief that a "high value target" -- possibly Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's number two -- was among them. "I think we are still waiting for the situation to continue to unfold, still trying to learn exactly what's happening on the ground,"...

KABUL, March 19 (Reuters) - Afghanistan has sent hundreds of extra troops to its border with Pakistan to prevent any attempt by al Qaeda militants, who may include Osama bin Laden's deputy, fleeing from a Pakistani military onslaught, officials said. Kabul was in close touch with Islamabad but had no independent confirmation that al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri was among militants in a compound under assault in Pakistan's South Waziristan region, Foreign Ministry spokesman Omar Samad said on Friday. However he said "a few hundred" extra troops had been sent to the border region in Paktika province, opposite the...

Three Taliban commanders have been arrested and 12 of the movement's fighters killed as the American military launched an operation in southern Afghanistan aimed at capturing militants, including Osama bin Laden. The leaders were captured in Zabul, a lawless province in the south where remnants of the ousted regime are fighting for control by bribing and intimidating the local population. The operation, called Mountain Storm, is backed by air support and was launched a week ago as the US-led coalition intensified its hunt for bin Laden along the Pakistani border. The Taliban commanders were captured during a joint US-Afghan search...

SPIN BOLDAK: Despite a crackdown involving tens of thousands of troops and a pledge by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to do all he can in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Afghans say a steady stream of Taliban and al-Qaeda fugitives are finding a safe haven on Pakistan’s side of the 2,000-mile border. The Afghan border chief gestures toward a fresh spray of bullet holes across his pickup truck, then points toward the place he says the Taliban attackers came from: Pakistan. “See the trees? They started from that border post,” said Palawan, his head shaved. Afterward, “the vehicles came...

<p>WASHINGTON — The U.S. military has launched a new offensive in Afghanistan (search) called "Operation Mountain Storm" aimed at rooting out elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pentagon officials said Friday.</p> <p>Though Mountain Storm is a new operation, it is also a continuation of a series of efforts that began last summer and fall. Those operations, including one called Mountain Resolve, aimed to drive terrorist elements out of the south of Afghanistan and some areas of the north, and back toward the border with Pakistan (search).</p>

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces have launched a sweeping new hunt in Afghanistan's remote southern and eastern mountains where Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be in hiding. The operation, codenamed "Mountain Storm", began on March 7 and involved troops from the 13,500-strong U.S.-led force backed by air support, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Hilferty told a news briefing on Saturday. "We believe that this will help bring the heads of the terrorist organisations to justice by continuing to place pressure on them," he said. Asked whether the operation could lead to the arrest...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The U.S. military on Saturday announced a sweeping new operation across troubled southern and eastern Afghanistan, with the aim of destroying al-Qaida and the Taliban and ultimately reeling in Osama bin Laden. The offensive comes as Americans step up their hunt for the al-Qaida leader and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, who are believed to be hiding out in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. "We believe this will help bring the heads of the terrorist organizations to justice, by continuing placing pressure on them," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a U.S. military spokesman. The...

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan - Despite a crackdown involving tens of thousands of troops and a pledge by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to do all he can in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Afghans say a steady stream of Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives are finding a safe haven on Pakistan's side of the 2,000-mile border. The Afghan border chief gestures toward a fresh spray of bullet holes across his pickup truck, then points toward the place he says the Taliban attackers came from: Pakistan. "See the trees? They started from that border post," said Palawan, his head shaved. Afterward, "the...

Pentagon officials have described their planned spring offensive against Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters as a "hammer and an anvil." The description suggests part of the operation will be aimed at capturing or killing Islamic militants along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, while other troops block their escape routes through the mountains. Kandahar, Afghanistan; 12 March 2004 (RFE/RL) -- According to some reports, the spring offensive in Afghanistan by U.S. forces will be the largest since Operation Anaconda two years ago near the southeastern border with Pakistan. "Our goal also is to defeat the Taliban if it decides to confront us, which it...

PESHAWAR, March 9: The government on Tuesday decided to use force to flush out Al Qaeda militants in remote South Waziristan tribal region. "There would now be less talk and more action," said a senior government official. "The wheel has started running and it will continue to grind," remarked the official. The decision, said this official, was taken at a meeting at the Governor's House here. Governor Lt-Gen Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah presided over the meeting that was also attended by senior security and administration officials. "It was a review meeting to discuss the situation in South Waziristan and consider...