Officials: Hizbullah hiding arms in dozens of villages

Thousands of weapons caches have been placed in homes scattered in 160 villages in southern Lebanon, senior defense officials said on Tuesday, a day after one such stockpile exploded in the home of a Hizbullah operative in Tayr Filsay, near Tyre.

On Tuesday, the IDF released video taken from an Israeli aircraft of the home, which belongs to Abdul Nasser Issa, a low-level Hizbullah operative.

The blast took place at around 8 p.m. on Monday, and an hour later Hizbullah men are seen carrying weapons out of the home and loading then onto a truck.

In the footage, seven men are seen carrying a four-meter-long device, thought to be a Katyusha rocket or launcher. Hizbullah is thought to have more than 30,000 rockets of various ranges and sizes.

The men took several hours to clear the home. For the first few hours, the area was sealed off by Hizbullah and the Lebanese army.

Contrary to media reports, Israeli defense sources said on Tuesday that no one was killed by the blast but that one person was lightly injured. The officials also dismissed Hizbullah claims that the explosion was caused by IDF ordinance left behind during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

The Israeli aircraft followed the truck as it drove about 4 km. to another village called Deir Qanoun al-Nahr. There, the truck pulled up at another home and the group of men unloaded the weapons.

"Hizbullah uses civilian homes to hide its weaponry," an IDF officer said. "This is a direct violation of UN [Security Council] Resolution 1701."

President Shimon Peres spoke Tuesday about the blast and said that Hizbullah had turned Lebanon into a "powder keg" that will - in the end - damage Lebanon.

"It is Hizbullah which is endangering Lebanon, not Israel, just as it is Hamas which is endangering the Palestinian people," Peres said.

"We have evacuated all of the territory and are now extending a sincere hand to the Lebanese people. Lebanon could have long since become the Switzerland of the Middle East. It is Hizbullah and Hamas that are preventing this economic flowering and peace and security for the region."

Hizbullah acknowledged that the home belonged to one of its members, but would not give any other information.

Hizbullah legislator Hussein Haj Hassan said Israel was exaggerating the incident, to "take advantage of it for political interests."

Michael Williams, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, told reporters in Beirut that his mission was concerned about the incident.

"We are keeping a close eye on this because of its relevance to Resolution 1701 while waiting for the outcome" of the investigation by UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army, he said after meeting with Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri.

Israel's Ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev called on Tuesday for an investigation by UN peacekeepers on the explosion in Tayr Filsay.

In a letter of complaint sent to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the president of the Security Council, Le Luong Minh of Vietnam. Shalev said Israel has "considerable" reason to believe the house where the explosion took place served as an arms storage facility for Hizbullah.

In her letter, Shalev said that in the aftermath of the explosion, Hizbullah operatives sealed off the area and attempted to remove evidence.

"Only three months after the explosion of a Hizbullah arms depot in the village of Khirbat Silim, yesterday's explosion is another example [showing] that the Hizbullah terrorist organization possesses illegal weapons in Lebanon, south of the Litani River, in violation of Resolution 1701 as it builds a military infrastructure within the civilian population," Shalev wrote. "The aforementioned incidents leave no doubt regarding Hizbullah's modus operandi to place its military weapons and facilities in civilian villages and houses."

The UN Security Council is set to meet on Wednesday, where Palestinian and Arab diplomats are expected to focus on the Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of war crimes during its offensive against Hamas in Gaza last winter.

Source: JPost

FBI aware of report that suicide bomber was Somali-American

By Tricia Escobedo

An online report has identified a Somali-American from Seattle, Washington as one of the suicide bombers who killed 21 peacekeepers in Mogadishu, Somalia last week.

The Somali-language Web site Dayniile.com said the bomber lived in Washington until 2007. The report could not independently be confirmed.

An FBI spokesman in Seattle, Fred Gutt, said investigators are aware of the report, but he declined to comment about it in detail. When asked if the FBI was looking into the report, Gutt would only say “we have continuing outreach efforts with the (Somali-American) community.”

Federal agents have been investigating possible recruiting efforts in the United States by Al-Shabaab, a Somali group with ties to al Qaeda that the U.S. classifies as a terrorist organization.

More than a dozen young men of Somali descent have disappeared recently from their homes in and around Minneapolis, Minnesota, which has a sizable Somali population, as does Seattle. At least three have ended up dead in Somalia, community leaders say.

Read more here,,,,,

Source: CNN

Greg Sheridan: Gillard prime ministerial in Israel

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor | June 25

RIAD Malki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, would like to see Australian troops posted to the Gaza Strip as peacekeepers. More than that, he would be happy, in the event of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories, to have Australians posted in the West Bank.

Malki told me this in a meeting in Ramallah earlier this week. Specifically, he would like Arab, probably Egyptian, forces to come into Gaza, to stop rockets being fired at Israel and, in his words, to "stop any Israeli incursions into Gaza".

Then, he says, the Palestinian forces in Gaza should be professionalised. But to provide security, he says the Palestinians "are willing to accept international forces, NATO, American or Australian forces, in Gaza or the West Bank. We will go the extra mile. We will take away any excuse from the Israelis (not to withdraw from Palestinian territories)."

At the moment, Malki's proposal is unrealistic. The Palestinian Authority cannot guarantee its own security in Gaza. Egypt, let alone the US or Australia, would be unlikely to commit troops and the Israelis would not accept a restriction on their right to self-defence.

Nonetheless, in the unlikely event that a peace deal is reached between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the question of international forces to monitor the deal and perhaps to guard borders will become a real one.

Given Australia's remarkable history of involvement in the Middle East, the question of our participation should be given serious consideration by Canberra.

The fact that the Palestinian foreign minister suggested Australian soldiers reflects the high reputation of our troops. But it also demonstrates that Australia's deep friendship with Israel has not remotely diminished our credibility with the Arab world.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and former treasurer Peter Costello are visiting Israel as part of the inaugural Australia Israel Leadership Forum, organised by Melbourne businessman Albert Dadon.

Gillard deserves particular praise for attending the forum, as she was subject to a nasty campaign from the Left to try to intimidate her out of going. The Left internationally is going through one of its periodic bouts of trying to isolate Israel. This is one of those demented moments where allegedly progressive opinion believes it's the height of creativity to engage the mullah dictatorship in Iran, as it steals elections and pursues nuclear weapons, but wrong to visit a democratic ally such as Israel.

The Rudd government has stood four square against this nonsensical position, as demonstrated in Kevin Rudd's long telephone conversation with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, earlier this week.

Rudd, who follows the Middle East with forensic attention to detail, discussed Netanyahu's speech responding to US President Barack Obama's Cairo address to the Muslim world. Specifically Rudd and Netanyahu discussed the prospect of a Palestinian state and the situation in Iran. Read more here...

Source: The Australian

UN Peacekeepers Salute Imad Mughniyeh, Dead Terrorists

United Nations "peacekeepers" stand and salute the remains of Hizballah terrorists on a truck decorated with a photograph of Imad Mughniyeh, mastermind of the Marine barracks bombing that killed hundreds of US citizens.

U.N. soldiers salute as a tractor-trailer loaded with coffins of nearly 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters and bearing the picture of slain Hezbollah top leader Imad Mughniyeh, right, arrives in the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, Thursday, July 17, 2008. Eight tractor-trailers loaded with coffins are driving from south Lebanon to Beirut a day after a prisoner swap between Israel and Lebanon.

Source: LGF
More on the subject:
Baby-Killer Receives 'Hero's Welcome' by Hezbollah
Some of the dead terrorists are here: [1], [2]