Turkey aborted attack on Syria at last minute over downed jet, report says

Turkey abandoned the idea of bombing Syria's anti-aircraft weapons and missile systems on the countries’ border at the last minute in the wake of last month’s downing of a Turkish jet, daily Sabah reported today.

F-16 warplanes were reportedly prepared to fly to Syria to conduct the bombings when the bodies of the downed jet’s pilots were found in the sea.

There were also three other factors preventing Turkey from conducting the sortie, according to reports.

The first factor was that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) were not familiar enough with the Russian antiaircraft systems deployed in Syria as the defenses had not yet been tested by Turkish jets, Sabah reported.

The TSK also held back because it had not yet been revealed how the Turkish jet had been shot down, the newspaper said.

Most importantly, however, Turkey chose not to attack because of the political risk attached to such a bombing campaign. Attacking Syria could have damaged the country's image at the same time that Ankara has been supporting Middle Eastern peace efforts, authorities decided, according to the daily.

Syria downed the Turkish jet on June 22 in the eastern Mediterranean.

Assailants attack Microsoft HQ in Athens

Attackers targeted the Microsoft main office in the Greek capital in a pre-dawn arson attack Wednesday, smashing the entrance with a mini-van and setting off gas canisters, police said. AFP Photo

Attackers targeted the Microsoft main office in the Greek capital in a pre-dawn arson attack Wednesday, smashing the entrance with a mini-van and setting off gas canisters, police said. AFP Photo

Assailants attacked the offices of Microsoft in Athens early Wednesday, driving a van through the front doors and setting off an incendiary device that burned the building entrance, police said.

There were no reports of injuries in the pre-dawn attack on the U.S. company’s headquarters in the Greek capital, located in the Maroussi suburb north of the city center.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Authorities said no warning call had been made before the attack.

Greece has experienced attacks by several small armed anarchist or domestic terrorist groups for decades, which usually target official buildings, banks or symbols of state power with small bombs or incendiary devices. The attacks usually occur late at night and rarely cause injuries.

Police said initial information indicated three people had been inside the van. They forced the two security guards at the building to leave before they reversed the van into the front entrance, smashing the door.

The two security guards were giving testimony to police.

The assailants then triggered an incendiary device inside the van that police said appeared to have consisted of camping gas canisters and several containers of gasoline.

Police forensic teams examined the burned-out van, which was still outside the blackened entrance later Monday morning.

Although they have died down over the past year, attacks had spiked following the fatal police shooting of a teenager in Athens in December 2008 that led to widespread riots across the country.

One group that had appeared in the aftermath of the rioting had set itself apart by claiming responsibility for shooting dead an anti-terrorism police officer in central Athens in 2009 and a journalist in 2010.

Afghan fighters storm NATO base in Kandahar

KABUL, Afghanistan — Violence spiked in southern Afghanistan as militants stormed a NATO military base and attacked a police checkpoint Tuesday, a day after gunmen wearing police uniforms killed a U.S. soldier.

The heaviest fighting in Afghanistan this summer has been in the south and east where Afghan forces are increasingly taking charge of security from their international partners. That could signal a rocky transition as foreign combat troops are due to withdraw by the end of 2014.

Most of the attacks over the past two days occurred in the southern Kandahar province, the Taliban’s birthplace.

Insurgents attacked a NATO base before dawn Tuesday in Kandahar’s Shah Wali Kot district, the U.S.-led coalition said.

Fewer than 10 U.S. troops were wounded and officials believe coalition forces were able to kill seven or eight insurgents, said Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was targeting troop sleeping quarters.

Kirby said the attack was apparently carried out by insurgents wearing Afghan military uniforms who breached the perimeter of the operating base and were quickly engaged by coalition forces inside.

The attack at the base appears to have been “at least facilitated — potentially facilitated — by an individual dressed in the Afghan national police uniform,” Kirby said.

He noted that violence frequently increases in the summer when it is warmer and the Taliban are more easily able to move through mountain passes.

“Part of that is because of the weather. Part of it is because ... coalition forces are being more aggressive,” he said.

A few hours later, militants wearing Afghan police uniforms attacked a police checkpoint in Kandahar city. Three policemen were killed and nine others were wounded during an hour-long gunbattle that ensued, according to the Ministry of Interior. Four militants also died.

The Taliban again claimed responsibility and said the clash lasted six hours.

The U.S. and other foreign troops have increasingly been targeted by Afghan security forces, or militants disguised in their uniforms.

On Monday, three gunmen dressed in Afghan police uniforms killed one American service member and wounded nine others in Kandahar’s Zhari district, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because an investigation was still under way. The Kandahar province spokesman said the attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the coalition forces, then fled the scene.

The Defense Department said Army Pfc. Jarrod Lallier, 20, of Spokane, Wash., died when individuals in Afghan police uniforms turned their weapons against his unit. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C.

Efforts to draw down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan rely on the training and mentoring of Afghan forces so they can take over the security of their country. Such insider attacks fuel distrust between the two forces and have triggered increased security protections for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

It remains unclear whether the gunmen were actual members of the Afghan National Police or militants dressed in their uniforms.

The number of insider attacks in the country has escalated, with more than a dozen fatal assaults already this year that have led to more than 20 deaths.

Last year 21 fatal attacks killed 35 coalition service members, according to the coalition. That compares with 11 fatal attacks and 20 deaths the previous year. In 2007 and 2008 there were a combined total of four attacks and four deaths.

The increase accelerated after a series of mistakes by U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan, including the burning of Korans and other religious materials earlier this year at a U.S. base north of Kabul.

Separately, the coalition said a NATO service member was killed Tuesday in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan. No other information was released so it was unclear whether the service member died in one of the attacks in Kandahar province or elsewhere in the south. So far this year, 200 NATO service members have died in Afghanistan.

In other violence Tuesday, gunmen assassinated two local government employees in the Chaparhar district of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, said the governor’s spokesman, Ahmad Zia Abdulzai. The Taliban routinely target Afghan officials in an attempt to weaken the resolve of a government they say is collaborating with foreign occupiers.

Elsewhere, a car hit a roadside bomb Monday in the Musa Qala district of southern Helmand province, killing eight civilians, including women and children, the governor’s office said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Afghan authorities announced that two men have been charged in connection with a Dec. 6 suicide bombing that killed 56 worshippers and wounded more than 160 others last year outside a Shiite shrine in Kabul. It was Afghanistan’s first major sectarian assault since the fall of the Taliban regime more than a decade ago.

Officials with the Afghan intelligence service and Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko told reporters the two men confessed to transporting the suicide attacker from Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan, to the shrine in Kabul.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Pakistan-based group that has carried out other attacks against Shiite Muslims, claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The attorney general said the bombing was aimed at dividing Afghan Sunni and Shiite Muslims. He alleged that the Pakistani intelligence service was involved in the attack during the period of Ashoura, which marks the seventh century death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied facilitating attacks in Afghanistan.

One of the men, Rahim Gul from Bati Kot district of Nangarhar province, told officials on a taped confession that he transported the suicide bomber because he was poor and badly needed the 10,000 Pakistani rupees (about $106) the organizers of the plot had agreed to pay him. The second man charged, Habibullah, who uses only one name, is from Nangarhar’s Surkh Rod district.

U.S. declassifies attacks in Yemen, Somalia

The White House is partially lifting the lid of secrecy on its counterterrorism campaign against al-Qaida in Yemen and Somalia by formally acknowledging for the first time that it is conducting lethal attacks in those countries, officials said Friday.

The White House’s semiannual report to Congress on the state of U.S. combat operations abroad, delivered Friday, mentions what has been widely reported for years but never formally acknowledged by the administration: The U.S. military has been taking “direct action” against members of al-Qaida and affiliates in Yemen and Somalia.

The report does not elaborate, but “direct action” is a military term of art that refers to a range of lethal attacks, which in the case of Yemen and Somalia include attacks by armed drones. The report does not mention drones or other weapons.

The report applies only to U.S. military operations, including those by special operations forces — not those conducted by the CIA.

The report does not provide details of any military operations in either Yemen or Somalia. It merely acknowledges they have happened. Killings of terror suspects overseas are acknowledged by the administration, but it does not mention the involvement of drones. The CIA and military have separate drone fleets.

The decision by President Obama to declassify the existence of the counterterror actions in those two countries amounts an incremental move toward greater openness about the use of U.S. force overseas. It does not reflect any change in the intensity or basic character of the U.S. campaign to defeat al-Qaida.

A previous step in the direction of greater official transparency came in April when the White House’s counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, made the first formal confirmation that the U.S. uses armed drones against terrorists. But he did not mention their use in specific countries.

The new information in Friday’s report comes amid outcries from some in Congress about leaks to the news media about details of classified activities such as the existence of a White House “kill list” of targeted al-Qaida militants. The accusation, mostly by Republicans, is that the White House has orchestrated the leaks to improve Obama’s re-election chances, an allegation the president has rejected as “offensive” and “wrong.”

Three administration officials who briefed The Associated Press on the decision to declassify the existence of the military’s counterterrorism campaigns in Yemen and Somalia said Obama determined that the time was ripe, in part because the U.S. has built closer relations with the Yemeni government and with governments interested in eliminating extremist elements in Somalia. Somalia has not had a fully functioning government since 1991.

The officials said the declassification of further details in future reports to Congress would remain under White House review.

Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, the White House is required to report to Congress every six months on U.S. combat operations abroad. Friday’s report includes a secret attachment with classified details, which was not released publicly.

The last report, on Dec. 15, 2011, made no mention of Yemen or Somalia. Instead it said that in relation to efforts against al-Qaida, the U.S. was working with partners “with a particular focus on countries within the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility,” which is a broad swath of territory that includes the entire Middle East and Central Asia.

Friday’s report was more explicit. It said that in Somalia the U.S. military has worked to counter the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida and al-Qaida-associated elements of a militant group called al-Shabaab.

“In a limited number of cases, the U.S. military has taken direct action in Somalia against members of al-Qaida, including those who are also members of al-Shabaab, who are engaged in efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against the United States and our interests,” it said.

It said the U.S. military also has been working closely with the Yemeni government to “operationally dismantle and ultimately eliminate” the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.

It called AQAP “the most active and dangerous affiliate of al-Qaida today.”

“Our joint efforts have resulted in direct action against a limited number of AQAP operatives and senior leaders in that country who posed a terrorist threat to the United States and our interests,” the report said.