This purports to be video footage of the RPG attack on the Cosco Asia showing 2 individuals firing RPGs at the container ship (albeit, thank the Lord, to little effect). Reuters reports that Egyptian authorities have arrested 3 suspects in what is described as a “terrorist attack.”
Tag Archives: terrorist attack
Container ship hit by RPG, machine gun fire in Suez Canal
The Cosco Asia was struck by an RPG fired from the shore which struck a container near to the accommodation block. Machine gun fire was also reported.
Egypt Boosts Suez Security as Foiled Attack Shows Risks
Egyptian authorities moved to bolster security along the Suez Canal after a foiled attack on a ship traversing the waterway that handles about 8 percent of world trade spotlighted new threats confronting officials after Mohamed Mursi’s ouster.
The failed Aug. 31 attack on the Panama-registered Cosco (1919) Asia didn’t damage the ship or its cargo, Suez Canal Authority head Mohab Mamish said in a statement yesterday. The military dealt “decisively” with the attempt, he said, without giving details.
A convoy of container ships pass southbound along the Suez Canal towards Suez, Egypt.
Egyptian authorities moved to bolster security along the Suez Canal after a foiled attack on a ship traversing the waterway that handles about 8 percent of world trade spotlighted new threats confronting officials after Mohamed Mursi’s ouster.
The failed Aug. 31 attack on the Panama-registered Cosco (1919) Asia didn’t damage the ship or its cargo, Suez Canal Authority head Mohab Mamish said in a statement yesterday. The military dealt “decisively” with the attempt, he said, without giving details.
The maritime incident underscored the threats in the country as the military-backed government pursues an offensive against the Muslim Brotherhood and militants following Mursi’s July 3 ouster. More than 1,000 people have died, most of them supporters of the toppled Islamist leader who were killed in a single week in August amid clashes with security forces.
“Events like this increase the confusion and cause international embarrassment,” said Adel Soliman, head of the private Strategic Dialogue Forum research institute. “You have a state of turbulence in the street under which anything can happen.”
The waterway and the ships transiting it are completely secure, the state-run Middle East News Agency said today, citing Ossama Askar, commander of the Third Field Army.
State of Emergency
Authorities are already grappling at once with quashing the Brotherhood who see Mursi’s ouster as a “coup” while the military presses on with a campaign aimed at purging the strategic Sinai Peninsula of insurgents, some inspired by al-Qaeda.
After the Islamist was pushed from power, Egypt declared a state of emergency and enforced a curfew that’s since been eased — all in what has been a largely successful bid to quash the protests led by the Brotherhood and their Islamist allies.
Mursi will face trial in a Cairo criminal court along with 14 Muslim Brotherhood leaders for “inciting violence and killing” in events that occurred near the el-Itihadiya palace in Cairo on Dec. 5, news agency MENA reported, citing Prosecutor Mohamed Hisham.
Leaders Arrested
A Brotherhood call for protests on Aug. 30 fizzled because security authorities prevented demonstrators from rallying in a single location. The group said in an e-mailed statement yesterday that “the era of sleep and rest is over until we take back the revolution.”
Authorities yesterday ordered Sobhi Saleh, another Brotherhood leader, held for 15 days pending investigation after he was arrested in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. Saleh faces allegations including inciting violence, according to the Alexandria prosecutor’s office said in a faxed statement yesterday. In all, more than 1,000 Brotherhood members, including its supreme guide, have been arrested, with some facing charges as serious as murder.
Keeping canal traffic flowing normally became a concern even before Mursi was deposed as the military stepped up security along the waterway months ago.
Canal Authority spokesman Tarek Hassanein said by phone that he didn’t have additional details and Zhang Jiqing, general manager at the executive division of the Beijing-based COSCO, didn’t return two calls outside normal business hours yesterday.
The Suez Canal and SUMED pipeline, as the link between Egypt’s ports of Ain Sukhna on the Red Sea and Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean is known, together handled 3.8 million barrels a day of crude and products, according to 2011 data cited by the International Energy Agency. Most of that traffic was northbound.
The recent unrest has undercut Egypt’s hopes to rally an economy stunted since longtime leader Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in 2011. It’s also led some key allies, including the U.S. and European Union, to talk about withholding aid.
Early ElectionsEgyptian officials have downplayed the criticism as threats and said they have contingency plans. At the same time, officials are pressing ahead with a “road map” announced by the military that sees the country amending the now-suspended constitution and holding elections by early next year.
Interim President Adly Mansour issued a decree yesterday setting up a 50-member committee charged with amending the charter, which would then be voted on in a referendum, presidency spokesman Ehab Badawy told reporters. The Salafi Nour Party will have a representative on the panel, Badawy said, adding that invitations were extended to other Islamist parties, including the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party. Only Nour responded, he said.
Assessing the terrorist threat against the Sochi Olympics
When the IOC announced that Russia had bribed its way to a “successful” Olympic bid er… been awarded the privilege of hosting the 2014 Summer Olympics at Sochi, I thought to myself, “Oh dear. That’s rather close to the Caucasian hornet’s nest. I do hope the Russian authorities take all the necessary precautions.”
Sochi lays on the Black Sea, domain of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet. Given the low-outlay, high-impact of a USS Cole style attack or a Mumbai type attack it should be hoped that the Russian military have a strong… very strong… presence at Sochi.
Assessing the terrorist threat against Sochi
© RIA Novosti. Mihail Mokrushin
Throughout Russia, clocks are counting down to the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The importance of the event, to both government and country, is hard to overstate. President Vladimir Putin has vested much of his personal credibility in the games, as well as the economic future of Southern Russia.
Costs are estimated to run to $33.5 billion, making the Sochi Games the most expensive Olympics in history. Thirteen massive new facilities, plus a Formula One track, are currently under construction. The investment in infrastructure is no less impressive, with roads, railways and an airport terminal being constructed to service the games.
Security is one of the key talking points of the Sochi games, of course. On July 3, Doku Umarov, leader of the separatist organization the Caucasus Emirate released a video stating that the 2014 games would be “prevented.”
Umarov had previously claimed responsibility for the 2011 terror attack on Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, the 2010 bombing of the Moscow metro, and the 2009 bombing of the Nevsky Express.
In the video, Umarov not only called on all Muslims within the region to use “maximum force” against the Sochi Games, but also signaled an end to the 2012 moratorium against attacks on Russian civilian targets. The moratorium, Umarov claimed, had been a gesture of solidarity with Russian opposition protesters.
The excuse they needed?
“The Olympics are really the world’s games” Frank Cilluffo, former White House special assistant to the president for homeland security and an associate vice president at George Washington University, told The Moscow News. “Everyone will be watching. Hosting the Games is therefore a point of genuine national pride.”
The Olympics are also an opportunity to cause the host state harm – and the Sochi Games may be no exception. “Looking to the Games in Sochi, you combine a symbolic target with the long history of bloody violence in the nearby North Caucasus, and you have a potentially toxic and explosive mix,” Cilluffo said.
This year’s muted opposition rallies in Russia may also have given Caucasus Emirate leaders the excuse they needed to terrorize civilians again.
“The moratorium was introduced at the time when public protests against Russian authorities were widespread,” Valery Dzutsev, North Caucasus analyst at American think tank the Jamestown Foundation, told The Moscow News. “By the summer [of] 2013, the situation… does not seem to be nearly as threatening to the Kremlin as it [once] was. So the insurgents may have decided that the initial rationale for implementing the moratorium did not exist anymore.”
Threat debated
“How much of a threat the group may pose outside of the Caucasus themselves is unclear,” Matthew Henman, senior analyst at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center, told The Moscow News. “The Caucasus Emirate has been coming under a lot of security forces pressure over the past few years [as Sochi approaches], and it isn’t at all clear whether the group, or elements within the group, retain the ability to carry out decisive operations beyond the North Caucasus.”
“This is somewhat less of an issue in terms of Sochi, given its relative proximity to the North Caucasus, but the high level of security surrounding the Winter Olympics may make carrying out a successful attack a very challenging proposition for the group,” Henman added.
The authorities respond
The Russian Anti-Terrorist Committee’s response to Umarov’s statement was brief and unyielding. “All of Russia’s state institutions, special services and law enforcement bodies are constantly implementing a set of measures aimed at providing security for Russian citizens,” its official statement read.
The response from Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen republic and close Kremlin ally, was more emotional. ” [Umarov] is Satan,” Kadyrov told journalists. “I am certain that we will eliminate him before the Olympics.”
Yet according to Dzutsev, Kadyrov may be overstating his ability to go after Umarov. “The Olympics in Sochi are Putin’s labor of love, and when Umarov abuses that… even verbally, Kadyrov understandably becomes very upset,” he said. “But he cannot do much more.”
According to Henman, killing Umarov may not necessarily make the Caucasus Emirate organization go away. “As such, even were Umarov to be killed, then a successor would be appointed and the group would continue as before,” he said. “Each of the jamaats [assemblies] has suffered the loss of multiple emirs over the past six or seven years, and these deaths rarely entail a loss of capability or intent.”
It can be said that there is a bitter irony in that a spectacle designed to celebrate humanity at its best should now attract the attention of humanity at its very worst. Worse yet, according to the experts, the threat of terror from the North Caucasus will persist long after the Sochi Games are done.
“The federal and respective republican governments have engaged in concerted counter-terrorism offensives for several years now in an attempt to decisively defeat the Caucasus Emirate,” Henman said. “While they have somewhat succeeded in reducing the group’s operational tempo, they have not addressed the underlying causes of the insurgency.”
http://themoscownews.com/russia/20130716/191771837/Assessing-the-terrorist-threat-against-Sochi.html
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