Unidentified drone kills PKK member, injures another near Iraq's Sulaymaniyah, sources say
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Arab News
36 minutes ago
- Arab News
Pakistani militants use drones to target security forces, officials say
PESHAWAR: Militants in Pakistan have started using commercially acquired quadcopter drones to drop bombs on security forces in the country's northwest, police said, a potentially dangerous development in the volatile region. The use of such drones, which are powered by four rotors allowing for vertical take-off and landing, is worrying the overstretched and under-equipped police force, the frontline against militant attacks, officials said. Two quadcopters sent by the militants targeted a police station earlier this month, killing a woman and injuring three children in a nearby house in Bannu district, said police officer Muhammad Anwar. A drone spotted over another police station on Saturday was shot down with assault rifles, he said. It was armed with a mortar shell, he said. At least eight such drone attacks have targeted police and security forces in Bannu and adjacent areas in the last two and a half months, he said. Regional police chief Sajjad Khan said militants were still trying to master the use of the drones. 'The militants have acquired these modern tools, but they are in the process of experimentation and that's why they can't hit their targets accurately,' he added. The militants are using the quadcopters to drop improvised explosive devices or mortar shells on their targets, five security officials said. They said these explosive devices were packed with ball bearings or pieces of iron. Provincial police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said the police lacked resources to meet the new challenge. 'We do not have equipment to counter the drones,' he told the local Geo News channel on Sunday. 'The militants are better equipped than we are,' he said. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the drone strikes. The main militant group operating in the northwest is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban. But they denied using the drones. 'We are trying to acquire this technology,' a TTP spokesman told Reuters. In 2024, militants carried out 335 countrywide attacks, killing 520 people, according to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an independent organization. In recent weeks, thousands of residents from the border region have staged protests, aimed against both the attacks by militants and what they fear is an offensive planned by the army, according to a statement issued by the demonstrators. They said they feared that a military operation against the militants would displace them from their homes. A sweeping operation against militants in 2014 was preceded by a forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents. They spent months, and in many cases years, away from their homes. Pakistan's army did not respond to a request for comment on whether an operation was planned.
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
Israeli undercover force detains senior Gaza health official, ministry says
CAIRO: An Israeli undercover force detained Marwan Al-Hams, a senior Gaza Health Ministry official, outside the field hospital of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday, the health ministry said. Hams, in charge of field hospitals in the enclave, was on his way to visit the ICRC field hospital in northern Rafah when an Israeli force 'abducted' him after opening fire, killing one person and wounding another civilian nearby, according to the ministry. Medics said the person killed was a local journalist who was filming an interview with Hams when the incident happened. The Israeli military and the Red Cross did not immediately respond following separate requests by Reuters for comment. Israel has raided and attacked hospitals across the Gaza Strip during the 21-month war in Gaza, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes, an accusation the group denies. But sending undercover forces to carry out arrests has been rare.
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
US officials express anger over Israel's Syria strikes
LONDON: White House officials have expressed frustration over Israel's bombing of Syria, The Times reported. Israel carried out a series of attacks on government targets in the Syrian Arab Republic last week, including a strike on a tank convoy and the shelling of the Defense Ministry in Damascus. US diplomats warned Israel to cease its intervention, which it claimed to be conducting in support of Syria's Druze minority. Clashes between local Bedouin and Druze forces had broken out in Syria's southern province of Sweida, with the country's government sending troops to quell the violence. One White House official told Axios that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 'acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time. This could undermine what (US President Donald) Trump is trying to do.' Trump lifted sanctions on Syria earlier this year after meeting President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who has pledged to unite his country and bring an end to more than a decade of violence. The US brokered a ceasefire last week that appeared to stop the clashes in Sweida, where more than 1,000 people were killed over seven days, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The violence was reportedly sparked by a series of kidnappings targeting members of various faiths, clans and tribal groups in the province. Before launching strikes, Israel claimed that Syrian government forces were involved in targeting the Druze. Israel has its own community of Druze, numbering about 130,000, and some Syrian members of the faith traveled to meet family members there to escape the violence in Sweida. After the overthrow of Bashar Assad's regime last year, Israel sent forces into Sweida to establish a buffer zone. The province borders Syria's Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967. Another US official told Axios: 'Netanyahu is sometimes like a child who just won't behave.' US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday urged Al-Sharaa to halt the violence in his country, which he described as 'horrifying and dangerous.' The 'rape and slaughter of innocent people, which has and is still occurring, must end,' Rubio said on X, adding that Syrian authorities 'must hold accountable and bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks.' White House officials also described growing consternation over Israel's war on Gaza, especially after the shelling of the Palestinian enclave's only Catholic church last week. The attack killed three Palestinians. A senior American official told Axios after the church strike: 'The feeling is that every day there is something new … what the f***?' Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, also delivered surprise public criticism in the wake of an arson attack on a Byzantine-era church in the occupied West Bank over the weekend. 'To commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship, it is an act of terror, and it is a crime,' he said. 'There should be consequences.' He also demanded 'accountability' from Israel after a Palestinian American was killed in the West Bank last week.
