Category: International

Germany – German Interior Ministry banned Turkish-nationalist biker gang Osmanen Germania BC allegedly for violent crimes and possible ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government – reports DW.

The ban was part of a wider effort by the German authorities cracking down on organized crime. The group’s size is estimated at 300 people.

Source: Deutsche Welle.

New Delhi – Approximately seven months after the Gokhale over-bridge at Andheri railway station was inspected for structural integrity collapsed.

Railway minister Piyush Goyal requested an inquiry into the incident to be completed by the Commissioner of Railway Safety, Western Circle within 15 days.

Five people were injured in the incident.

Source: original source is Times of India.

Brussels, Belgium, August 25 — After yelling “Allahu akbar” and wounding a Belgium soldier during a violent knife attack the suspect in Friday’s terrorist attack was shot dead.

Belgian authorities reported the soldier was “slightly” wounded and noted that attack was likely work of a “lone wolf” extremist.

Two shots took out the perpetrator.

Source: Telegraph UK

Turkey, Ankara, August 22 — Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech at the Turkish Presidential Palace discussing the ongoing problems with the possible formation of the Kurdish state in northern Syria.

“I believe that my Kurdish brothers would never allow such a formation in northern Syria and southern Turkey. We are one nation within our country in a unitary structure. We are one nation with 80 million people. We have one flag, one homeland and one state. [We have] a homeland of 780,000 square kilometers. We will send those who want to break this nation apart to the grave,” said the president, report from Hurriyet Daily News.

The president continued to discuss his concern with the US and Russian funding and supplying of PKK and PYG forces with military weapons.

“The U.S. tells us, ‘We have the serial numbers of all these armored vehicles. We will take them back when the Raqqa operation is over.’ But I told the U.S. generals and Trump this: ‘That was said to us before regarding northern Iraq, but now we see the U.S. and Russia from the weapons we confiscate from the PKK in northern Iraq. The same thing will happen here tomorrow. Even if we pay you wouldn’t give us these weapons, but you supply [the YPG] with them for free.’ Unfortunately we must keep talking about these things,” says the president.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News

P|M Weighs In:

US supports Kurdish forces who are fighting ISIL. This poses a serious problem for Turkey which identifies PKK as a terrorist organization. (PKK is also identified as a terrorist organization by US DHS) – but the issues (among many) is that PKK also has many off-shoots with many ulterior motives other than fighting ISIL forces.

Historically arming one group to fight another group in an extremely complex war zone does not workout well for anyone.

This issue is not going to go away any time soon.

Turku, Finland, August 18 — In what appears to be a terrorist knife attack involving multiple individuals in Puutori-Market Square in city of Turku one suspect has been wounded by police and taken into custody.

Local authorities claim other suspects maybe still at large.

Several people are reported to have been stabbed.

Source: BBC, JBN

Spain, August 18 — Five suspected jihadist terrorists have been killed by Spanish authorities in another terrorist attack in town of Cambrils that was planned along side the Barcelona van attack.

The prime suspect at large remain Moussa Oukabir. BBC reports he is thought to be a 17 year old driver of the van who killed the people in Las Ramblas yesterday.

Source: BBC

Barcelona, Spain, August 17 — Earlier today an individual drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians in Barcelona’s tourist district of Las Ramblas.

Update: The local authorities have apprehended one of the individuals involved in the savage terrorist attack but there appears to be a horrible case of mis-identification.

Update 2: Not surprisingly the ISIL/ISIS terrorist group claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

It now appears the incident is a vehicular terrorist attack. Current reports state as many as 32 people are injured and 13 are deceased. These figures have not yet been confirmed by official authorities.

Fox News and BBC both reporting the driver of the van has fled after hiding in one of the restaurants.

We ask for patience because these events typically carry wildly inaccurate information.

P|M Weighs In:

Our hearts and prayers are with the deceased and injured. Regardless of the motives of the perpetrator(s) we hope the individual(s) responsible will be apprehended swiftly and brought to the fullest extent of justice.

Sources: Fox News and BBC.