Deadly shooting shakes Lebanese city, culprit a ‘lone wolf’

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Our prayers are with the family of the victims of this terrorist attacks! 

By Hassan Ammar and Andrea Rosa | AP - TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Military police and forensics in white overalls deployed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Tuesday after a lone gunman went on an overnight shooting spree, killing four security personnel before blowing himself up in an apartment in a residential building. The rare shooting, in which the gunman used a motorcycle to move around, opening fire on police and army vehicles, shook the predominantly Sunni Muslim coastal city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Interior Minister Raya El Hassan told reporters that the gunman, identified as Abdul-Rahman Mabsout, is a former member of the Islamic State group and now a “lone wolf.” She said the situation was under control. The shooting began late Monday with Mabsout first firing at a branch of the Lebanese Central Bank, then driving around, shooting at police and later at an army vehicle, killing four.

With police in hot pursuit, opening fire and using tear gas, Mabsout then drove to a residential building, where he shot his way up the stairs and into an empty apartment on the fourth floor and barricaded himself inside. An hours-long standoff ensued, culminating with security forces storming the apartment. Cornered, Mabsout detonated his explosives vest, killing himself instantly. On Tuesday, there were multiple signs of battle. At least four civilian cars and one police car were heavily damaged, their windshields smashed and pocked by bullet holes. Military police and forensics removed bullets from the street. Tear gas canisters were still on the ground. The nine-floor apartment building where Mabsout died was shell pocked and the apartment itself partially destroyed. Mabsout left a message, apparently for the apartment’s owner, on a mirror. “Forgive me my Muslim brother. ... God willing. I love you in God, I didn’t mean it.”

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Israel expects U.S.-mediated Lebanese sea border talks in weeks

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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel expects to launch U.S.-mediated talks within weeks with Lebanon on setting their maritime border, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday, naming a U.N. peacekeeper compound in southern Lebanon as a possible venue. Lebanon has not commented publicly on whether it would attend talks or on any possible timeline. The United States, which has been sending a senior envoy on shuttle missions between Lebanon and Israel, also has not announced a date or venue but said it is prepared to help them resolve the dispute. Formally at war since Israel’s 1948 founding, the neighbors have long disagreed on border demarcations in the eastern Mediterranean, an issue that gained prominence in the past decade when large deposits of natural gas were found there. Among the bridging proposals put forward by both sides was for international energy groups, operating in both Israeli and Lebanese waters, to carry out the first seismological survey of the disputed area, the Israeli official told Reuters. Last week, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said Israel was open to U.S.-mediated talks on the sea border. The senior Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday that Israel expects the negotiations “will begin already in the coming weeks”.

The Google Outage Highlights the Perils of a Centralized Internet

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Starting at around 3:30 EST on Sunday, a problem with Google’s cloud services triggered a massive disruption that rippled across the internet. According to the company’s own G Suite Status Dashboard, the Sunday outage at one point disrupted nearly every service Google offers in the US and Europe ranging from Gmail to Google Docs. “The network congestion issue in eastern USA, affecting Google Cloud, G Suite, and YouTube has been resolved for all affected users as of 4:00pm US/Pacific,” Google said in a statement.

The cloud outages impacted more than just Google services. Any services that leaned on Google’s cloud lost functionality, including Shopify, Snapchat, Discord, and even Rocket League game servers. Many Apple cloud-based services were also hampered by the outage, including iCloud Mail, iCloud Drive, and iMessage. Sunday’s issues once again highlighted how fragile the modern internet really is, and how reliant we are on Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud), who collectively dominate the $70 billion cloud computing market. The outage also again showcased that however carefully engineers may plan, having a centralized point of failure will inevitably cause headaches—especially when you’ve trusted your entire backend computing power or storage to just one company.

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Lawyer for Nizar Zacca held in Iran says he will be freed

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BEIRUT (AP) — The lawyer for Nizar Zacca held in Iran since 2015 said Monday that his client will be released in the "next few days." Majed Dimashkiyeh told The Associated Press that Nizar Zakka's expected release comes after mediations by top Lebanese officials, including President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri.  Some Iranian media outlets reported earlier Monday that Zakka would be released soon without giving further details. The expected release of Nizar Zakka, 52, comes at a time of rising tension in the Middle East between the United States and Iran. Zakka, who has permanent U.S. residency, went missing in 2015, during his fifth trip to Iran. Two weeks later, Iranian state TV reported that he was in custody and suspected of having "deep links" to U.S. intelligence services. Zakka was sentenced to 10 years in prison in September 2016 and handed a $4.2 million fine after a security court convicted him of espionage. Zakka's family denies the allegations. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives issued a resolution two years ago calling for Zakka's release.

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Militant who killed members of Lebanese Army, police blows himself up

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by Joseph Haboush| The Daily Star

BEIRUT: The militant who opened fire at the Lebanese Army and Internal Security forces on the eve of Eid al-Fitr late Monday has been killed, an eyewitness told The Daily Star. Abdel-Rahman Mabsout, an Islamist who fought with Daesh (ISIS) in Syria and was arrested by Lebanese security forces in 2016, killed one police officer and two soldiers, Defense Minister Elias Bou Saab told LBCI. Meanwhile, a statement from the Army said that Mabsout, who was strapped with an explosive belt, blew himself up as he was cornered by security forces that raided the building in a two-hour operation. The statement said there were no other injuries when he blew himself up.

An eyewitness and neighbor of the building Mabsout was hiding out in told The Daily Star that he began shooting from the roof of his building and then went inside. As the eyewitness was speaking to The Daily Star by phone, heavy gunfire and explosions could be heard in the background. An Army source told The Daily Star earlier “one soldier and another ISF member were martyred, while a third ISF member is in critical condition.” At around 11:30 p.m. local media reported that the militant was on a motorcycle alone as he fired at the different targets. A statement from the Army said that at 11:00 p.m., Mabsout opened fire at the Central Bank in Tripoli and another post of the ISF at the Tripoli Serail. “In addition [to these posts], a unit of the Army came under attack, which led to the martyrdom of a soldier and injured others,” the statement said. The statement added the Army was deployed in the area and searching for the suspect to be arrested. Mabsout was released from Roumieh Prison in late 2017.

The Most Powerful Arab Ruler Isn’t M.B.S. It’s M.B.Z

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By David D. Kirkpatrick - nytimes.com --This is an opinion article does not necessarily represent khazen.org opinion

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the 29-year-old commander of the almost negligible air force of the United Arab Emirates, had come to Washington shopping for weapons. In 1991, in the months after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the young prince wanted to buy so much military hardware to protect his own oil-rich monarchy — from Hellfire missiles to Apache helicopters to F-16 jets — that Congress worried he might destabilize the region. But the Pentagon, trying to cultivate accommodating allies in the Gulf, had identified Prince Mohammed as a promising partner. The favorite son of the semi-literate Bedouin who founded the United Arab Emirates, Prince Mohammed was a serious-minded, British-trained helicopter pilot who had persuaded his father to transfer $4 billion into the United States Treasury to help pay for the 1991 war in Iraq. Richard A. Clarke, then an assistant secretary of state, reassured lawmakers that the young prince would never become “an aggressor.” “The U.A.E. is not now and never will be a threat to stability or peace in the region,” Mr. Clarke said in congressional testimony. “That is very hard to imagine. Indeed, the U.A.E. is a force for peace.” Thirty years later, Prince Mohammed, now 58, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, is arguably the most powerful leader in the Arab world. He is also among the most influential foreign voices in Washington, urging the United States to adopt his increasingly bellicose approach to the region.

Prince Mohammed is almost unknown to the American public and his tiny country has fewer citizens than Rhode Island. But he may be the richest man in the world. He controls sovereign wealth funds worth $1.3 trillion, more than any other country. His influence operation in Washington is legendary (Mr. Clarke got rich on his payroll). His military is the Arab world’s most potent, equipped through its work with the United States to conduct high-tech surveillance and combat operations far beyond its borders. For decades, the prince has been a key American ally, following Washington’s lead, but now he is going his own way. His special forces are active in Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Egypt’s North Sinai. He has worked to thwart democratic transitions in the Middle East, helped install a reliable autocrat in Egypt and boosted a protégé to power in Saudi Arabia.

At times, the prince has contradicted American policy and destabilized neighbors. Rights groups have criticized him for jailing dissidents at home, for his role in creating a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and for backing the Saudi prince whose agents killed the dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi. Yet under the Trump administration, his influence in Washington appears greater than ever. He has a rapport with President Trump, who has frequently adopted the prince’s views on Qatar, Libya and Saudi Arabia, even over the advice of cabinet officials or senior national security staff. Western diplomats who know the prince — known as M.B.Z. — say he is obsessed with two enemies, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Trump has sought to move strongly against both and last week took steps to bypass congressional opposition to keep selling weapons to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “M.B.Z. has an extraordinary way of telling Americans his own interests but making it come across as good advice about the region,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama, whose sympathy for the Arab Spring and negotiations with Iran brought blistering criticism from the Emirati prince. When it comes to influence in Washington, Mr. Rhodes added, “M.B.Z. is in a class by himself.” Prince Mohammed worked assiduously before the presidential election to crack Mr. Trump’s inner circle, and secured a secret meeting during the transition period with the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The prince also tried to broker talks between the Trump administration and Russia, a gambit that later entangled him in the special counsel’s investigation into foreign election interference.

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