Armoured & Luxury
Chauffeur Driven Cars

Cameroon has sentenced 89 members of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram to death, local media report.

They were convicted on terror charges by a military court for their roles in several attacks in Cameroon’s northern region which borders Nigeria. Cameroon passed an anti-terror law in 2014 which introduced the death sentence.

This is the first time the death sentenced has been used since that law was passed. The 89 are among 850 people arrested in Cameroon on charges of links to Boko Haram.

Following the death sentences, a local human rights group has called for reforms to Cameroon’s justice system. Hundreds of people have been killed in a spate of attacks in Cameroon since it joined a regional force set up to tackle the militants last year.

Boko Haram:

• Founded in 2002, initially focused on opposing Western-style education – Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” in the Hausa language
  Launched military operations in 2009
  Thousands killed, mostly in north-eastern Nigeria, abducted hundreds, including at least 200 schoolgirls
  Joined Islamic State, now calls itself “West African province”
  Seized large area in north-east, where it declared caliphate

Two British diplomats have been caught illegally filming military aircraft near an airfield in North Ossetia, Russian state TV has claimed.

Rossiya 1 said defence attache Carl Scott and assistant naval attache Ryan Coatalen-Hodgson from the Moscow embassy were spying near Mozdok base. The Foreign Office confirmed that two British men were stopped.

Russian TV claimed an American man was also detained while taking photos at a military airfield in the Moscow region. A UK Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “It is routine for defence attaches to travel around their host countries in the course of their diplomatic duties. This is no different in Russia. “The defence attaches from the British Embassy in Moscow submitted to all relevant checks requested by the Russian authorities.”

Car Escape

The report on the Russian state TV channel on Tuesday evening said three “spies conducting surveillance of air bases in North Ossetia and Moscow Region have been detained”. It claimed that one “British general tried to escape in a car with diplomatic number plates” and suggested that the diplomats could be expelled. The report showed the British men’s car and their diplomatic cards.

Read More

Four people have been arrested in the Paris area as part of a wider investigation into a possible plot to attack France, officials say.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said police had information to suggest one of those arrested “could undertake violent actions in France”.

But he played down French media reports that an attack was imminent.

France remains on high alert after the jihadist attacks in Paris in November that killed 130 people.More than 100 people were killed and many wounded in a series of shootings and suicide bombings that targeted a concert hall, major stadium, restaurants and bars over the course of a Friday evening.The so-called Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind the attacks.

French media reported that three men and a woman were detained at dawn in the 18th arrondissement of Paris and the nearby northern department of Seine-Saint-Denis.

Read More

The Kurdish militant group TAK says it carried out Sunday’s deadly attack in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

In an online statement it said the attack, which killed 37 people, was in revenge for military operations in the mainly Kurdish south-east.

The TAK, an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), had already said it was behind another bombing in Ankara last month.Authorities in Turkey have blamed the latest attack on the PKK.In a further development, Germany closed its embassy in Ankara and its consulate and a school in Istanbul on Thursday citing a “concrete threat” of an imminent attack.

Twelve German tourists were killed in a suicide bombing blamed on the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Istanbul in January.

Sunday’s suicide car bombing took place in a busy commercial district and transport hub in the city centre. Dozens of people were wounded.

After a bombing in 2011, TAK went quiet for a few years but has now reared its head with an attack at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport in December and the two suicide bombings in Ankara. The reason is clearly the resumption of armed conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish militants in the south-east. Since a ceasefire between the two sides collapsed last July, hundreds have been killed and predominantly Kurdish cities are under repeated curfews.

Read More

At least 41 civilians have been killed and 35 others wounded in an air strike by Saudi-led coalition warplanes in northern Yemen, medics say.

Witnesses said at least two missiles hit a busy market in the Mustaba district of Hajja province at midday.

Video footage purportedly of the aftermath showed what appeared to be the bodies of several children. Hajja is controlled by Houthi rebels, who the coalition is battling on behalf of Yemen’s government.

More than 6,200 people, half of them civilians, have been killed since the coalition launched a military campaign to defeat the rebels at the end of March 2015, according to the UN. Last month, two-thirds of the 168 civilian deaths were attributed to air strikes.

Blood Everywhere

“The scene was terrifying,” witness Showei Hamoud told the Associated Press by telephone after Tuesday’s attack. “Blood and body parts everywhere.” “People collected the torn limbs in bags and blankets,” he said, adding that many of the dead were children who worked at market stalls or carried goods. The international medical charity, Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), initially said in a series of tweets that it had received 40 injured civilians at its Abs hospital, among them women and children. But a doctor at the hospital later told the AFP news agency that it had received the bodies of 41 people, along with 35 others who were wounded.

The director of the Hajja health department, Dr Ayman Mathkour, also told the Reuters news agency that the death toll stood at 41. The pro-Houthi Saba news agency reported that a total of 65 civilians had died in raids on the market and a nearby restaurant. There was no immediate comment from the Saudi-led coalition.

In January, a UN panel found that coalition air strikes had targeted civilians in Yemen and assessed that some attacks might constitute crimes against humanity.