July 3, 2012—Cyprus—Authorities detained a 24-year-old Lebanese Palestinian carrying a Swedish passport on suspicion of involvement in a Hizballah plot to attack Israeli interests in Limassol. He admitted to Hizballah affiliation. He said he was planning to attack planes and buses used by Israeli tourists. Police searching his hotel room found plans to blow up a plane or tour bus. He was collecting flight schedules of charter planes from Israel and tour bus routes. Police said he acted alone. He was ordered to stand trial on September 12 on seventeen terrorism-related charges, including espionage and conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack. He faced life in prison. He was represented by attorney Antonis Georgiades.

July 3–5, 2012—United Kingdom—Police in West Midlands arrested seven men on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism. The arrests followed a weekend discovery of two guns and a small amount of ammunition in a car stopped by police who believed it was uninsured. The detainees included six men from the West Midlands, all in their 20s, and a 43-year-old man from West Yorkshire.

On July 9, 2012, three men were ordered held, pending a July 31 hearing at London’s Central Criminal Court. Jewel Uddin, 26, Omar Mohammed Khan, 27, and Mohammed Hasseen, 23, all from Birmingham, were charged with “engaging in conduct in preparation for an act or acts of terrorism, with the intention of committing such acts.” Prosecutors said that they manufactured an improvised explosive device, acquired firearms and other weapons, and purchased cars connected with their plans, between May 1 and July 4.

On July 11, 2012, another three men, Anzal Hussain, 24, Mohammed Saud, 22, and Zohaib Ahmed, 22, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court to face charges of preparing an act of terrorism in a plot to set off a bomb at a rally of U.K.’s far-right English Defense League, which carries a potential life sentence. Deputy Chief Magistrate Daphne Wickham ordered the Birmingham-based trio held in prison custody until a July 31 hearing with the other three at London’s Central Criminal Court.

July 5, 2012—United Kingdom—London police used smoke grenades and a stun gun to arrest five men and a woman, aged 18 to 30, on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism. The raids occurred against homes in east, west, and north London and businesses in east London. Police said the operation was not linked to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Three brothers were arrested in Stratford, a neighborhood that contains Olympic Park. They did not have any links to the individuals arrested in West Midlands. On July 11, 2012, London police released without charge two of the men detained on July 5–7—an 18-year-old man and a 24-year-old man detained at an address close to the Olympic stadium. The 24-year-old was hit by a taser during his arrest. A 30-year-old woman was released earlier.

On July 18, 2012, Scotland Yard charged three British Muslims with traveling to Pakistan for terrorist training. Richard Dart, 29, Imran Mahmood, 21, and Jahangir Alom, 26, went to Pakistan between 2010 and 2012 “with the intention of committing acts of terrorism or assisting another to commit such acts.” The indictment said they provided others with advice on how to get to Pakistan, get trained, and stay safe in Pakistan. Ruksana Begum, 22, and Khalid Javed Baqa, 47, were charged with having material likely to be useful for terrorism. The five had been arrested earlier in July. Dart, a Muslim convert, was featured in My Brother the Islamist, a BBC documentary. Former police support officer Alom appeared in a YouTube video to talk about his hardline stance. Begum was detained while carrying a memory chip with issues of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire. Baqa also had copies of Inspire and a CD containing “39 Ways to Support and Participate in Jihad.” Alom lives a mile from London’s Olympic Stadium. Mahmood lives down the street from the site of Royal Air Force Northolt in northwest London.

July 6, 2012—Nigeria—Authorities discovered and safely detonated a bomb in Jos. Boko Haram was suspected.

July 7, 2012—Nigeria—Terrorist attacks and reprisal raids in thirteen Christian villages near Jos left thirty-seven people—including fourteen civilians, twenty-one terrorists, and two police officers—dead and more than three hundred people displaced. Police conducted a four-hour gun battle with the attackers. The Nigerian Red Cross tallied fifty-eight killed after a federal lawmaker and a state lawmaker were ambushed on July 8 on their way to a mass burial for the victims. They were identified as Senator Gyang Dantong and majority leader of the Plateau State House of Assembly Gyang Fulani. Another seven people, including one lawmaker, were injured in the ambush. A government spokesman said the terrorists “came in hundreds. Some had (police) uniforms and some even had bulletproof vests.” Muslim Fulani herdsmen were initially suspected until Boko Haram claimed credit.

July 9, 2012—Pakistan—Pakistani Taliban gunmen attacked a Pakistani Army camp on the outskirts of Gujrat at 5:20 a.m., killing eight people. Thousands of Islamist Difah-e-Pakistan (Defense of Pakistan) protestors had spent the night nearby before going to Islamabad to protest the decision to reopen the NATO supply line to Afghanistan.

July 13, 2012—Egypt—Bedouin gunmen jumped from two cars and kidnapped two American tourists and their local tour guide from their tour bus in the Sinai en route to Taba. One of the Americans was Michel Louis, 61, a pastor of Boston’s Free Pentecostal Church of God, from Dorchester, Massachusetts, who was traveling with a group of clergy and church members; the other American was Lisa Alphonse, 39, a woman from another church who worked closely with Louis’s congregation. The kidnappers wanted the release of their relative who was detained in Alexandria, Egypt, on drug charges. Bedouin sheikhs acting as mediators between the kidnappers and the government said that the hostages were unharmed and well fed. Authorities said the principal hostage taker was Germy Abu Masouh, a member of a prominent Bedouin tribe in the Sinai. He wanted Egyptian police to free his uncle, who was caught in Alexandria with a half-ton of drugs. He threatened to kidnap more tourists if the demands were not met. The three hostages were freed unharmed on July 16. The government said it did not give in to the kidnappers’ demands. 12071301

July 13, 2012—Nigeria—A suicide bomber set off his explosives outside the Central Mosque in Maiduguri, killing five people. Alhaji Zanna Umar Mustapha, deputy governor of Borno State, said that the young boy was targeting him and the Shehu of Borno; neither was hurt. Boko Haram was suspected.

July 13, 2012—Syria—Islamic gunmen kidnapped two Western photojournalists—Jeroen Oerlemans, a Dutch freelance photographer with the British agency Panos Picture, and John Cant-lie, a British freelancer who had worked for the Sunday Times of London—after they entered Bab al-Hawa, a border crossing with Turkey. The two were freed on July 27 by another group of rebels. Oerlemans sustained two gunshot wounds while trying to escape; Cantlie was also shot during the failed escape. Oerlemans was hit in the groin; Cantlie in the arm. Oerlemans said in an interview in Turkey with Business News Radio of the Netherlands that he was sure that the gunmen were not Syrians. “They all claimed they came from countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh and Chechnya,” and the United Kingdom. The terrorists accused the journalists of working for the CIA and took their equipment and documents. Between thirty and one hundred jihadi gunmen kept the two hooded and blindfolded and often threatened to kill them. Oerlemans said,

They were definitely quite extreme in their religious beliefs. All day we were spoken to about the Quran and how they would bring shariah law to Syria. I don’t think they were al Qaeda; they seemed too amateurish for that. They said, “We’re not al Qaeda, but al Qaeda is down the road.” Guantanamo was constantly on their minds, and they were saying, “This is what you do to our guys.” They would cock their weapons and say, “Prepare for the afterlife,” or, “You better repent and accept Islam.” It was pretty terrifying, I can assure you.

He assumed their rescuers were from the Free Syrian Army, who fired into the air to intimidate the jihadis. By October 9, British police were investigating whether a British man and woman, both 26, who were arrested at Heathrow Airport after arriving on a flight from Egypt, were involved in the kidnapping. The two were arrested on suspicion of “commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism” in Syria. The former hostages had said that some of the kidnappers had British accents. The British press said Cantlie said one of the kidnappers claimed to be a U.K. medic who was on sabbatical to treat Syrian fighters. On October 17, 2012, Shajul Islam, 26, was indicted in Westminster Magistrates Court in the United Kingdom for the kidnapping. He had been arrested at Heathrow Airport on October 9. A 26-year-old woman arrested with Islam was released without charge. The British duo had flown to Heathrow from Egypt. Islam was a trainee doctor who studied at St. Bart’s and University of London Hospital. He joined a jihadi group in Syria, serving as a medic. He said there could be fifteen Britons in a jihadi camp in Syria. A follow-up hearing was scheduled for November 2 at the Old Bailey. 12071302

July 14, 2012—Afghanistan—A suicide bomber set off his suicide vest at a wedding in Aybak, capital of Samangan Province, killing twenty-two guests, including a senior politician, and injuring forty-three. The politician was identified as Ahmad Khan Samangani, a member of the Afghan parliament, who was hosting his daughter’s wedding. He had been an anti–Taliban militia leader. Also dead was the provincial head of the Afghan intelligence service.

July 15, 2012—Yemen—An al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terrorist killed himself and injured another person when the bomb he was making exploded in a metal workshop in the southern Hizzayz district of Sana’a.

July 15, 2012—Netherlands—Needles were inserted into six turkey sandwiches prepared in an Amsterdam catering company for four Delta Airlines flights to Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Seattle. One passenger on a flight to Minneapolis was injured, although the individual refused medical treatment. Some of the sandwiches were served to business class passengers.

July 15, 2012—Libya—Ahmad Nabil al-Alam, president of the Libyan Olympic Committee, was kidnapped in central Tripoli at 4:00 p.m. Unidentified gunmen in two vehicles seized him. He was freed on July 22. He was scheduled to head the Libyan delegation in London for the Olympic Games.

July 17, 2012—United States—Brian Hedglin, 40, a SkyWest Airlines pilot who killed Christina Cornejo, 39, a Colorado woman found dead of stab wounds in Colorado Springs on July 13, attempted to steal a SkyWest CRJ200 commercial jetliner that was not in service at St. George Municipal Airport. He killed himself before the plane became airborne. Hedglin and Cornejo both served in the Colorado Army National Guard. Hedglin was on administrative leave from SkyWest. 12071701

July 17, 2012—Nigeria—Terrorists fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a Muslim school in Jos, killing a 10-year-old boy when it missed the school and hit a nearby house.

July 17, 2012—Pakistan—Gunmen fired on a UN vehicle in Karachi’s northwestern Gadap neighborhood, seriously wounding in the abdomen a Ghanaian doctor working on vaccinating people against polio. The doctor’s driver was less seriously wounded. The Taliban had made threats against the World Health Organization’s program. 12071702

July 18, 2012—Syria—A bomb killed Assef Shawkat, President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law (Shawkat was married to al-Assad’s elder sister Bushra) and deputy chief of staff of the Syrian armed forces; Minister of Defense Dawoud Rajha, who was the most prominent Christian in the government; and former Minister of Defense Hassan Turkmani, who headed the country’s crisis management cell and was the senior military aide to Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa. The trio was attending a meeting of the central command unit for crisis management at the National Security Building in Damascus’s Rawda neighborhood. Interior Minister Lt. Gen. Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar and Lt. Gen. Hisham Baktiar, the national security chief, were hospitalized. Baktiar later died of his wounds. Al-Dunia TV said it was a suicide bombing; the Free Syrian Army, which claimed credit, said the bomb was remotely detonated in the conference room. The Brigade of Islam and the Islamic Battalions also claimed credit.

July 18, 2012—Bulgaria—Israel blamed Iran-backed Islamic Jihad, Hamas, or Hizballah terrorists when a suicide bomber set off explosives in his backpack on a tour bus carrying forty-seven Israelis that killed six—including five Israeli tourists and the Bulgarian bus driver—and injured thirty-two (three were in intensive care), including two Russians, an Italian, and a Slovak, in a parking lot outside Burgas Airport on the Black Sea. The Israelis had just arrived from Tel Aviv and were going to a beach resort 30 miles away. The dead included childhood friends Itzik Kolengi, 28, and Amir Menashe, 27. Their plane had landed at 5:00 p.m. The bus was one of seven that were to transport the tourists.

Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry said the male suicide bomber was carrying a fake Michigan driver’s license with a Louisiana address. The Bulgarian press said the bomber was Stockholm-born Mehdi Ghezali, 33, a Swede captured in Afghanistan in 2001, sent to Guantanamo on January 7, 2002, and detained for two years at Guantanamo Bay. Sweden denied that the man repatriated from Gitmo on July 8, 2004, was the bomber. The Bulgarian Interior Minister said Ghezali had been in the country for twenty days before the attack. Video of the bomber showed an individual with long hair wearing a hat, glasses, shorts, and T-shirt, and carrying a large backpack. The New York Times said U.S. officials believed the bomber was a Hizballah member. On July 20, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu narrowed the suspect list to Hizballah. Over the week, a Lebanese newspaper received a claim of credit by al Qaeda.

Police said the foreign bomber used 7 pounds of TNT to build the bomb. They were searching for local accomplices. He had been driven by taxi from the seaside town of Ravda. A man with a faked Michigan driver’s license had tried to rent a car earlier that week at the Tourist Office Afrodita agency in Pomorie but left when they tried to photocopy his license. Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov told the press on July 24 that the conspirators rented several cars, met in several cities, and were never photographed together. On August 16, Bulgaria announced that a suspected accomplice used a faked Michigan driver’s license for Ralph William Rico. A computer-generated image showed a heavyset man wearing glasses with short hair and stubble. 12071801

July 18, 2012—Afghanistan—Taliban gunmen destroyed twenty-two trucks, including eighteen fuel tankers, carrying supplies for NATO forces in Samangan Province in northern Afghanistan. One person was wounded in the bombing.

July 19, 2012—Russia—Assassins in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, killed Valiulla Yakupov, a deputy mufti, and hospitalized Ildus Faizov, Tatarstan’s chief mufti. Radical Islamists were suspected of attacking the traditionalist Islamic leaders, who had criticized Salafis. Yakupov died in the lobby of his house as he was leaving for work. A bomb exploded in Faizov’s Toyota Land Cruiser an hour later. He was thrown from the car and broke both his legs. Russian investigators arrested five suspects, one of whom headed a firm that arranges hajj travel. On August 4, 2012, Jihad Muhammad, emir of the previously unknown Mujahideen of Tatarstan, released a video on a Muslim Caucasus radical Web site in which he said, “On July 19, 2012, on my orders an operation was conducted against the enemies of Allah…. All praise Allah. We believe the operation was a success…. If any of the imams do not want or cannot carry out the points established by Shariah, they should leave their posts. That way, you will be protected from the mujahideen.” By then, investigators had detained six suspects and released photographs of Robert R. Valeev, 35, and Rais R. Mingaleev, 36, the two men at large suspected of organizing the killing and deemed “extremely dangerous.” By the end of August, dozens of Muslim men were arrested; most were released. October 24, 2012, police and security services killed three Islamic terrorists suspected of conducting the attacks on Faizov and Yakupov. While the police attempted to arrest the terrorists, a bomb went off, killing a security officer. The officers broke into the first-floor apartment in Kazan, where they found guns and materials to be used for bomb making.

July 20, 2012—United States—James Egan Holmes, 24, walked into the Century Aurora 16 multiplex’s theater 9 in Aurora, Colorado, thirty minutes after the beginning of the midnight showing of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. He threw two tear gas canisters, then opened fire, killing a dozen people and injuring fifty-nine, including a 3-month-old. He fired an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, and two .40 caliber handguns while wearing body armor, a helmet, and a gas mask. He surrendered peacefully in the parking lot to police, telling them that he was the Joker. He sported dyed red hair.

Holmes had sat in the front row by himself. He feigned taking a phone call, then walked out the emergency exit, propping open the door. He put on his gear, then returned through the door.

He told police there were explosives in his white Hyundai and in his apartment, which he had booby-trapped with incendiaries and chemical devices attached to tripwires. Police found a Soldiers of Misfortune poster in the 800-square-foot third-floor apartment, as well as sixty incendiary and chemical devices linked to wire-filament tripwires. A posting in Adult Friend Finder by “classicjimbo” appeared to have been of Holmes, who asked, “Will you visit me in prison?” He had legally purchased the guns from Gander Mountain and Bass Pro Shop. He also amassed six thousand rounds of ammunition online. He had had numerous boxes delivered to his apartment in the previous few months.

Holmes appeared in an Arapahoe County, Colorado, courtroom on July 23, sporting an amateurish orange hair dye job and looking distant. He was represented by public defenders Tamara Brady and Daniel King. On July 30, he was charged with 24 counts of first-degree murder (12 counts of murder with deliberation and 12 of murder with extreme indifference to the value of human life), 116 counts of attempted murder, a charge of possession of explosive or incendiary devices, and one charge of a crime of violence—a weapons charge of using deadly weapons during the commission of murder and attempted murder.

Holmes was about to drop out of the doctoral program in neurosciences at the University of Colorado. He had recently given a presentation on the biological basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Those killed were:

• Alex Sullivan, 27, who was celebrating his birthday and had worked at the theater

• John Larimer, 27, who served in the U.S. Navy as a petty officer third class with the cyber command of the U.S. Tenth Fleet at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora. He was a native of Crystal Lake, Illinois.

• Jessica Ghawi, 24, an aspiring sports journalist who had survived the June 2 Toronto mall shooting that left two dead and several wounded. She had graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

• Micayla Medek, 23, a community college student working at a restaurant

• Jon Blunk, 26, who died shielding girlfriend Jansen Young. The navy veteran was the father of two.

• Alex Teves, 24, who recently earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Denver

• Alexander “AJ” Boik, 18, who recently graduated from high school, planned to attend Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. He had not yet told his parents that he was engaged to Lasamoa Croft.

• Gordon Cowden, 51, father of two, from Centennial, Colorado

• Rebecca Wingo, 32, a waitress and mother of two

• Matt R. McQuinn, 27, who died shielding his girlfriend, Samantha Yowler, 27, along with her brother, Nick Yowler, 32, who had stood up to shield Samantha. McQuinn was hit in the chest, leg, and back. He had recently come to Denver from Ohio. He worked at a local Target with Samantha.

• Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6; her mother, Ashley Moser, 25, was in critical condition. Ashley Moser miscarried on July 29 and was paralyzed from the waist down. Ashley was studying to be a nurse.

• Jesse Childress, 29, an Air Force Reserves staff sergeant on active duty at Buckley Air Force Base, serving as a cyber systems operator with the 310 Force Support Squadron.

Those injured included:

• Brent Lowak, a Texan who was at the film with Jessica Ghawi

• Patricia Legarreta, a Texan, who brought her 4-year-old daughter and boyfriend Jamie Rohrs’s 4-month-old son, Ethan. Legarreta was hospitalized with a bullet wound. At the hospital, Rohrs proposed.

• Samantha Yowler, 27, underwent surgery for a bullet to her knee.

• Brandon Axelrod, 30, was sitting in the tenth row with Denise Traynom, 24, his wife of two weeks and a friend, Josh Nowlan. The couple suffered minor injuries from shrapnel.

• Josh Nowlan, 32, was shot twice; one bullet broke his right arm and the other damaged his leg.

• Pierce O’Farrill, 22, wounded in the left arm by a shotgun blast, was on a cross-country bike trip after graduating from Syracuse University, where he gave the student commencement speech. He was scheduled to teach English in Russia on a Fulbright grant.

• Rita Paulina, hit in the left leg

• Caleb Medely, 23, an aspiring comic who remained in a coma as of August 12, 2012

• Allie Young, 19, saved by Stephanie Davies, 21, who applied pressure to Young’s gushing neck wound and led her to safety

• Stephen Barton, of Southbury, Connecticut

• Zack Golditch, 17, a Gateway High School student who was shot in the back of the neck

• Petra Anderson, 22, a violinist who was hit by four shotgun pellets, one of which lodged in her brain. She had been accepted into the graduate program at the University of Maryland School of Music.

• Jennifer Seeger, another Gateway student and aspiring firefighter, who was burned on her legs by the hot shell casings

• Farrah Soudani, 22, who lost a kidney and her spleen and needed reconstructive surgery on her left calf. Her left lung and pancreas were damaged and three ribs were broken. She was working her way through masseuse school at a local Red Robin restaurant. She did not have health insurance.

CNN reported on August 2 that Lynne Fenton, medical director of student mental health services at the university and Holmes’s psychiatrist, had warned police about her patient. Holmes had mailed to Fenton a journal that foreshadowed a massacre, but the package was not opened before the killings.

The United States experienced 645 incidents of the killing of at least four victims between 1976 and 2010.

July 20, 2012—Iraq—An 11:00 p.m. explosion damaged a pipeline carrying oil from Kirkuk, Iraq, to Ceyhan, Turkey, causing no injuries. Authorities also shut down a parallel pipeline as a precaution. Officials blamed the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Firat News, a PKK-linked Web site, said the group was responsible. 12072001

July 20, 2012—Iraq—Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, emir of al Qaeda in Iraq, released an audiotape for the opening of Ramadan in which it threatened to strike at the “heart” of the United States. “You will soon witness how attacks will resound in the heart of your land, because our war with you has now started.” He also praised the Syrian uprising and announced a new campaign of violence against the Iraqi government. “We are starting a new phase in our struggle with a plan we named ‘Breaking the Walls,’ and we remind you of your priority to free the Muslim prisoners. At the top of your priorities regarding targets is to chase and liquidate the judges, the investigators, and the guards.”

July 21, 2012—Somalia—Puntland authorities seized a boat carrying explosives, switches, rockets, guns, ammunition, and rocket-propelled grenades believed going from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen to al-Shabaab in Somalia.

July 21, 2012—Pakistan—A suicide vehicle bomber killed twelve people, including four children—three girls and a boy—and wounded thirteen in Orakzai tribal agency, near the home of Maulvi Nabi, a pro-government militant commander who was not wounded. Local authorities said his group has battled an organization led by Mullah Toofan with links to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. A Taliban spokesman claimed credit.

July 22, 2012—Egypt—Terrorists blew up a gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula that transports fuel to Israel. It was the fifteenth such attack since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The blast caused moderate damage but set fire to some gas left in the pipeline. 12072201

July 22, 2012—Afghanistan—A man wearing an Afghan National Security Forces uniform shot to death three NATO contractors. 12072202

July 23, 2012—Yemen—Security forces defused a remote-controlled bomb planted at the entrance of an intelligence services building in Aden.

July 23, 2012—Turkey—Some 2,000 Turkish troops in an air-power-assisted offensive killed 115 suspected Kurdish rebels in Semdinli between July 23 and August 5.

July 24, 2012—Afghanistan—The National Directorate of Security claimed to have broken up a terrorist plan to attack a five-star international hotel in Kabul.

July 24, 2012—Afghanistan—Gunmen ambushed three people in a van in the northern province of Parwan, killing all three, including a U.S. electrical engineer who had lived in Afghanistan for decades, an Afghan colleague, and their Afghan driver. The Taliban took credit. 12072401

July 24, 2012—Pakistan—Gunmen fired on a NATO troop convoy, killing a driver and wounding a second driver and his assistant, in Jamrud in the Khyber tribal area. The Pakistani Taliban was suspected.

July 25, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram killed two Indian businessmen and injured a third in a morning attack on their shop in Maiduguri. 12072501

July 25, 2012—Philippines—In a day-long gun battle between Philippine troops and Abu Sayyaf, twelve army soldiers and four terrorists died at a terrorist encampment on Basilan Island in the Sumisip township. At least thirty-three soldiers and two terrorists were wounded.

July 26, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen shot to death three police officers at a highway checkpoint in Bauchi State. A fourth policeman was injured in the morning attack. The terrorists stole the police officers’ rifles.

July 27, 2012—Russia—During the night, security forces killed eight terrorists in Alburikent, Dagestan, in the suburbs of Makhachkala, after storming a house where they had holed up with women and children. Negotiations failed and the terrorists fired on the troops. One woman pretended to turn herself in, but when she approached the special forces, she set off an explosive belt, killing herself but not harming any troops. At least eight bodies were found in the house.

July 27, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen on a motorcycle shot to death two air force officers in Kano.

July 28, 2012—Nigeria—Three gunmen shot to death a shoe shiner in a morning attack outside an uninhabited house in Zaria belonging to Vice President Namadi Sambo. The house was under renovation.

July 29, 2012—Yemen—A guard at the Italian Embassy who was a member of the Carabinieri was kidnapped in broad daylight and driven off in a car. No one took credit. 12072901

July 30, 2012—Nigeria—Suicide bombers killed themselves and three other people in Sokoto. One bomber hit a compound containing a police station and regional police officers. Another hit a police station two miles away. Among the dead were a civilian and a police officer. One injured man at the Specialist Hospital Sokoto said he saw a car drive through the main gate of the compound. The blast threw him from his bicycle. Motorcycle-riding gunmen shot at a third police station in Sokoto.

July 31, 2012—Spain—Authorities arrested three suspected al Qaeda terrorists planning to conduct an attack in a Gibraltar-area shopping mall, coinciding with the London Olympics. Authorities found equipment for three motorized paragliding machines and explosives in the rented La Linea de la Concepcion home of Cengiz Yalcin. Police believed one of their targets was the Puerta de Europa commercial complex in Algeciras, across the Strait of Gibraltar. Cengiz Yalcin, the cell’s Turkish facilitator, was asked to take photos of a Gibraltar shopping mall. The cell tested a remote-controlled plane as a potential bomb delivery system. Investigators found a video of Yalcin flying a 3-meter-long remote-controlled airplane in a descent; two packets dropped from either wing of the plane. Authorities arrested Chechen Russian Eldar Magomedov, alias Ahmad Avar, and Chechen Russian Muhammad Ankari Adamov on a bus near Valdepenas and Ciudad Real, 125 miles south of Madrid, en route to France. Magomedov violently resisted arrest. The duo gave fake names but were identified by Russian authorities.

Magomedov, the group’s suspected leader, was a former member of the Russian Spetsnaz special forces. He had trained as a sniper and was an expert in poisons. He had joined training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including those run by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, after leaving the Spetsnaz. Between 2008 and 2011, he operated in Dagestan and North and South Waziristan. Adamov received explosives training in Afghanistan. He was suspected of participating in a recent bombing in Moscow. They were charged with membership in a terrorist group and possession or storage of explosives. They were believed to have been tasked with conducting the attack; they had been trained in motor-paragliding near La Linea. Authorities found a Russian-language paragliding handbook in their possession. Yalcin was accused of possession of explosive substances. He had worked at a construction company. The Chechens also lived near La Linea. The French had been monitoring the duo’s phone calls and tipped off the Spanish in May, according to CNN. The London Mirror said the two were going to conduct a Mumbai-style attack against British tourists and military personnel watching the Olympics on an outdoor screen and in bars. They would crash the explosives-laden plane, then machine-gun other tourists and soldiers. The Mirror said other gunmen were at large and that 300 pounds of explosives were seized. The paper also said the cell considered using an explosives-laden boat against a ship moored off Gibraltar.

July 31, 2012—Libya—Seven Iranian relief workers who were official guests of the Libyan Red Crescent Association were kidnapped in Benghazi. As of August 21, their whereabouts were unknown. Qadhafi loyalists were suspected. 12073101

August 2012—Djibouti—Local authorities arrested Swedish citizens Ali Yasin Ahmed, 27, and Mohamed Yusuf, 29, and former U.K. resident Mahdi Hashi, 23, as they were on their way to Yemen. The trio was of Somali extraction. Hashi’s U.K. citizenship had been revoked.

The United States accused them of participating in weapons and explosives training with al-Shabaab. A U.S. federal grand jury secretly indicted the trio on October 18. The FBI took custody of them on November 14. They appeared in a Brooklyn, New York, federal court on December 21, 2012, to face charges that they had supported al-Shabaab, illegally used high-powered firearms, and participated in “an elite al-Shabaab suicide-bomber program.” They were accompanied in court by a Swedish interpreter. The case had been under seal for several months. Attorney Ephraim Savitt, a former federal prosecutor, represented one of the Swedes. British attorney Saghir Hussain represented Hashi’s family and claimed that the case had the “hallmarks of rendition.” U.S. attorney Harry Batchelder represented Hashi. Susan Kellman was the U.S. defense attorney for Ahmed.

August 2012—Syria—Syrian rebels posted to YouTube a video in which they threatened to kill 48 Iranian Shi’ite pilgrims from Iran if Tehran and Damascus did not comply with their demands. “Unless they start releasing our people from their prisons and cease the shelling of the innocent civilians in our cities and the ongoing random slaughter, within forty-eight hours, starting from the moment this statement is read, we inform you that for every martyr who gets killed by the Syrian regime, we will kill one of the Iranian hostages.”

The government announced on January 9, 2013, that it would free 2,130 prisoners, including dozens of women and children and some Turkish nationals, in exchange for the 48 Iranian hostages. The governments of Turkey and Qatar, along with the Turkish humanitarian aid agency IHH, brokered the deal with the al-Baraa rebel brigade. Iran had eventually admitted that the 48 were part of a delegation from the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its paramilitary Basij militia, backing off from its story that they were civilian pilgrims. The hostages were turned over to an Iranian Embassy delegation at a Damascus hotel.

August 2012—Colombia—Guerrillas toppled three electricity towers in the Pacific coast port town of Tumaco, cutting electrical service for more than one week. Landmines killed at least five people, including two repairmen.

August 1, 2012—Egypt—Jihadis posted a statement on Internet forums to announce the creation of the Soldiers of Islamic Law, which listed five demands of the Egyptian and U.S. governments, including establishment of shariah law throughout Egypt starting in the Sinai, release of prisoners, and withdrawal of U.S. peacekeeping troops stationed along the border.

August 1, 2012—India—Between 7:37 p.m. and 8:15 p.m., four bombs went off in Pune. One person was seriously injured at a theater. Another bomb was defused at the theater. Other bombs went off near a McDonald’s restaurant, a bank, and a bridge. At least one bomb was on a bicycle. 12080101

August 1, 2012—Somalia—A failed suicide attack involving two bomb explosions in Mogadishu did not stop the National Constituent Assembly from adopting a new constitution that established shariah as the basis for all laws. The two bombers made it to the gate of the meeting but killed only themselves while wounding a Somali soldier.

August 4, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen attacked two ships belonging to Sea Trucks Group, an oil and gas contractor with offices in the Netherlands, 35 nautical miles off the Niger Delta. They kidnapped an Indonesian, an Iranian, a Malaysian, and a Thai before fleeing. No immediate ransom demand or credit claim was made. 12080401

August 4, 2012—Yemen—A suspected al Qaeda suicide bomber set off his explosives during an evening funeral in Jaar, killing forty-five people and injuring forty, most of them civilian militia fighters who aided the government in its retaking of Jaar from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

August 4, 2012—Syria—Shortly before noon, gunmen kidnapped forty-eight Iranians. Tehran claimed those kidnapped were pilgrims from a tour bus group in Damascus, en route to the Shi’ite shrine of Sayeda Zeinab and the Hotel al-Faradis in Damascus. The bus was the last in a convoy of six and was stopped at an opposition checkpoint when the kidnapping took place. The Iranian government had canceled official tours. One bus sustained a bullet hole in its windshield. No group claimed credit. The trip was organized by Samen al Aemmeh Industries’ travel agency owned by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to the rebels. The firm was under UN Security Council and U.S. Treasury sanctions for its role in the Iranian missile and nuclear programs. The Wall Street Journal quoted local sources as saying that the IRGC members were on a mission to provide counterinsurgency training to Syrian forces to use in Aleppo. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) posted a video of the hostages, showing IRGC ID cards. The rebels said three Iranians and several FSA soldiers died in Damascus during a government bombardment and threatened to kill the rest of the hostages if the bombing continued. Iran asked Qatar and Turkey for assistance in obtaining the hostages’ release. 12080402

August 5, 2012—United States—At 10:25 a.m., Wade Michael Page, 40, opened fire on the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, south of Milwaukee, killing six before he killed himself after being hit by police gunfire. Earlier reports said a police officer shot him to death with a rifle. The gunman shot police Lt. Brian Murphy, 51, several times. Page started firing in the parking lot, killing one person, walked into the temple and fired, then fired at responding police vehicles. The temple’s president, Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, was among the dead. Police identified four other dead men as Sita Singh, 41, Ranjit Singh, 49, Suveg Singh, 84, and Prakash Singh, 39, a priest who had recently immigrated to the United States. One woman, Paramjit Kaur, 41, was also killed. Two other Sikhs were hospitalized in critical condition, as was Lt. Murphy, a 21-year police veteran. A third was treated and released. Members of the Sikh community praised two children who saw the shooting in the parking lot and ran into the temple to warn others, saving a dozen people who hid in a pantry.

The army veteran played guitar in Thirteen Knots—the number of knots in a noose—and End Apathy, Max Resist, Blue Eyed Devil, and Intimidation One, all far-right punk bands. He had been involved in the “hate music” subculture for a decade. Local authorities deemed it a domestic terrorist attack. Page had legally purchased his 9-mm semiautomatic handgun with multiple ammunition magazines. Police said he was a white supremacist. He had a 9/11 tattoo on his arm. Page, born on Veterans’ Day 1971, served in the army from 1992 to 1998, stationed at Fort Bliss and Fort Bragg as a missile system repairman and a psychological operations specialist. He obtained an honorable discharge, despite a service record with “patterns of misconduct.” His criminal record included DUI (driving under the influence) convictions in Colorado in 1999, writing a bad check in October 1997, and criminal mischief in Texas in 1994. He bummed around the United States with a backpack and motorcycle. He bought a house in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 2007 for $165,000, but it was foreclosed in January 2012. He was issued five gun permits on May 5, 2008. He moved to Wisconsin in 2012, living in a two-story apartment in South Milwaukee with his girlfriend and her son. On August 7, South Milwaukee police arrested Page’s former girlfriend, Misty Cook, for felony firearm possession.

August 5, 2012—Egypt—At sunset, thirty-five masked Islamist gunmen armed with automatic rifles and weapons mounted on three Land Cruisers killed sixteen border guards and wounded seven others sitting down to their post-sunset Ramadan dinner at a checkpoint along the border with Gaza and Israel. The attackers were supported by mortar fire by Gaza. The terrorists commandeered an armored vehicle and a truck, which they used in an attack across the Israel border. The truck contained a half ton of explosives. The driver set off the explosives at 8:00 p.m. at the Israel border fence, killing himself. The armored car then entered Israel but was stopped by three Israeli air strikes that killed six or seven men, most of them carrying explosives. Egyptian officials said militants in the Sinai were aided by Palestinians in Gaza. On August 10, troops and security forces arrested nine sleeping suspects at a house close to the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza Strip. The suspects believed behind the attack included Selmi Zeyoud, a “dangerous element” and brother of a slain jihadi. Egypt indefinitely closed the border crossing at Rafah. Israel returned to Egypt the armored car and the bodies of those killed at the Kerem Shalom crossing. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi fired intelligence chief Gen. Mohamed Murad Mowafi and other senior defense officials. On August 8, the Egyptian Army conducted helicopter missile attacks in the Sinai, killing twenty terrorists. 12080501

August 5, 2012—Libya—Gunmen attacked the International Committee of the Red Cross compound in Misrata with grenades and rockets. The Red Cross suspended its work in the port city and Benghazi. Seven aid workers were inside the residence but none were hurt. Building damage was extensive.

August 5, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram set off a suicide car bomb in Damaturu, killing six soldiers and two civilians.

August 6, 2012—Russia—A Chechen suicide bomber killed three Russian soldiers and wounded another three outside a Chechen department store in Grozny. A separate branch of the Interior Ministry said two suicide bombers had killed four soldiers.

August 6, 2012—United States—At 3:30 a.m., the mosque of the Islamic Society in Joplin, Missouri, burned to the ground. No injuries were reported. Arson was the cause of a July 4 fire at the mosque that caused minor damage; no arrests were made in that case. The mosque’s sign was torched in 2008.

August 6, 2012—Nigeria—Three gunmen entered the Deeper Life evangelical church in Otite, a suburb of Okene, in Kogi State, 155 miles southwest of Abuja, and fired assault rifles on an evening Bible study group, killing nineteen people. At least twenty worshipers, including Lawan, Saliu, were injured. Two gunmen fired on the parishioners while the third switched off the generator, putting the church into darkness, and preventing the victims from seeing to flee. Boko Haram was suspected.

August 7, 2012—Nigeria—Three motorcycle-riding gunmen shot at a military patrol in Okene, killing two soldiers.

August 7, 2012—Afghanistan—A remotely-detonated bomb hidden under a bridge hit a minivan in Paghman Valley in the western suburbs of Kabul, killing eight civilians and wounding several other local residents. Irate residents badly pummeled a man captured with the remote device. Observers suggested the intended target was a group of Afghan troops passing the bridge at the time; none of them were hurt. The Taliban was suspected.

August 7, 2012—Afghanistan—Two foreign soldiers died when a suicide bomber set off explosives at a joint NATO-Afghan base. Several foreign troops and Afghan civilians were wounded.

August 8, 2012—Afghanistan—A suicide bomber killed a USAID worker along with an Afghan civilian and three coalition troops. Ragaei Abdelfattah, 43, was on his second voluntary tour with USAID. He was a former master planner for Prince George’s County, Maryland, who had emigrated from Egypt. He had established schools and health clinics. He was a doctoral candidate at Virginia Tech. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen several years earlier.

August 9, 2012—Turkey—Two roadside bombs hit a bus carrying Turkish troops en route to a naval base outside the Aegean resort town of Foca, killing a soldier. Eleven people were wounded, including six soldiers and five civilians who worked for the military. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was blamed for the 8:00 a.m. attack.

August 10, 2012—Afghanistan—A gunman wearing an Afghan police uniform shot to death three U.S. Special Forces troops during a nighttime meeting with tribal leaders at an Afghan checkpoint in the Sangin district of Helmand Province. The gunman, identified as police officer Asadullah, escaped. Asadullah’s father, Shamsullah Sahraye Alokozai, denied the allegations. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the gunman was safe with the Taliban.

August 10, 2012—Afghanistan—At 8:30 p.m., three U.S. Marines were shot to death by Aynoddin, 15, an Afghan police affiliate, while they were exercising at the U.S.-Afghan base Delhi in Garmsir district in Helmand Province. They were pronounced dead just before midnight. They were assigned to Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. The detained Taliban killer was a personal assistant to the district police chief, Sarwar Jan, and had not been vetted. The teen grabbed a Kalashnikov rifle that was in an unlocked barracks. He walked to the gym where four unarmed Marines were exercising and emptied the clip. The fourth Marine was badly injured. The teen walked out of the gym, still armed, and yelled, “I just did jihad. Don’t you want to do jihad, too? If not, I will kill you.”

August 11, 2012—Afghanistan—The National Directorate of Security said it had arrested four Afghans and a Pakistani in Kabul who were planning to attack the parliament and the home of Karim Khalili, the country’s second vice president and leader of the Hezb-i-Wahdat party. Authorities seized weapons, ammunition, suicide vests, Afghan army uniforms, and Pakistani ID cards, money, and phone numbers.

August 12, 2012—Sudan—An armed gang in Nyala, capital of South Darfur State, shot to death a UN peacekeeper from Bangladesh’s Formed Police Unit and injured another in the mission’s policing center inside the Otash camp for internally displaced persons. 12081201

August 12, 2012—Turkey—Members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) kidnapped Huseyin Aygun, a parliamentarian from the opposition Republican People’s Party, during the evening at a roadblock between Ovacik and Tunceli. The gunmen freed a journalist and Deniz Tunc, an advisor traveling with him. Aygun represents Tunceli, where he was an attorney for fourteen years.

August 12, 2012—Ivory Coast—Gunmen crossed the Liberia border to attack army checkpoints in Pekambly and Pahoubly in the west, wounding one soldier in the fifth attack against the armed forces during August. Officials blamed loyalists of ousted President Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to concede defeat in the November 2010 election; the resulting violence left three thousand dead. Eleven soldiers had died in earlier pre-dawn raids against the military in Abidjan. The gunmen had also attacked Abengorour, near the Ghana border, and Agboville. Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front party condemned the attacks. Human Rights Watch claimed gunmen had forced child soldiers to conduct attacks. On August 14, the Liberian government announced the arrest of six individuals who attacked two Ivorian military checkpoints while they were trying to cross into Liberia while armed.

August 12, 2012—Egypt—Security forces killed seven suspected terrorists in raids on hideouts in al-Ghora and al-Mahdiyah villages in near el-Arish in northern Sinai. Police seized landmines, an antiaircraft missile, heavy machine guns, and grenades. The terrorists died following a firefight in which the authorities shelled their safe house.

August 12, 2012—Lebanon—The Military Tribunal charged former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha—believed to be an ally of Syria, Iran, and Hizballah—and two Syrians—Chief of the Syrian National Security Bureau Gen. Ali Mamlouk and Syrian Army Brig. Gen. Adnan—with conspiring to conduct terrorist attacks in Lebanon and plotting to assassinate politicians and religious officials. The charge sheet said Samaha transported and stored explosives provided by Mamlouk and Adnan. The trio set up an armed group to incite sectarian unrest and undermine “the authority of the state and its civil and military institutions.” They were accused of working with the “intelligence ministry of a foreign country to undertake attacks in Lebanon.” Lebanese authorities arrested Samaha on August 7 at his home in the Metn Mountains and seized equipment, computers, and documents from his offices in Beirut and Metn.

August 13, 2012—Syria—Gunmen kidnapped Ahmad Sattouf, a correspondent for Iran’s state-run Arabic-language TV Al-Alam from his office in Homs. 12081301

August 13, 2012—Syria—U.S. freelance journalist Austin Tice, 31, disappeared in Darayya, a Damascus suburb. On September 26, 2012, khalidfree75 posted a forty-seven-second video clip entitled Austin Tice Still Alive on YouTube. The video was reposted on a Facebook page called “The Media Channel of Al-Assad’s Syria.” He was surrounded by masked gunmen holding assault rifles. Tice wrote stories for such outlets as the Washington Post and McClatchy Newspapers. The men were shown driving through the mountains, then leading Tice up a mountain path while they called out, “Allahu al-Akbar.” Tice was on his knees, initially praying in Arabic, then said, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” before returning to Arabic. Observers noted that the gunmen were wearing freshly pressed and clean Afghan-style tunic and pants, which Syrian rebels do not wear. Another video posting blamed the al-Nusrah Front as being responsible. Some observers believed that the video was faked by the Syrian government, which was holding Tice.

Tice was a Georgetown University law school student and a former Marine infantry officer. He had crossed into Syria from Turkey in May. His parents made a plea for his release during a November 12, 2012, news conference in Beirut, Lebanon, and another on December 20, 2012. 12081302

August 14, 2012—Syria—The Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television channel broadcast a Syrian rebel video showing a kidnapped Lebanese Shi’ite believed linked to Hizballah. Hassane Salim al-Mikdad (variant Hassan al-Meqdad) said his group was told by Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Narullah to help “the Shi’ite army against Sunni gangs.” He was surrounded by three masked gunmen. He noted, “Most of those who entered were snipers.” He said his group was sent to Syria on August 3. Hizballah denied that he was a group member. 12081401

August 15, 2012—Lebanon—Members of a clan hoping to obtain the release of a relative kidnapped by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) kidnapped a Turk and forty Syrians with ties to the FSA. They showed a video of three gunmen standing behind two Syrians in front of a banner for the al-Meqdad Clan. The first hostage said he was Mohammed Musa Issa, a member of the FSA from Daraa, who recruited and obtained weapons for the FSA in Lebanon. The second hostage, Maher al-Housarnabi, said he assisted Issa. Ramzi Meqdad, a clan spokesman, asked for International Committee of the Red Cross mediation for a hostage swap. By August 24, clan spokesman Maher Mokdad (he spells it differently) said twenty-two Syrian hostages had been released, but they were still holding more than twenty Syrians and the Turk. 12081501

August 15, 2012—Lebanon—Members of the Meqdad clan, in interviews with local news channels, threatened to kidnap Qatari and Saudi nationals in Lebanon.

August 16, 2012—Israel—Jewish extremist settlers were believed responsible for throwing firebombs at a Palestinian taxi, hospitalizing the driver and four members of a Palestinian family with several burns. The attack occurred south of Jerusalem at 5:30 p.m. Driver Bassam Ghayada, from Nahalin, a Palestinian village, was driving construction worker Ayman Ghayada, his wife, brother, and three children to the Rami Levy supermarket on the West Bank. A young masked man wearing sidelocks threw a Molotov cocktail from 30 feet away. Another group of settlers threw a second firebomb that missed the taxi. Investigators believed the attacks came from the Bat Ayin settlement, which had been the base of a Jewish network that planned to bomb a Palestinian girls’ school in 2002. Five of the victims remained hospitalized with burns after a week; the father was in intensive care. On August 26, Israeli police arrested three suspects, aged 12 or 13, living in Bat Ayin.

August 16, 2012—Indonesia—Two gunmen shot at a police post in Solo, injuring two officers.

August 17, 2012—Indonesia—A terrorist threw a grenade at a police post, wounding two police officers.

August 17, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan Local Police officer shot to death two American soldiers during a training exercise in Farah Province.

August 17, 2012—Kazakhstan—In a dawn raid in a village 16 miles outside Almaty, police killed nine terrorists suspected of bombing a house and killing eight people a month earlier. One police officer was wounded. The terrorists were also linked to a July11 house fire that killed eight people. Police later found guns and ammunition in an adjacent garage.

August 18, 2012—Yemen—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was suspected in the morning attack on the intelligence services headquarters in Aden that killed fourteen Yemeni soldiers and security guards and wounded seven others. The terrorists set off a car bomb next to the headquarters, then fired rocket-propelled grenades and guns, breaking windows and setting the building on fire.

August 18, 2012—Russia—A suicide bomber in Ingushetia killed seven people and wounded eleven at a house in rural Sagopshi of Ilez Korigov Malgobek. The home was the site of a funeral for a police officer who was killed in a shootout with terrorists that day. The government blamed Islamists.

August 18, 2012—Russia—Two masked gunmen fired inside a Shi’ite mosque in Khasavyurtin in the North Caucasus, injuring six people. The government blamed Islamists looking to form a caliphate.

August 18, 2012—Libya—A bomb exploded near a military vehicle outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Tripoli. No one was injured.

August 19, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan police officer shot to death a NATO service member and wounded another in Spin Boldak district of Kandahar Province. He had been arguing with his Western colleague before turning his gun on him. 12081901

August 19, 2012—Libya—Three car bombs exploded near Interior Ministry and security buildings on Omar al-Mukhtar road in Tripoli, killing two people. One bomb went off near the Interior Ministry’s administrative offices, causing no casualties. Police found another car bomb that did not explode. Thirty minutes later, two car bombs detonated near the former headquarters of a women’s police academy, which the defense ministry had used for interrogations and detentions. Two men were killed and another two wounded.

August 20, 2012—United States—Treasury officials in New York seized $150 million from the account of Beirut’s Societe Generale de Banque au Liban/Lebanese Canadian Bank in connection with the laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal money belonging to Hizballah.

August 20, 2012—Turkey—A remotely-controlled car bomb exploded at a bus stop near a police station in Gaziantep, killing nine people, including a 12-year-old girl and three other children, and wounding sixty-one. The government blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and arrested more than a dozen people. The PKK denied involvement. A Gaziantep lawmaker said the raid was planned with Syrian intelligence to retaliate for the government’s policy toward Syria.

August 20, 2012—Pakistan—The Taliban tried to kidnap the brother and other relatives of Dr. Shakil Afridi, accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden.

August 20, 2012—Sudan—Gunmen kidnapped two Jordanian police officers on patrol as African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) peacekeepers in Kabkabiya, 87 miles west of El-Fasher. Hasan Al-Mazawdeh and Qasim Al-Sarhan were freed on January 3, 2013, in Darfur. They had been held for 136 days but were unharmed and in good health. The UNAMID worked with the government of Sudan and Jordan and the governor of North Darfur to secure their release. 12082001

August 21, 2012—Libya—Authorities defused a car bomb in a Tripoli suburb.

August 21, 2012—Libya—The car of an Egyptian diplomat was blown up in Benghazi, causing no injuries. Security forces arrested thirty-two Qadhafi loyalists who were accused of involvement in the string of bombings the past week. 12082101

August 25, 2012—Yemen—Shots were fired in Aden at the car of Transport Minister Waed Abdullah Bathib; no one was hurt.

August 26, 2012—Saudi Arabia—Authorities arrested six Yemeni members of an al Qaeda cell preparing to set off explosives in Riyadh. Their arrest followed the detention of their Saudi leader, who was picked up in Jeddah for preparing chemicals to be used in explosives.

August 26, 2012—Russia—A car carrying three men who had an automatic rifle and Islamic pamphlets exploded in Zelenodolsk in what appeared to be an accidental detonation of a homemade bomb. Authorities blamed Tatarstan Islamists.

August 27, 2012—United States—Prosecutors near Fort Stewart in Georgia said that four army soldiers who belonged to an anarchist militia group plotted several anti-government domestic terrorist attacks and killed a former colleague and his girlfriend. The four included active and former U.S. military members who spent $87,000 to purchase eighteen rifles and handguns and bomb components in Washington and Georgia. Authorities seized uncompleted pipe bombs.

Prosecutors said the group on December 4, 2011, shot to death former soldier Michael Roark, 19, and his girlfriend, Tiffany York, 17; their bodies were found the next day by fishermen in the woods near the base. The group also planned to take over Fort Stewart and seize its ammunition control point; bomb vehicles of local and state judicial and political figureheads and federal representatives to include the local Department of Homeland Security; bomb the Forsyth Park fountain in Savannah, Georgia; bomb a dam; poison Washington State’s apple crop; overthrow the government; and assassinate President Barack Obama. Army Pfc. Michael Burnett told a southeast Long County, Georgia, court that the group killed the duo because Roark took money from the group, which he planned to leave. Also accused was Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, 21, the leader of the group, who recruited disaffected soldiers at Fort Stewart. Also accused were Sgt. Anthony Peden and Pvt. Christopher Salmon, who created the group FEAR (Forever Enduring Always Ready). Burnett said Peden shot York; Salmon shot Roark. Burnett had a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to several charges, including manslaughter, rather than capital murder. The army dismissed military murder charges initially brought in March, ceding jurisdiction to the civilian court system. Civilian prosecutors sought the death penalty for the remaining three defendants, who were each charged with thirteen counts of malice murder, felony murder, and illegal gang activity. Salmon’s wife, Heather, was charged with murder and other counts, but the prosecution did not seek the death penalty for her.

Investigators later said that Aguigui was a suspect in the murder of his wife, Army Sgt. Deirdre Wetzker Aguigui, 24, in July 2011. She was five months pregnant. She had served in Iraq as an Arab-language linguist. He was believed to have founded FEAR with circa $500,000 in life insurance benefits he collected after his wife’s death. The couple met at the U.S. Military Preparatory Academy in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Aguigui was initially represented by attorney Keith Higgins.

August 27, 2012—Kenya—Radical cleric Sheik Aboud Rogo Mohammed, accused by the UN and United States of being a fund-raiser and recruiter for al-Shabaab, was shot to death in Mombasa by gunmen who sprayed his minivan with bullets. He faced Kenyan charges of orchestrating terrorist attacks. The U.S. Treasury Department had imposed sanctions on him in July 2012 for facilitating travel of recruits and raising money for al-Shabaab. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on him in July for his “campaign to promote violence throughout East Africa.” Local police said he was assassinated by al Qaeda rivals; his followers and family said he was killed by police. The crime scene was destroyed in rioting that followed his death.

August 28, 2012—Kenya—Grenades were thrown at a police truck during a riot in Mombasa, killing fourteen people, including a local police officer. The protestors were reacting to the murder of radical cleric Sheik Aboud Rogo Mohammed the previous day. Muslims accused police of the murder.

August 28, 2012—Russia—Female suicide bomber Aminat Kurbanova, 30, set off an explosive belt, killing herself and six other people, including Sheik Said Afandi Atsayev, 74, a Sufi scholar and spiritual leader of Muslims in Dagestan. She entered his home in Chirkey disguised as a pilgrim. The explosive belt, which was packed with nails and ball bearings, also killed an 11-year-old boy who was visiting with his parents. The terrorist lived in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital.

A border guard shot to death seven of his fellow soldiers belonging to a special rapid response unit before he was killed in Belidzhi village in the Republic of Dagestan in the North Caucasus. The press suggested that he had been recruited by Wahhabi extremists.

August 29, 2012—Afghanistan—A gunman wearing an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire during the night at Australian soldiers who were relaxing at a base in Uruzgan Province, killing three and wounding two. Australian soldiers returned fire, but the gunman hopped a fence and escaped. One of the wounded soldiers was medevaced to another base. 12082901

August 29, 2012—Georgia—Authorities conducted a gun battle against twenty heavily armed terrorists who had crossed the Russia border from Dagestan and took hostage five Georgian villagers in Lapankuri, 13 miles from the border. At least three Georgian officers and eleven terrorists died in the exchange. Among the dead was a Defense Ministry doctor, Vladimir Khvedelidze, and two members of the Interior Ministry’s special forces—Solomon Tsiklauri and Archil Chokheli. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said Russia was “exporting its disorder.”

Georgian authorities had attempted to negotiate with the gunmen, who refused to surrender. They accepted a swap of border guards in place of the civilian hostages; the border guards were later exchanged for other officers. A gunfight broke out when the government forces were conducting a rescue operation. By mid-day, five hostages were freed and the terrorists were surrounded. One young former hostage, Levan Khutsurauili, was seen on a government video saying, “We went for a picnic to the forest, I and my friends. When we were returning along the river we met several men; they were armed and had beards. They told us we are hostages now and must follow them. They threatened they would kill us if we tried to run away.” The government said the terrorists wore camouflage uniforms and carried Russian passports and Qurans. The government seized automatic weapons, ammunition, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, radios, maps, binoculars, and other equipment. The government said at least six terrorists had escaped and were hiding in the woods. Swiss diplomats had conveyed information from Georgia to the Russian government regarding the attack. 12082902

August 30, 2012—Indonesia—Two gunmen on a motorbike killed a police officer in Solo following the arrest of a member of a terrorist cell in Bandung, West Java Province. He was identified as computer expert Maman Kurniawan and believed to be a Muslim terrorist and a key member of a new terrorist cell in North Sumatra’s Medan city. He had helped the group hack several Web sites and raise $700,000. Police seized computers and bank transfer documents.

August 31, 2012—Indonesia—An Indonesian antiterrorist squad shot to death two terrorists and arrested a third, who was wounded, at a food stall in central Java’s Solo town, hometown of Abu Bakar Baasyir, Jemaah Islamiya’s spiritual leader. Police had been tipped that the group was planning more attacks on Java. The terrorists fired at police, who returned fire. Police were investigating their ties to Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid.

August 31, 2012—Pakistan—A car bomb exploded in a market in Mattani near Peshawar, killing eleven, injuring twenty, and damaging thirty shops.

August 31, 2012—Afghanistan—Villagers found the decapitated body of a 12-year-old boy in the rural Panjwai district of Kandahar Province. Local observers said the Taliban killed him because his brother and uncle were members of the local police. The Taliban denied the charge.

August 31, 2012—Afghanistan—The decapitated body of a 7-year-old girl was found in a garden in the Tagab district of eastern Kapisa Province.

September 2012—Indonesia—Jakarta police found bomb-making materials at a house believed occupied by suspected bomb maker Muhammad Toriq, who fled during a police raid.

September 2012—Kenya—Following the assassination of a radical Islamic cleric, two Christian churches were burned and looted and two civilians killed.

September 2012—France—A grenade exploded at a kosher grocery store. A jihadi cell of young French converts was suspected. On October 6, 2012, police killed a man whose DNA was found at the scene. He had fired on police in Strasbourg. Police arrested eleven other suspects across the country.

September 2, 2012—Libya—A bomb that was planted in a car went off in a shopping district on Gamal Abdel-Nasser Street in Benghazi, killing the driver, who was a Libyan intelligence officer, and wounding a second.

September 4, 2012—Pakistan—A suicide bomber crashed his car bomb into a U.S. Consulate SUV near the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar during the morning, killing two Pakistanis and wounding twenty-five other people, including two U.S. consular staffers and two Pakistani employees of the consulate. A U.S. backup vehicle immediately rescued the four who were injured and took them to the consulate. The two Pakistanis were killed outside the vehicle. The Taliban was suspected. The U.S. vehicle was passing a UN High Commissioner for Refugees guesthouse on Abdara Road when the vehicle hit it and set off 200 pounds of explosives. 12090401

September 4, 2012—Afghanistan—At 3:30 p.m., a suicide bomber killed between twenty-five and thirty-five mourners and injured another forty-five at a funeral for Hajji Rasi, a prominent businessman, in the Durbaba district of Nangarhar Province. A Shinwari tribal leader said the target was probably district Governor Hamisha Gul, who was wounded. Among the dead was Gul’s son, Nek Wali, 26. The Taliban disputed government charges of involvement.

September 4, 2012—United States—Jonathan Jimenez, 28, an Orange County man, pleaded guilty to two federal charges in connection with a plot to kill members of the U.S. military serving overseas. He admitted in an Orlando Federal courtroom to tax fraud and lying to the FBI regarding the plot to wage violent jihad. An FBI phone tap established that he had received terrorist training, including martial arts, firearms, and knife training, from convicted felon Marcus Robertson, the former imam of an east Orange County mosque.

September 4, 2012—Canada—Richard H. Bain, 61, fired an assault rifle and shot to death Denis Blanchette, 48, a stagehand, and wounded another person at a nighttime victory rally in Montreal’s concert hall by Pauline Marois, 63, Quebec’s newly elected premier. The gunman was dressed in a blue bathrobe, balaclava, black underwear, and a face mask. He carried two guns and had five more in his car. Police discovered that he owned at least twenty firearms; all but one were registered. He set fire at the hall’s back door before being arrested. As he was being placed into a police cruiser, he yelled, “The English are waking up!” in French. He was initially taken to a hospital, but later jailed. Police said it might have been an assassination attempt against Marois, leader of the separatist Parti Quebecois. Bain owned an outdoor outfitting business near the Mont Tremblant resort and lived in La Conception. He was charged in a Montreal courtroom with sixteen counts, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, and arson. Many in rural Quebec viewed him as a kilt-wearing eccentric.

September 5–6, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected of damaging thirty-one cell phone towers in six states, including Adamawa, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi, Kano, and Borno. One of the burned towers was in Maiduguri’s main office for the South Africa–based MTN group, Ltd., Nigeria’s largest cell network provider. Other firms hit included Bharti Airtel, Ltd., of India, Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat, the local Globacom, Ltd., and five other local firms. The group had threatened cell phone companies six months earlier for cooperating with the government against its members. 12090501-03

September 6, 2012—Gaza Strip—Israeli soldiers shot to death three Palestinian men who were “part of a terrorist squad that was planting an explosive device” near the security fence in Beit Hanoun on the border with Israel. Two of the men were brothers.

September 7, 2012—United States—The U.S. Department of State announced that as of September 17, the Haqqani network would be the fifty-second entry on the Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, thereby prohibiting network members from traveling to the United States, freezing its assets in the United States, and barring Americans from providing financial/material support.

September 7, 2012—Philippines—Seven Abu Sayyaf gunmen attacked 120 rubber plantation workers in four trucks heading home for lunch in Sumisip township on Basilan Island, killing one and wounding 35.

September 8, 2012—Afghanistan—A 14-year-old Taliban suicide bomber killed six people, most of them children, in a high-security zone in Kabul 150 feet from the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force.

September 8, 2012—Indonesia—A bomb exploded during the night in a terrorist bomb-making safe house in Depok, a suburb near Jakarta, injuring five people, including three passersby and two fleeing terrorists on a motorbike. The terrorists were seriously wounded on their hands. Police found one man at the site whose left hand had been severed and had burns over 70 percent of his face and body. A woman sustained slight wounds to her head. The house was listed as an orphanage foundation and herbal clinic but was never opened to the public. Police confiscated six pipe bombs, three grenades, two machine guns, a Beretta pistol, bomb guide books, and several jihadi books. The bombs were packed with nails. Police ran a DNA test to determine whether the injured man was bomb maker Muhammad Toriq. He was believed linked to a terrorist group planning to shoot police and bomb the parliament building as part of a jihad to establish a caliphate. The Associated Press reported on September 10 that Toriq had surrendered on September 9 while carrying a gun and ammunition and wearing an empty suicide bomber belt. He told police he had planned to conduct a suicide bombing on September 10 against police, an antiterrorism squad, or Buddhists to protest mistreatment of minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Although he had written a suicide note, he reconsidered after thinking about the pain it would cause his mother, wife, and son.

September 9, 2012—Israel—A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit the roof of the southern Israel home of Pini Azoulay. Palestinian terrorists were suspected. 12090901

September 9, 2012—Iraq—A car bomb went off outside a French consular building in Nassiriya, 185 miles south of Baghdad, wounding two people. No one claimed credit. 12090902

September 11, 2012—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri posted a video on Islamist sites entitled Truth Has Come and Falsehood Has Perished, in which he said, “I proudly announce to the Muslim umma and to the Mujahideen … the news of the martyrdom of the lion of Libya Sheikh Hassan Mohammed Qaed,” one of the names of Abu Yahya al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda member who died in a U.S. drone strike in June in Pakistan. He called for revenge. “His blood urges you and incites you to fight and kill the crusaders.” Al-Zawahiri said Libi was a “lion of jihad and knowledge.” Referring to President Obama, he said, “This liar is trying to fool Americans into believing that he will defeat al Qaeda by killing this person or that person. But he escapes from the fact that he was defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Adam Gadahn, American-born al Qaeda propagandist, added, “America is crystal clear about its opposition to Islam as a political system, Islam as a ruling system … and the essence of Islam. So, how can America say that it is not at war with Islam?”

September 11, 2012—Turkey—A Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) suicide bomber threw a hand grenade and detonated his explosives at the entrance to a police station in Istanbul, killing a police officer and injuring seven others. The attacker had participated in prison hunger strikes.

September 11, 2012—Nigeria—Authorities arrested eleven Boko Haram members and seized a submachinegun, 7 AK-47s, 1,568 rounds of ammunition, 12 empty shells, and 19 bombs in the Waka-Biu region of Borno State.

September 11, 2012—Yemen—A car bomb went off alongside a convoy in Sana’a that included Yemeni Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, killing seven bodyguards and five civilians and wounding fifteen other people. Ahmed was unhurt. Ali al-Ansi, head of the National Security Agency, was fired. No group claimed credit, although al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was suspected.

September 11, 2012—Afghanistan—Taliban attackers killed three Afghan intelligence employees and destroyed a NATO helicopter.

September 11, 2012—Libya—At 10:00 p.m., RPGs and mortars slammed into a building in the U.S. Consulate compound, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. diplomats and wounding another two. Two diplomats died in the building; another two were killed in a midnight firefight while another facility was still under siege. The Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Shariah was suspected; the group denied responsibility. The group was believed led by Sufyan bin Qumu, a Libyan released from Gitmo in 2007 and transferred to Libya on condition he be kept in jail; Qadhafi released him in 2008. He was believed to have had ties to the 9/11 financiers and to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Other observers pointed to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) or to individuals with AQIM ties.

The dead U.S. diplomats included:

• Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, a career State Department officer who spoke Arabic and French and had twice served in Libya. He had run the liaison office with the rebels in Benghazi during the overthrow of Muammar Qadhafi. He was the sixth U.S. ambassador to be killed by terrorists.

• Sean Smith, 34, who had worked as an information management specialist for the State Department for a decade in Brussels, Baghdad, Pretoria, and Libya. The online gamer enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1995 at age 17. He served for six years as a ground radio maintenance specialist and deployed to Oman. He left the service in 2002 as a staff sergeant, having earned the Air Force Commendation Medal. He had served for the State Department in Brussels, Baghdad, Pretoria, Montreal, and The Hague. Smith was survived by his wife and two children.

• Glen Anthony Doherty, 42, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who worked for a private security firm protecting the Benghazi consulate. He was a pilot and paramedic, and had coauthored a book about being a military sniper. He had told ABC News that he was tracking down MANPADS shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles left over from Qadhafi’s arsenal. He attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona. He had joined the U.S. Navy in 1996 and left active duty in 2005 as a petty officer first class. He had served two tours in Iraq, earning the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Combat Distinguished Device. He was lauded in the book The Red Circle by colleague Brandon Webb.

• Tyrone S. Woods, 52, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who had served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a registered nurse and paramedic. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy out of high school in 1990. Decorations included the Bronze Star with Combat V. He retired as a senior chief petty officer in 2007. He had protected U.S. diplomats in Central America and the Middle East since 2010. He was survived by his wife and three sons.

The news media initially reported that the attackers and demonstrators in numerous other countries were protesting an inflammatory anti–Islam video. Authorities scrambled to determine the authorship of the thirteen-minute Innocence of Islam trailer, which portrays Muhammad and his followers as child abusers and perverts. It was eventually attributed to a handful of California-based Coptic Christian extremists. The amateurish film had been available on the Internet since July but only recently was made available in Arabic. The apparent producer of the film, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was arrested on September 27 for violating terms of his probation.

News reports later pieced together the chronology of the attack. At around 9:00 p.m., gunmen attacked the compound from three directions. Smith and Stevens were mortally injured. Stevens was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. A group of Americans escaped to a second compound a mile away but were attacked in a firefight. The two former SEALs were killed.

On September 16, Mohamed al-Magariaf, leader of the General National Congress, said fifty people had been arrested in connection with the attack. He said they included individuals from Mali and Algeria and several with ties to al Qaeda. Al-Magariaf said that the attack was planned and organized by foreigners. Some observers said the attack was led by the Ansar al-Sharia. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 2 that the gunmen were linked to Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad, who had asked Ayman al-Zawahiri for permission to open an al Qaeda franchise in Libya.

On September 19, during testimony to Congress, Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said that it was an “opportunistic attack” by heavily armed militants. He told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the Americans “were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.”

Within a week the United States had shuttered its consulates in Alexandria, Peshawar, Lahore, and Karachi.

On September 21, U.S. officials said that the fifty attackers, many of them masked, used military-style tactics to steer the Americans toward an ambush. The terrorists used gun trucks and set up a perimeter. The first attack moved the Americans to their fallback building, which was then hit by mortars.

FBI investigators were accompanied by several dozen Special Operations forces in examining the ruins of the Benghazi consulate on October 3. Two days earlier, the State Department had withdrawn all official U.S. government personnel from Benghazi; nonessential personnel were withdrawn from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, as well.

Turkish authorities announced on October 4 that they had arrested two Tunisian men carrying fake Austrian passports who had attempted to arrive at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. They were believed involved in the Libya attack. The Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades, which had claimed credit for setting off a small bomb outside the Benghazi consulate in June, was also suspected.

Ahmed Abu Khattalah was seen at the diplomatic mission where two of the Americans died. The founder of Ansar al-Sharia reportedly propagates an al Qaeda-style ideology. The militia leader lives in the Leithi neighborhood of Benghazi. He was believed to be in his mid–40s as of October 2012. He trained to become an auto mechanic while a teen. He spent most of his adult life in Qadhafi’s Abu Salem prison. He was released in February 2011.

On October 24, 2012, the Tunisian government arrested Ali al-Harzi, 28, a Tunisian, in connection with the September 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed. He was represented by attorney Oulad Ali Anwar, who claimed his client was working in Benghazi painting a house at the time of the attack. He had been arrested in Turkey on October 3 along with another Tunisian; the duo were carrying fake passports and were on their way to Syria from Libya.

On October 25, 2012, Egyptian police arrested five Libyan and two Egyptian members of al Qaeda, killed Karim Ahmed Essam al-Azizi, alias Hazem, a Libyan suspected of involvement in the September 11, 2012 assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, and seized two trucks carrying 25 rockets, 102 rocket-propelled grenades, and 102 mortar rounds. Al-Azizi died in a raid on his rented apartment in the Cairo suburb of Medinat Nasser. He threw a bomb at the police, but it bounced back and exploded in his apartment. Police seized 17 bombs, 4 rocket-propelled grenades, 3 automatic weapons, and large quantities of ammunition. Police said the group had been using several apartments in the neighborhood to store arms. The trucks were halted on the highway near Marsa Matrouh, 270 miles northwest of Cairo.

In early December, Egyptian authorities announced the arrest of Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad, 45, whose supporters were believed involved in the attack. He had been released from an Egyptian prison in March 2011. The former Egyptian Islamic Jihad member had been arrested in mid–November in Sharkia Province on charges of leading a militant cell of Libyans and Egyptians. Police found 2 machine guns, ammunition, and a laptop. Egyptian authorities said his cell, with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula assistance, was planning attacks in Egypt and abroad. He had set up training camps in Libya and Egypt. The group became known as the Jamal Network. He held a master’s degree in sharia law. He had asked Ayman al-Zawahiri to establish an affiliate called al Qaeda in Egypt. Authorities also believed he was a founder and leader of the Nasr City Cell in Cairo. In October 2012, Egyptian authorities raided an apartment in Nasr City, arresting five terrorists after a gun battle during which a terrorist set off a bomb. Ahmad speaks English, is 5 foot, 7 inches, and has a thick beard.

In December 2012, Ali Harzi, alias Abdelbasset Ben Mbarek, a Tunisian suspected of involvement, refused to be interrogated by FBI agents, according to his lawyer, Anwar Oued-Ali. He was freed by Tunisian authorities on January 8, 2013, for lack of evidence. He had been detained in October 2012 at a Turkish airport.

Ahmed Abu Khattala, another suspect, on January 6, 2013, survived a car bombing in Benghazi that killed his would-be assassin. It was unclear what happened to the other man who was planting the bomb under Abu Khattala’s car. 12091101

September 11, 2012—Egypt—Protestors climbed the compound wall to attack the U.S. Embassy, burning a U.S. flag. At least two thousand demonstrators were involved but only a dozen climbed the wall.

September 12, 2012—Somalia—Three suicide bombers attacked the temporary residence of new Somali President Hassan Sheik Mohamud, 56, who was elected by the new parliament on September 10, during a news conference. The terrorists killed an African Union soldier but did not assassinate any political leaders. One terrorist struck near the gate, and one struck at the back of the Jazeera Hotel near the airport. The third attacker was shot trying to go over the wall of the compound. One terrorist was wearing a military uniform. An African Union spokesman said four people died, plus the three terrorists. Three other African Union troops were injured. Al-Shabaab claimed credit. Mohamud did not stop his speech during the gunfire, telling visiting Kenyan Foreign Minister Sam Ongeri, “Things like what’s happening now outside will continue for some time … Somalia has the momentum to move ahead.” 12091201

September 13, 2012—Iraq—Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Asaib al-Haq militia, threatened to attack Americans as part of the Islamic demonstrations against the anti–Muhammad film. “The offence caused to the Messenger will put all American interests in danger and we will not forgive them for that.” Hundreds of protestors were on the streets of Baghdad and Basra.

September 13, 2012—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri released another audio, calling on Muslims to back Syrian rebels and demanding Egypt revoke its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, saying Cairo represented a “government for sale and an army for rent.” “Supporting jihad in Syria to establish a Muslim state is a basic step towards Jerusalem, and thus America is giving the secular Baathist regime one chance after another for fear that a government is established in Syria that would threaten Israel.” “I appeal to the honorable members of the Egyptian Army, and there are many of them, not to be guards for the borders of Israel, and not to defend its borders or participate in besieging our people in Gaza.”

September 13, 2012—Yemen—Protests over the anti–Muhammad film led to the death of four demonstrators during a battle between security forces and thousands of demonstrators outside the U.S. Embassy. Some twenty-four security force members and eleven protestors were injured. The protestors had hopped a compound wall and stormed the embassy, but no diplomats were harmed. One of the compound’s buildings was set on fire. 12091301

September 13, 2012—Egypt—Police fired warning shots and tear gas at protestors outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Minor injuries were reported.

Protests also took place in Tunisia, Morocco, Iran, and other locations throughout the Middle East.

September 14, 2012—Middle East/Asia—Anti-U.S. protests were reported in Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Qatar, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Protestors torched Kentucky Fried Chicken and Hardee’s restaurants in Tripoli, Lebanon; police fired on the arsonists, killing one. Protestors broke into the U.S. embassies in Sudan and Tunisia. Sudan refused to let the United States send more Marines to defend the facility. 12091401-04

September 14, 2012—Sudan—Protestors set alight the German Embassy, then tried to attack the U.S. Embassy. Police opened fire. Casualties were not reported. 12091405

September 14, 2012—Lebanon—Demonstrators torched a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Tripoli. One man was killed and more than a dozen injured in clashes with police. 12091406

September 14, 2012—Kenya—Local police arrested two people with two explosive devices, four suicide vests containing hundreds of ball bears, four AK-47 assault rifles, twelve grenades, and ammunition and were searching for eight more would-be bombers and masterminds of a plot to conduct a terrorist attack in Nairobi. The group was believed linked to al-Shabaab.

September 14, 2012—United States—Authorities arrested Adel Daoud, 18, a U.S. citizen residing in Chicago’s Hillside suburb, following an undercover operation in which FBI agents provided him with a fake Jeep bomb he planned to use against a downtown bar. He was charged the next day with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to damage and destroy a building with an explosive. He had posted material on the Internet about “violent jihad” and the killing of Americans. Daoud had listed twenty-nine potential targets, including military recruiting centers, bars, malls, and other tourist attractions in Chicago. The U.S. Attorney’s office noted that at 7:15 p.m., he met the undercover agent in Villa Park and drove with him to downtown Chicago.

During the drive, Daoud led the undercover agent in a prayer that Daoud and the agent succeed in their attack, kill many people, and cause destruction. They entered a parking lot where a Jeep containing the purported explosive device was parked. Daoud then drove the Jeep out of the parking lot and parked the vehicle in front of a bar in downtown Chicago, which was the target that he had previously selected. According to the affidavit, Daoud exited the vehicle and walked to an alley approximately a block away, and in the presence of the undercover agent, attempted to detonate the device by pressing the triggering mechanism. He was then arrested.

He was charged the next day with one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, namely explosives, and one count of attempting to damage and destroy a building by means of an explosive. He faced life plus twenty years in prison if convicted.

September 15, 2012—Tunisia—During anti–U.S. riots, a school building on the grounds of the American school in Tunis was destroyed. Four people died and fifty injured during a firebomb attack on the U.S. Embassy. The United States announced that it was withdrawing embassy staff in Tunisia and Sudan. Local authorities blamed Salafist thugs and announced the arrests of 96 suspects. Police were searching for Salafist leader Saif Allah bin Hussein, alias Abu Ayyad, leader of the Tunisian wing of Ansar al-Sharia. He had been jailed under the former Tunisian government and released in 2011 at the start of the Arab Spring. He had delivered a sermon the previous day that authorities believed incited the attack on the school and embassy. The government detained 144 people, mostly Salafists, including 2 leaders of Ansar al-Sharia, after the attack on the embassy. Some conducted a prison hunger strike.

On October 14, U.S. Ambassador Jacob Walles sent a letter to the Tunisian government in which he called “upon the Tunisian government to conduct its investigation and bring the perpetrators and instigators of this attack to justice.” On October 24, a Tunisian court sentenced Abu Ayyad (variant Abu Ayub, variant Abu Ayoub), leader of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia, to a year in prison on charges of disturbing public security and incitement to violence, including the attack on the U.S. Embassy. His attorney, Rafik Ghak, said he would appeal. Bachir al-Gholi and Mohammed Bakhti, prominent Tunisian members of the Salafist movement, died on November 15 and 17, 2012, from their hunger strikes. They were held in the attack on the U.S. Embassy. 12091501-02

September 15, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan Local Police officer fired on British NATO coalition soldiers, killing two and wounding four, before he was shot to death by another soldier in Gereshk town. 12091501

September 15, 2012—Yemen—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula called for killing more U.S. diplomats. Yemen’s parliament demanded that all foreign troops leave, including the fifty U.S. Marines protecting the U.S. Embassy.

September 16, 2012—Pakistan/Afghanistan/Australia—Anti-U.S. protests continued. In Karachi, one protester died and eighteen were injured when hundreds of people broke through a barricade and tried to enter the U.S. Consulate.

September 16, 2012—Pakistan—A remotely-detonated bomb hit a passenger van in the Lower Dir district near Bunr village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killing fourteen and injuring six.

September 16, 2012—Turkey—Police officers hit a landmine while they were driving from Karliova to their base in Bingol Province in the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Eight officers died and nine were wounded. Kurdish separatists were suspected.

September 16, 2012—Afghanistan—A member of the Afghan security forces fired on U.S. troops at a remote checkpoint near a NATO installation in Zabul Province, killing four. 12091601

September 16, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan National Army soldier fired on six Lebanese civilian contractors working for NATO forces, causing minor injuries to some of them. The six were riding in a vehicle near Camp Garmsir in southern Helmand Province. 12091602

September 16, 2012—Egypt—Salafist preacher Ahmad Ashoush issued a fatwa saying, “The killing of the director, producer, actors, and everyone else involved in the film is mandatory.”

September 16, 2012—Somalia—Gunmen shot in the head and chest freelance cameraman Zakariye Mohamed Mohamud Moallim, killing him.

September 16, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram shot to death a security agent and three of his family members in Kano.

Gunmen attacked a Bauchi suburb, killing eight people playing poker.

Gunmen shot to death a moderate Muslim cleric in Maiduguri.

September 17, 2012—Lebanon—Hizballah led tens of thousands of protestors in Beirut. The group was addressed by Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah, who noted, “The world should know our anger will not be a passing outburst but that this is the start of a serious movement that will continue all over the Muslim world to defend the prophet of God.” He said that the release of a full-length version of the thirteen-minute video would entail “dangerous consequences.”

September 17, 2012—Nigeria—Soldiers at a checkpoint in Mariri shot to death two Boko Haram (BH) leaders. One was the BH spokesman, Abul Qaqa; another was the commander of the Kogi state BH group. The commander’s wife and children, who were also in the BH vehicle, were taken into military custody.

Meanwhile, a Nigerian Army soldier and thirteen suspected BH members were killed in Maiduguri when terrorists threw an explosive at a military vehicle. The bomb killed the soldier and injured three others. During a subsequent firefight, the thirteen BH members were killed.

September 18, 2012—Afghanistan—At 6:45 a.m., a 22-year-old female suicide bomber driving a Toyota Corolla attacked a van carrying foreigners near Kabul Airport, killing fourteen people, among them ten foreigners, including eight foreign civilians working for Air Charter Service Balmoral, an international aviation company. Two Afghan bystanders were killed and ten wounded. South Africa said most of the dead were South Africans. Kabul police said only six South Africans were killed, including one woman, and that a Filipino died, along with the Afghan driver. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said one of the dead was from Kyrgyzstan. Russian casualties were also reported. Haroon Zarghoon, a spokesman for Hizb-i-Islam terrorists, claimed credit, saying the bomber, Fatima, was protesting the anti–Muhammad film. Observers noted that Afghan women rarely drive, and this was the first female suicide bombing in the country. A second Hizb-i-Islam spokesman, Zubair Sediqqi, said, “A woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up in response to the anti–Islam video.” 12091801

September 18, 2012—Turkey—Kurdish rebels were blamed for an attack on a military convoy in Bingol Province that killed ten soldiers and wounded more than seventy.

September 18, 2012—Pakistan—Two bombs exploded within minutes of each other at a market in the Nazim Abad neighborhood of Karachi, killing six and wounding fifteen. No one claimed credit.

September 18, 2012—Mali—Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb threatened new anti–U.S. attacks in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania, encouraging “all Muslims to continue to demonstrate and escalate their protests … kill their ambassadors and representatives or to expel them to cleanse our land from their wickedness…. We congratulate our Muslim rebel brothers who defended our Prophet’s honor … and we tell them: the killing of the U.S. ambassador is the best gift you give to his arrogant unjust government.”

September 19, 2012—Pakistan—A remotely-detonated car bomb went off near a passing Pakistani Air Force vehicle close to Badaber Air Base, killing ten and wounding twenty-seven at a busy intersection in Peshawar. The Pakistani Taliban was suspected.

September 19, 2012—Nigeria—The Nigerian Army announced it had killed two more Boko Haram leaders at a highway checkpoint near Maiduguri. The men had weapons in their car.

September 19, 2012—France—A grenade attack against a Jewish grocery store in Sarcelles, a Paris suburb, injured one person. On October 6, 2012, French authorities conducted raids in Strasbourg, Paris, Nice, and Cannes, detaining twelve French-born suspects and killing one suspected of involvement in the grenade attack. Police found weapons, $35,200 in cash (27,000 Euros), a printed al Qaeda publication, martyr wills, and a list of Jewish groups in the Paris area. Authorities said a jihadi network was targeting the Jewish community.

The dead suspect was Jeremie Louis-Sidney, 33, whose DNA was found on the remains of the grenade. Sidney emptied six shots from his .357 caliber pistol at police as they forced open the door of his wife’s home. They fired back, killing him. One police officer was wounded in the gun battle. Louis-Sydney had earlier served two years in prison from 2008 to 2010 for drug trafficking. He was born of Caribbean descent and raised as a Christian. He was radicalized in prison. Hours after Sidney was killed, blank shots were fired at a synagogue in Argenteuil, a working-class suburb of Paris.

Another one of the detainees was captured near Paris carrying a loaded pistol. French President Francois Hollande said a proposed law would make it illegal to travel to militant training camps. Some of the suspects were admirers of Mohammed Merah, who conducted anti–Semitic attacks in March 2012 in Toulouse before being killed in a shootout with police. Prosecutors said that the dozen suspects were planning attacks on French soil and wanted to recruit people to fight against the Syrian regime and in other countries.

On October 11, 2012, five of the detainees were freed. The other seven were recent Islamic converts. The suspects ranged in age from 18 to 25. Also on October 11, French police announced that the Sarcelles bombing was planned by Jeremy Bailly. Investigators found during a raid of his home a key to a storage unit in Torcy outside Paris that contained bomb-making material, including bags of chemicals, batteries, alarm clocks, car headlights, and a pressure cooker. A prosecutor said the bomb he was building was “exactly” the type used by an Algerian terrorist group in the mid–1990s.

September 20, 2012—Somalia—Two suicide bombers attacked a Mogadishu restaurant, killing fifteen people, including three local journalists and two police officers. The dead journalists included Abdisatar Dahir Sabriye, news producer for the state-run Somali National TV; Liban Ali Nor, a TV news editor; and Abdirahman Yasin Ali, a radio director. Five other journalists were wounded. Al-Shabaab was suspected of the attack on the Village Restaurant, which is owned by Ahmed Jama, 46, a British Somali. The restaurant is next door to Radio Kulmiye, a station where Somali comedian Abdi Jeylani Malaq, who had twitted al-Shabaab, was shot to death in August. 12092001

September 20, 2012—Internet—Al Qaeda American-born spokesman Adam Gadahn released an eighty-four-minute As-Sahab video entitled Advice and Support to Our Rebel Brothers Against Injustice. It was believed to have been produced on April 30. Gadahn spoke in Arabic.

September 21, 2012—Somalia—Gunmen shot to death a radio reporter.

September 21, 2012—Worldwide—France closed diplomatic facilities in twenty countries after Charles Hebdo, a French satire magazine, printed anti–Mohammed cartoons. Germany closed its embassy in the Sudan in preparation for likely protests. A few dozen people stood in front of the French Embassy in Cairo in protest.

September 21, 2012—Pakistan—During protests against the anti–Mohammed film, 19 people died and 160-plus were injured in demonstrations throughout the country. Mobs in Peshawar torched two movie theaters; TV reporter Muhammad Amir and another person were killed. Demonstrators in Rawalpindi set alight a tollbooth and vehicles. Police prevented the protestors from getting to U.S. diplomatic facilities in Rawalpindi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Islamabad. Arsonists in Karachi hit movie theaters, banks, American food franchises, and police vehicles and threw stones at the Sheraton hotel. A mob burned an Anglican church in Mardan.

September 21, 2012—Worldwide—Protests against the anti–Islam film were also reported in Lebanon, Bangladesh, and Malaysia.

September 21, 2012—United States—The Washington Post reported that the State Department had decided to remove the Iranian Mujahideen-e Khalq from the list of terrorist groups.

September 21, 2012—Israel—Three gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms crossed the Sinai border in a mountainous area but were shot to death in a firefight with Israeli troops, who lost soldier Netanel Yahalomi, 20; a second soldier was wounded. Yahalomi was posthumously promoted to corporal. The terrorists had fired on Israeli soldiers who were securing a construction zone for a security fence at Mount Harif between the Gaza Strip and Eilat. An explosives belt worn by one of the terrorists detonated. The gunmen had three rocket-propelled grenade launchers and a machine gun hidden in a nearby pit. The Supporters of the Holy Places (Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, variant Partisans of Jerusalem) claimed credit, saying it was retaliating for the anti–Muhammad video. The group also claimed credit for the August 18, 2011, attack near Eilat that killed eight and wounded more than thirty people. The group said one of its leaders, Ibrahim Aweida, helped lead the Eilat attack, and that he died in an Israeli attack in the Sinai village of Khreiza in August 2012. The most recent attack was also to avenge his death. 12092101

September 21, 2012—Afghanistan—A joint Afghan-NATO special operations team foiled two men preparing to attack a coalition base in Logar Province. The two “known insider attack facilitators” planned to set off homemade bombs, recruit terrorists, and infiltrate the Afghan security forces. Interrogators were trying to determine their affiliation.

September 21–22, 2012—Russia—Four police officers and four Chechen terrorists were killed in gun battles in the southern Vedeno region. Eleven police officers were wounded.

September 22, 2012—Somalia—Unidentified gunmen shot to death Mustaf Haji Mohamed, a Somali lawmaker, after evening prayers in Mogadishu’s Waberi district.

September 22, 2012—Yemen—Abdul-Latif al-Sayed, a former Islamist who helped drive al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula out of Jaar, escaped an assassination attempt when a suicide bomber set off his explosives. Al-Sayed had entered a parked car with three others after dining in an Aden restaurant. The terrorist died; four victims had serious injuries. An August attack against Sayed killed forty-five.

September 22, 2012—Pakistan—Federal Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour told a news conference that he would personally finance a $100,000 reward for the death of the person behind the anti–Muhammad video. Although incitement to murder is illegal, Bilour was “ready to be hanged in the name of the Prophet Muhammad” and called on the Taliban and al Qaeda to join him as “partners in this noble deed.” The prime minister’s press secretary said, “We completely dissociate ourselves from the statement of Mr. Bilour.” Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, who lives in California, was believed to be the target of the hit. The Pakistani Taliban took Bilour off its hit list. The Dadullah Group of the Taliban in Afghanistan offered a bounty of 8 kilograms of gold (roughly $487,000) for the killing of those behind the film.

September 22, 2012—Bangladesh—Clashes between police and Islamists protesting the anti–Muhammad video left more than one hundred people injured in Dhaka.

September 22, 2012—Indonesia—An antiterrorist squad arrested ten Islamist militants and seized a dozen homemade bombs, three rifles, four swords, and several jihadi books from the homes of three suspects. The team defused five bombs in Solo. The group was planning suicide attacks against security forces and the government; attacks would include a bombing of parliament, shooting of police, and attacking members of the antiterrorist team. Two terrorists were picked up in Central Java’s Solo town after being fingered by detainees; they were identified as Mohammad Toriq, a bomb maker who surrendered a fortnight earlier in Jakarta while carrying a gun and ammunition and wearing an empty suicide belt, and Yusuf Rizaldi, who surrendered to police in North Sumatra three days later. They in turn fingered six other terrorists arrested later in Solo. A ninth suspect was grabbed in West Kalimantan, Borneo. The tenth suspect, Joko Partit, brother of Eko Joko Supriyanto, a terrorist shot dead by police in 2009, was arrested in Solo on September 23. Badri Hartono and Rudi Kurnia Putra, both 45, reportedly recruited young men and taught them to make bombs.

September 23, 2012—Nigeria—At 9:00 a.m., a suicide car bomber attacked a Catholic Mass ceremony in St. John’s Catholic Church in Bauchi, killing two and wounding forty-five. Boko Haram was suspected.

September 24, 2012—Nigeria—The military announced it had arrested more than 150 people and killed 36 others in a crackdown against Boko Haram in towns in Adamawa and Yobe states. Two soldiers were wounded in the operations that had taken place during the previous few days.

September 24, 2012—Yemen—Gunmen shot to death Col. Abdullah al-Ashwal, the most senior intelligence officer killed in Sana’a. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was suspected of the drive-by shooting.

September 25, 2012—India—During a gun battle in a forest village in Kashmir, a terrorist and a soldier were killed. Two soldiers were wounded.

September 25, 2012—Turkey—A bomb exploded under a vehicle carrying Turkish security forces in Tunceli, killing six soldiers and a civilian walking in the road. Kurdish rebels were suspected.

September 26, 2012—Syria—Suicide bombers attacked the Syrian Army’s General Staff Command headquarters in Damascus in a morning attack, setting off a white van on the main highway outside the perimeter fence. A second explosion went off on the grounds. Four guards were killed and fourteen people were wounded. The Free Syrian Army’s Damascus Military Council and the jihadi Tajamo Ansar al-Islam claimed credit on Facebook.

September 27, 2012—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video on a jihadi Web site, Days with the Imam, Part III, about his memories of Osama bin Laden. He noted that bin Laden was blind in the right eye after an accident in his youth when he was a member of the Saudi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jeddah. The group tossed him out for insisting on conducting jihad against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan in the late 1980s.

September 28, 2012—Iraq—During a prison break in Tikrit, forty-seven al Qaeda terrorists escaped. Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed credit on October 12, saying it had smuggled weapons to the prisoners. The dozens of prisoners, many on death row, killed sixteen members of the security forces. The group said it set off a car bomb outside the prison gate.

September 29, 2012—Thailand—Islamist insurgents were blamed for firing two grenades at a security checkpoint near a trade fair in Bajoh District, Narathiwat Province, injuring thirty people, four seriously.

September 29, 2012—Afghanistan—Guards at an Afghan Army checkpoint fired on a platoon of twenty U.S. soldiers during an afternoon patrol in Wardak Province. The senior American was killed when an Afghan opened fire without warning. A second Afghan killed a U.S. civilian contractor and wounded two U.S. soldiers. Afghan soldiers and insurgents fired from different directions at 4:00 p.m. north of Sisay in the Tangi Valley. Three Afghan soldiers were killed and several wounded in the gun battle.

September 30, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen set off a bomb near an Islamic boarding school in the Gaskiya neighborhood of Zaria, in northern Kaduna State, injuring several. They then conducted a gun battle with authorities that resulted in two deaths. The terrorists ordered the students out of the school before setting off the bomb, which destroyed several nearby homes. Boko Haram was suspected. The school is run by Awwal Adam Albani, a critic of Boko Haram and himself a Salafi.

September 30, 2012—Kenya—At 10:30 a.m., a grenade was thrown into a church in the Eastleigh neighborhood of Nairobi, killing a 9-year-old boy and injuring several children. Al-Shabaab sympathizers were suspected.

September 30, 2012—Iraq—Bombs in Kirkuk, Taji, and Kut killed twenty-six and wounded ninety-four people. Al Qaeda in Iraq was suspected. At 7:15 a.m., three car bombs went off in a Shi’ite neighborhood in Taji, killing eight and wounding twenty-eight. At the same time, a suicide bomber set off his car bomb in Shula, Baghdad, killing one person and injuring seven. A suicide bomber drove his minibus into a security checkpoint in Kut, killing three police officers and wounding five.

October 2012—Syria—Rebel gunmen kidnapped Ukrainian journalist Anhar Kochneva, 40. On November 7, the group released a video of her admitting to working for Russian military intelligence agent Pyotr Petrov, translating for Russian and Syrian military officers. Her captors said on Ukrainian television, “Let not a single Russian, Ukrainian or Iranian come out of Syria alive.” She had grown up in Odessa, where she learned Arabic. She ran a Moscow travel agency that specialized in the Middle East. Following her divorce, she moved to Damascus. She worked on getting out the Syrian government’s message, often appearing on Syrian television. She phoned family and friends to say she had been kidnapped. She said the Free Syrian Army had saved her from a group of violent thugs but then held on to her as a hostage. 12109901

October 2012—Pakistan—The Pakistani Taliban conducted an acid attack on a Kohat University van filled with graduate students in Doranai near Parachinar in northern Pakistan, leaving two girls, Zahida and Nabila, with severe burns to their faces and one boy, Mohammad Ali, with gunshot wounds. Another boy was also burned by acid. The terrorists left pamphlets warning local girls against going to school. Local Pakistani Taliban leader Qari Muhavia told CNN, “We will never allow the girls of this area to go and get a Western education…. If and when we find any girl from Parachinar going to university for an education, we will target her [in] the same way, so that she might not be able to unveil her face before others.”

October 2012—Gaza Strip—Palestinians for the first time fired a Strela shoulder-launched missile at an Israeli helicopter early in the month. Israeli officials believed the missile originated from Libyan stockpiles that were smuggled through tunnels along the Egypt-Gaza border.

October 2012—Lebanon—In late October, Beirut authorities arrested two Malaysians on suspicion of having al Qaeda links. They were represented by local attorney Marwan Sinno, who said they were accused of planning a terrorist attack in Syria.

October 1, 2012—Afghanistan—At 9:00 a.m. in Khost, a Taliban suicide bomber set off his explosives-packed motorcycle near a joint International Security Assistance Force and Afghan police patrol in the east, killing nineteen people, including three NATO service members, their local interpreter, and fifteen Afghan police and civilians. Fifty-nine others were wounded.

October 2, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen and knife-wielding terrorists killed twenty-five to twenty-seven people at the Federal Polytechnic college in Mubi in Adamawa State. Gang members of warring religious fraternities were suspected. Police said most who were killed were executive leaders elected in a campus election that week. Among the dead were nineteen Polytechnic students, three students from another college, a former soldier, a guard, and an elderly man. Police had raided the campus the previous week in a search for Boko Haram members, seizing weapons and bombs.

October 2, 2012—Sudan—Four Nigerian soldiers belonging to the UN–African Union peacekeeping mission in western Darfur were ambushed and shot to death during the evening. Eight soldiers were injured by unknown gunmen. 12100201

October 3, 2012—Syria—Car bombs exploded in Aleppo at a social club and a hotel in the central Saadallah al-Jabri Square, killing 40 and wounding between 90 and 130. Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists belonging to al-Nusrah were suspected.

October 3, 2012—Lebanon—Three Hizballah members were killed when explosives went off in a weapons warehouse in Nabi Sheet, south of Baalbek.

October 4, 2012—Nigeria—A bomb at an outdoor bar in Jalingo in Taraba State killed two people and wounded fourteen others at 8:00 p.m. Boko Haram was suspected.

October 5, 2012—Israel—New York native William Hershkovitz, 23, a U.S. tourist at the Red Sea resort of Eilat, attacked a security guard at the seaside Leonardo Club hotel, grabbed his gun, and shot to death a hotel chef. Hershkovitz then barricaded himself in the hotel’s kitchen before being shot dead by a military counterterrorism team. 12100501

October 5, 2012—Nigeria—A bomb went off during the night in Jalingo in Taraba State, wounding eight people. Boko Haram was suspected.

October 6, 2012—Israel—Israeli authorities shot down a Hizballah drone that entered Israeli airspace. Hizballah leader Seyed Hassan Nasrallah said it was an Iranian-built reconnaissance drone. Israeli officials said the drone was spotted over the Mediterranean, near the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials suggested it was photographing the Dimona nuclear research center. Israeli officials said it was Hizballah’s third drone flight.

October 6, 2012—Peru—The Shining Path destroyed three helicopters belonging to Transportadora de Gas Del Peru (TGP), leaving the natural gas pipeline from the Camisea gas fields without maintenance services. The firm is owned by Argentina’s Pluspetrol, U.S.-based Hunt Oil, South Korea’s SK Energy, Suez-Tractebel, and others. 12100601

October 7, 2012—Philippines—The press reported that the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front had come to an agreement that set the stage for a final agreement that would end the insurgency. Muslims in the southern Philippines would be granted broad autonomy in a new administrative region, Bangsamoro. The October 15 signing was witnessed by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose emissaries served as mediators, Philippine President Benigno Aquino, III, and rebel chairman Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim.

October 7, 2012—Iraq—Six people died in bombings in Mosul, Tal Afar, Sulaiman Bek, and Baghdad. In Mosul, gunmen killed Judge Abbas al-Abadi in a drive-by shooting.

October 7, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected in the shooting death of a Chinese citizen outside of Maiduguri. 12100701

October 8, 2012—Yemen—Local authorities detained an American suspected of having links to al Qaeda. He was arrested in a hotel in Ataq, capital of Shabwa Province, carrying two U.S. passports and a German one. He had been visiting mosques in Marib. He had earlier been in Saudi Arabia before entering Yemen a few months ago. He was on a list of wanted al Qaeda suspects. He spoke English, claiming to be a Muslim.

October 8, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected of setting off a bomb that killed an army lieutenant and wounded two others in Maiduguri.

October 8, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram killed fourteen people, including a mother and her three children, belonging to a Christian ethnic group in the Riyom local government area of Plateau State. Gunmen fired on a car in Barkin Ladi near the local airport, killing two Christians; local villagers killed a Muslim man in retaliation.

October 8, 2012—Afghanistan—Caitlan Coleman, 27, a pregnant American woman, was reported missing with her Canadian husband. She was due to deliver in January and was suffering from a liver ailment. The family said on December 30, 2012, that they last heard from son-in-law Josh on October 8 from an Internet café. No ransom demand had been made. No terrorist group claimed credit. Observers suggested that they had been kidnapped. 12100801

October 9, 2012—Pakistan—A masked Pakistani Taliban gunman shot in the head and critically wounded Malala Yousafzai, 14 (although her school records listed her birth date as July 12, 1997), a ninth-grade girl who had spoken out against Taliban attempts to intimidate girls from going to school. The gunman jumped into her school bus, asked for her by name, and shot her. A second gunman was in the rear of the bus. She was flown to a military hospital in Peshawar, then sent to a U.K. surgical hospital. Thousands of Pakistanis demonstrated against the Taliban’s attack. In early 2009, she wrote in a diary about Taliban attacks for the BBC’s Urdu service. She lived in Mingora, in the Swat Valley. In 2011, the Pakistani government awarded her a 1 million rupee ($10,500) peace prize. She was a finalist that year for the International Children’s Peace Prize, awarded by a Dutch organization. Two other girls were shot, including a seventh grader who was hit in the leg. The Pakistani Taliban vowed to kill her if she survived surgery. Spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan said she was responsible for “negative propaganda” about Muslims. “She considers President Obama as her ideal leader. Malala is the symbol of the infidels and obscenity.”

Authorities said they had identified an attacker who traveled from eastern Afghanistan and offered a $100,000 reward for his capture. On October 19, the Taliban threatened to attack media outlets that covered the Malala story. Pakistani police detained the relatives of Attaullah, believed to be the gunman. The detainees included his brother, Ehsanullah, 18, who was picked up a month earlier. Also detained were Attaullah’s brother-in-law and an uncle. He had earlier been arrested on suspicion of militant activity in 2009 during a military operation in Swat, Pakistan, but was freed for lack of evidence. His family home is in Sangota, 4 miles from Mingora. Two other men accused of sheltering the gunman for a night were arrested. One was a driving instructor from Mingora named Abdul Haleem. Authorities believed Attaullah had fled to Afghanistan. The press reported that the head of the Swat Taliban, Maulana Fazlullah, alias Mullah Radio (he once ran a private FM station), had ordered the murder from his hideout in Konar Province, Afghanistan.

October 9, 2012—Yemen—Authorities found three decapitated bodies in a market in Marib. CDs next to the bodies showed them confessing to being government informants against al Qaeda and placing tracking devices on cars that were targets of U.S. drones. One man said he worked in a tire repair shop and planted chips in terrorist vehicles.

October 9, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen shot to death two police officers in Kano who were guarding workers trying to give polio shots to local children. Police arrested several suspects.

October 9, 2012—Syria—The Sunni jihadi Al-Nusrah Front for the People of Levant claimed credit for a nighttime three-stage suicide attack on a compound of the air force intelligence service in Harasta. The group named the suicide bomber and said the car contained 9 tons of explosives. After twenty-five minutes, another man drove an ambulance carrying explosives to the scene to kill first responders. The group then shelled the area.

October 10, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen outside of Kano shot to death two officers of the Federal Road Safety Corps who were on a routine assignment checking vehicles. Another officer was wounded. Boko Haram was suspected.

October 10, 2012—Libya—Gunmen in a passing car shot to death Army Gen. Mohammed al-Fitori as he was leaving Friday prayers in Benghazi. He had defected from the Qadhafi regime and rose to become head of ammunition and armament for the army.

October 10, 2012—Afghanistan—Six members of the Afghan Local Police died when a police vehicle ran over a roadside bomb in the Nad Ali district of Helmand Province.

October 11, 2012—Pakistan—Gunmen kidnapped a retired Army Brig. Gen. who was working on a counterterrorism contract with the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. He was grabbed on the outskirts of Islamabad shortly after leaving his home for work. His driver resisted and was shot to death.

October 11, 2012—Yemen—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was blamed in the drive-by shooting by a masked terrorist of Qassem M. Aqlani, a security official for the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a. The terrorist escaped on a motorcycle driven by a colleague after intercepting Aqlani near his house. He had worked for the embassy for eleven years. 12101101

October 12, 2012—Internet—Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri released an audio on Mujahedin al-Ansar, an Islamist Web site, in which he called for “free and distinguished zealots for Islam” to “continue their opposition to American crusader Zionist aggression against Islam and Muslims.” He called for more protests outside U.S. embassies. He praised the assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Libya the previous month. He claimed U.S. authorities permitted the anti–Muhammed film “in the name of personal freedom and freedom of expression” that is not given to Muslim prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

October 13, 2012—Libya—A bomb exploded beneath the car of a police colonel in Benghazi’s al-Hadayeq neighborhood. Col. Mohammed Ben Haleem was uninjured when he went to warm up his engine then stepped back into his house. No injuries were reported.

October 13, 2012—Pakistan—A car bomb exploded in a Darra Adam Khel bazaar outside an office of anti–Taliban tribal elders, killing seventeen people, injuring forty, and destroying thirty-five shops and eight vehicles. The Pakistani Taliban was suspected of the attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

October 13, 2012—Mali—Al Qaeda-linked members of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) threatened to “open the doors of hell” for French citizens if Paris continued to press for armed intervention by Economic Community of West African States.

October 13, 2012—Afghanistan—An insider attack, this time by a member of the Afghan intelligence service, killed two Americans and four Afghan National Directorate of Security colleagues when a suicide bomber set off his vest at the intelligence office in the Maruf district in Kandahar Province. The dead included former U.S. military officer Dario Lorenzetti, 42 (according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram); Ghulam Rasool, deputy intelligence director for Kandahar Province; two of his bodyguards; and another intelligence employee. The terrorist was identified as Abdul Wali from Zirak village in Maruf district. Wali’s 9-year-old brother was killed in a revenge attack later that day. The New York Times, Reuters, CNN, Daily Mail, Google, and Associated Press reported on October 17 that one of the Americans killed worked for the CIA. The Wall Street Journal on October 17 said that the Department of Defense identified the U.S. military casualty as Spc. Brittany B. Gordon, 24, of St. Petersburg, Florida, assigned to the 572nd Military Intelligence Company, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. 12101301

October 14, 2012—Nigeria—Fifty gunmen firing assault rifles killed twenty-four people, including those leaving a mosque after dawn prayers, in Dogon Dawa, a village in Kaduna State. Observers suggested the attack was part of a clash between Muslim farmers and Muslim nomadic cattlemen.

October 14, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram shot to death Mala Kaka, a traditional ruler in Maiduguri who had called for an end to attacks.

October 14–15, 2012—Ivory Coast—Gunmen attacked a power station and security facilities in Abidjan during the night and early morning. Supporters of deposed President Laurent Gbagbo were suspected. Among the sites was the Azito thermal power station in Abidjan’s Yopougon neighborhood, where ten attackers were arrested. Gunmen also attacked a police station in Bonoua in an attempt to steal weapons.

October 15, 2012—Nigeria—At least fifteen bombs went off during a hail of gunfire in Maiduguri. Boko Haram was suspected. A gunman shot to death a police traffic warden. Fighting between the police and the terrorists killed at least twenty-four people; one soldier was injured. Boko Haram used small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. One school was burned down.

October 16, 2012—Yemen—A gunman on a motorcycle shot to death Gen. Khaled al-Hashim, a senior Yemeni intelligence officer. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was suspected. Al-Hashim was one of several Iraqi military experts hired by the Yemeni government after the end of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003. 12101601

October 16, 2012—Tunisia—Five masked men set alight the 500-year-old shrine of Sayyeda Aicha Manoubia, a thirteenth-century Muslim female saint, in Tunis. The men then stole valuables from four women staying overnight at the shrine. Salafis oppose the veneration of saints.

October 17, 2012—Norway—The government of Colombia began closed-door peace talks with representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

October 17, 2012—United States—The FBI arrested Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, a Bangladeshi living in Queens who tried to bomb the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on 33 Liberty Street with what he believed was a 1,000-pound bomb in a van. He came to the United States on a student visa in January 2012, looking to perform jihad in the United States. His parents (his father is a banker) in Dhaka said he was a terrible student, on probation in Bangladesh’s North South University, and he had come to study in the United States to improve his job prospects. He enrolled in cybersecurity at Southeast Missouri State University, becoming vice president of the school’s Muslim student association. He withdrew after a semester and requested that his records be transferred to a Brooklyn-area school. He contacted an individual who was an FBI informant. He claimed to have had overseas connections with al Qaeda (AQ), although the FBI said there was no evidence that AQ was involved. He suggested several targets, including a senior New York Stock Exchange official and President Obama. The undercover agent provided twenty 50-pound bags of inerted explosives, which Nafis stored in a warehouse, then moved to a van. He parked the van, recorded a confessor video in a nearby hotel, phoned a number he believed would set off a detonator, and was arrested. His Plan B was to conduct a suicide attack, although he preferred to stay alive to carry out more attacks. In the video, he warned, “We will not stop until we attain victory or martyrdom.” Nafis hoped the bomb would disrupt the presidential election and the U.S. economy. He also wrote an article claiming credit; he asked the agent to give the article to an al Qaeda magazine.

Nafis was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda. He was assigned a public defender. He made an initial court appearance at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn. Magistrate Judge Roanne L. Mann ordered him held without bail. He had claimed that he was going to attend school in Missouri. He was working as a busboy at a Manhattan restaurant when arrested.

Nafis communicated via Facebook with the undercover FBI agent and someone named “Yaqeen.” They discussed whether it was permissible under Islamic rulings to wage jihad while on a student visa. On October 18, 2012, the FBI arrested the man they believed to be “Yaqeen” and Nafis’s accomplice. Howard Willie Carter, II, was arrested after the Bureau found one thousand images and three video files of child pornography on a laptop and hard drive in the trash near his apartment in San Diego. He was held on child pornography charges. Carter was named as a co-conspirator in the Nafis indictment. Nafis said that Yaqeen had told him about a Baltimore military base that had only one guard. 12101701

October 17, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen kidnapped six Russian sailors and an Estonian in an attack on the Bourbon Liberty 249, an anchor handling ship operated by the Paris-based Bourbon SA oil and gas services firm off the coast of the Niger Delta. The attack occurred near the Pennington River off Bayelsa State, near the Pennington Export Terminal run by the U.S.-based Chevron Corporation. The company works with the Chinese-owned Addax Petroleum Company, among others. Another nine sailors on the ship sailed to the firm’s port on Onne in Rivers State. 12101702

October 18, 2012—Turkey—Security forces killed a dozen Kurdish rebels in the southeast, bringing the death toll in two days of fighting to eighteen.

October 18, 2012—Turkey—A midnight explosion outside Eleskirt wounded twenty-eight soldiers and damaged a military vehicle and a state-owned Boru Hatlari ile Petrol Tasima AS (BOTAS) pipeline, disrupting the flow of natural gas from Iran. BOTAS transports oil and gas from Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Azerbaijan. No group claimed credit, although the Kurdistan Workers’ Party was suspected. 12101801

October 18, 2012—United States—The U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program offered multi-million dollar rewards for the arrest of two al Qaeda (AQ) members moving money and terrorists through Iran. The administration offered $7 million for Iran-based financier Muhsin al-Fadhli, who had received advanced notification of the 9/11 plot. Another $5 million was offered for Fadhli’s deputy, Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi, which moved AQ money and terrorists through South Asia and the Middle East. The U.S. Treasury imposed financial sanctions against al-Harbi, prohibiting U.S. citizens from dealing with him and freezing his U.S.-based assets. Al-Fadhli was blacklisted by the Treasury in 2005.

October 18, 2012—Afghanistan—At 6:00 a.m., a roadside mine exploded near a minibus carrying people to a wedding reception at the groom’s house in the Dawlat Abad district of northern Balkh Province, killing nineteen, including six children and seven women, and wounding sixteen.

October 18, 2012—Algeria—Gunmen stopped a bus at their checkpoint in the Boumerdes region, checked passengers’ IDs, and pulled aside two members of the military, dragging them out and shooting them dead.

October 19, 2012—Lebanon—During the afternoon rush hour, a remotely-detonated car bomb exploded in East Beirut’s Ashrafiyeh district near Sassine Square in the mostly Christian Ashrafiyeh area, killing Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, chief of the Internal Security Forces Information Branch, and seven other people, including his bodyguard and a civilian, and injuring 110. The bomb was hidden in a stolen car parked on a narrow street near a safe house he had used to meet sources. He and his bodyguard were driving an unarmored, rented Honda Accord. He was outspoken in his opposition to the Syrian regime and was leading an investigation into jailed Lebanese politician Michel Samaha, who was believed to be plotting with two Syrian officials to conduct political and religious assassination in Lebanon. Many Lebanese observers blamed Hizballah and suggested it was an inside job. Hizballah deemed the attack a “sinful attempt to target the stability and national unity.” Al-Hassan had returned from Paris to Lebanon the night before, traveling under a false name. Some officials suggested that airport workers in thrall to Hizballah leaked his whereabouts to the terrorists. 12101901

October 20, 2012—Iraq—Two bombs went off near a Baghdad checkpoint in front of a Shi’ite shrine in the Khadimiya neighborhood, killing eleven and wounding forty-eight.

October 19, 2012—Yemen—In an al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula attack on an army base in Abyan, thirteen soldiers and thirteen terrorists were killed. Two terrorists wearing army uniforms drove their truck bomb into the base, killing themselves and ten soldiers and injuring more than twenty soldiers. Another group of terrorists attacked the base from the sea, spurring a gun battle in which eleven more terrorists and three soldiers died.

October 21, 2012—Russia—The Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee announced that it had killed forty-nine rebels and captured dozens more in the North Caucasus in a two-month period of raids against ninety militant bases and twenty-six weapons caches. The government said the terrorists were responsible for bombings, murders of police officers, and attacks on schools in the Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria Republics.

October 21, 2012—Jordan—The government announced the arrest of eleven Jordanians who had been planning since June to attack shopping centers, cafés, government buildings, and diplomatic targets, including the U.S. Embassy, using car bombs, mortars, machine guns, grenades, and other heavy weapons that would have killed hundreds of people. The group named itself 11-9 the Second, referring to the November 9, 2005, series of Amman hotel bombings that killed 60 people and wounded 115. Minister for Media and Communication Samih Maayta said that the group had traveled to Syria to obtain weapons, including TNT, and had taken “counsel from al Qaeda in Iraq via the terrorist sites on the Internet.” Several targets were in the affluent Abdoun neighborhood in southern Amman. Authorities seized weapons, computers, cameras, and forged documents. A week earlier, Jordanian officials had arrested three Jordanians trying to sneak into Syria to join radical jihadis fighting Assad loyalists.

The Washington Post reported on December 3, 2012, that the attacks would have been conducted in three phases. First, they planned suicide bombings of two shopping centers. Second, they planned gun and bomb attacks against luxury hotels frequented by foreigners, cafes, and government buildings, to draw police away from the final target. Third, the U.S. Embassy and the affluent Abdoun district would be subjected to heavy mortar and machinegun fire.

The detainees were identified as Mohammed Raed Moustafa Khater, Abdullah Khalil Mohammad Hamdam, Abdul Rahman Sabri Abdul Rahman al-Heyari, Ahmed Abd al Hadi Abu Taha, Mahmoud Younis Manaa, Ala al-Deen Derbas, Fawzi abd al-Jabbar Hussein, Abdal-Fattah Saud Dardas, Tareq Ali al-Shari, Jafar Saud el-Fatah Dardas, and Ayman Ahmed Salam Abu Selek. They had met while fighting the Assad government in Syria and were in their 20s and 30s. They had smuggled across the border cases of TNT, mortar shells, grenade launchers, and belt-fed machine guns. Authorities had kept them under surveillance after penetrating the cell. They arrested the group, seizing their weapons, computers, and forged documents.

October 21, 2012—Jordan—In a separate attack, government forces battled sixteen armed terrorists trying to sneak into Syria. A Jordanian soldier and four terrorists died in the twenty-minute gun battle.

October 22, 2012—Nigeria—The government set a 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. curfew in Potiskum, Yobe State, after twenty-three people were killed by Boko Haram attacks. The dead included a state government official and his two children. Gunmen burned down three schools and threw a bomb at a military convoy, injuring two soldiers.

October 24, 2012—Yemen—Two masked motorcyclists shot to death Ali al-Yamani, a counterterrorism official, in Damar Province. The fleeing gunmen were suspected of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula membership.

October 24, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan soldier not wearing his uniform shot to death two British soldiers and an Afghan police officer in Helmand Province. 12102401

October 25, 2012—Yemen—A gunman firing from a motorcycle failed to assassinate Abdulkader Ali Hilal, mayor of Sana’a. The gunman and the driver of the motorbike were arrested.

October 25, 2012—Afghanistan—Taliban spokesman said a uniformed member of the Afghan security forces shot two U.S. service members in Uruzgan Province. 12102501

October 25–26, 2012—Indonesia—Antiterrorist authorities conducted raids in four provinces and arrested eleven members of Harakah Sunni for Indonesian Society (HASMI) of planning terrorist attacks on local and foreign targets, including the U.S. Embassy, the local office of U.S. mining firm Freeport-McMoRan, the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya, a plaza near the Australian Embassy, and the headquarters of a special police force in Central Java. Police confiscated bombs, explosives, bomb-making material, ammunition, and a 6.6-pound gas cylinder filled with explosives that had been assembled at a house in Madiun, East Java. They also found videos and images of attacks on Muslims elsewhere in the world.

October 26, 2012—Afghanistan—At least forty-one people died and seventy were injured when a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Meymaneh, capital of Faryab Province, on the first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday. Casualties included police officers and soldiers plus fourteen civilians.

October 27, 2012—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri released a two-hour and twelve-minute video calling for kidnapping of Westerners, imposition of sharia in Egypt, and assisting the rebellion in Syria. “We are seeking, by the help of Allah, to capture others and to incite Muslims to capture the citizens of the countries that are fighting Muslims in order to release our captives.” He complained that the international community had given Bashar al-Assad “a license to kill … I incite Muslims everywhere, especially in the countries that are contiguous to Syria, to rise to support their brothers in Syria with all that they can and not to spare anything that they can offer.” Turning, to Egypt, he observed, “The battle in Egypt is very clear. It is a battle between the secular minority that is allied with the church and that is leaning on the support of the army, who are made by [former president Hosni] Mubarak and the Americans … and the Muslim ummah in Egypt that is seeking to implement the sharia.” He demanded the release of “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman from the United States.

October 28, 2012—Nigeria—At 9:00 a.m., a suicide bomber crashed his explosives-carrying Jeep SUV at St. Rita’s Catholic Church in Kaduna’s Malali neighborhood, killing seven and wounding more than one hundred. Boko Haram was suspected.

October 28, 2012—France—Police arrested two Basque Homeland and Liberty (ETA) members—Izaskun Lesaka, 37, responsible for its weapons and explosives caches, and Joseba Iturbide Ochoteco, 35—in a hotel in Macon in eastern France. Both were armed. Lesaka was considered one of ETA’s top three leaders. Police seized “abundant computer equipment and a stolen car with false number plates.”

October 29, 2012—Afghanistan—A man in an Afghan police uniform shot to death two NATO soldiers during a joint patrol in Girishk, Helmand Province. The attacker escaped. 12102901

October 31, 2012—Egypt—Authorities arrested a dozen jihadis, including a Tunisian and a Libyan suspected of al Qaeda links, planning to conduct terrorist operations inside Egypt and abroad. The terrorists had rented apartments and used false names. They belonged to Cairo cells in Nasser City, Sayyida Zeinab and Heliopolis, and an area on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road. Police seized arms, explosives, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Three of the terrorists were trying to sneak into Libya.

November 2012—Nigeria—The Ansaru faction of Boko Haram kidnapped a French engineer in the north near the Nigeria border, citing the French ban on Islamic veils and preparations for a military operation in Mali. 12119901

November 1, 2012—Northern Ireland—Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists were suspected in the death of a prison guard during a gun ambush as David Black, 52, drove to work on the M1 freeway southwest of Belfast. His car crashed down a grassy embankment into a ditch. The burned-out getaway car was found in Lurgan, a power base of two factions of the IRA—the Real IRA and Continuity IRA. The car had Dublin, Ireland, license plates. It was the first murder of a guard in two decades. No one claimed credit 12110101

November 2, 2012—Afghanistan—Rival police officers shot to death four Afghan colleagues in Helmand’s Grish District during a shift change by arriving officers.

November 2, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected of shooting to death a retired general at his Maiduguri home while he was sitting with guests during an afternoon visit.

November 3, 2012—Pakistan—A suicide bomber set off his explosives near a vehicle carrying Fateh Khan, head of a local anti–Taliban militia, killing him, three guards, and two passersby. Several others were wounded at a gas station in Buner District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Khan was a leader of the Awami National Party.

November 3, 2012—Somalia—Two suicide bombers set off explosives at a Mogadishu restaurant when a security guard stopped them from entering the building. The attack killed one person and damaged cars.

November 4, 2012—Libya—A homemade bomb exploded under a police car in front of the central Hadayeq police station in Benghazi, injuring three police officers.

November 4, 2012—Kenya—Al-Shabaab was suspected in a grenade attack on a church service in a police camp in the north that wounded ten people.

November 5, 2012—Bahrain—A series of five bomb explosions killed two Asian men working as street cleaners, including a trash collector, and seriously injured a third Asian in Manama’s Qudaibiya and Adliya districts, an area popular with tourists and Westerners. 12110501-05

November 5, 2012—Saudi Arabia—Al Qaeda killed two Saudi border guards.

November 6, 2012—Iraq—A suicide car bomber killed thirty-three people and wounded fifty-six at an Iraqi military base during shift change in Taji. Among the dead were twenty-two soldiers, as were many of the wounded.

November 6, 2012—Internet—Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a video posted on a jihadi Web site that Muslims should join al-Shabaab in fighting “crusader invaders” after Kenyan soldiers forced them out of their redoubts. He suggested guerrilla tactics and suicide bombings. “Show them the fire of jihad and its heat. Chase them with guerrilla warfare, ambushes, martyrdom…. With God’s grace, these people are to be defeated. They have been defeated in Iraq, they are withdrawing from Afghanistan, their ambassador was killed in Benghazi and their flags lowered in Cairo and Sana’a.” He observed that al-Shabaab was pushed out of Kismayo thanks to “clear, direct, and flagrant support from the Americans.” He believed that American “awe is lost and their might is gone and they don’t dare to carry out a new campaign like their past ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

November 7, 2012—Pakistan—A suicide bomber targeted the vehicle of a senior police officer outside a Peshawar police station in a crowded market, killing the officer, two other policemen, and two bystanders. Twenty people were injured. No one claimed credit.

November 7, 2012—Yemen—A drive-by gunman on a motorbike shot in the head and killed Mohammed El-Fil, a Yemeni intelligence officer. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was suspected.

November 8, 2012—Pakistan—In a morning attack, a Taliban suicide truck bomber crashed into housing for the Rangers paramilitary force in Karachi, killing three security officers and injuring twenty.

November 8, 2012—Gaza Strip—Explosives hidden in a tunnel blew up near soldiers on the Gaza-Israel fence, injuring one soldier. The Hamas tunnel was the largest seen in years. An army spokeswoman said, “A kidnapping attempt is a possibility. Killing soldiers is a possibility.”

November 9, 2012—Poland—Internal Security Agency investigators arrested a 45-year-old Polish researcher employed at the University of Agriculture in Krakow for illegal possession of explosive materials, munitions, and guns. He was planning to set off a four-ton bomb in front of Warsaw’s parliament building when President Bronislaw Komorowski, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, government ministers, and 460 lower chamber legislators were inside. Police discovered the plot while looking into Polish links to Anders Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing terrorist. Police believed he had purchased bomb-making materials in Poland. The researcher had nationalistic, xenophobic, and anti–Semitic ideas, although he did not belong to a political group. He refused psychiatric testing. He was building bombs and had detonators. He was a chemist who conducted research at the university. He faced five years in prison. Two accomplices were arrested for illegal possession of weapons.

November 11, 2012—Afghanistan—A gunman wearing an Afghan Army uniform shot to death a British member of the coalition forces. Coalition forces returned fire, killing a member of the Afghan Army. 12111101

November 14, 2012—Gaza Strip—An Israeli air strike killed Ahmed al-Ja’abari, chief of the Ezzedin Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing. Israel and Palestinians exchanged rocket fire for several days. Israel called up sixteen thousand reservists while hundreds of rockets were aimed at Israeli territory, including Tel Aviv. Three Israelis—Yitzhak Amsalem, Mira Scharf, and Rabbi Aharon Smadja—were killed on November 15 when a rocket fired from the Gaza strip hit an apartment house in Kiryat Malachi.

November 14, 2012—Internet—Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a statement entitled Supporting Islam on the Internet, in which he called for the resumption of the caliphate and rejected the idea of nation states or the UN in dealing with conflict. Sharia should be supreme for Muslims who “refuse judgment by any other principles, beliefs, and laws.” The caliphate “does not recognize nation state, national links, or the borders imposed by the occupiers, but establishes a rightly guided caliphate following in the footsteps of the Prophet Mohammed…. These are the objectives of the Document of Supporting Islam, and we call on all those who believe in them to call for them, support them, and try to spread them in every way possible among the people of the nation.” Muslims should liberate occupied lands, including the British Mandate Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, Ceuta and Melilla, and East Turkestan.

November 16, 2012—Afghanistan—A roadside bomb went off under a minivan carrying thirty-one Afghans to a wedding party in Farah Province, killing seventeen people, including nine women and one child.

November 18, 2012—Pakistan—A roadside bomb went off against a fifteen-vehicle military convoy in the Mir Ali area 21 miles east of Miran Shah, killing two Pakistani soldiers and wounding seven.

November 18, 2012—Pakistan—A bomb exploded on a motorcycle outside a Shi’ite mosque in Karachi, killing two and injuring ten people celebrating the holy month of Muharram.

November 18, 2012—Kenya—A bomb exploded in a minibus in Nairobi’s predominantly Somali Eastleigh neighborhood, killing nine and damaging two cars. Al-Shabaab was suspected. Three people were detained. Rioters attacked Somalis in Nairobi and looted their homes.

November 19, 2012—Kenya—Al-Shabaab was suspected when gunmen shot to death three Kenyan Army soldiers in the north. They were part of an African Union force fighting al-Shabaab in Somalia. They were in the border town of Garissa on their way back to Somalia. Five soldiers had gone to a garage to change a flat tire when they were fired on by seven gunmen; two soldiers survived. Rioters attacked ethnic Somalis a day later; thirteen people were shot and hundreds of shops in Garissa were torched. 12111901

November 19, 2012—Pakistan—A female suicide bomber detonated her explosives near the convoy of Husain Ahmad, former leader of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, the country’s largest Islamist party. He was unharmed in the attack in Mohmand tribal region, but three of his aides were injured. No one claimed credit, but the Pakistani Taliban was suspected.

November 19, 2012—United States—Bashir Ahmad, 57, an Afghan immigrant who operates a Manhattan food cart and issues the morning call to prayer at a Kew Gardens mosque in Queens, was stabbed by a stranger. The attacker approached him from behind yelling anti–Muslim comments, bit his nose, threatened to kill him, and slashed him a dozen times with a knife. Police said the attacker was 35 to 45 years old, 6 feet tall, weighed 180 pounds, and had blue eyes. He was wearing a blue baseball cap, black jacket, and blue jeans. 12111902

November 19, 2012—Colombia—Ivan Marquez, spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, unilaterally declared a two-month cease-fire as his team started peace talks with the government, hosted in Havana. The government refused to reciprocate.

November 20, 2012—United States—Four men—Sohiel Omar Kabir, 34, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan; Ralph Deleon, 23, a permanent U.S. resident from the Philippines; Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales, 21, a permanent U.S. resident from Mexico; and Arifeen David Gojali, 21, an American of Vietnamese descent living in Riverside, California—were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and wage war against Americans overseas by attacking U.S. bases.

Kabir converted and recruited Santana and Deleon to Islam in 2010, introducing them to the teachings of Anwar al-Aulaqi. The two converts then recruited Gojali in September 2012. They played paintball as part of their training. Kabir went to Afghanistan in July 2012 to set up training for the other three. Vidriales and Deleon told an FBI informant of their plans to fly from Mexico City to Istanbul en route to Afghanistan. Authorities arrested Santana, Gojali, and Deleon in Chino on November 15, a day after they booked their tickets. Kabir was captured by U.S. Special Forces in Kabul on November 17, 2012.

Kabir had lived in Pomona and served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000 to 2001. The plotters lived in Ontario, Upland, and Riverside, California. Deleon went to Ontario High School in 2006, playing on the football team and making the Homecoming Court.

Kabir returned to the United States for his first court appearance on December 4, 2012, and was represented by Deputy Federal Public Defender Jeffrey Aaron. He was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. He was held without bond and scheduled for a December 11 court date. Deleon, Gojali, and Vidriales pleaded not guilty on December 5 to the same charge. They all faced fifteen years in prison.

November 20, 2012—Mali—Seven masked and turbaned gunmen kidnapped French citizen Gilberto Rodriguez Leal, 61, a retiree who was touring western Mali in a camper. He was chatting with youths in Diema when the gunmen grabbed him. Several days later, the terrorists released a video of him pleading for his release. 12112001

November 21, 2012—Israel—A man threw a bag of explosives into a bus as it passed army headquarters, injuring twenty-two people, three seriously. Hamas praised the attack.

November 21, 2012—Libya—Three gunmen assassinated Col. Farag al-Dersi, head of Benghazi police, in front of his home as he was returning from work. The trio fled.

November 21, 2012—Pakistan—A bomb went off near an army vehicle, killing three soldiers and two civilians in Quetta. Hours later, two bombs exploded outside a Shi’ite mosque in Karachi, killing one person.

November 21, 2012—Afghanistan—Two Taliban men set off their suicide vests near a U.S. base in Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood after 8:00 a.m., killing two Afghan guards and injuring five civilians in what might have been intended as an attack against Camp Eggers.

November 22, 2012—Syria—Unknown gunmen kidnapped freelance U.S. war correspondent James Foley, 39, of Rochester, New Hampshire, in Taftanaz, Idlib Province, in northwestern Syria. He contributed several videos to Agence France Presse regarding the Syrian conflict. His family made public his plight on January 2, 2013. The name of another journalist taken with Foley was not released. No group claimed credit. 12112201

November 23, 2012—Afghanistan—A Taliban suicide bomber set off his explosives hidden in a water tanker truck, killing three Afghan civilians, including one woman, and wounding more than ninety people, including twenty prisoners, fifteen police officers, and several Afghan and NATO troops in a morning explosion in Maidan Shahr, capital of Wardak Province. The wounded including seventy-five men, eleven women, and four children; six NATO troops were injured. The bomb damaged several government offices and a jail. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the group was retaliating for the execution of four Taliban prisoners at the Kabul detention center. 12112301

November 23, 2012—Nigeria—A military task force offered $1.8 million for information leading to the arrest of Boko Haram leaders.

November 24, 2012—Pakistan—The Pakistani Taliban set off a 10-kilogram bomb in a garbage container in Dera Ismail Khan during a Shi’ite religious procession during the two-day Ashura holiday, killing seven people, including four children. Thirty people were injured, including five children and two police officers. The Houthi tribe in northern Yemen said four Yemenis were killed in the attack. 12112401

November 25, 2012—Pakistan—Yet another bomb went off near a Shi’ite Muslim procession in Dera Ismail, killing six and injuring more than ninety. The bomb went off inside a bicycle repair shop. The Pakistani Taliban claimed credit.

November 25, 2012—Nigeria—Two suicide car bombs went off at the St. Andrew Military Protestant Church in Jaji inside the barracks of the Armed Forces Command and Staff College, killing thirty and wounding another thirty. The second bomb went off ten minutes after noon, ten minutes after the first, targeting first responders. Boko Haram was suspected. A bus bomb rammed the church’s walls before exploding. A sedan parked nearby then went off.

November 26, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen conducted a nighttime drive-by shooting on a road leading to the airport in Plateau State, killing ten people in a Christian town. The gunmen wore military uniforms.

November 26, 2012—Pakistan—A bomb was found under the car of Hamid Mir, a journalist who hosts a popular political talk show. The Pakistani Taliban was suspected. Mir had criticized the Taliban’s attempted assassination of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai. The Taliban affiliate Tariq Geedar had earlier in the month threatened to kill Mir. A black box attached with magnets to the bottom of his car contained a half kilogram of plastic explosive and a landmine detonator.

November 27, 2012—Pakistan—Acting on a tip, police detained three boys, aged 12 to 14, who were to be trained as suicide bombers, along with their handler. The group was going from Karachi to Miranshah and was halted while boarding a bus in Norang town. They were from South Waziristan, but living in Karachi. The boys and handler, Yahya Mehsud, part of a gang that recruits young boys for suicide attacks, appeared before an antiterror court the next day.

November 27, 2012—Iraq—Car bombs in Shi’ite mosques in Baghdad killed thirty and wounded dozens. Car bombs went off at three mosques, killing twenty-one. The first bomb went off in the Hurriyah neighborhood, killing nine and wounding twenty. Another bomb went off near Gaereat mosque, killing five. A third bomb killed seven and wounded twenty-one in the Shula neighborhood in the north. Meanwhile, three car bombs went off in Kirkuk. One went off near the main Kurdish party headquarters, killing five, including a Kurdish security guard, and injuring fifty-eight. Minutes later, two bombs went off in a market in Hawija west of Kirkuk, killing two civilians and wounding five others. Bombs injured five Iraqi Army soldiers at their houses in nearby Tuz Khortmato.

November 28, 2012—Yemen—Saudi military attaché Sgt. Khalid al-Onizi and his Yemeni bodyguard were shot to death on a busy street in Sana’a. His 4-wheel-drive vehicle was blocked at noon by another vehicle. Gunmen jumped out and fired on his vehicle, hitting both men in the head. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was suspected. 12112801

November 29, 2012—Iraq—Two car bombs killed 32 Shi’ite pilgrims and wounded 138 in Hilla. The second car bomb was aimed at first responders. Another car bomb exploded at the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala, killing six Shi’ites. Bombs in Falluja, Mosul, Baghdad, and Karbala killed another ten and wounded seventy.

November 29, 2012—United States—Authorities in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, arrested Sheheryar Alam Qazi, 30, and his brother, Raees Alam Qazi, 20, two naturalized U.S. citizens from Pakistan, for plotting to provide material support to terrorists and to use a weapon of mass destruction by providing money, property, housing, and communications equipment to conspirators. A bail hearing was set for December 7.

December 2012—Algeria—The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat posted an Internet video of its bomb attack on a bus transporting Algerian oil workers.

December 2, 2012—Nigeria—Ten people died when gunmen attacked a church in Chibok, Borno State. Boko Haram was suspected. Gunmen also torched government buildings in Gamboru village.

December 3, 2012—Pakistan—Two police officers died when a bomb exploded outside a police van on patrol in Peshawar.

December 4, 2012—Somalia—Al-Shabaab attacked an army outpost in the Galgala Mountains in Puntland, killing a dozen soldiers.

December 5, 2012—Pakistan—Two suicide bombers set off their truck bomb at the gate of an army camp in Wana, South Waziristan, killing three soldiers and wounding twenty. Soldiers had unsuccessfully fired an RPG at the truck. The Ahmadzai Wazir tribe was suspected.

December 5, 2012—Kenya—A remotely-detonated bomb exploded during the evening rush hour in Eastleigh, a rundown Somali neighborhood in Nairobi, wounding nine people, three critically. Al-Shabaab was suspected. 12120501

December 5, 2012—Afghanistan—The Taliban kidnapped American doctor Dilip Joseph of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and two of his Afghan colleagues while driving to a rural medical clinic in the Sarobi district of Kabul Province. Dr. Joseph worked for the U.S. nonprofit Morning Star Development. Following two days of negotiations, the kidnappers released the Afghan hostages. Dr. Joseph was held 50 miles from the border with Pakistan. The Taliban was believed to have demanded a $100,000 ransom. U.S. forces rescued him in a helicopter raid in Sarobi on December 9 after intelligence showed he was in “imminent danger of injury or death,” according to U.S. Gen. John R. Allen. On December 9, President Obama announced that Nicolas D. Checque, 28, of Pennsylvania, a member of the U.S. Special Forces SEAL 6 team, was killed in the hostage rescue. Seven Taliban armed with machine guns and AK-47s were killed. Two Taliban leaders were arrested. 12120502

December 6, 2012—Syria—A car bomb exploded in Damascus’s southern Zahraa district, killing one person and damaging the headquarters of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent relief organization. Observers believed the target was Prime Minister Wael al-Halki; the bomb killed his driver outside the latter’s home.

December 6, 2012—Lebanon—Snipers killed two men in Tripoli in a battle between pro– and anti–Syrian gunmen. During the past three days, eight people died and fifty-eight were wounded in the gunfights.

December 6, 2012—Afghanistan—A suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace negotiator seriously injured Asadullah Khan Khalid, 43, head of the National Directorate of Security intelligence organization, inside one of the organizations guesthouses in Kabul’s Taimani neighborhood. Khalid underwent emergency surgery on the lower part of his body. One of his bodyguards died in the 3:00 p.m. bombing. The bomber had hidden explosives in his underwear. Khalid had served as governor of Kandahar and Ghazni provinces and minister of Tribal and Border Affairs. Afghan President Hamid Karzai claimed that the bomber came from Pakistan, where the plot had been “designed” as a “very sophisticated and complicated act by a professional intelligence service.” He said the Taliban could not have organized such a sophisticated attack alone.

December 7, 2012—Pakistan—CNN reported that a Predator drone strike killed Sheikh Khalid Bin Abdul Rehman Al-Hussainan, aka Abu-Zaid al-Kuwaiti, 46, who was eating breakfast. He was seen as a possible successor to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. He had written several books on religious topics and had trained al Qaeda operatives in religion.

December 7, 2012—Kenya—A bomb went off in Eastleigh, a Somali district in Nairobi, killing three and wounding eight, including parliamentarian Yusuf Hassan. Al-Shabaab was blamed.

December 7, 2012—Corsica—At least seventeen houses were bombed and a man was shot to death. Authorities suggested separatist terrorists or criminal gangs were responsible.

December 10, 2012—Pakistan—Taliban attackers using a rocket, hand grenades, and automatic weapons killed six people—three police officers and three civilians—at a police station in Bannu during an hour-long gun battle. The civilians were coming out of a neighboring mosque. Another eight people—three police officers and five civilians—were injured. Three terrorists were killed; another escaped.

December 11, 2012—Yemen—Suspected masked al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula gunmen riding a motorcycle shot to death Col. Ahmed Barmadah, deputy head of the Political Security Office, as he left his house in Mukalla in Hadramut Province.

December 11, 2012—United States—The FBI arrested one U.S. citizen at a bus station in Augusta, Georgia, and one U.S. citizen at Atlanta’s airport on charges that they were leaving the United States for North Africa “intending to prepare to wage violent jihad.” Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhadair and Randy Wilson, alias Rasheed Wilson, both 25, were charged with conspiracy to “kill persons or damage property outside the United States.” They had run a men’s fragrance store in Mobile, Alabama. The criminal complaint said the duo exchanged e-mails two years earlier, then told an FBI source that they planned to use fake passports to join terrorists in Mauritania or Morocco. Abukhdair suggested buying firearms and taking hostages in the United States. He allegedly told Wilson and the source that “jihad means people are going to die. This is what jihad is. This is what war is.” Wilson added, “One way or the other, everyone’s gonna have to fight … Jihad is the pinnacle of Islam. There’s no dead better than jihad.”

Born in Mobile, Wilson and his wife have two small children. He was a former roommate of Omar Hammami, who had joined al-Shabaab. Abukhdair, from Syracuse, New York, was single. He had been jailed in Egypt for terrorist ties. He was deported to the United States. He moved to Mobile in October 2011. The duo watched videos of guerrilla tactics, bombings, beheadings, and mutilations of women and children. They spoke in codes, such Nevada for Nigeria, San Francisco for Sudan, and San Diego for Somalia.

December 10, 2012—United States—The State Department blacklisted the jihadist Jabhat al-Nusrah in Syria as a foreign terrorist organization linked to al Qaeda in Iraq. The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on its leaders. The Federal Register indicated that the name was an alias of al Qaeda in Iraq.

December 12, 2012—Syria—An NBC News team led by Richard Engel, 39, chief foreign correspondent, was ambushed, forced out of their car and into a container truck, blindfolded, and held for five days by fifteen masked members of an unknown group. Also on the team was NBC producer Ghazi Balkiz, cameraman John Kooistra, and Aziz Akyavas, a Turkish reporter working with NBC. One of their rebel escorts was immediately killed during the ambush. The hostages were moved to several safe houses. They were freed on December 17 at 11:00 p.m. during a firefight at an Ahrar al-Sham Islamist rebel checkpoint. Two kidnappers were killed; the rest escaped. NBC said no ransom was demanded, and no contact had been made with the kidnappers. News services had kept the kidnapping under wraps to avoid endangering the hostages.

Engel said he believed the kidnappers were pro–Assad Shabiha militia members trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hizballah. “They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government, openly expressing their Shi’ite faith.” The team returned unharmed to Turkey. Engel noted, “There was a lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot Ghazi several times. When you’re blindfolded and then they fire the gun up in the air, it can be a very traumatic experience.” He said the kidnappers wanted the release of four Iranians and two Lebanese from a Shi’ite political party who were held by rebels. On December 19, Ian Rivers, part of the kidnapped team who became separated from the other hostages during the escape, reached safety in Turkey. 12121201

December 13, 2012—Afghanistan—At 5:00 p.m., a suicide car bomber attacked an armored military vehicle outside Kandahar Airfield, killing an American and two Afghan civilians and wounding several other people. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had been at the base a few hours earlier.

December 14, 2012—Philippines—Mohd Noor Fikrie Bin Abd Kahar, a suspected 26-year-old Malaysian terrorist planning a bomb attack, was shot to death by Philippine police outside a Davao hotel. He and his Filipino wife, Annabel Nieva Lee, a Muslim convert, were checking out. He tried to grab her backpack, which contained a bomb. He threatened to set off the bomb, saying, “You want the bomb? You want the bomb? Shoot me! Shoot me! I will explode the bomb!” The couple ran outside, and he grabbed the backpack and ran toward a park where there were people partying. Police arrested her. Guards locked the park gate. Kahar ran into a packed restaurant but was shot twice in the chest. Other officers shot and killed him. Police defused the bomb, which was fashioned from a mortar shell. Kahar’s passport indicated he had left Malaysia via Sabah on April 27, arriving in the Philippines on April 28. He had stayed in southern Zamboanga City, moved to Cotabato City, then went to Davao on December 14. 12121401

December 15, 2012—Pakistan—At 8:30 p.m., Pakistani Taliban gunmen fired five rocket-propelled grenades at Peshawar’s Bacha Khan International Airport, killing nine people. Two of the rockets landed in a nearby neighborhood. The terrorists failed to drive a car bomb into the airport. The vehicle hit the airport’s outer wall and exploded, killing five terrorists and four civilians and wounding more than forty people. Police removed and defused suicide jackets found on the terrorist corpses. The next day, police raided a residence that the terrorists had taken over, taking the homeowner hostage. The terrorists set off their explosives, killing two terrorists, while three other terrorists died in the gun battle with the police. One police officer died in the skirmish. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said the terrorists were targeting the nearby air base. “We have planned more attacks on Pakistani forces and its installations as it works to please the USA.” Several of the attackers were Uzbeks, suggesting an al Qaeda link. 12121501

December 16, 2012—Libya—Gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades on a security compound in Benghazi, killing four policemen. Police said the gunmen had planned to break into a detention center holding a man involved in the November 21 assassination of Col. Farag el-Dersi, National Security chief.

December 17, 2012—Syria—Gunmen kidnapped two Russian steel plant workers and an Italian colleague and demanded more than $700,000. 12121701

December 17, 2012—Afghanistan—A landmine exploded as several girls, aged 9 to13, were gathering wood outside Dawlatzai village in Nangarhar Province’s Chaperhar District. Ten girls died; another two were in critical condition at a local hospital. A boy was also injured. A police spokesman said the device went off when the children hit it with an axe and that it probably dated from the civil war or from the Soviet occupation.

December 17, 2012—Afghanistan—A Taliban suicide bomber set off a car bomb at the compound of McLean, Virginia-based Contrack International, a private military contractor in the Kabul suburbs, killing one person and injuring fifteen, including foreigners, among them five American and South African citizens. The construction maintenance company provides logistics services for the Afghan Army, police, and NATO coalition bases. Among the injured was Roheen Fedai, 19, a member of the company’s call center, who was hit in the hand and eye. The bomb destroyed a two-story office. A director of the firm was wounded. 12121702

December 17, 2012—Pakistan—Gunmen shot to death Khadim Hussain Noori, provincial spokesman and Shi’ite Muslim, in Quetta. The motorcycle-riding gunmen then shot to death two policemen and wounded a third.

December 17, 2012—Pakistan—A car bomb loaded with 90 pounds of explosives was remotely detonated near government offices in Jamrud, the Khyber tribal agency, killing seventeen people, including four Afghan women and three children, and hospitalizing forty-four, who had been near the women’s waiting area of a bus stop. No one claimed credit. It was unclear whether the attackers were targeting the government or the anti–Taliban Zakakhel subtribe. 12121703

December 17, 2012—Nigeria—Gunmen kidnapped four South Korean workers and their Nigerian colleague in the Niger Delta. They were freed on December 22 after Hyundai Heavy Industries Company paid $187,000 to the kidnappers. 12121704

December 18, 2012—Pakistan—Gunmen on motorcycles shot to death five female health workers providing polio immunizations to children in Karachi. Three victims were teens. Two male health workers were wounded. Gunmen fired on two sisters providing vaccinations in Peshawar; one died. The next day, a male health worker was shot in Peshawar, and a female health supervisor and her driver in Charsadda were shot dead in a car. The government suspended vaccinations in two cities. A local doctor, Shakil Afridi, who was involved with a vaccination program, had visited Osama bin Laden’s compound before the U.S. raid in May 2011, leading local terrorists to suspect all vaccination programs. After three days of attacks, eight workers had died and the World Health Organization and UNICEF had suspended anti-polio work in Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban in Mohmand was suspected, although spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan denied involvement. Police shot two suspects and arrested a dozen people in connection with the attacks.

December 19, 2012—Nigeria—Up to thirty gunmen were believed involved in the nighttime kidnapping in Rimi of a French engineer working for Bergnet, a French renewable-energy contractor. The gunmen killed a guard and another man at the victim’s home. Members of al Qaeda in the Arabaian Peninsula or another Islamist group in northern Mali were blamed. 12121901

December 20, 2012—Libya—Terrorists fired rocket-propelled grenades and threw hand grenades at the security directorate headquarters in Benghazi during the night, killing four people, including a national guard soldier, a police officer, and two militia members. Police said it was another attempt to free suspects in the November 21 assassination of Col. Farag el-Dersi, National Security chief. The detainees included Salah al-Hami, a member of an Islamist clan and a suspect in the killings of former Qadhafi regime officials. He is the brother of Mohamed al-Hami, former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who, along with two other brothers and an uncle, was killed by Qadhafi’s security services.

December 20, 2012—Iraq—Iraqi Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi said a “militia” force had kidnapped members of his staff. He called for a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who he held responsible for the hostages’ safety.

December 21, 2012—Kenya—Pokomo farmers wielding AK-47s raided a village of Orma herders in the Tana River Delta. At least thirty-nine people died in the attack, including thirteen children, six women, eleven men, and nine terrorists. The Pokomo tribesmen torched forty-five houses.

December 21, 2012—South Sudan—A UN helicopter was shot down while conducting reconnaissance in Jonglei State. All four Russian crew members were killed. The UN blamed the government, which in turn blamed rebel fighters.

December 21, 2012—Yemen—Tribesmen in Sana’a kidnapped a Finnish couple and an Austrian man who were studying Arabic. The Finnish woman was grabbed from a busy street. The hostages were sold to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who demanded a ransom and was holding them in al-Bayda Province as of January 15, 2013. Hundreds of AQAP terrorists flowed into the south to bolster the kidnappers after negotiations broke down. Some four thousand Yemeni troops conducted a ground assault. 12122101

December 22, 2012—Pakistan—A suicide bomber set off his explosives at a political rally for the Awami National Party, which opposes the Taliban, killing nine people, including Bashir Bilour, second-ranking member of the provincial cabinet.

December 22, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected when two suicide bombers attacked two mobile phone switching stations of the South Africa–based MTN Group, Ltd., and Bharti Airtel, Ltd., of India at 8:00 a.m. in Kano. The Airtel bomber crashed his car bomb into the gate, injuring a staffer. A security guard shot the MTN bomber before he could pass the gate and get onto the premises. The stations control Kano’s mobile phone network. 12122201-02

December 24, 2012—Afghanistan—An Afghan policewoman shot to death Joseph Griffin, 49, of Mansfield, Georgia, an American civilian member of the International Security Assistance Forces who served as a logistics adviser to the Kabul police. She shot him in the heart in the office of a local police chief as he looked at a case full of decorative medals. The shooter, Sgt. Nargis, 33, one of 1,850 female police officers trained in Afghanistan since 2002, was arrested and faced prosecution in an Afghan court. Griffin worked for DynCorp International of Falls Church, Virginia, since November 2000. It appeared to have been the first insider attack by a woman. A senior Afghan official later said Nargis was an Iranian who had infiltrated the Afghan National Police. She married an Afghan refugee in Tehran a decade before moving to Afghanistan with him. They had three children. He helped her obtain Afghan documents. Afghan officials showed a press conference her Iranian passport. She had returned from a monthly police training program in Egypt less than a month earlier. She had gone AWOL for two days in Egypt. She told police that she wanted to kill someone “important.” She initially tried to get access to the offices of the Kabul governor’s office and the Kabul police chief’s office but after being turned away, settled for Griffin, who had just bought an Afghan flag at a police canteen. 12122401

December 25, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected when gunmen fired on a church in a village west of Potiskum, Yobe State, killing five people and wounding four others.

December 26, 2012—United Arab Emirates—The government announced the arrest of U.A.E. and Saudi citizens planning attacks in the two countries and other states. Authorities confiscated equipment to be used in al-Islah terrorist operations.

December 26, 2012—Russia—Gunmen shot to death Islamic cleric Ibragim Dudarov, 34, North Ossetia’s deputy mufti, as he was driving near Vladikavkaz.

December 27, 2012—Pakistan—At least twenty-three police officers were kidnapped when the Pakistan Taliban attacked two police posts in Frontier Region Peshawar with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, killing two police officers. Some twenty-one officers were found shot to death in the Jabai area of Frontier Region Peshawar on December 30, after one officer escaped. Another officer was found seriously wounded. The police were lined up on a cricket pitch on December 29 and gunned down.

December 28, 2012—Yemen—Al Qaeda-linked tribesmen were believed responsible for an attack on an oil pipeline in Marib Province, hours after it had been repaired.

December 29, 2012—Nigeria—Boko Haram was suspected of attacking Musari village near Maiduguri during the morning, lining up men, women, and children, then slitting their throats. At least fifteen people were killed.

December 29, 2012—Pakistan—An explosion went off on a passenger bus at a Karachi bus terminal, killed six and wounding fifty-two. Police suspected a bomb or gas canister.

December 30, 2012—Pakistan—The Taliban was suspected when a car bomb went off near a convoy of buses taking Shi’ite pilgrims to Iran, killing nineteen and wounding thirty in the Mastung district in the southwest of the country. The explosion destroyed the bus and damaged another that was carrying Shi’ites. It was unclear whether it was a suicide bomb or a remotely-detonated device.

December 30, 2012—Northern Ireland—An Irish Republican Army splinter group placed a booby-trapped bomb under the car of a Northern Irish policeman. The officer found the bomb near the Northern Irish parliament in east Belfast, just before he was going out to lunch with his family.

December 30, 2012—Libya—A bomb went off at an Egyptian Coptic church in Misrata, killing two Egyptian citizens working at the church in preparation for New Year’s Eve Mass and wounding two other people. 12123001

December 31, 2012—Yemen—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) offered 3 kilograms (more than 105 ounces, worth $160,000) of gold for the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein and 5 million Yemeni rials ($23,350) to anyone who kills any American soldier in Yemen. The offer was good for six months to “encourage our Muslim Ummah [nation], and to expand the circle of the jihad by the masses.” The audio recording, posted on the Internet, was made by AQAP’s Malahem Foundation media group.

December 31, 2012—Colombia—The police said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was behind a grenade attack that injured four civilians and two police officers at a police station in Guapi village.