Flames, rioting engulf London for third day

LONDON: Violence escalated across London and at least three other cities Tuesday as police fought thousands of rioters and looters and Prime Minister David Cameron headed back to Britain to face the crisis.
In unprecedented scenes of rioting in the capital, buildings were in flames in Croydon, Peckham and Lewisham in the city’s south, while gangs of looters roamed the streets of Hackney in the east, Clapham in the south, Camden in the north and Ealing in the west.
Scotland Yard said it had deployed an extra 1,700 officers to deal with the London unrest, the worst in years. Armoured cars were used to quell the rioters.
Hundreds of riot police poured into Hackney to try to contain the violence in a district just a few kilometres from where the 2012 Olympics will take place in a year’s time                                                                                                                                                                                                     

US ready to help improve Karachi situation: Wassan

Speaking to the media at his residence after briefing US Consul General William Martin on the overall situation in the city, Wassan (home minister) said the US had offered equipment and other expertise to overcome the situation in the city.

The home minister said the Government of Sindh is yet to accept the offer made by the US.

He said 15 Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC) will arrive by the end of August.

The Sindh government is giving the police five billion rupees to buy new vehicles and equipment. It will buy 40 armoured personnel carriers.

The struggling police force is understaffed and underequipped, given the size of Karachi city and the terrifying spread of crime

Agencies struggle to dismantle Hizb ut-Tahrir network

Security agencies are trying to dismantle a ‘multi-faceted’ communication network of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) but there has been little headway so far, a senior military official said months after some mid-ranked army officers were detained for alleged links with the banned organisation

.“Yes, we are at it… making efforts to dismantle whatever means they [HuT activists] are using to communicate with society and within the outfit,” the official told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity. “There has not been any major breakthrough yet.”

The official said that the organisation’s presence outside Pakistan was a key factor hindering the country’s spy agencies’ attempts to break links of HuT activists among themselves and with other people.

“It seems that the communication network is being operated from countries like the United Kingdom or some other European states where the outfit is not banned… that makes all the difference,” said the official in an apparent attempt to justify the so called ‘failure’.

The revelation came three months after Brigadier Ali Khan, a serving army officer, and some other unnamed personnel were detained for their alleged links with the HuT — an organisation that seeks to establish a caliphate in Pakistan by overthrowing the democratic government.

Subsequently, intelligence agencies launched a countrywide crackdown on HuT activists and some of its activists – allegedly the masterminds behind its ‘highly sophisticated cyber warfare’ – were picked up from different parts of the country.

The arrest last month of a telecom engineer, Osama Hanif, from Islamabad was part of the campaign to dismantle the organisation’s technological network that still operates freely without any hindrance. The official also confirmed that some of the arrests of HuT activists were linked to efforts to block its communication but refused to give the exact number.

The HuT uses many platforms on the internet, cellular phones and written materials to send their message across despite a ban on its activities.

SEAL Team Six,killed

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) —Saturday, The Taliban claimed they downed the CH-47 Chinook  with a rocket while it was taking part in a raid on a house where insurgents were gathered in the province of Wardak overnight during fighting in eastern Afghanistan, killing 30 Americans, most of them belonging to the same elite Navy SEALs unit that killed Osama bin Laden in a May raid in Pakistan, as well as seven Afghan commandos, U.S. officials said Saturday, It was the deadliest single loss for American forces in the decade-old war.The casualties are believed to be largest loss of life in the history of SEAL Team Six, officially called the Navy Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. The team is considered the best of the best among the already elite SEALs, which numbers 3,000 personnel.