The top counterterrorism official for the White House admitted Thursday that the overthrow of the Yemeni government by Islamic extremists had taken U.S. intelligence services by surprise.
National Counterterrorism Center Director Nick Rasmussen told the Senate Intelligence Committee the Yemeni army’s response to the advancing rebels was similar to Iraqi forces who simply laid down arms before ISIS last summer.
“As the Houthi advances toward Sanaa [Yemen’s capital] took place,” Rasmussen said, “they weren’t opposed in many places. … The situation deteriorated far more rapidly than we expected.”
The terrorists overran the government last September, deposing the U.S. backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
The terrorists are providing a safe haven in Yemen for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who carried out the terrorist attacks in Paris on magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher market.
The U.S., Britain and France have closed their embassies in the country and Britain & France have told their citizens to immediately leave Yemen.
A Christian Boys’ School in northern Pakistan was attacked by an armed mob of over 300 Muslims who were angry over the cartoons of Muhammad published in the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
“It is very sad that Islamic radicals attack Pakistani Christians because of Charlie Hebdo. Christians condemn the blasphemous cartoons. It is a shame that even after 67 years since the birth of Pakistan, Christians have not yet been considered Pakistani citizens, but are seen as ‘Western allies,'” Nasir Saeed, director of the NGO Center for Legal Aid Assistance & Settlement, told Fides News Agency.
At least four Christians were wounded in the assault on the building.
Witnesses say that the Muslim mob lifted smaller members to the top of the fence surrounding the facility so they could go and open gates allowing the attackers inside.
The school has been closed for two days because of additional security measures being installed to the building and grounds.
The attack is the latest in assaults on Christians around the world for the drawings in the French publication, which is not Christian and has often published cartoons mocking Christ and God.
An Islamic leader is calling on western countries to limit freedom of speech because unless they stop people from drawing pictures of Muhammad, they will be inciting World War III.
Sirajul Haq, the leader of the Islamic extremist Jamaat-e-Islami Party in Pakistan, told a crowd during a protest celebrating the attack on French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that the United Nations and western leaders need to make sure religious personalities are not mocked.
“The path that the West has chosen will take the world to a third world war,” Haq told the crowd.
Haq also demanded that France issue a formal apology for allowing Charlie Hebdo to exist and for offending “billions of Muslims across the world.”
Jamaat-e-Islami is calling for a worldwide boycott of French products by Muslims as a way to show their anger toward France for allowing anyone to mock Muhammad. The group also is part of a circle of Muslim extremist groups that have offered a $1.6 million bounty for the heads of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.
Muslims in Niger attacked Christians, burning their homes and churches over the weekend, in retaliation for the French magazine Charlie Hebdo publishing a cartoon of Muhammad.
The International Christian Concern reported missionaries in the capital city of Naimey said all of their churches have been burned to the ground along with the homes of every pastor in the city. Some of the missionaries’ homes are among those destroyed by the mobs.
However, the missionaries reported that while smoke is “around all of side our house”, they are going to remain in Niger to speak the truth of Christ.
The protests apparently began at the grand mosque in the city and the mob then began their attack on Christians.
“I just rushed and told my colleagues in the church to take away their families from the place,” Pastor Zakaria Jadi said. “I took my family to take them out from the place. When I came back I just discovered that everything has gone. There’s nothing in my house and also in the church.”
Boko Haram’s leader was born in Niger and is believed to continue to have strong contacts in the country.
Paris, France is under siege again as police confront two dangerous hostage situations. One involving the two suspects from Wednesday’s Charlie Hebdo attack and another at a kosher grocery store.
Police converged on the Charlie Hebdo suspects in a town northeast of Paris Friday morning. The New York Times reports that they barricaded themselves inside a printing business with at least one hostage.
Hours later, another hostage situation broke out at a kosher market located in Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris. The police have identified this suspect as Amedy Coulibaly who is suspected of murdering a female police officer on Thursday.
Police report that Coulibaly is an associate of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist suspects.
It was not immediately known if or how the two situations were related, but both underscored France’s days-long nightmare and anti-terrorism fight.
The latest unfolded near Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris, where the city prosecutor’s office reported a shooting and hostage situation early Friday afternoon. Police anti-terror units raced to the scene, while ambulances blared as they moved away from it.
Source: CNN – CNN: Charlie Hebdo attack: 2 intense standoffs in France