Radioactive Bomb Material headed to Iran from Kent UK was intercepted in Bulgaria at the border– see this post at LGF.

Border guards seized a British lorry on its way to make a delivery to the Iranian military – after discovering it was packed with radioactive material that could be used to build a dirty bomb.

The lorry set off from Kent on its way to Tehran but was stopped by officials at a checkpoint on Bulgaria’s northernborder with Romania after a scanner indicated radiation levels 200 times above normal.

The lorry was impounded and the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NPA) was called out. On board they found ten lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Inside each box was a soil-testing device, containing highly dangerous quantities of radioactive caesium 137 and americium-beryllium.

This is the stuff of dirty bombs, not real weapons grade plutonium, but you have to wonder what the intent is.

Counter Terrorism Blog has an interesting take on the radical muslim cleric who tried to flee Lebanon here.

Peretz in Israel states that the number of missiles launched at Israel now tops 2,200. It’s time for the yammerheads in the press to realize that restraint isn’t something called for here, no matter how many fools demonstrate worldwide. Story here.

If the people of Israel weren’t smart in Civil defense, if they didn’t have bomb shelters in every apartment building and home, if they didn’t have the warning sirens, then the fatalities from these attacks would far exceed the “civilian” casualties in Lebanon.

Two people were killed earlier Sunday and over 10 others were wounded as a barrage of 13 rockets landed throughout Haifa and the Krayot.

Shimon Gliklich, 60, was killed after he was hit by shrapnel while driving his car on a major city street. Awad Haviv, 48, of the village of A’ablin, was killed while working at a carpentry shop in Kiryat Ata.

A speaker in the Lebanese government states that Hezbollah is ready to negotiate the return of the two kidnapped soldiers according to this from the Jerusalem Post:

Hizbullah agreed to allow the Lebanese government to begin negotiations regarding kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, announced speaker of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri on Sunday afternoon.

This means Hezbollah is on the ropes, getting immense dissatisfaction from other parts of Lebanon, and they have looked back to Syria and Iran only to see that the expected aid is not going to come. My wish is that Israel makes these hostages the last, and continues to eradicate Hezbollah from South Lebanon, the people of Lebanon need their government, not more blood-money charity from Iran and Syria. Blood money is always the costliest loan in the end. Iran and Syria are going to back down for they have looked into merciless basilisk eyes they did not expect, and do not like what they see.

In a sign that desperation is setting in, Hezbollah is awakening sleeper cells to attack world-wide, so steel yourselves folks. This is the is the worst political move Hezbollah could make at the moment however. It might make a big media spash, it might make the umma feel better for the moment, but the backlash will be horrid. Again from JP:

Sleeper Hizbullah cells abroad in conjunction with Iran have ‘reawakened,’ The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday, and were possibly preparing plans to launch attacks on Jewish and Israeli sites throughout the world in retaliation to the current operation in Lebanon.

The assumption within Military Intelligence is that Hizbullah would only launch an attack on a target abroad under extreme circumstances and if it felt pushed into a corner. The group’s hesitation to launch such attacks can be explained by the assumption that Hizbullah did not want to be associated with Global Jihad and Al Qaida.

From the front in Afghanistan, there is both good and bad news. The Afghan security forces are stepping up and have killed 19 Taleban, including two Pakistanis. Two suicide bombers killed some civilians, and two Canadian soldiers in their usual tactic of car-bombing an initial objective, and then carbombing the crowd that gathers. This from Voice of America News:

An Afghan official says local security forces have killed 19 Taleban militants and captured 17 others during an operating against insurgents in the southern province of Helmand.

The deputy provincial governor of Helmand (Mullah Amir Mohammed Akhundzada) says two of those captured are Pakistani fighters. He says Afghan police launched the operation Sunday near the town of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand.

In another incident, officials say Taleban rebels attacked an Afghan police post in the province of Ghazni late Saturday, killing three policemen.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition is investigating two suicide bombings in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar Saturday. The attacks killed eight people, including two coalition soldiers from Canada. More than 20 others were wounded.

A coalition official says the first attacker rammed his explosives-laden car into a a coalition vehicle, killing the two soldiers and wounding eight others.

Minutes later, a second bomber approached a crowd of onlookers and blew himself up, killing six Afghan civilians.

A purported Taleban spokesman (Yousuf Ahmadi) claimed responsibility for the attacks.

In Iraq, the sectarian violence continues as the new leader of Al Qaida whose favorite technique is suicde car bombs, tries to instigate civil war. AP Video link here.

July 23, 2006 — At least 72 people are reported to have been killed across Iraq in two large bomb attacks and in a major clash with Shi’ite militiamen.

One bomb killed 36 people and wounded at least 60 at a market in Al-Sadr City, a Shi’ite Muslim district of eastern Baghdad. The market was crowded with morning shoppers.

Two weeks ago, a car bomb in the same area left 60 people dead.

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, at least 20 people died when a bomb exploded outside a courthouse. Police said some 50 people were wounded, 30 of them seriously.

Kirkuk is a center of Iraq’s oil industry and an ethnically mixed town of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomans.

Iraq has suffered from an upsurge in bomb attacks in recent months, seemingly aimed primarily at fomenting sectarian strife. The principal targets have been Shi’ite.

Iraqi leaders met on July 22 in a show of sectarian and ethnic solidarity, but the biggest party representing the minority Sunni community, the Iraqi Accordance Front, did not attend.

The top U.S. commander for the Middle East, General John Abizaid, said on July 21 that sectarian violence in Baghdad is now a bigger problem than the insurgency.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Army is doing a great job of stepping up to the task, as detailed in this article at Defenselink which lists numerous encounters and engagements handled by Iraqi forces.

Also from VOA we find more effects from the SWIFT program the New York Times so effectively disabled.

Albania says it has frozen another bank account belonging to a fugitive businessman accused by U.S. authorities of receiving money from Osama bin Laden to set up a terrorist network in Albania.

The Albanian Finance Ministry also said Sunday it had seized assets belonging to at least five Islamic charities operating in the country.

The businessman, Abdul Latif Saleh, a Jordanian national who also holds an Albanian passport, is on a United Nations’ sanctions list that requires U.N. members to impose travel bans and block the assets of suspects.

Warning: Turn on pop-up blocker before following next link, truly obnoxious amount of pop-up ads.

From India Times, reports that youths in Mumbai are being recruited to Islamofascism by ISI and other groups from Nepal and Pakistan, and they note that the Taleban madrassas seem remarkably well-financed:

Despite repeated warnings by Central Intelligence agencies regarding intrusion of ISI agents in Bihar via Nepal, their influence has only widened in the districts bordering Nepal.

Some organisations based in the Himalayan Kingdom have managed to sneak into the territories of Bihar to poison the minds of educated, but unemployed, Muslims so as to lure them into subversive activities.

Central Intelligence report suggested that the ISI, which operates from behind the scene, has been using an organisation called Islamic Yuva Sangh to plant its men in certain pockets. The report identified about a dozen such agencies which are active in North Bihar districts.

Interestingly, after the recent arrest of two persons from two villages in Madhubani district, which borders with Nepal, it is being suspected that most of the people detained in Mumbai and its suburbs, in the aftermath of the serial train blasts in the metropolis, have links with Madhubani. Madhubani, like Kishanganj, Araria, Purnia, Sitamarhi, East and West Champaran, has been the target of elements attempting to attract the Muslim youths.
He said youths going to Mumbai for job opportunities abroad mostly fall prey to certain forces, who give them false assurances, and, in between, influence their minds by giving sermons on jehad. The youths, generally belonging to orthodox families, easily fall prey to them, he added. The growth of religious educational institutions in that region has also alarmed the Intelligence, and not without any reason.

Some of these institutes are so largely and expensively built with residential facilities that they stand odd in the poverty-stricken Muslim-dominated villages. Ever heard of a madrasa having its own website in the face of the reality that madrasas mainly run from ramshackle buildings, roofless structures or from the corner of an old mosque where pigeons outnumber Taliban (students)? This institute is situated in Malmal village from where one of the suspected youths was arrested by the anti-terrorist squad on Thursday

Also from the same source, India times, with the same warning regarding pop-ups, comes this article. It appears that authorities are making good progress in the Mumbai Bombing case. Indian Police have had three clashes with Lashkar-e-Taiba at a favored Islamofascist infiltration spot at Poonch, near the Kashmiri border and re-enforcements have been sent there. 

Update: Man arrested in Kenya is not Tunda.

NEW DELHI: In a dramatic twist to the reports that one of India’s most wanted men, Syed Abdul Karim alias Tunda, had been nabbed in Mombasa, the Kenyan police said on Sunday that the arrested man was a West African national amid media reports that he had been handed over to the FBI.

The Earlier report below: 

Along with this there are are unconfirmed reports that “Tunda aka Syed Abdul Karim also suspect in the Mumbai train bombings has been captured in Kenya from Kaumudi Online in New Delhi:

Confusion prevailed over the reported arrest of top terror suspect Syed Abdul Karim alias Tunda belonging to the Lashker-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based outfit believed to be behind the July 11 blasts in Mumbai.

Tunda, wanted in India for the 1997-98 serial bomb blasts in Delhi, Ajmer and Mumbai, was said to have been detained in Mombasa by Kenyan police.

Some reports in Kenya said the police had denied the arrest while others said the police were unwilling to confirm it till the questioning of the detained person was confirmed.

Meanwhile Pakistan’s Interior Minister reports that Dawood is not in Pakistan. If you are wondering why I am following this closely, all of the heat, light, and pressure of the Indian investigations might turn over a rock that has leads to Osama Bin Laden.

In Somalia the Ethiopian forces have taken another town, and it soon looks to be all out war there against the Sharia Courts Islamofascists. Human rights groups are reporting that aproximately 600 civilians have been killed by “gunmen” in Somalia this year, including a Swedish reporter. The “gunmen” are islamofascists, but the press isn’t going to say that.

Somalia was edging closer to full-scale war last night as Ethiopian troops moved into a second Somali town, potentially bringing them into conflict with an Islamic militia that has taken over the capital, Mogadishu, and is seeking to spread its influence over the rest of the country.

Eyewitnesses in Waajid said that about 200 Ethiopian troops had taken over the airstrip in the town yesterday morning. That follows moves last Thursday which saw Ethiopian troops take up positions in the town of Baidoa to back up Somalia’s beleaguered interim government, which is based there.

The move of fresh Ethiopian troops into the anarchic country raises the prospect of renewed war in Somalia. Ethiopia strongly backs the UN-supported government of President Abdullahi Yusuf and has vowed to prevent the country from slipping into the hands of Islamic extremists