RTC Director

Israel and Hamas 'negotiate unofficial truce' in Gaza

Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant movement controlling Gaza, are said to have reached an unofficial ceasefire after days of deadly attacks.

The truce was negotiated with the help of Egypt but its exact terms and duration remain unknown, the BBC's Jon Donnison in Gaza City reports.

Five have been injured in Israel, since rocket attacks began on Monday.

Israel retaliated with air strikes on Gaza City, killing at least four militants.

Schools were closed on both sides of the border for fear of more attacks.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to continue "targeted attacks" on militants launching rockets into Israel.

"We didn't ask for this escalation and didn't initiate it," he said. "But if it continues, we are prepared to embark on a far more extensive and penetrating operation."

'Holy missions'

On Wednesday, more than 70 rockets were launched into southern Israel, injuring five people, two critically, according to the Israeli military.

In response, Israeli aircraft and tanks targeted rocket launching sites in northern Gaza.

Hamas's military wing, the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades, confirmed it had been involved in firing dozens of rockets and mortars into Israel.

In a statement, the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades and a smaller Gaza-based militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), said: "These holy missions come in response to the repeated, continuous crimes of the enemy against our people."

The violence comes as the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, visits the region to try to revive the stalled Middle East peace process.

She was scheduled to meet Israeli President Shimon Peres and Mr Netanyahu. Her talks with Defence Minister Ehud Barak were cancelled on Wednesday so he could tour the border with Gaza.

On Thursday, Baroness Ashton will meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad.

"This is a critical time for the wider Middle East," she said.

Hamas, which governs Gaza, is not even part of the peace process, which has seen little US engagement since direct negotiations collapsed two years ago, reports our correspondent.

by RTC Director

Syria government 'agrees to Eid al-Adha ceasefire'

Syria's government and most opposition groups have agreed to a ceasefire during this weekend's Eid al-Adha holiday, the UN's peace envoy has said.

Lakhdar Brahimi said he hoped to use the lull in fighting to "discuss a longer and more effective ceasefire".

However, Syria's foreign ministry said the truce had not been agreed, and it would announce a decision on Thursday.

Rebels were split over the ceasefire plan, with one jihadist group saying it would not observe it.

The al-Nusra Front, a shadowy group that says it has carried out several high-profile bomb attacks, said it would not be tricked into playing "filthy games".

The main armed rebel group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), said any ceasefire observed by the government would be reciprocated.

But the group's Gen Mustafa al-Sheikh added: "It is impossible that the regime will implement the truce, even if it says it will."

Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice, commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as proof of obedience to God.

In other developments:

• Syrian state TV says a car bomb has exploded in Damascus, killing six people and injuring 20 others
• BBC reporters in Damascus say warplanes have been flying over the capital and firing on some areas
• Opposition forces and the government blame each other for the killing of at least 16 civilians in Douma, a north-western suburb of the capital

Government divisions

Mr Brahimi has travelled across the Middle East over the past two weeks to promote his plan to use a ceasefire to kickstart a political process.

"There is agreement from the Syrian government for a ceasefire during the Eid," he told reporters in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

"Other factions in Syria that we were able to contact - heads of fighting groups - most of them also agree on the principle of the ceasefire."

Mr Brahimi later briefed the UN Security Council, and they announced that they supported his plan.

Shortly after his announcement, the Syrian foreign ministry said the government was still studying the proposal and would announce its "final position" on Thursday.

But Russian diplomats said they had "indications" that Damascus would approve the plan.

Some analysts say divisions among the rebels over the ceasefire are just one part of the problem because there are also differences of opinion within the government.

While politicians might approve a ceasefire, the army and security officials are viewed by some as more likely to object and continue to push for a military solution.

by RTC Director

White House knew of extremist claims in Benghazi attack

Two hours after first being notified of an attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, a government e-mail to the White House, the State Department and the FBI said an Islamist group had claimed credit, according to a copy obtained by CNN.

An initial e-mail was sent while the attack was still underway, and another that arrived two hours later -- sent from a State Department address to various government agencies including the executive office of the president -- identified Ansar al-Sharia as claiming responsibility for the attack on its Facebook page and on Twitter.

The group denied responsibility the next day.

However, the e-mails raise further questions about the seeming confusion on the part of the Obama administration to determine the nature of the September 11 attack that left U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Two White House officials, speaking on condition of not being identified on Wednesday, said the government e-mails about the attack were not an intelligence assessment. They also noted that there was conflicting information about Ansar al-Sharia denying responsibility.

"They were a part of the many different reports we were receiving that day," one of the White House officials said of the e-mails. "There are always multiple and conflicting reports in the initial hours of an attack. That's why you have an investigation."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advised reporters to wait until a review panel she appointed to investigate what happened completed its work.

"The Independent Accountability Review Board is already hard at work looking at everything, not cherry picking one story here or one document there but looking at everything, which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach to something as complex an attack like this," Clinton said Wednesday.

"You know, posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence. I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be," Clinton said.

She repeated her earlier pledge to "take whatever measures are necessary to fix anything that needs to be fixed, and we will bring those to justice who committed these murders."

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Jay Carney noted the e-mail about the claim of responsiblity "was an open-source, unclassified e-mail referring to an assertion made on a social media site that everyone in this room had access to and knew about instantaneously."

Carney added that "the whole point of an intelligence community and what they do is to assess strands of information and make judgments about what happened and who was responsible."

The day after the attack took place, President Barack Obama referred to it as an "act of terror."

But in the following days, Carney maintained there was no evidence suggesting the attack was "planned or imminent."

The administration also suggested that an anti-Muslim video produced in the United States likely fueled a spontaneous demonstration in Benghazi as it had in Cairo, where the U.S. Embassy also was attacked.

Clinton, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland and Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, all cited the video as a motivating factor in the attack.

On September 13 -- two days after the attack -- a senior U.S. official told CNN that the violence in Libya was not the work of "an innocent mob."

"The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective, but this was a clearly planned military-type attack," the official said.

However, it wasn't until September 19 that Matthew Olsen, the nation's counterterrorism chief, told senators that it was a terrorist attack. The next day, Carney also said it was "self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack."

The e-mails obtained by CNN provide additional insight into the Benghazi attack.

The first one, sent at 4:05 p.m. ET, or 10:05 p.m. in Libya, described a diplomatic mission under attack.

"Approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well," the e-mail said. Stevens and four other mission staff were in the compound safe haven, it added.

Less than an hour later, at 4:54 p.m. ET, another e-mail reported "firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi has stopped and the compound has been cleared." It said a search was underway for consulate personnel.

The final e-mail, at 6:07 p.m., noted the claim of responsibility for the attack. The subject line said: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."

"Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli," the e-mail said.

The Facebook claim of involvement was subsequently denied by the group at a news conference in the following days, but not very convincingly.

"We are saluting our people for this zeal in protecting their religion, to grant victory to the prophet," a spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia said at the time. "The response has to be firm."

It is common for one or more claims of responsibility to follow high-profile attacks on U.S. targets, and intelligence officials analyze them for validity before declaring any legitimate. For example, groups make false claims to seek publicity and raise their profile.

Analysts examine a group's history, whether it made previous claims that were legitimate, whether it has the capacity to carry out such an attack, and whether known members of the group participated in the attack in assessing the validity of claims of responsibility.

CNN

by RTC Director

Terrorist Sentenced to 37-Year prison Term in ‘Millennium’ Bomb Plot

A U.S. federal court has sentenced convicted Algerian terrorist Ahmed Ressam to a 37-year-prison term for the 1999 New Year's Eve plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.

The court in Seattle, Washington imposed the sentence Wednesday, after prosecutors appealed an earlier 22-year sentence as too lenient.

Prosecutors pushed for stiffer penalties, arguing Ressam continues to pose a threat for reneging on an agreement to provide evidence against other suspects in the bombing plot. After Ressam withdrew his cooperation, federal prosecutors were forced to drop charges against two suspected co-conspirators.

Ressam was arrested in December 1999 as he tried to enter the United States from British Columbia, after customs inspectors noted suspicious behavior at a ferry landing in Port Angeles, Washington.

After Ressam tried to flee, authorities found his rental car packed with enough explosives to produce a blast 40 times greater than a typical car bomb.

A jury convicted him in 2001 on nine felony counts and sentenced him to 22 year in prison in 2005. Prosecutors appealed that sentence after Ressam stopped cooperating in the U.S. probe.

Before reneging on the deal, Ressam was interviewed repeatedly by terror investigators in the United States and Europe. He was credited in a classified FBI report with linking Osama bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah to the airport bombing plot. Zubaydah, captured in Pakistan in 2002, remains in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

by RTC Director

AU Lifts Mali Suspension

The African Union has lifted its suspension of Mali as it works on plans to send a military force to the West African nation.

AU officials say Mali is again allowed to participate in all the organization's activities and meetings.

The AU suspended Mali in March after a group of soldiers staged a coup just weeks before a presidential election. Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaida control northern Mali. Those militants have carried out public executions and whippings in their drive to enforce strict Islamic law. Mali's interim government has asked for help in driving them out.

The AU plans to intervene with force in Mali with help from the United Nations, the European Union and the Economic Community of West African States.

AU chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma says the AU will leave no stone unturned until Mali's government fully regains control of the entire country and defeats terrorism.

by RTC Director

Tunisian Man Held In Connection With Attack On US Embassy In Libya

Tunisia's government says it has arrested one of its nationals believed to be linked to the September-11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.

Interior Ministry spokesman Tarrouch Khaled said Wednesday that 28-year-old Ali Harzi was in custody in Tunis. He gave no other details.

Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Libya's Mediterranean city of Benghazi.

The U.S. the State Department had no immediate comment.

by RTC Director