World’s Largest Hotel to Open in Mecca in 2017

The city of Mecca increasingly stretched with the development of giant properties. The latest is Abraj Kudai built by Dar Al Handasah.

No kidding, the dimensions of this enormous project, which is 1.4 million square meters on an area of 6 hectares. Its location is only 2 kilometers south of the Grand Mosque Masjidil Haram, but still is in the heart of Mecca which Manafia region.

This development in the complex will stand vertically 12 residential towers, commercial space comprising a large podium, shopping centers, restaurants, dining halls, convention centers, and showrooms vehicle as well as a five-star hotel.

Striking giant size, believed to be a new landmark downtown Mecca. In fact, Dar Al Handasah designed it as a new identity which combines modern Islamic culture.

Interestingly, five-star hotel, and a number of apartments in it, dedicated to the pilgrims of the Kaaba. They can take advantage of this five-star facilities during the pilgrimage, or umrah.

Abraj Kudai bordering Ajyad Street in the east, Kudai and tunnels Birka in the west, as well as Prince meteb land in the north. With this strategic location, Abraj Kudai easily accessible by anyone.

In addition, the project site is surrounded by modern office buildings, hotels and shopping centers in the east, and west of the region.

According to the plan, citing the official website of Dar Al Handasah, Abraj Kudai will be opened to the public in two years or in 2017. If future operations, Abraj Kudai will be the largest hotel in the world

Putin slams US Intervention in FIFA's Officials Arrests

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday (28/5), criticized the United States on charges of corruption filed by the US against the FIFA officials, citing the case of the US effort to extend its jurisdiction to other countries.

Putin, in his commentary on television said the US also tried to prevent the election of the FIFA president Sepp Blatter. Elections are scheduled to take place Friday in which Blatter will face a competitor in an attempt fifth term of office.

Russia will host the World Cup in 2018.

Putin statement similar to the messages conveyed Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, describing the case as the application of American law outside the legal territory.

America has been no response due to Putin's statement. Providing the opportunity for Russia to host the 2018 World Cup, is part of a Swiss investigation into allegations of mismanagement and money laundering

ISIS reportedly executed 400 people in Palmyra including women and children

Iraqi forces recaptured territory from advancing Islamic State militants near the recently-fallen city of Ramadi on Sunday, while in Syria the government said the Islamists had killed hundreds of people since capturing the town of Palmyra.

The fall of Ramadi and Palmyra, on opposite ends of the vast territory controlled by Islamic State fighters, were the militant group's biggest successes since a U.S.-led coalition launched an air war to stop them last year.

The near simultaneous victories against the Iraqi and Syrian armies have forced Washington to examine its strategy, which involves bombing from the air but leaving fighting on the ground to local forces in both countries.

In a sharp criticism of Washington's ally, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter accused Iraq's army of abandoning Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Baghdad, to a much smaller enemy force.

"The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight," he told CNN's State of the Union program. "They vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they withdrew from the site."

Iraq's government, along with Iran-backed Shi'ite militiamen and locally-recruited Sunni tribal fighters, launched a counter-offensive on Saturday, a week after losing Ramadi. A police major and a pro-government Sunni tribal fighter in the area said they had retaken the town of Husaiba al-Sharqiya, about 10 km (6 miles) east of Ramadi.

"Today we regained control over Husaiba and are laying plans to make more advances to push back Daesh fighters further,” said local tribal leader Amir al-Fahdawi, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, also known in English as ISIS or ISIL.

“The morale of the (pro-government) fighters is high after the arrival of reinforcements and loads of ammunition," Fahdawi said. "Today's advance will speed up the clock for a major advance to regain control of Ramadi."

Planes were bombing Islamic State positions on the opposite bank of the Euphrates river, where the militants were launching mortars and sniper fire to prevent the pro-government forces advancing, Fahdawi and the police major said.

MASS EXECUTIONS

Days after taking Ramadi, Islamic State also defeated forces of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad to capture Palmyra, home to 50,000 people and site of some of the world's most extensive and best-preserved Roman ruins.

The fighters have killed at least 400 people, including women and children in Palmyra since capturing the ancient Syrian city four days ago, Syrian state media said on Sunday.

It was not immediately possible to verify that account, but it was consistent with reports by activists that the Islamist fighters had carried out executions, leaving hundreds of bodies in the streets.

The Sunni Muslim militants have proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory they hold in both Syria and Iraq. They have a history of carrying out mass killings in towns and cities they capture, and of dynamiting and bulldozing ancient monuments, which they consider evidence of paganism.

"The terrorists have killed more than 400 people ... and mutilated their bodies, under the pretext that they cooperated with the government and did not follow orders," Syria's state news agency said, citing residents inside the city.

Many of those killed were state employees, including the head of the nursing department at the hospital and all her family members, it said.

Islamic State supporters have posted videos on the Internet they say show fighters going room to room in Palmyra's government buildings, searching for hiding troops and pulling down pictures of Assad and his father.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence in the country with a network of sources on the ground, says beheadings have taken place in the town since it fell but has not given an estimate for the toll among civilians.

It says at least 300 soldiers were killed in the days of fighting before the city was captured.

"A bigger number of troops have disappeared and it is not clear where they are," Rami Abdulrahman from the Observatory told Reuters.

source:via reuters

Gunfight between Mexican Authorities and Drugs Cartel, 43 dead

By Alexandra Alper

ZAMORA, Mexico, May 22 (Reuters) - Government security forces killed 43 suspected drug cartel henchmen and suffered one fatality in a firefight in western Mexico on Friday, an official said, one of the bloodiest shootouts in a decade of gang violence wracking the country.

National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said one federal policeman died and another was injured in the three hour battle on a ranch just inside the Michoacan state border with Jalisco, home of Guadalajara, Mexico's second-biggest city.

The death toll was one of the heaviest to hit Mexico since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December 2012 pledging to put an end to years of gangland violence that have claimed more than 100,000 lives since 2007 alone.

Government officials said the 42 killed by security forces near the town of Tanhuato were suspected members of the Jalisco New Generation (JNG) cartel, a gang based in the neighboring state that has seriously undermined Pena Nieto's pledge.

The gunfight began after security forces alerted to an "invasion" of the ranch approached the 112 hectare property and were fired upon by a group of armed men, Rubido said.

After calling in air and ground support, government forces ground down their opponents with the aid of a helicopter, in the end capturing three suspected gang members and seizing a grenade launcher and 39 guns of varying calibers, he added.

Earlier, a government official told Reuters that two federal police had died in the exchanges near Tanhuato, where a week ago, federal forces replaced local police after the assassination of a candidate for mayor in a nearby town.

Rubido said officials from the national human rights commission (CNDH) had been sent to the ranch, where the number of dead was the highest in any clash between the government and suspected gangsters since a controversial incident last June.

Then, the government first reported that 22 gang members were killed in a shootout with soldiers in central Mexico. However, subsequent investigations showed that more than half of the dead had been executed, embarrassing the government.


ELECTION LOOMS

Jalisco is one of the engines of the Mexican economy, but the state's southern border turned into a battleground between the JNG and the Michoacan-based Knights Templars, a gang whose leadership has been shattered over the past 18 months.

Capitalizing on the Templars' losses, the JNG has become the biggest threat to the government, killing at least 20 police since March. On May 1, its gunmen shot down an army helicopter in southwestern Jalisco, claiming the lives of six military personnel.

The gang also set vehicles, banks and gas stations ablaze around Guadalajara in a series of concerted attacks that day, shaking confidence in the federal government's ability to contain the violence ahead of mid-term elections on June 7.

Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party hopes to defend the slim majority it and its allies have in the lower house of Congress, with polls suggesting it could. (Additional reporting by Dave Graham, Lizbeth Diaz, Ana Isabel Martinez, Anahi Rama and Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Dan Grebler, Lisa Shumaker, Ken Wills and Michael Perry)

source: reuters

ISIS claims suicide bomb attacks over Shiite mosque in Saudi, killing 21 people

An Islamic State (IS) suicide bomber has attacked a Shiite mosque in Sunni-ruled eastern Saudi Arabia, killing 21 people.

The bomber struck during the main weekly prayers in the eastern province, where assailants linked to the Sunni extremist IS group killed seven members of the minority Shiite community in November.

"An individual detonated a bomb he was wearing under his clothes during Friday prayers at Ali Ibn Abi Taleb mosque in Kudeih in Qatif province," an interior ministry spokesman said in a statement.

Twelve people were in critical condition after the attack, with another 69 people wounded, the health ministry said.

In a statement published online, IS said it was behind the bombing — the first time the group has officially claimed an attack in Saudi Arabia.

It named the bomber as Abu Amer al-Najdi and included a picture of him.

The statement said "the soldiers of the caliphate" were behind the attack by a suicide bomber "who detonated an explosives belt" in the mosque.

It also pledged "dark days ahead" for Shiites until militants "chase them from the Arabian Peninsula".

News websites in eastern Saudi Arabia posted photographs of bodies lying in pools of blood.

Qatif hospital issued an urgent call for blood donations after the attack and called in off-duty staff to cope with the high number of casualties, one Shiite activist said.

Naseema Assada, a resident of Qatif, said worshippers were celebrating the birth of revered Shiite Imam Hussein when the blast occurred.

"The people are very angry," she said, adding that they tried to stop police from entering the Kudeih area.

She said residents had feared such an attack was coming because the government was failing to curb hate speech on social media against the Shiite community.

"We don't want a repeat of what is happening in Syria or Iraq here. This is our country and we love it," she said.

The mufti of Saudi Arabia, the highest-ranking Sunni cleric, denounced the attack in a statement broadcast on state television.

"It is a criminal act aimed at dividing the sons of the nation ... and at sowing trouble in our country," he said.

The attack comes as a Saudi-led coalition has since March 26 been bombing Shiite rebels in Yemen who have overrun much of the country and forced the government to flee abroad.

Analysts said radical Sunnis in the ultra-conservative kingdom consider Saudi Shiites to be allies of the Yemen Houthi rebels.

"This (attack) was unfortunately only a matter of time," Gulf analyst at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Frederic Wehrey said.

Shiites have not joined in the "wave of Sunni nationalism" that has followed the Saudi-led campaign against the rebels in Yemen, and are considered by radical Salafists as a "fifth column" for the Houthis.

The interior ministry spokesman said Saudi Arabia would "hunt down anyone involved in this terrorist crime carried out by people seeking to undermine national unity".

The website of Arryadh newspaper posted pictures showing bloodied prayer rugs and part of the ceiling of the mosque that had caved in.

First reports by witnesses said the suicide bomber appeared to be from Pakistan, but others said he was wearing traditional Afghan clothes.

Kudeih is in the oil-rich eastern province and is home to most of Saudi Arabia's minority Shiite community, which has long complained of marginalisation in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.

Saudi police have made a string of arrests in recent months of Sunni extremists suspected of plotting attacks aimed at stirring sectarian unrest in the eastern province.

Last November, gunmen killed seven Shiites, including children, in the eastern town of Al Dalwa during the commemoration of Ashura, one of the holiest occasions of their faith.

Four men carried out the attack after killing a man from a neighbouring village and stealing his car to use in the shootings, the interior ministry said.

In April, authorities said they arrested 93 jihadists, including 62 suspected of links to the IS group who were plotting attacks to "incite sectarian sedition".

Since 2011, protests and sporadic attacks on security forces have taken place in Shiite area.