Homeland Security News

Details emerged Wednesday of an apparent Boko Haram attack on a Nigerian village in which at least 150 people died, the latest in a series of attacks and abductions of schoolgirls attributed to the group.  Militants dressed in military uniforms, backed by armored personnel carriers and shouting "God is great" attacked Gamboru Ngala on Monday afternoon, firing rocket-propelled grenades and tossing improvised bombs into a crowded outdoor marketplace, witnesses told CNN on Wednesday.

They then set fire to buildings where people had tried to take shelter from the violence, the witnesses said. The fighters also attacked the police station during the 12-hour assault, initially facing stiff resistance. They eventually used explosives to blow the roof off the building, witnesses said. Fourteen police officers were found dead inside, they said.

Read more:  CNN

Cuba’s Interior Ministry has announced that four Cuban exiles from Miami were arrested after they allegedly planned to carry out terrorist attacks on military installations.  In a statement published Wednesday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, the ministry reported the men were arrested April 26th. It identified the men as José Ortega Amador, Obdulio Rodríguez González, Raibel Pacheco Santos and Félix Monzón Álvarez.

Three of these men, according to the statement, traveled to Cuba several times last year for planning purposes.  The ministry statement also claims that the men admitted that they were planning to attack military installations with the goal of promoting violent actions. The men are part of an organized group in Miami who have close ties to Luis Posada Carriles, according to the statement.

The statement concludes by saying that “competent U.S. authorities” have been contacted so that they can “prevent U.S. territory from being used for actions harmful to both countries.”
 
Source: CBS Miami

Exhausted and worn out from a year-long siege, hundreds of Syrian rebels on Wednesday left their sole remaining bastions in the central city of Homs under a ceasefire deal struck last week with government forces, opposition activists and the city's governor said.  The exit of some 1,200 fighters and civilians from rebel strongholds in Homs will mark a de-facto end of the rebellion in the battered city, which was one of the first places to rise up against President Bashar Assad's rule, earning its nickname as "the capital of the revolution."

By early afternoon Wednesday, over 200 fighters had boarded two batches of buses that departed from the police command center on the edge of Homs' rebel-held areas, heading north, opposition activists said. Many of the rebels wounded and it was unclear how many civilians were among them.  An activist who goes by the name of Abu Yassin al-Homsi said all fighters and any remaining civilians would leave the city before the end of the day, adding that they would be taken a few miles north to the rebel held towns of Talbiseh and al-Dar al-Kabira on the northern edge of Homs province -- a short drive away.

Read more: CBS News

The United States has received intelligence of a "specific terrorist threat" against churches and other places of worship in the Ugandan capital, its embassy there said.

A security message on the embassy's website did not say who was planning the attack, but Somali Islamist militants have previously threatened, and struck, Uganda and other east African countries that have sent troops into Somalia.

"The threat information indicates a group of attackers may be preparing to strike places of worship in Kampala, particularly churches, including some that may be frequented by expatriates, in May or June," said the notice dated May 6.

Read More:  Reuters