Homeland Security News

Two years after ETA disbanded, Spain's government is accelerating moves to transfer jailed Basque separatist militants to prisons closer to home, angering families whose lives were shattered by their violence.

The Basque separatist group waged a decades-long campaign for independence involving bombings and shootings that killed more than 850 people, with a total of 197 ETA prisoners held in prisons across Spain.

Since the 1980s, Spanish government policy has been to keep most prisoners in jails hundreds of kilometres away from the northern Basque Country region -- and separated from each other to prevent them from working together behind bars.

Read more: France 24

In silence and mourning, France marked five years since 130 people were killed by Islamic State extremists who targeted the Bataclan concert hall, Paris cafes and the national stadium in a series of coordinated attacks.

It was France’s deadliest peacetime attack, deeply shaking the nation. It led to intensified French military action against extremists abroad and a security crackdown at home.

Five years later, Prime Minister Jean Castex was leading silent ceremonies Friday at the multiple sites targeted by coordinated attackers around the French capital on Nov. 13, 2015: the Stade de France in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, the Bataclan, and five cafes in eastern Paris where gunfire shattered the balmy Friday night.

Read more: AP

Fourteen soldiers were killed and others were injured in an extremist attack in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region, the government said.

A military convoy from the Tin-Akoff area, in Oudalan province was ambushed on Wednesday, government spokesman Remis Fulgance Dandjinou said. Three severely injured people were evacuated by plane to the capital, Ouagadougou and the military has been sent to the area to find the attackers, he said.

The same day, at least 20 gunmen were seen on motorbikes in the nearby town of Gorom Gorom, burning a bar and frightening civilians, Ousmane Amirou Dicko, the Emir of Liptako told The Associated Press by phone. The jihadists were trying to show that “they are in charge of the place,” he said.

Read more: KHON