Thursday  27, Nov 2025 {HMC}US Special Forces and Puntland counter-terrorism units have carried out a coordinated operation targeting an ISIS hideout in Somalia’s Balade Valley.

According to security sources on Wednesday, dozens of US troops were inserted into the area using MH-60 helicopters, while MQ-9 Reaper drones conducted precision strikes on a base believed to house between 10 and 15 ISIS fighters in the Habarbakuuje and Mareero areas of the valley.

The operation triggered a fierce gun battle lasting two to four hours in a fortified hideout thought to shelter foreign fighters from Syria, Turkey, and Ethiopia.
Initial reports indicate that a senior ISIS commander and several of his aides were killed, with an estimated 5 to 10 confirmed militant deaths. The joint forces also destroyed a cache of weapons and equipment used by the group in its gold-mining operations, a key source of financial revenue for ISIS in Puntland.

The Puntland administration has repeatedly stated that it aims to eliminate ISIS in the region by the end of 2025.

The United States has been supporting Puntland with airstrikes and intelligence in the mountainous areas, forcing militants to abandon several positions and withdraw into isolated hideouts.

Source Hiiraan Online

Thursday  27, Nov 2025 {HMC}  Two National Guard soldiers were shot and critically wounded on Wednesday in downtown Washington near the White House in what officials described as a targeted ambush, and the suspect was in custody after suffering gunshot wounds during the incident.

The suspect was identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national. Authorities said they had yet to determine a motive for the shooting.

According to DHS, Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program to resettle thousands of Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the Afghanistan war and feared reprisals from Taliban forces who seized control of their homeland after the U.S. withdrawal.
The DHS did not include other details of his immigration record, but a Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on April 23 of this year, three months after President Donald Trump took office.

Lakanwal, 29, who resided in Washington state, had no known criminal history, the official said.

Trump, who was at his resort in Florida at the time of the attack, released a prerecorded video statement late on Wednesday calling the shooting “an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror.” He said his administration would “re-examine” all Afghans who came to the U.S. during Joe Biden’s presidency.

Late on Wednesday night, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency announced an immediate and indefinite halt to the “processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals” pending a review of security and vetting protocols.

The two soldiers, members of the West Virginia National Guard, were part of a “high-visibility patrol” around 2:15 p.m. ET (1915 GMT) near the corner of 17th and I streets, a few blocks from the White House. The suspect came around a corner and “ambushed” them, Metropolitan Police Assistant Chief Jeff Carroll said at a press briefing.

After an exchange of gunfire, other National Guard troops subdued the shooter, he said. The two wounded soldiers were in critical condition at local hospitals, FBI Director Kash Patel said.

“This is a targeted shooting,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said at the briefing.

The shooter appeared to have acted alone, officials said.

In response to the shooting, Trump ordered 500 more guard soldiers deployed to Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters. The additional troops will join about 2,200 already in the city as part of the president’s contentious immigration and crime crackdown targeting Democratic-led cities.

Vice President JD Vance, who was in Kentucky on Wednesday, said in a post on X that the shooting proved that the Trump administration’s immigration policy was justified.

“We must redouble our efforts to deport people with no right to be in our country,” he said.

Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policy say it has employed illegally harsh tactics and swept up immigrants indiscriminately, including some with no criminal history and others here legally.

WITNESSES DESCRIBE CHAOTIC SCENE

The shooting unfolded near Farragut Square, a popular lunch spot for office workers just a few blocks from the White House. The park, where light posts are wrapped in wreaths and bows for the holiday season, is flanked by fast-casual restaurants and a coffee shop, as well as two metro stops.

Witnesses described a chaotic scene with pedestrians fleeing after shots were fired.

Mike Ryan, 55, said he was on his way to buy lunch nearby when he heard what sounded like gunfire. He ran half a block away and heard another round of apparent gunfire.

When he made his way back to the scene, he saw two National Guard soldiers on the ground across the street, while people tried to resuscitate one of them. At the same time, other Guard troops had pinned someone on the ground, Ryan said.

Another witness, Emma McDonald, said she saw one of the soldiers carried away on a stretcher minutes after the shooting, his head covered in blood and an automated compression system attached to his chest.

National Guard soldiers have been in Washington since Trump’s initial deployment in August, a move that was opposed by local officials and criticized by Democrats. The guard troops in the city include contingents from the District of Columbia as well as Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama.

Trump, a Republican, has suggested repeatedly that crime has disappeared from the capital as a result of the deployment, an assertion at odds with the police department’s official crime statistics.

Reporting by Jana Winter, Ted Hesson, Leah Douglas, Idrees Ali, Jeff Mason, Steve Gorman, Kanishka Singh, Phil Stewart, Ismail Shakil, Maria Tsvetkova, Jasper Ward and David Morgan; Writing by Joseph Ax; editing by Susan Heavey, Paul Thomasch, Cynthia Osterman, Deepa Babington and Stephen Coates

Source Hiiraan Online

Thursday  27, Nov 2025 {HMC} President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he is barring South Africa from participating in the Group of 20 summit next year at his Miami-area club and will stop all payments and subsidies to the country over its treatment of a U.S. government representative at this year’s global meeting.

Trump chose not to have an American delegation attend the recent summit hosted by South Africa, saying he did so because white Afrikaners were being violently persecuted. It is a claim that South Africa, which was mired for decades in racial apartheid, has rejected as baseless.

The Republican president, in a social media post, said South Africa had refused to hand over its G20 hosting responsibilities to a senior representative of the U.S. Embassy when the summit ended over the weekend.

“Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere,” he said, “and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”

In some ways, Trump views next year’s G20 summit as personal, given that he announced it will be at his golf club in Doral, Florida.

This year’s summit in Johannesburg, the first held in Africa, was boycotted by the United States, a G20 founding member and the world’s biggest economy. The meeting’s declaration, giving more attention to issues that affect developing countries, went unsigned by Washington, and the Trump administration expressed its opposition to South Africa’s agenda, especially the parts that focus on climate change.

On Monday, the U.S. took over the rotating presidency of the G20, leaving the long-term impact of the South African declaration unclear.

By tradition, the host country hands over a symbolic wooden gavel to the nation taking over the G20 presidency. But there was no American official on hand to receive it from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa because of the boycott.

The U.S. wanted to send a representative from its embassy. South Africa refused, saying it was an insult for Ramaphosa to hand over to what it called a junior official.

Trump has claimed that white Afrikaner farmers in South Africa are being killed and that their land is being seized. The South African government and others, including some Afrikaners themselves, say Trump’s claims are the result of misinformation.

South Africa has been a target for Trump since he returned to office at the start of the year, with his administration casting the country as anti-American because of its diplomatic ties with China, Russia and Iran.

Last month, the Trump administration announced it would restrict the number of refugees admitted annually to the U.S. to 7,500, with most of the spots reserved for white South Africans. Trump had suspended the refugee program on his first day in office in January. Since then only a trickle have entered the country, mostly white South Africans. In May, the administration welcomed a group of 59 white South Africans as refugees.

Afrikaners are South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch but also French and German colonial settlers who first came to the country in the 17th century.

Afrikaners were at the heart of the apartheid system of white minority rule from 1948-1994, leading to decades of hostility between them and South Africa’s Black majority. But Afrikaners are not a homogenous group, and some fought against apartheid. There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million.

Source Hiiraan Online