Recent reports (LAT, Jan. 19) have militia forces of the Kurdish National Council battling jihadist rebels of the Nusra Front for control of villages along Syria’s northeast border with Turkey. The jihadists seem to be alarmingly well-armed, using tanks and artillery to attack Kurdish positions and civilian neighborhoods in Ras Ayn village. There is a growing sense that the Islamization of the rebels is solidifying an alliance between the secular-minded Kurds and the Damascus regime—with much fear about the role of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the separatist group in Turkey which is on the US Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.

A Lebanese judge on Feb. 4 issued an arrest warrant for a top Syrian intelligence official and his aide for alleged involvement in a bombing plot in Lebanon. Brigadier General Ali Mamlouk is accused of being involved in plotting a series of bomb attacks with former Lebanese information minister Michel Samaha. Samaha, who was branded a global terrorist by the US Department of the Treasury, was arrested in August for allegedly plotting to incite violence in Lebanon with the aid of Mamlouk and Syria. In October Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan, a top Lebanese counter-Syrian intelligence official, was killed by a car bomb in Beirut believed to be in connection to his networks discovery of Samaha and Mamlouk's bomb plot.

Shi'ites in Quetta, capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province, spent three nights in freezing cold with the bodies of their slain loved ones at one of the city's main intersections—in defiance of their own traditions of speedy burial—to demand action in the face of a wave of terror taregting their community. The bodies were those of 83 people killed last week in coordinated bomb attacks on a Shi'ite neighborhood—the latest in a wave of such attacks across Pakistan. The bodies were finally buried Jan. 14 under heavy security, as mourners chanted slogans against the security forces for their failure to protect them.

A study carried out by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has found that more than 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Syria since March 2011. According to the report, the average number of deaths per month has increased significantly since the summer of 2011, where the average was approximately 1,000 deaths per month, to an average of 5,000 deaths per month since July 2012. However, the study noted that 60,000 is likely an underestimate and that the actual toll may be significantly higher. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated that "the number of casualties is higher than expected, and is truly shocking." While cautioning that the figure is not "definitive," she said the report is the "most detailed and wide-ranging to date."

At least 23 people were killed and scores more wounded in a series of attacks across Iraq Dec. 31. At Mussayib on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, seven people—three women, two children and two men—were killed when three houses were blown up. In central Baghdad, a parked car bomb went off next to a tent for Shi'ite pilgrims in Karada neighborhood, killing five people and injuring 25 others. At Khalis, 80 kilometers north of Baghdad, two more Shi'ite pilgrims were killed. Another pilgrim was killed and 11 wounded at Latifiyah, south of Baghdad. Near Baquba, west of Baghdad, gunmen assaulted the house of Kalid Luhaibi, a local leader of the government's National Reconciliation dialogue initiative, killing a security guard and wounding two. (Al Jazeera, Middle East Online, Dec. 31; al-Shofra, Dec. 6)

A bomb killed at least eight—including four children—and wounded some 70 at a Shi'ite procession marking the Ashura holy day in Pakistan's northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Nov. 24. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. "We carried out the attack against the Shi'ite community," spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location. "The government can make whatever security arrangements it wants but it cannot stop our attacks." (Reuters, Nov. 25; AFP, Nov. 24) On Nov. 25, a second blast targeting an Ashura procession in Dera Ismail Khan left at least a further four dead. (BBC News, Nov, 25) The blasts follow a suicide attack that killed 23 at a Shi'ite procession in the garrison city of Rawalpindi—Pakistan's deadliest bombing for five months.

The main Islamist rebel groups in Aleppo on Nov. 19 rejected the newly formed Syrian opposition bloc, saying they want an Islamic state. "We, the fighting squads of Aleppo city and province, unanimously reject the conspiratorial project called the National Coalition and announce our consensus to establish an Islamic state" in Syria, a spokesman announced in an Internet video. "We reject any external coalitions or councils imposed on us at home from any party whatsoever." The unidentified speaker, sitting at the head of a long table with some 30 other men and a black Islamist flag on the wall, named 14 armed groups as signatories to the statement, including al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and Liwa al-Tawhid. Ahrar al-Sham rejected the proclamation on its official webpage, however, saying that its leadership did not endorse the statement.

Authorities in Bangladesh say Muslim rioters over the weekend torched at least a dozen Buddhist temples and some 50 homes, in Cox's Bazar district near the Burmese border (Chittagong division, see map). Authorities said the attacks were prompted by a photo posted on Facebook that showed a local Buddhist trampling on a Koran. (Mizzima, Oct. 2; ANI, Sept. 30) After the rioting, more than 100 Buddhist monks protested at the Bangladeshi embassy in Rangoon, Burma, where a banner read "No Terrorist Muslim War on Religions." Hundreds of Buddhist monks also demonstrated in Colombo, Sri Lanka. (AP, Oct. 5; VOA, Oct. 4)