Islam Does Not Want To Deal With Reality With Resp

[iris89]

Islam Does Not Want To Deal With Reality With Respect Its Lust For Violence:

INTRODUCTION:

As everyone well knows there are anomalies that occur, but they do NOT represent everyday occurrences. One such anomaly was the bombing of the Oklahoma City, Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by a Catholic 'nut case'; but members of Islam would rather dwell on these anomalies than fact up to the real Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) within Islam with regard to uncalled for violence.

When working to find the root cause of problems, one does NOT look at anomalies but looks where repeating things occur and with respect world violence, this root cause is Islam. As one Australian paper put it,

<<<"Did you know that 90-95% of the conflicts in the world today are Muslims fighting non-muslims or each other? " [source - The Weekend Australian, November 26-27, 2005 AD]>>>.

So this is a repeating circumstance and the root cause has been identified as Islam.

However, one member of Islam said the following to divert attention from the root cause.

<<<"So Iris, what is your spin on Tim McVeys bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building? Does the make the Pope someone to hunt down in the hills of Italy? After all dear sweet Tim was a Catholic. Or is ok to kill people and blow up stuff only if your christian? And wasn't it the christians of the day the held the Witch Hunts in Salem? Hum? You need to be more worred about your stupidity and absurdity and the plank in you eye." [source - A member of Islam writing under a pseudonym]>>>.
And, this same individual also said,

<<<"Iris, why don't you tell me the truth of Tim McVay and the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing? If 9/11 justifys comdeming all Muslims, let us be equal in treatment of Catholics." [source - A member of Islam writing under a pseudonym]>>>.

Clearly her objective was to divert attention away from the awful reality that about 95% of the world violence is by members of Islam. In fact, the bombing by the 'nut job' Timothy McVey only killed 168 individuals and was a complete anomaly. However, violence my members of Islam such as 9/11 killed over 3,000 in just one day and did billions of damage, and even resulted in a war and the establishment of a costly new government department since it was NOT an anomaly but an ongoing situation.

For starters, here are some examples of the almost daily violence by members of Islam, some large in scope and some small in scope - but ongoing which is the salient item. They are being given just as starters to show the magnitude of the problem with respect this false religion that worships the mythical old middle eastern celestian moon god, "Allah," with regard the continuing world violence.

<<<"<<<"Islam is intolerant of other religions, so much so that Christians in Nigeria, Sudan and middle eastern countries are killed for practicing their religion. Muslims are also responsible for burning down their churches. Sydney has recently seen an attack on four churches for similar reasons. (December 16, 2005) How can we tolerate such intolerance?">>.[7]

Says it all, so clearly Islam should be redefined as something other than a religion. So it is very necessary that this greed and hate be addressed. Remember, Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." (AV).

Let's consider the facts as continually revealed in the world news that shows if any thing that the newspaper editor may have been a little low when he said 95 percent of the violence in the world was caused by Muslims. Here are some instances of terrorism by members of Islam:[7]

(1) World Trade Center - 9/11 - unprovoked attack and mass murder by Muslims.[8]
(2) London Subway Bombing by Muslims [9]
(3) Continued mosque bombings in Iraq by Muslims.[10]
(4) Suicide bombings in Israel by Muslims.[11]
(5) Suicide bombing of a wedding reception in Jordan by Muslims.[12]
(6) Daily roadside bombings in Iraq by Muslims.[13]
(7) Train bombings in Spain my Muslims.[14]
(8) Riots and car burnings and murders in France by Muslims.[15]
(9) Suicide bombings in Iraq by Muslims.[16]
(10) Car and truck bombings in Iraq by Muslims.[17]
(11) Unprovoked murder of 8 Israelis and the kidnapping of 2 by Muslims to provoke turmoil and violence in Lebanon and Israel by Muslims.[18]
(12) Unprovoked murder of 2 Israelis and the kidnapping of 1 by Muslims to provoke turmoil and violence in Gaza by Muslims.[19]
(13) Bombing of restaurants and cafes in Bali, Indonesia by Muslims.[20]
(14) Bombing of a trains in India by Muslims.[21]
(15) Take over o***rammar school in Russia resulting in the deaths of many students by Muslims.[22]
(16) Attempted shoebombing of a plain by a Muslim.[23]
(17) Conspiracy to bomb about 10 planes going from UK by Muslims.[24]
(18) Attempted murder of several Indian politicians in Kashmir by Muslims.[25]
(19) Many violent acts by Muslims in Afghanistan.[26]
(20) Murder o***irl by Shiite Muslims in Iran.[27]
(21) Conspiracy to bomb trains in Germany - as previously posted for you.[28]
(22) And the list could go on and on, get it?
References:
[7] The Weekend Australian, November 26-27, 2005 AD
[8] World Trade Center bombing, by Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[9] Explosions Hit Three Tube Stations, One Bus, Thursday, July 21, 2005, Fox News
[10] By Ellen Knickmeyer and K.I. Ibrahim, Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 23, 2006; Page A01
[11] Suicide attack, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[12] Zarqawi Calls for Jordan King's Head, Friday, November 18, 2005
[13] The Daily Star, 03/21/2006, Vol. 5 #644
[14] CBS News, WASHINGTON, March 12, 2004
[15] Free Republic, News/Activism 05/30/2006 5:46:30 PM PDT, and, The Telegraph, By Colin Randall in Paris (Filed: 31/05/2006)
[16] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[17] CNN, Thursday, March 18, 2004 Posted: 4:59 PM EST (2159 GMT)
[18] Telegraph (UK), Israeli crisis is a smoke screen for Iran's nuclear ambitions, By Con Coughlin(Filed: 14/07/2006)
[19] Associated Press
[20] aljazeera.net, Bali a soft target, experts say, By Marianne Kearney in Jakarta, Indonesia, Monday 03 October 2005, 20:20 Makka Time, 17:20 GMT
[21] MSNBC, Associated Press, Updated: 6:26 p.m. ET July 12, 2006
[22] Beslan school hostage crisis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[23] CNN, CNN NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN, Debate Over Guantanamo Detainees Continues, Aired January 21, 2002 - 22:00 ET
[24] TIME, The Daily Dish, by Andrew Sullivan, The Alleged UK Terror Plot, 16 Aug 2006 09:58 am
[25] The New Yorker, BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS - India and Pakistan are caught in a dangerous struggle over Kashmir. But what do its people want? by Isabel Hilton , Issue of 2002-03-11
[26] USA Today, USA's Muslims under a cloud, Updated 8/10/2006 9:13 AM ET
[27] NITV Satellite TV station located in Los Angeles, on Masjed Soleymaani Hastam, and [FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great, and (in German) Iran/forum/viewtopic.php of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia' and sosiran97.home.comcast.net/MasjedSoleymaaniHastam.mp3, and
[28] AOL NEWS, War on Terror, and Netscape.com, Third Lebanese Arrested in German Train Terror Plot , (via dailystar.com.lb)
[source - Large Religions are False Religions - Their Fruitage, by Iris the Preacher].

In fact, they are even to this day trying to start violence in North America with a view to Islamic Imperialism. Let's consider the Fort Dix fouled plan to commit murder with respect furtherance of their wicked goal. <<<" WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The federal government has charged five alleged Islamic radicals with plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey.
A sixth was charged with aiding and abetting the illegal possession of firearms by three of the others.

"The philosophy that supports and encourages jihad around the world against Americans came to live here in New Jersey and threaten the lives of our citizens through these defendants," New Jersey U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie said at a news conference Tuesday. (Watch how the suspects' trip to a video store led to the arrest )
The men were arrested Monday night and heard the charges against them Tuesday in federal court. They will be held without bond pending a hearing Friday, according to Michael Drewniak, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey....

One quote from the alleged recordings was defendant Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer saying, "My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers. ... This is exactly what we are looking for. You hit four, five or six Humvees and light the whole place [up] and retreat completely without any losses."...
Their goal was to figure out how to kill as many American soldiers as possible, Christie said.

The men had surveyed a number of bases but settled on Fort Dix because one of the defendants said he knew the base "like the back of his hand" because he had delivered pizza there, Christie said. (About Fort Dix)" [source - CNN in May, 2007][source - Blood, Blood, and More Blood, the Story of Islam: by Iris the Preacher]>>>.

So as can be seen, most of the violence in the world today is the result of this one group, and this with only 5% being able to be subscribed to anomalies committed by plain 'nut jobs' not connected with Islam.

REASON FOR SO MUCH VIOLENCE BY MEMBERS OF ISLAM:

There is an underlying reason for so much violence on the parts of members of Islam, and that is the teaching of a lust for violence by many of its religious leaders such a Sunni Sheik Osama bin Ladin and others of his ilk.

Those who try and assign this lust for violence on the part of some in Islam to other causes are just fooling themselves. It is not what either the Bible or the distorted Bible knockoff the Qur'an actually say, but how religious leaders be they priest and/or imams or muftis or what ever teach the people is the interpretation of what is written either in the Bible or the bible knockoff the Qur'an that matters and governs actions. It matters not what the Bible and/or the Bible knockoff really say. People go by what they are taught by their religious leaders. Take the genocide committed by the Roman Catholic Church at the direction of their supreme religious leader, the pope, what mattered was not that the Bible clearly said at Exodus 20:13, "Thou shalt not kill." (Authorized King James Bible; AV), but what their religious leaders told them. Therefore, it is the religion at fault, irregardless of what their particular holy book, be it the Bible or the distorted Bible knockoff the Qur'an may say. Neither is so called Christianity or in Islam are most individuals actions really governed in any way by what their particular holy book really says, but they are governed by the interpretation of their religious leaders. Thus, knowing this reality, one would be either just plain stupid and/or dumb to even bother looking at a particular religion's holy book and expect the members would conform to it. Take the Rig Vede and find me for example a Hindu actually conforming to it instead of the interpretation given to it by his religious leaders, like looking for a needle in the haystack per K.S. Lal, India's greatest historian.

In fact, with regard to what is commonly called Christian, there are two very different taxonomies described as follows:

The so called Christian religion consist of over 33,000+ sects and/or groups all believing and propagating different things which is the promoting of many false religions under the broad umbrella of the taxonomy of being Christian. However, it should be obvious to any thinking individual that 33,000+ different ways can NOT all be correct, so what we in effect have is a very large maze that one must transverse to get to the real truth since all but one would only be dead ends.

Of course, in order to do this, one can NOT examine each in detail, but must therefore seek to learn what the Inspired Word of Almighty God (YHWH), Creator of all that exist, the Bible, really teaches. But this is no easy task.

But let's consider the two taxonomies or distinct classifications of what is commonly referred to as Christianity. Realizing that some view gaining salvation as and easy task and feel that belonging to any old religion is acceptable to Almighty God (YHWH), but is it? Let's look at some facts, realities in keeping with John 8:32, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (Authorized King James Bible; AV).

Now let's look at the two different taxonomies and carefully note what sets them apart from each other:

Group 1 - the genuine (true) followers of Jesus (Yeshua) Christ do NOT involve themselves with war and violence or meddle in politics, and try to follow to the 'letter' the words and commandments of Christ. Also, they have NO creedal doctrines and/or traditions.

Group 2 - the false claimants of being followers of Jesus (Yeshua) Christ involve themselves with war and violence and meddle in politics while falsely claiming to be followers of Christ, the Prince of Peace. The give 'lip' service with respect following to the 'letter' the words and commandments of Christ - the term Sunday Christian aptly fits them. They have their creedal doctrines and/or traditions and assign more importance to these than the Inspired Word of Almighty God (YHWH), the Bible.

As can readily be seen, Group 1 does not involve itself with nationalism and racism but readily recognizes the Biblical reality of no partiality as shown at Romans 2:11 and elsewhere, "for there is no respect of persons with God." (American Standard Version: ASV). Also, this group strives to follow the 'letter' of the commandments of Jesus (Yeshua) Christ and Inspired Word of Almighty God (YHWH), Creator of all that exist, the Bible; and NOT the creeds and creedal doctrines of men who give themselves high sounding titles.

Whereas, Group 2 only gives 'lip service' to commandments of Jesus (Yeshua) Christ and Inspired Word of Almighty God (YHWH), Creator of all that exist, the Bible. The self evident truth being:

That it matters not what their holy book says be they Group 2 so called Christians and/or some none so called Christian group such as Islam, Hinduism, etc. It is not what either the Bible or the Bible takeoff the Qur'an actually say, but how religious leaders be they priest and/or imams or muftis or what ever teach the people is the interpretation of what is written either in the Bible or the bible takeoff the Qur'an that matters and governs actions. It matters not what the Bible and/or the Bible takeoff really say. People go by what they are taught by their religious leaders. Take the genocide committed by the Roman Catholic Church at the direction of their supreme religious leader, the pope, what mattered was not that the Bible clearly said at Exodus 20:13, "Thou shalt not kill." (Authorized King James Bible; AV), but what their religious leaders told them. Therefore, it is the religion at fault, irregardless of what their particular holy book, be it the Bible or the Bible takeoff the Qur'an may say. Neither in so called Christianity or in Islam are most individuals actions really governed in any way by what their particular holy book really says, but they are governed by the interpretation of their religious leaders. Thus, knowing this reality, one would be either just plain stupid and/or dumb to even bother looking at a particular religion's holy book and expect the members would conform to it. Take the Rig Vede and find me for example a Hindu actually conforming to it instead of the interpretation given to it by his religious leaders, like looking for a needle in the haystack per K.S. Lal, India's greatest historian.

So, clearly, it is NOT my taxonomy but reality that sets the two groups clearly apart as separate classifications. Also, it is not my opinion that sets the two separate groups that are called "Christians" apart, but clearly the diametrically opposed actions of the two groups.

In fact, the Inspired Word of Almighty God (YHWH), the Bible, clearly demonstrates how difficult it really is not to be mislead by the Devil and the religious leaders of evil false religions under control of the god of this system of things. This was clearly shown by Almighty God's (YHWH's) Son, Jesus (Yeshua), in answering a question asked of him at Luke 13:23-30, "And one said unto him, Lord, are they few that are saved? And he said unto them, 24 Strive to enter in by the narrow door: for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able. 25 When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us; and he shall answer and say to you, I know you not whence ye are; 26 then shall ye begin to say, We did eat and drink in thy presence, and thou didst teach in our streets; 27 and he shall say, I tell you, I know not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. 28 There shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and yourselves cast forth without. 29 And they shall come from the east and west, and from the north and south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. 30 And behold, there are last who shall be first, and there are first who shall be last." (ASV).

Also, Jesus (Yeshua) clearly showed his genuine (true) followers would be few in number compared to the total number of mankind. Let's consider both Luke 13:24 and Matthew 7:13-14, it is in both of these that the road followed by true believers would be narrow and cramped, Luke 13:24, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able." (Authorized King James Bible: AV); And Matthew 7:13-14, "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, abroad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." (AV); thereby, clearly showing few would be entering the narrow gate "which leadeth unto life." In reality, it will be difficult for even true Christians to enter as testified to at 1 Peter 4:18, "And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear." (AV). In order to enter, we must have the right sort of guide, Luke 1:79, "To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." (AV). Now, if one picks the wrong group, just because it is popular or the so called 'one to belong to in a community' and not because of Bible Truths, there is an important warning given at Matthew 15:14, "Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." (AV). In fact, being with the wrong group can mean you are NOT having fellowship with the Son of God, Jesus (Yeshua) as testified to at 1 John 1:6, "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not [have] the truth." (AV). This danger is made abundantly clear at Luke 12:32 when Jesus (Yeshua) spoke of his true followers as a little flock and not a large one, "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (AV). Simply stated, his true followers will be relatively few in number which should cause all sincere individuals to question whether mainstream religion with its vast membership is heading for the narrow gate!

Now being this is the case, it behooves all genuine (true) followers of Jesus (Yeshua) to show neighbor love and warn their neighbors of the need to seek genuine salvation and to get OUT OF EVIL FALSE RELIGION regardless of what it is called or how long their families and friends have been members of it. This would be required by what Jesus (Yeshua) said at Matthew 22:37-40, "And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 40 On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets." (ASV).

We will consider how this love of neighbor requires all genuine (true) followers to warn their neighbors of evil false religion by exposing it for what it is.

Whereas in Islam there is only one taxonomy, divided up of course into different flavors such as Sunni, Shia, etc.

Mush of Islam is very prone to violence for the reasons previously dealt with, but now let's look at actual examples from the world news that clearly show an ongoing Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) by members of Islam rather than an anomaly.

WORLD NEWS ACTUAL EXAMPLES OF ISLAM'S SOP:

Now see for yourself Islam's SOP in action.


[1] Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:33 PM ET
ALI-YURT, Russia (Reuters) - Petimat Tatriyeva was woken up one morning late last month by shouts and banging coming from the courtyard of her home.

She said it was a raid by Russian security forces. "About 15 men ... burst into the yard. One of them put a machine gun to my forehead. They said: 'Where are the men? We'll count to ten, then throw a grenade into the house'," she told Reuters.

"When my 15-year-old son woke up, they threw themselves at him and beat him up," she said. "They beat my husband on the kidneys and pressed their fingers into his eyes."

Tatriyeva and her family live in Ingushetia, a mainly Muslim republic where for more than a decade Moscow's forces have been fighting a low-level military campaign against armed Islamist militants linked to separatists in neighboring Chechnya.

But things are getting worse. In response to an escalation in attacks by insurgents, Moscow in late July sent in an additional 2,500 interior ministry troops, almost tripling the number of special forces in Ingushetia.
The escalation in violence shows that seven years after President Vladimir Putin came to power on a pledge to "wipe out" the insurgency in Russia's North Caucasus region that includes Chechnya and Ingushetia, the rebels are not beaten.

In Chechnya, attacks have grown rare, but the problems appear to have shifted next door.

Some people in Ingushetia draw parallels with Chechnya eight years ago. Then, after a lull in the fighting that had already dragged on for six years, troops were sent back in to respond to a wave of rebel attacks. That unleashed a new war.

Now in Ingushetia, reports emerge almost daily of gun battles or ambushes on police vehicles.
This summer the insurgents have killed an aide to Murat Zyazikov, the region's pro-Moscow president, and launched an audacious attack on an army base. Last week a Russian soldier was killed in an attack on a column of troops.
In July, the rebels murdered an ethnic Russia schoolteacher, Lyudmila Terekhina, and two of her children. A bomb went off in the cemetery as she was being buried, wounding several mourners.
In Ingushetia's capital, Nazran, armored personnel carriers drive through the streets. Roadblocks check the documents of everyone entering the city.

"ROUTINE OPERATION"
Zyazikov, a former official with the Federal Security Service (FSB), a successor to the Soviet KGB, told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday it was a "routine precautionary operation."

"There are no curfews, no punitive operations, no violations of anyone's human rights, whatever anyone says. It has had no impact on the situation. There is no public outrage."

However, residents who spoke to Reuters described a massive security operation underway, with regular and often violent raids on private homes by security forces looking for insurgents.

Homes in the village of Ali-Yurt were raided after shots were fired at government buildings in the nearby town of Magas.
"They brought my husband outside in just his underpants and they pressed me against the wall," said Madina Martazanova. "They told him to lie on the ground, he didn't want to and they forced him down and kicked him in the stomach."
Nazran resident Idris Khamkhoyev said heavy-handed police operations were causing bitterness among the local population.

"They (Russian security forces) are rampant and answer to no one," he said. "They are exacerbating the situation and we now fear a repetition of the Chechen problem."

In Moscow, some observers see other parallels with Chechnya. The start of the second Chechen war helped the then little-known Putin show off his credentials as a tough politician. It was a factor in his victory in the 2000 presidential election.

Early next year, Russia is due to choose a new president because Putin, limited by the constitution to two consecutive terms, says he is stepping down.
Most observers say the Kremlin will encourage voters to back a Putin lieutenant as his replacement.

"In theory, the new deterioration of the situation in the Caucasus could be used to raise the profile of the successor, or as a pretext for calling off the election completely," said New Times, a Russian-language news magazine.
(Additional reporting by Oleg Shchedrov in Moscow)

[2] By DAVID McHUGH, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago [9/5/2007]

BERLIN - Three suspected Islamic militants were arrested for allegedly plotting "imminent" and "massive" attacks on the Ramstein Air Base, a major U.S. and NATO military hub, and Frankfurt's busy international airport, German authorities said Wednesday.

German federal prosecutor Monika Harms said the three - two of whom were German converts to Islam - had trained at terror camps in Pakistan and procured some 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives. And a top legislator said the group could have struck "in a few days," noting a "sensitive period" that includes the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We were able to succeed in recognizing and preventing the most serious and massive bombings," Harms told reporters.
Officials said the hydrogen peroxide, stored in a hideout, could have been mixed with other additives to produce a bomb with the explosive power of 1,200 pounds of TNT.

"This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid (transit) bombings," Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany's Federal Crime Office, said at a joint press conference with Harms.

The three suspects - two Germans, aged 22 and 28, and a 29-year-old Turk - first came to the attention of authorities because they had been observing a U.S. military facility at the end of 2006, officials said. All three had undergone training at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the group.

The Islamic Jihad Union was described as a Sunni Muslim group based in Central Asia that was an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an extremist group with origins in that country.

"There was an imminent threat," German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told ARD broadcaster.
The three had no steady work and were drawing unemployment benefits while their main occupation was the plot, officials said. "This group distinguishes itself through its profound hatred of U.S. citizens," Ziercke said.

Ziercke said members of Germany's elite GSG-9 anti-terrorist unit arrested two of the suspects at a holiday home in central Germany on Tuesday. A third managed to escape through a bathroom window, but was apprehended about 300 yards later by federal police who had roped off the area.

The three suspects were brought before judges in a closed proceeding at Germany's Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe after being flown in by helicopter, court officials said.

Prosecutors in Karlsruhe said the arrests took place Tuesday afternoon, and that police had also carried out searches across the country. The German reports came a day after Denmark authorities said they had thwarted a bomb plot when authorities rounded up eight alleged Islamic militants believed to have links to al-Qaida.

Wolfgang Bosbach, a top legislator for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, said that "the suspects had been under observation by security officials for a long time"

"Consequently, we know without any doubt that they were planning attacks that would have had considerable consequences," he told N24 television, adding that the three had acquired chemicals for the plot.

Bosbach said an attack could have occurred "in a few days" and pointed out the Sept. 11 anniversary, as well as parliamentary deliberations in the next few weeks over whether to extend troop mandates in Afghanistan.
"We are in a highly sensitive period," he said.

Ramstein is one of the best-known U.S. Air Force bases worldwide because it serves as a major conduit for U.S. troops moving in and out of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It is a key transit point for injured troops from Iraq and Afghanistan who are flown there to be taken to nearby Landstuhl.

Besides U.S. personnel, British, French, and other international forces are also located there.
Frankfurt International Airport is Europe's third-busiest airport, handling hundreds of in- and outbound flights to and from the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. In July, a record 5.2 million passengers arrived or departed from the airport. In 2005, more than 52.2 million passengers came through the airport, which is also a major cargo hub.

German and U.S. officials have warned of the possibility of a terrorist attack, and security measures have been increased. Navy Capt. Jeff Gradeck, spokesman for the U.S. military's European Command in Stuttgart, said German authorities had contacted them concerning the alleged plot, but had no further information.
"We extend our gratitude to Germany for their efforts in protecting us," Gradeck said.

Germany, which did not send troops to Iraq, has largely been spared terrorist attacks such as the train and subway bombings in Madrid and London - although its involvement in the attempt to stabilize Afghanistan against Islamic insurgents has led to fears it might be targeted. In July 2006, two bombs were placed on commuter trains but did not explode. Officials said that attempt was partly motivated by anger over cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. Several suspects are on trial in Lebanon, and a Lebanese man has been charged in Germany.

The Tuesday arrests in Denmark sent jitters through a country that was the focus of Muslim anger and deadly protests over the cartoons. Jakob Scharf, head of the PET intelligence service, said that the eight suspects arrested were "militant Islamists with connections to leading al-Qaida persons."
Separately in Denmark, four Muslim men went on trial Wednesday in an unrelated case on charges of making bombs for a planned terror attack, a year after they were arrested. The defendants, who cannot be named under a court order, are accused of purchasing chemicals and equipment to produce explosives. All pleaded innocent.

The European Union's top justice official said Wednesday that the threat of a terror attack remained high in the 27-nation bloc. EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini said the EU executive would push ahead with plans to set up an EU-wide airline passenger data recording system despite privacy concerns.

"The threat of new terror attacks continues to be high," Frattini said, citing Spain, Italy, Belgium, Britain and Germany as countries where the risk has been the highest.

The German chancellor said in an interview released Wednesday that German troops would remain in Afghanistan for several more years, despite recent setbacks in the region.

"To walk away would send the wrong signal," Merkel told N-24 television.
Magnus Norell, at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said while Germany's mission in Afghanistan could be a motive for a terrorist attack, a flood of other factors could also play a role.

"It could be discontent with Germany, or even western Europe as a whole. It's really not that easy as to say that this (Afghanistan) would be the reason for it."

[3] By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Fri Sep 7, 1:49 PM ET
BERLIN - Fritz and Daniel - two of the three militant Islamic suspects arrested in a purported plot to bomb American targets are as German as their names.

The pair allegedly are among the small number of Western converts who have been used by terrorism masters because their ability to blend in is matched by their willingness to become violent, Muslim and non-Muslim experts say.
The two Germans and a Turk were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of planning attacks on U.S. and other facilities. Police say they had stockpiled enough material to build bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid and 52 in London.

The extremism behind the alleged plot was in many ways inculcated not in far-off lands but on the banks of the Danube River in Germany, security officials say.
Fritz Martin Gelowicz, described as the leader of the Islamic Jihad Union terror cell, converted to Islam 10 years ago at age 18 in his hometown of Ulm, security officials told The Associated Press.

Ulm, in Baden Wuerttemberg in southwestern Germany, is a center for radical Islamic activity along with Neu-Ulm, just across the Danube in Bavaria. Authorities say the local Islamic scene is marked by particular zeal.
Security officials said Gelowicz first became an adherent of what they described as an Islamic hate preacher at the Multicultural House in Neu-Ulm, which he attended regularly with a German friend of Turkish descent, identified only as Tolga D. Tolga D. was arrested in Frankfurt last month after being deported from Pakistan and is accused of recruiting a German citizen for terrorism.
Born Sept. 1, 1979, in Munich, Gelowicz was 5 when he moved to Ulm with his parents and brother. His mother was a doctor and his father ran a company that sells and installs solar heating equipment.

The parents split up while Gelowicz was a boy, and he worked for his father to pay for his education, studying business and engineering at a vocational college. Tolga D. also worked for the company and played a major role in converting Gelowicz to Islam, security officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media, said Gelowicz and Tolga D. often went to the Multicultural House, which was shut down by authorities as a security threat in 2005.

"That was his scene," an official said. "Fritz G. was a conscientious student."
After the Multicultural House was closed, Gelowicz began going to the Islamic Information Center in Ulm - which was searched by police this week. Officials at the center could not be reached for comment.

"I believe this center in Ulm has played a calamitous role," said Udo Steinbach, a specialist on Islam at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg.

Investigators say that in March 2006, Gelowicz attended a terror training camp in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Officials say the group is influenced by al-Qaida.
Gelowicz's alleged accomplices are Daniel Martin Schneider, 22, a German from the western town of Neunkirchen, and Adem Yilmaz, 29, who was born in Turkey but lives in Germany. Both men attended terror training camps in Pakistan last year, officials said.

Late last year, at least one of the three was observed studying a U.S. military base at Hanau with what security officials suspected was an apparent aim of making it a terror target.

German officials said police then put the three under surveillance.
The head of the Federal Crime Agency, Joerg Ziercke, said the plot went ahead even though the men knew police were watching them. "This underlines their devotion, or fanaticism, in regard to their goal," said Ziercke.
The case has raised concerns about fanaticism among European converts to Islam, and some German officials have suggested singling them out for special surveillance. Others say that would be wrong.

"Most converts want to show born Muslims that they are especially religious," said Gerhard Isa Moldenhauer, a convert who is a member of the board of the Central Institute of the Islam Archive of Germany.

Figures about how many Germans convert to Islam are hard to come by. "The mosques don't usually make it known when someone converts," Steinbach told The Associated Press.

He said he wasn't surprised that Germans were involved in the alleged plot.
"We had to expect sooner or later that phenomena would become visible here that we had already seen in England, that people who turn to Islam for whatever reason also move to violence," Steinbach said.

"A very marginal part follow the pied pipers and fall into the hands of criminals, as we have seen," he said. "They reach them with the Internet and try to give them a new identity through violent action."

Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, was a convert who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris in 2001. One of the London commuter bombers in 2005, Jamaican-born Jermaine Lindsay, also was a convert, as was Jose Padilla of Chicago, convicted last month in Miami of helping Islamic extremists and plotting overseas attacks.

Western converts accused of involvement with the Taliban or al-Qaida include American John Walker Lindh, now in prison after being captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Australian David Hicks.

German Christian Ganczarski is awaiting trial in France for his alleged role in a 2002 attack on a Tunisian synagogue that killed 21 people, mostly foreign tourists.

[4] By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago [9/7/2007]

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden appeared for the first time in three years in a video Friday released ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, telling Americans they should convert to Islam if they want the war in Iraq to end.

American officials said the U.S. government had obtained a copy even though the video had not been posted yet by al-Qaida - and intelligence agencies were studying the video to determine whether it was authentic and looking for clues about bin Laden's health.

The 30-minute video was obtained by the SITE Institute, a Washington-based group that monitors terrorist messages, and provided to the Associated Press.
The footage gives a rare look at the al-Qaida leader, who has likely avoided appearing in videos as a security measure. His emergence comes at a time when terrorism experts believe his terror network is regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region - and it underlines the U.S. failure to catch him.

In the video, a short excerpt of which was broadcast to the Arab world by Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden wears a white robe, a white circular cap and a beige cloak seated behind a table while reading an address to the American people from papers in front of him.

His trimmed beard is shorter than in his last video, in 2004, and is fully black - apparently dyed, since in past videos it was mostly gray. He speaks softly, as he usually does, and has dark bags under his eyes, but his appearance dispelled rumors that he had died.

U.S. President George W. Bush made the rare move of speaking about an al-Qaida video. The tape is "a reminder about the dangerous world in which we live, he told reporters on the sidelines of a summit of Pacific Rim nations in Sydney, Australia.

"It's important that we show resolve and determination to protect ourselves, deny al-Qaida safe haven and support young democracies," Bush said.
In the video, Bin Laden makes no overt threats and does not directly call for attacks.

Instead, he addresses Americans, lecturing them on the failures of their leaders to stop the war in Iraq despite growing public opposition in the U.S.
He says there were two solutions to stopping the Iraq war. "One is from our side, and it is to escalate the fighting and killing against you. This is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out," bin Laden said.
"The second solution is from your side. ... I invite you to embrace Islam," he said.

One result of that, bin Laden said, would be an end to the Iraq war. He said "warmongering owners of the major corporations" would rush to appease voters who showed they are looking for an alternative, "and this alternative is Islam."
He derided Bush, saying events in Iraq have gotten "out of control" and the American leader "is like the one who plows and sows the sea: He harvests nothing but failure."

Bin Laden frequently criticized capitalism, calling its leaders the real terrorists and threats to human freedom.
"This is why I tell you: as you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system," he said.
Bin Laden's attacks in the video on capitalism, multinational corporations and globalization led several current and former government officials to believe an American - 28-year-old Adam Gadahn - may have written at least part of the speech.

Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and supporting terrorism for serving as an al-Qaida propagandist, has appeared in several past al-Qaida-produced videos, lecturing against capitalism and globalization and making insider references to American culture.

"It has Adam Gadahn written all over it," one former senior intelligence official said of bin Laden's tape, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The video appeared to have been recently made. At one point, bin Laden mentions that "several days ago" Japan marked the 62nd anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. He also refers to the Democratic Party's congressional victory in last fall's election and to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected in May.

He also shows a grasp of current events, dropping mentions of global warming and saying Americans are "reeling under the burdens" of a mortgage crisis.
And he praises author Noam Chomsky, an early critic of the Iraq war, as well as Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, who has said poor U.S. leadership was losing the war against terrorist groups.

Bin Laden "knows Bush has low approval ratings, knows the significance o***rowing awareness of global warming," said Thomas Sanderson, deputy director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "He's trying to capitalize on what he sees as a shift back to the middle in American politics."

Al-Qaida annually uses the anniversary of the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as a propaganda opportunity, issuing videotapes to rally supporters and mock the United States.
But the appearance of bin Laden this year makes a bigger splash. The al-Qaida leader had not appeared in new video footage since October 2004, and he had not put out an audiotape in more than a year, his longest period without a message.
His deputy, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahri, has issued numerous videos and audiotapes in the meantime as al-Qaida has increased the sophistication and speed of its media operations.

Seth Jones, a terrorism expert at the RAND think tank, said that while the anniversary gives the pretext for the tape, it also comes at a time when the main al-Qaida leadership has managed to regroup.
"There clearly has been a resurgence of core al-Qaida in the tribal areas of Pakistan" along the frontier with Afghanistan since 2005, Jones said.
He said sympathy in that region for the Taliban has made it more receptive to militant Sunni groups, including al-Qaida. "It's really created a sanctuary," Jones said.

Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, said she believes "strongly that al-Qaida has regrouped" but that its core bases are more scattered than previously, comprising several training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She said it was likely bin Laden is hidden in a more secure location, away from any of those sites.

During the video, bin Laden's image moves for only a total of about 3 1/2 minutes in two segments, staying frozen the rest of the time while his remarks continue.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it might have resulted from a technical glitch while al-Qaida passed the video through a variety of computer sites to mask its cyber trail.
The United States intercepted the video before it was released on Islamic Web sites where al-Qaida usually posts its messages, a U.S. counterterrorism official said in Washington. U.S. officials had analyzed the video for hours before transcripts and videos were leaked, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The official said analysts were studying bin Laden's physical characteristics - for clues about his health after unconfirmed rumors earlier this year that he had died of kidney disease.

Soon after word emerged that the United States had the video, Islamic militant Web sites that usually carry statements from al-Qaida went down and were inaccessible.

Hours later, the sites were back up, but by late Friday, the video still had not been released on the militant Web sites.
The reason for the shutdown was not immediately known. Evan H. Kohlmann, a terrorism expert at globalterroralert.com, said he suspected it was the work of al-Qaida itself, trying to find how the video leaked to U.S. officials.

[5] By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 9 minutes ago [9/11/2007]
CAIRO, Egypt - Two messages from Osama bin Laden in a matter of days have revived the game of questions over his health and whereabouts, but they also made clear he is al-Qaida's propaganda "top gun," able to draw attention in the
In a new video released Tuesday, bin Laden's voice was heard commemorating one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers and calling on young Muslims to follow his example in martyring themselves in attacks.

It came on the heels of a video released Saturday containing the first new images of the terror movement's leader in nearly three years. It showed him urging Americans to convert to Islam and railing against capitalism, globalization and democracy as failed philosophies.

Both releases on Web sites used by Islamic extremists may in part be an attempt to use bin Laden's charisma to win over supporters in an audience of growing importance for al-Qaida - Muslim converts and immigrants from Muslim countries living in the West, particularly Europe.

Militants from both groups have been implicated in several plots inside Europe in recent years, and the anti-globalization rhetoric could be aimed at giving disenchanted Muslims there further reason to join his cause, along with his traditional condemnation of U.S. policy in the Mideast.

The two videos, timed to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, also made a splash in the U.S. at a time when the presidential campaign and falling support for the war in Iraq have prompted a debate on how America should be fighting terrorism.

Presidential candidates weighed in on the question of whether the man President Bush once vowed to take "dead or alive" remains a threat. Republican Fred Thompson called bin Laden a "symbolic" figure, while Rudolph Giuliani insisted the al-Qaida leader needed to be taken down.

U.S. intelligence agencies, meanwhile, are poring over bin Laden's messages, looking for clues to the 50-year-old's health and location.
Little was immediately evident, except for bin Laden's new beard - dyed a dark black from the mostly gray of previous videos.

The images in Saturday's video were clearly recent - made at least since June, because bin Laden mentioned British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who took office that month, and perhaps done as recently as early August.
Because bin Laden's image moves for only a few minutes in the first tape and not at all in the second, questions are being raised about his health.
Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, said trying to guess at bin Laden's physical condition from the images is pure speculation. But it is clear that the al-Qaida leader is plugged in, he said.
"He's very much up on current events, but it is more than that. Bin Laden has learned to skillfully package and tap into issues that have political currency and a wide resonance outside his normal constituency," Ranstorp said.

The messages end a long dry spell for bin Laden - his last video had been released in October 2004, while his last audiotape came out in July 2006.
During that lull, numerous videos and audiotapes were issued by his deputy, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri, who many analysts believe has a more direct hand in al-Qaida and has led the rebuilding of the network's command since the 2001 U.S. assault on Afghanistan.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University, said the evidence indicates al-Zawahri likely holds al-Qaida's operational reins, heading meetings of the network's top leadership in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But Bin Laden is "still the marquee name ... wheeled out in dramatic fashion," Hoffman said.
"He's a brand name, probably one of the most recognizable brand names in the world. So he has tremendous value in that respect. He's the headliner."
Tuesday's video was the latest in an al-Qaida tradition: Every year on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack it has commemorated one or two of the 19 suicide hijackers by releasing their videotaped "last will and testament."
This year, the video included the testament of Waleed al-Shehri, one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11 that hit the World Trade Center. An audiotape of bin Laden introduced the testament, played over a still photo of the terror leader taken from Saturday's video.

Bin Laden praised al-Shehri, saying he "recognized the truth" that Arab rulers are "vassals" of the West and have "abandoned the balance of (Islamic) revelation."

"It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs) until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues," Bin Laden said.

One thing the messages may show is that bin Laden feels secure enough to emerge.
"It means he is freer to move and to talk and he is in (a) safer place. Now he is more confident to communicate to the media," said Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of the pan-Arab newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi and author of "The Secret History of al-Qaida."
By issuing two tapes in just four days, "he is saying, 'I'm back,'" Atwan said.

[6] By SCOTT MACLEOD 1 hour, 44 minutes ago [11/28/2007][Yahoo News]

As would-be peacemakers bask in the international limelight of the Annapolis conference, back in the Middle East two other parties are serving up notice that no deal will come to pass, if they can help it: Iran and its Palestinian ally, Hamas. "The Annapolis conference was already a failure," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told journalists after a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday. The U.S. could sponsor a hundred such meetings, he added, and the result would be the same. In Gaza, which is effectively ruled by the fundamentalist Hamas group, anti-Annapolis protesters filled the streets. "They can go to thousands of conferences and we will say in the name of the Palestinian people that we do not accept," Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told the demonstrators.

[7] By BRUCE CRUMLEY 1 hour, 43 minutes ago [12/11/2007]

Death and destruction revisited the Algerian capital of Algiers Tuesday morning when a pair of powerful car bombs exploded, and claimed what early estimates placed as 62 lives. Though no claims of responsibility have been made, security experts say there's little doubt the attack was the work of al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group that formed an alliance with Osama bin Laden's global jihad in 2006. Officials say Tuesday's spectacular strike increases the risk that AQIM is ramping up its violent struggle to bring down the Algerian government. And as the fourth big hit by AQIM in less than a year, the incident highlights the group's increasing organizational skills and establishes it as the greatest potential terror threat to continental Europe as well.

The first blast occurred Tuesday at around 9:30 a.m. local time, as an explosives-filled car plowed into a packed bus, immediately killing the driver and a dozen or more university students en route to the law school in the Ben-Aknoun section of Algiers. The point of impact was located outside two highly symbolic institutions of the Algerian state: the nation's supreme court, and neighboring constitutional court. Just minutes later, a second suicide car bomb ripped through the nearby Hydra neighborhood, badly damaging the offices of two United Nations organizations: the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), and the U.N. Development Program (UNDP). The final death toll may be as high as 100, well above the 30 killed and over 200 injured during the twin car bombings of government buildings in Algiers last April.

Algerian officials had claimed that a counter-offensive by security forces since April had decimated AQIM ranks. But smaller AQIM bombings and gun attacks on police or military forces have continued unabated, though often unreported. There was also the September 8 suicide bombing of a coast guard unit in eastern Algeria that killed 32 people. The ability and determination of the AQIM to strike in stunning fashion was made even clearer two days earlier, when a suicide bomber charged the cortege of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika during a visit to the city of Batna, killing 22 people and injuring more than 100.
"Any advances made during the counter-offensive by special military forces has been more than offset by the effective recruitment among disenfranchised youths since the insurgents took the al- Qaeda name," says a French intelligence official. The 15-year old terror group took on that name after affiliating with bin Laden on September 11, 2006. Since that time, AQIM has adopted the structured, stylized recruitment and attack methods of the original al-Qaeda. The use of synchronized attacks by suicide bombers in Tuesday strikes, for example, almost certainly shows the influence of bin Laden's strategists. "The desired message is 'With al-Qaeda, this is a deeper, broader force than a radical group battling the Algerian regime out in the sticks," says the French official. "The attacks are bigger, the damage larger, and some of targets and victims foreign. The message is clear: We're now battling enemies wherever we can find them."

Indeed, French security officials say that AQIM's organizational effectiveness makes it the largest risk of non-homegrown terror to continental Europe. The French, who keep a very close eye on suspected terror cells on their own territory, are nervous that the AQIM cells from Algeria may be rolled out against France and other European nations, all relatively easy to reach from just across the Mediterranean. Says one counter-terrorism investigator: "If they can make it in under our radar, we're blind to them - unless they make the mistake of making local contacts. That's our concern."

The threat of that kind of imported strike has grown since the AQIM promised to extend its Algerian jihad to Europe. Bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has repeatedly threatened Europe - and France in particular - as enemies of jihadist forces. Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's friendlier relations with the U.S. and relatively pro-Israel positions have only increased extremists ire. Since his taking office last May, officials say, radical websites have cited Sarkozy's support of Israel - and his own Jewish ancestry - in calling for terror strikes against France.

Given the personalized nature of that renewed fury, however, why didn't the AQIM seek a terror attack on Sarkozy or French interests during his state visit to Algeria last month? "Success," explains the French counter-terrorism official. "Trying to kill a visiting leader or bomb a place he's set to visit while security alerts are full is not going to work. Waiting a week until security has slackened to below even normal levels to attack - your chances of success get much better." If that was the AQIM's strategy Tuesday, it promises equally deadly actions for the future.
View this article on Time.com

See Part Two

[iris89]

Part Two

[8] Violence Follows Islam Everywhere

When members of Islam are not wanting a teacher shot, <<<"... There were divisions within the government, with hard-liners calling for a retrial and newspaper headlines saying, "Shoot This Woman," Ahmed told BBC." [source - <<<"The Teddy Bear Incident:" By Janet Stobart, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, December 5, 2007]>>>, for letting her students, members of Islam, name a Teddy Bear Muhammad, many of them are at their usual; to wit, committing violence of one type or another to fulfill their lust for violence.

Many members of Islam throughout the ages have been lustful for violence and stealing what belongs to others (greedy). One example of both of these evils perpetrated by members of Islam was the evil wrong committed against the people of Spain starting in the Seventh Century. As one historical account, actually written by a member of Islam stated, <<<" When the Moslems settled in the island, they found no other inhabitants there, than vinedressers. They made them prisoners. After that they took one of the vinedressers, slaughtered him, cut him in pieces, and boiled him, while the rest of his companions looked on.">>>. So as can be seen from this, the so called "Golden Age" was really an age of land stealing and sadistic murder by members of Islam that they have never payed reparation for until today.

Now let's look at the historic account of their land stealing and sadistic murders as told by one of their own:
The Islamic Conquest of Spain
Medieval Sourcebook: Ibn Abd-el-Hakem: The Islamic Conquest of Spain
The Muslim expansion continued throughout the sixth and into the seventh century. In 711 the Berber Tarik invaded and rapidly conquered Visigothic Spain. Famously by 733 the Muslims reached Poitiers in France. There a battle, more significant to westerners than Muslims, halted the Muslim advance. In truth by that stage Islam was at its limits of military expansion. Tarik gave his name to "Jabal (mount of) Tarik" or, as we say, Gibraltar. In 712 Tarik's lord, Musa ibn-Mosseyr, joined the attack. Within seven years the conquest of the peninsula was complete. It became one of the centers of Moslem civilization, and the Umayyad caliphate of Cordova reached a peak of glory in the tenth century. Spain, called "al-Andulus" by Muslims remained was at least partially under Muslim control until 1492 when Granada was conquered by Ferdinand and Isabella.
Musa Ibn Nosseyr sent his son Merwan to Tangiers, to wage a holy war upon her coast. Having, then, exerted himself together with his friends, he returned, leaving to Tarik Ibn Amru the command of his army which amounted to 1,700. Others say that 12,000 Berbers besides 16 Arabs were with Tarik: but that is false. It is also said that Musa Ibn Nosseyr marched out of Ifrikiya [Africa] upon an expedition into Tangiers, and that he was the first governor who entered Tangiers, where parts of the Berber tribes Botr and Beranes resided. These bad not vet submitted themselves. When he approached Tangiers, be scattered his light troops. On the arrival of his cavalry in the nearest province of Sus, he subdued its inhabitants, and made them prisoners, they yielding him obedience. And he gave them a governor whose conduct was agreeable to them. He sent Ibn Beshr Ibn Abi Artah to a citadel, three days' journey from the town of Cairwan. Having taken the former, he made prisoners of the children, and plundered the treasury. The citadel was called Beshr, by which name it is known to this day. Afterwards Musa deposed the viceroy whom be bad placed over Tangiers, and appointed Tarik Ibn Zeiyad governor. He, then, returned to Cairwan, Tarik with his female slave of the name Umm-Hakim setting out for Tangiers. Tarik remained some time in this district, waging a holy war. This was in the year 92. The governor of the straits between this district and Andalus was a foreigner called Ilyan, Lord of Septa. He was also the governor of a town called Alchadra, situated on the same side of the straits of Andalus as Tangiers. Ilyan was a subject of Roderic, the Lord of Andalus [i.e. king of Spain], who used to reside in Toledo. Tarik put himself in communication with Ilyan, and treated him kindly, until they made peace with each other. Ilyan had sent one of his daughters to Roderic, the Lord of Andalus, for her improvement and education; but she became pregnant by him. Ilyan having heard of this, said, I see for him no other punishment or recompense, than that I should bring the Arabs against him. He sent to Tarik, saying, I will bring thee to Andalus; Tarik being at that time in Tlemsen, and Musa Ibn Nossevr in Cairwan. But Tarik said I cannot trust thee until thou send me a hostage. So be sent his two daughters, having no other children. Tarik allowed them to remain in Tlemsen, guarding them closely. After that Tarik went to Ilyan who - was in Septa on the straits. The latter rejoicing at his coming, said, I will bring thee to Andalus. But there was a mountain called the mountain of Tarik between the two landing places, that is, between Septa and Andalus. When the evening came, Ilyan brought him the vessels, in which he made him embark for that landing-place, where he concealed himself during the day, and in the evening sent back the vessels to bring over the rest of his companions. So they embarked for the landing-place, none of them being left behind: whereas the people of Andalus did not observe them, thinking that the vessels crossing and recrossing were similar to the trading vessels which for their benefit plied backwards and forwards. Tarik was in the last division which went across. He proceeded to his companions, Ilyan together with the merchants that were with him being left behind in Alchadra, in order that be might the better encourage his companions and countrymen. The news of Tarik and of those who were with him, as well as of the place where they were, reached the people of Andalus. Tarik, going along with his companions, marched over a bridge of mountains to a town called Cartagena. He went in the direction of Cordova. Having passed by an island in the sea, he left behind his female slave of the name of Umm-Hakim, and with her a division of his troops. That island was then called Umm-Hakim. When the Moslems settled in the island, they found no other inhabitants there, than vinedressers. They made them prisoners. After that they took one of the vinedressers, slaughtered him, cut him in pieces, and boiled him, while the rest of his companions looked on. They had also boiled meat in other cauldrons...." [source - Ibn Abd-el-Hakem, History of the Conqziest of Spain, trans. by John Harris Jones (Gottingen, W. Fr. Kaestner, 1858), pp. 18-22]>>>. Some "Golden Age" of sadism, lust for violence, and plundering of what belonged to others. At least Germany has tried to make amends for their wrongs committed in World War II by paying reparation to families of Jewish victims and others, but Islam has NEVER done the same in Spain or anywhere else.

[9] Let's look, now, at a very recent lust for violence and savagery committed in Algeries by members of Islam:

<<<" Death and destruction revisited the Algerian capital of Algiers Tuesday morning when a pair of powerful car bombs exploded, and claimed what early estimates placed as 62 lives. Though no claims of responsibility have been made, security experts say there's little doubt the attack was the work of al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group that formed an alliance with Osama bin Laden's global jihad in 2006. Officials say Tuesday's spectacular strike increases the risk that AQIM is ramping up its violent struggle to bring down the Algerian government. And as the fourth big hit by AQIM in less than a year, the incident highlights the group's increasing organizational skills and establishes it as the greatest potential terror threat to continental Europe as well.

The first blast occurred Tuesday at around 9:30 a.m. local time, as an explosives-filled car plowed into a packed bus, immediately killing the driver and a dozen or more university students en route to the law school in the Ben-Aknoun section of Algiers. The point of impact was located outside two highly symbolic institutions of the Algerian state: the nation's supreme court, and neighboring constitutional court. Just minutes later, a second suicide car bomb ripped through the nearby Hydra neighborhood, badly damaging the offices of two United Nations organizations: the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), and the U.N. Development Program (UNDP). The final death toll may be as high as 100, well above the 30 killed and over 200 injured during the twin car bombings of government buildings in Algiers last April.

Algerian officials had claimed that a counter-offensive by security forces since April had decimated AQIM ranks. But smaller AQIM bombings and gun attacks on police or military forces have continued unabated, though often unreported. There was also the September 8 suicide bombing of a coast guard unit in eastern Algeria that killed 32 people. The ability and determination of the AQIM to strike in stunning fashion was made even clearer two days earlier, when a suicide bomber charged the cortege of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika during a visit to the city of Batna, killing 22 people and injuring more than 100.
"Any advances made during the counter-offensive by special military forces has been more than offset by the effective recruitment among disenfranchised youths since the insurgents took the al- Qaeda name," says a French intelligence official. The 15-year old terror group took on that name after affiliating with bin Laden on September 11, 2006. Since that time, AQIM has adopted the structured, stylized recruitment and attack methods of the original al-Qaeda. The use of synchronized attacks by suicide bombers in Tuesday strikes, for example, almost certainly shows the influence of bin Laden's strategists. "The desired message is 'With al-Qaeda, this is a deeper, broader force than a radical group battling the Algerian regime out in the sticks," says the French official. "The attacks are bigger, the damage larger, and some of targets and victims foreign. The message is clear: We're now battling enemies wherever we can find them."

Indeed, French security officials say that AQIM's organizational effectiveness makes it the largest risk of non-homegrown terror to continental Europe. The French, who keep a very close eye on suspected terror cells on their own territory, are nervous that the AQIM cells from Algeria may be rolled out against France and other European nations, all relatively easy to reach from just across the Mediterranean. Says one counter-terrorism investigator: "If they can make it in under our radar, we're blind to them - unless they make the mistake of making local contacts. That's our concern."

The threat of that kind of imported strike has grown since the AQIM promised to extend its Algerian jihad to Europe. Bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has repeatedly threatened Europe - and France in particular - as enemies of jihadist forces. Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's friendlier relations with the U.S. and relatively pro-Israel positions have only increased extremists ire. Since his taking office last May, officials say, radical websites have cited Sarkozy's support of Israel - and his own Jewish ancestry - in calling for terror strikes against France.

Given the personalized nature of that renewed fury, however, why didn't the AQIM seek a terror attack on Sarkozy or French interests during his state visit to Algeria last month? "Success," explains the French counter-terrorism official. "Trying to kill a visiting leader or bomb a place he's set to visit while security alerts are full is not going to work. Waiting a week until security has slackened to below even normal levels to attack - your chances of success get much better." If that was the AQIM's strategy Tuesday, it promises equally deadly actions for the future." [source - Article written for Time.com, By BRUCE CRUMLEY 1 hour, 43 minutes ago [12/11/2007]>>>.

[9] There was always, of course, a morsel of truth to the "peace" fib. Both Muslim and dhimmi apologists still trot out the one about how Islam and salaam, of "Salaam alaikem" (Peace be upon you) fame, come from the same tri-consonantal Arabic root, "s-l-m," which is often translated to peace. Translations being what they are, this allows for a lot of flexibility, especially when one has an agenda other than total accuracy. Any honest Arabic speaker, that is, one not speaking "takiyya" to infidels, will tell you that the proper word for political and military peace, as implied, is "sulh."

The problem Islamic scholars have in ascribing a new meaning to "Islam" is that Muhammad did not use this term to refer to his new religion. "Islam" to him simply meant what it always meant to Arabic-speaking tribes. To Muhammad, "Islam" meant a type of submission, but not to God, who was not yet established among the pagan Arabs, but of submission or surrender of one's desire to live, in order to become fearless in battle. According to, among others, Father Gnana Pragash Suresh, an expert on Islam with the Society of St. Pius X, Islam "referred to an attribute of manliness and described someone who was heroic and brave in battle" and who would "fight to the death" against "impossible odds." [4] Ironically, submission to God's laws is actually a concept developed by Christian monastic orders that Muhammad often railed against. It required moral firmness, while Muhammad's morals depended on his circumstances, suitably converging with his most recent vision. Islamic morals only firmed once Muhammad had died, having left an often brutal legacy of conflicting statements and actions and the impossible task of sorting them out. In other words, "Islam," the word known to Muhammad, pre-dates "Islam" the religion, as written and elaborated upon by later Muslim scholars. Muhammad's warrior definition of Islam, a very Bedouin concept, springs from the eye-for-an-eye code of his Arab nomadic culture. It is also very useful for spreading an ideology by force.
Actually, Islam means berserk by Nathan D. Weise
15 Jan, 2007
www.islam-watch.org/Others/NathanIslamBerserk.htm

[10] By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 19 minutes ago
SHERPAO, Pakistan - A suicide attacker detonated a bomb packed with ball bearings and nails amid hundreds of holiday worshippers Friday at the residential compound of Pakistan's former interior minister, killing at least 50 people, authorities said.

It was the second suicide attack in eight months apparently targeting Aftab Khan Sherpao, who escaped injury. One of his sons was wounded.

Suspicion will likely focus on the pro-Taliban or al-Qaida militants active in the northwestern region of the country where the attack occurred. The attack also deepened the sense of uncertainty in Pakistan as it heads into Jan. 8 parliamentary elections. Sherpao is a candidate for parliament.

Hours after the bombing, security officers raided an Islamic school in the nearby village of Turangzai and arrested seven students, some of them Afghans, two police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The officials declined to say whether the raid was connected to the attack.
The bombing, which came during the Islamic holy day of Eid al-Adha, left a scene of carnage at the mosque at the politician's residential compound in Sherpao, a village 25 miles northeast of the city of Peshawar.

Bloodied clothes, hats, shoes and pieces of flesh were strewn about the building. Witnesses said the dead included police officers guarding Sherpao, who was praying in the mosque's front row at the time of the attack but not injured.
"We were saying prayers when this huge explosion occurred," said Shaukat Ali, a 26-year-old survivor of the blast whose white cloak and pants were torn and spattered with blood.

The bomber was praying in a row of worshippers when he detonated the explosive, provincial police chief Sharif Virk said. Hundreds of people were in or around the mosque, about 40 yards from Sherpao's house, witnesses said.
District mayor Farman Ali Khan said between 50 and 55 people were killed, and authorities were collecting information on their identities. Local police chief Feroz Shah said over 100 were wounded.

The hospital in Peshawar was wracked with chaos as the injured arrived in pickup trucks, ambulance sirens wailed and the wounded screamed for help. The bomb contained between 13-17 pounds of explosives and was filled with nails and ball bearings to maximize casualties, said the head of the bomb unit at the scene, who declined to give his name.

A bulldozer was brought in to dig graves for the dead next to the mosque. Other volunteers used shovels.
Iqbal Hussain, a police officer in charge of security at the mosque, said all those who entered had been made to pass through a body scanner and were searched with metal and explosive detectors.

Hamid Nawaz, the current interior minister, maintained there was no security lapse.
"All possible care had been taken, there was no lapse as such ... but such an incident can happen at such a gathering," Nawaz said on Aaj TV.

After the blast, Sherpao's house was protected by about a dozen armed police and paramilitary troops. In a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press, Sherpao said he was unhurt.
"Yes, I'm fine," he said.

Sherpao was interior minister - Pakistan's top civilian security official - in the administration recently dissolved ahead of January parliamentary elections. He is head of the Pakistan Peoples Party-Sherpao, and is running as a candidate for parliament in next month's elections.

President Pervez Musharraf condemned the blast and directed security and intelligence agencies to track down the masterminds, the state Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

In April, Sherpao was slightly wounded when a suicide bomber attacked a rally for his political party in the nearby town of Charsadda, killing at least 28 people.

Islamic militants have repeatedly targeted top figures in the government of Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror. Musharraf himself narrowly escaped assassination in two bombings a few days apart in December 2003 near Islamabad.

Taliban and al-Qaida fighters have extended their influence over tracts of Pakistan's volatile northwest in the past two years and in recent months have launched numerous suicide attacks, usually targeting security forces and their families.
The army says the most recent attacks could be retaliation for a military operation against militants in the Swat valley, where it claims to have killed about 300 militants since last month.

The wave of violence comes as Pakistan struggles to emerge from months of political turmoil.
Musharraf recently declared emergency rule for six weeks - a step he contended was necessary to combat rising Islamic extremism, although it was widely seen as a move to prolong his presidency.

On Friday, police rearrested a prominent opposition lawyer, a day after releasing him, despite promises he would be allowed to remain free for the three-day Eid holiday. Aitzaz Ahsan was picked up before dawn as he traveled on the road from the eastern city of Lahore to the capital, Islamabad, and put back under house arrest in Lahore, his son, Ali Aitzaz, said.

Aitzaz Ahsan has been at the forefront of a lawyers' protest movement against Musharraf's rule. The lawyers are demanding the reinstatement of the Supreme Court's top judge, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, and other independent-minded justices.

[11] By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 21, 2007
BAGHDAD -- A suicide bomber edged his way into a crowd of Iraqi officials and U.S. forces gathered for a meeting north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing as many as 12 people, including an American soldier.

It was one of three attacks nationwide that shattered what had been the peaceful start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which began Wednesday for Sunni Muslims. Shiites begin celebrating the four-day holiday today. The violence included a bombing in central Baghdad that targeted a row of liquor stores and, police said, killed three Iraqis.

/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraqmap,0,4755754.flash?coll=la-tot-world/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraqmap,0,475575 4.flash?coll=la-tot-world
Interactive Feature
Graphic: A look into Iraq
(Flash)
Related Stories

-
Iraq's Sunnis celebrate holiday with a renewed vigor
-
U.S. releases Iranian detained in Kurdish city in 2004
-
Pentagon reports security gains in Iraq
-
U.S. practicing balancing act on Kurdish question
-
Truck bomb kills one at Mosul dam
-
Britain returns control of Basra to Iraq


The violence underscored what a U.S. official called the "great security threats" still looming in Iraq, threats further illustrated by two recent discoveries.

In Diyala province, north of Baghdad, Iraqi civilians tipped off U.S. forces to a gruesome torture chamber, with chains on the walls and ceilings and a bed on which chained victims apparently were subjected to electrical shocks.

And south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said it found an elaborate system of tunnels dug by insurgents along the Euphrates River. The militants apparently used the tunnels as hiding places and as positions from which to fire on U.S. forces. Soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which found the tunnel system, used two bombs to destroy it.

The discoveries occurred in areas still plagued by Sunni Arab insurgent activity blamed on the group Al Qaeda in Iraq. Troops came across the tunnel network Sunday during a search that also uncovered a cache of bomb-making equipment in Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad. The torture center was discovered in Muqdadiya, 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, after a tip from local Iraqis. The remains of 26 people also were discovered at the compound, which was uncovered during a series of operations this month.

A military statement said 24 insurgents were killed during the three-day mission.

"There are still great threats out there," said a U.S. Embassy official who asked not to be identified. "Each attack illustrates that."

The bloodiest attack Thursday occurred in Kanan, about 12 miles east of the Diyala provincial capital of Baqubah. The U.S. military said a bomber wearing an explosives vest approached a building where a local council meeting was about to take place. Several U.S. soldiers were standing outside the building, according to a military statement.

The statement said one American soldier and at least five Iraqi civilians were killed, and that 10 U.S. troops and an Iraqi military translator were injured. An unidentified Diyala police official put the death toll at 12. He said initial reports indicated that the dead included a "prominent leader" of the so-called Awakening Council of local sheiks who have joined forces with U.S. and Iraqi troops against insurgents.

It is not unusual for U.S. and Iraqi officials to have different casualty numbers, and there was no way to determine which was correct.

Also in Diyala, police said gunmen opened fire on a patrol of Iraqi police and volunteer security guards working alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces. The police official said one policeman and two security volunteers were killed.

Such security guards, who are often referred to as concerned local citizens, number in the tens of thousands and are paid about $10 a day by U.S. forces. They frequently are targeted by insurgents.

In Baghdad, police said three people died when a car bomb exploded on a busy shopping street outside a row of liquor stores.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, liquor stores came under attack from religious extremists, and most closed. In recent months, a decline in violence has prompted some liquor stores to reopen.

"The explosion was very huge," said Chassib Hamad, a parking lot attendant who was injured in the blast. He said one liquor store owner, whom he called Abu Toma, had told him he planned to keep his shop open during Eid because he expected a big increase in business, and because he had been feeling safer lately.

Hamad said Abu Toma's shop was damaged and that the shopkeeper was among those hurt. Police said nine people suffered injuries.

In the western province of Anbar, the stabbing death of an Iraqi policeman during a fight with a U.S. Marine threatened relations between U.S. forces and Sunnis in the former insurgent stronghold. A police officer in Ramadi, the provincial capital, said about 400 people protested the killing with a brief street demonstration Thursday. They called for the Marine to be put on trial for the Iraqi's death.

The incident took place Monday, and the U.S. military has said it is under investigation.

Marines stationed in Ramadi have developed close relations with Sunni tribal leaders in the city, which until a year ago was a haven for insurgents. The tribal chiefs' decision last year to reject insurgents and work with U.S. forces is credited with helping curb violence elsewhere in Iraq.

[e-mail]

[11] By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer 40 minutes ago [12/29/2007]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - An Islamic militant group said Saturday it had no link to Benazir Bhutto's killing, denying government claims that its leader orchestrated the assassination.

Bhutto's aides also said they doubted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack on the opposition leader and accused the government of a cover-up.
Meanwhile, attackers opened fire at a motorcade of Bhutto's supporters as they headed back to Karachi after her funeral, killing one man and wounding two others, said Waqar Mehdi, a spokesman for Bhutto's party. More than two dozen people have been killed nationwide since Thursday's assassination, officials said.

In Rawalpindi, thousands of Bhutto supporters spilled onto the streets after a prayer ceremony for her, throwing stones and clashing with police who fired tear gas to try and subdue the crowd.
President Pervez Musharraf told his top security officials that those looting and plundering "must be dealt with firmly and all measures be taken to ensure (the) safety and security of the people," the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

Also Saturday, Pakistan's election commission called an emergency meeting for Monday to discuss the violence's impact on Jan. 8 parliamentary elections.
Nine election offices in Bhutto's home province of Sindh in the south were burned to the ground, along with voter rolls and ballot boxes, the commission said in a statement. The violence also hampered the printing of ballot papers, training of poll workers and other pre-election logistics, the statement said.
The U.S. government, which sees nuclear-armed Pakistan as a crucial ally in the war on terror, has pushed Musharraf to keep the election on track to promote stability, moderation and democracy in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.
Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro said Friday the government had no immediate plans to postpone the election, despite the violence and the decision by Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader, to boycott the poll.

Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party also called a meeting Sunday to decide whether to participate in the vote. Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that their son would read a message left by Bhutto and addressed to the party in event of her death.

On Saturday, roads across Bhutto's southern Sindh province were littered with burning vehicles, smoking reminders of the continuing chaos since her assassination Thursday. Factories, stores and restaurants were set ablaze in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, where 17 people have been killed and dozens injured, officials said.

Army, police and paramilitary troops patrolled the nearly deserted streets of Bhutto's home city of Larkana, where rioting left shops at a jewelry market smoldering.

Musharraf called Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, promising to make every effort to bring the attackers to justice, state-run Pakistan Television reported.

The government blamed Bhutto's killing on al-Qaida and Taliban militants operating with increasing impunity in the lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. It released a transcript Friday of a purported conversation between Mehsud and another militant, apparently discussing the assassination.
"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema described Mehsud as an al-Qaida leader who was also behind the Karachi bomb blast in October against Bhutto that killed more than 140 people.

But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, denied the militant was involved in the attack and dismissed the allegations as "government propaganda."
"We strongly deny it. Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto," he said in a telephone call he made to The Associated Press from the tribal region of South Waziristan.

"The fact is that we are only against America, and we don't consider political leaders of Pakistan our enemy," he said, adding that he was speaking on instructions from Mehsud.

Mehsud heads Tehrik-i-Taliban, a newly formed coalition of Islamic militants committed to waging holy war against the government, which is a key U.S. ally in its war on terror.

Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party accused the government of trying to frame Mehsud, saying the militant - through emissaries - had previously told Bhutto he was not involved in the Karachi bombing.

"The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party.

After the Karachi attack, Bhutto accused elements in the ruling pro-Musharraf party of plotting to kill her. The government denied the claims. Babar said Bhutto's allegations were never investigated.

Bhutto was killed Thursday evening when a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she left a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad. The attack killed about 20 others as well. Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon who treated her said the impact from shrapnel on her skull killed her.

But Cheema said she was killed when she tried to duck back into the armored vehicle during the attack, and the shock waves from the blast smashed her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull, he said.
The government said it was forming two inquiries into Bhutto's death, one to be carried out by a high court judge and another by security forces.

[12] Wrongs of Islam by Amil Amani

A great irony of the age is that the seemingly most diehard proponents of freedom- the useful idiots of our time-are the most dangerous unwitting accomplices of liberty's enemy-Islam. Keep in mind that the very name "Islam" is a derivation of "taslim," the Arabic word for "surrender," surrender to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by Muhammad and recorded in the Quran.

This non-negotiable surrender to Islam requires the individual as well as the society to disenfranchise themselves of many of the fundamental and deeply cherished human rights. Below is a brief presentation of what this surrender to Islam entails and why it is imperative that all freedom-loving people arise and defeat the menace of Islamofascism.
Amendment I of the Bill of Rights enshrines some of the most cherished ideals of freedom-loving people:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Islam considers itself the three branches of government. It enacts laws as it sees fit, adjudicates laws, and executes as it deems. Islam is anathema to the provisions of the First Amendment and much more.

* Islam proclaims itself as the only legitimate religion for the entire world, grudgingly granting minor recognition to Judaism and Christianity from whom it has liberally plagiarized many of its dogma. Jews and Christians are allowed to live under the rule of Islam as dhimmis and must pay a special religious tax of jazyyeh. Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Baha'is, members of other religions, agnostics, or atheists are not even allowed to live practicing their belief or disbelief.

* Islam actively suppresses and even prohibits the practice of other religions, including those of the "people of the book," Jews and Christians. There is not a single church or synagogue in the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia, while thousands of mosques dot the tolerating and welcoming non-Moslem lands. Islamic countries that allow for Jewish and Christian places of worship subject these "people of the book" to numberless subtle and not-so-subtle forms of persecution. Moslems in non-Moslem lands proselytize relentlessly and convert others while any Moslem who leaves Islam is judged as apostate and automatically condemned to death.

* Freedom of speech is just about non-existent in Islam. The word is Allah's, his chosen divines such as Ayatollahs and Imams are the only ones who are to make pronouncements squarely-based on Allah's word, the Quran. Any expression in the least at deviance from the Quran, the Hadith and the edicts of Islamic high divines is heresy and severely punishable. Hence, stifling of free expression is the major mechanism by which the Islamic clergy retain power and prevent constructive change in Islamic societies.

* Freedom of the press is completely alien to Islam, since a free press tends to express matters as it sees it, rather than as it is stated in the Quran. To Islam, the Quran is the press and the only press. There is no need for critical reporting, no need to present ideas that may conflict with the Quran, and no place for criticism of anything Islamic. The stranglehold of Islam on the individual and society is complete.

* Peaceful assembly of the people is not allowed. The backward oppressive Islamic societies inflict great hardship on the citizenry and any assembly of the victims presents a threat to the suffocating rule. Islamic governments routinely prevent peaceful assemblies from taking place. Failing to do so, they unleash their hired thugs, the police and even the military against any assemblage no matter how peaceful and how legitimate is its grievance. The Islamic Republic of Iran which is vying with Saudi Arabia as the leader of true Islamic rule, routinely attacks any and all gatherings of its people, arrests them, imprisons them without due process, tortures them, and even executes them in secret dungeons. Journalists, academics, unionists, students, teachers, women rights groups who dare to petition the government for redress are labeled subversive and are severely punished.

* Maltreatment of religious minorities and the non-religious is criminal indeed. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, for instance, the government has launched a systematic program of genocide against its largest religious minority-the Baha'is. The government is gathering a comprehensive list of Baha'is, their occupations, locations, properties and the like-action reminiscent of the Nazis. The government is banning Baha'i students from post high-school education unless they recant their religion, deprives them of engaging in numerous forms of occupations and trades, denies them from holding worship gatherings, razes their holy places and much more. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not satisfied with its cruel treatment of the living Baha'is and has launched a war on their dead by bulldozing Baha'i cemeteries in several cities. Thus is the rule of fundamental Islamism that is awaiting the complacent and snoozing world.

* Oppression of women in general is tragic indeed. Men are allowed to have as many as four wives simultaneously and as many concubines as they wish or can afford. Men can easily divorce their wives and automatically have the custody of the children, if they so decide. Women have subservient status to men in all areas of the law. Equality under the law has no meaning in Islam. Just one example of the dreadful way of treating women in Islam is a case of a Saudi woman who was gang-raped. The Islamic court convicted the woman to prison term and lashes for having committed the "sin" of riding in a car with a male who was not her relative. This is a standard form of Islamic Shariah justice-a savage heritage of barbarism that ruled the Arabian Peninsula some centuries ago.

* Islam has a solution for every "problem." It deals with homosexuals, for instance, by hanging them en mass and gloating about it, even though homosexuality is just as prevalent in Islamic lands as anywhere else. Recently an Ayatollah made a ruling on homosexuals. He said that they should be hanged and tortured before they are hanged. In Islam the rulings of high-ranking clergy constitute the law and are binding.

* Not only Islam does not allow freedom of assembly and the press, it is intrusively restrictive in every aspects of a person's life. The way women should dress, the haircut of men, the music people are allowed, movies to watch, television programs to view, and even parties in the privacy of their home are subject to the ridiculous monitoring of moral police. Islam is hell-bent on outward morality and puritanical conduct while it is rotten to the core just below the pretentious surface.

* Islam segregates by gender many public places and events such as beaches, sporting venues, public transportations, and even building elevators. Families are often prevented from attending a sporting event together or swimming together at a beach.

* Egypt, the crown of the Arab-Islam world, demands that citizens declare Islam or only one of the two other religions, Jewish and Christianity, as their religion in order to receive the government-issued identity cards. ID cards are required for jobs, healthcare, education, a marriage license and a host of other things. If you are an agnostic, an atheist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Baha'i, you are forced to perjure yourself to receive the indispensable ID card. In a real sense, Islam the pretender of high moral ground compels people to lie in order to receive what is their birthright as citizens.

I have been sounding the alarm about Islam's imminent deadly threat for a number of years. The Islamic treasury flush with oil extortion money together with the help of useful idiots is having the upper hand in this battle of survival for freedom. The slaveholder Islam has been transformed into a more virulent form of Islamofascism; it is an inveterate unrelenting enemy of freedom. We need to act now and stem the tide of this deadly threat. Tomorrow may be too late. Freedom is too precious to abandon through complacency, acts of political correctness, or outright cowardice." [source - Amil Amani Tuesday, 20 November 2007, at www.amilimani.com on 01/02/2008]

[13] Just another case of members of Islam just trying to provoke violence:

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago [01/07/2007]

WASHINGTON - In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels.

U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats - believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy - turned and moved away, a Pentagon official said. "It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we've seen yet," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman called it a "serious incident. This is something that deserves an explanation."
Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the weekend incident was "something normal" and was resolved.

National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the United States urges the Iranians "to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future."

The incident occurred at about 5 a.m. local time Sunday as Navy cruiser USS Port Royal, destroyer USS Hopper and frigate USS Ingraham were on their way into the Persian Gulf and passing through the strait - a major oil shipping route.
Five small boats began charging the U.S. ships, dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships and forcing the U.S. ships to take evasive maneuvers, the Pentagon official said.

There were no injuries but the official said there could have been, because the Iranian boats turned away "literally at the very moment that U.S. forces were preparing to open fire" in self defense.

The official said he didn't have the precise transcript of communications that passed between the two forces, but said the Iranians radioed something like "we're coming at you and you'll explode in a couple minutes."
At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said he was not aware of any plans to lodge a formal protest.

"Without specific reference to this incident in the Strait of Hormuz, the United States will confront Iranian behavior where it seeks to do harm either to us or to our friends and allies in the region," McCormack told reporters. "There is wide support for that within the region and certainly that's not going to change."

Whitman said the Pentagon will work with State and National Security Council officials to determine "the appropriate way to address this with the Iranian government."

The U.S. vessels were in international waters, making a normal transit into the Gulf, Whitman said, adding that the Iranian boats were operating at "distances and speeds that showed reckless and dangerous intent - reckless, dangerous and potentially hostile intent."

He said the episode lasted 15 to 20 minutes but wouldn't say whether officials know for certain whether the were vessels were Iranian Revolutionary Guard or regular Iranian navy. The Revolutionary Guard forces have been known to be more aggressive than the regular navy.

"At least some were visibly armed. Small Iranian fastboats made some aggressive maneuvers against our vessels and indicated some hostile intent," Whitman.
Historical tensions between the two nations have increased in recent years over Washington's charge that Tehran has been developing nuclear weapons and supplying and training Iraqi insurgents using roadside bombs - the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.

In another incident off its coast, Iranian Revolutionary Guard sailors last March captured 15 British sailors and held them for nearly two weeks.
The 15 sailors from HMS Cornwall, including one woman, were captured on March 23. Iran claims the crew, operating in a small patrol craft, had intruded into Iranian waters - a claim Britain denied.

The weekend incident came as President Bush prepared for his first major trip to the Middle East. While scheduled to meet the leaders of Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other regional nations Jan. 9-16, Bush is expected to try to bolster the troubled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians but is also likely to seek backing for U.S. concerns about Iran.

At about this time last year, Bush announced he was sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region in a show of force against Iran. The U.S. Navy quietly scaled back to one carrier group several months later. But while the two were there, they staged two major exercises off Iran's coast.

The war games amounted to U.S. muscle-flexing at a time when Tehran increasingly was at loggerheads with the international community over its disputed nuclear program and threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz for oil transports in case of a U.S. military strike on Iran.

Since then, there have been diplomatic overtures aimed at calming tensions.
The United States maintains nearly 40,000 troops in Gulf countries other than Iraq, with the largest group in Kuwait and others in Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
___
Associated Press reporters Matthew Lee, Robert Burns and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

[14] By KRISHAN FRANCIS, Associated Press Writer 59 minutes ago [01/08/2008]
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - The president of the Maldives was saved from assassination Tuesday when a boy scout grabbed the knife of an attacker who had jumped out of a crowd greeting the leader, an official said.

President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was not hurt, but his shirt was ripped when the attacker tried to stab him before the boy and security guards intervened during the event on the small island of Horafushi, said government spokesman Mohammad Shareef.

"This fellow in the crowd with a knife in his hand attempted to stab the president in his stomach," Shareef said by telephone from Male, the capital. "But a 15-year-old boy came in the way, and grabbed the knife. One brave boy saved the president's life."

The scout was identified as Mohamed Jaisham Ibrahim, who had lined up to welcome Gayoom, according to the president's Web site.
The boy was injured in the hand by the knife. "His wound was stitched but later he complained that he could not move some of his fingers, so he was flown by a sea plane to Male," Shareef said.

"There was blood on the president's shirt, but it was not his but the boy's. Still we got a physician to examine him," Shareef said.
A photograph of the boy on the Web site of the Haveeru daily showed him wearing a blue scouting uniform with a blue kerchief around his neck waiting in line to greet the president.

Boy scouts in the Maldives are similar to their U.S. counterparts, receiving training in first aid and participating in activities such as camping. Like in the U.S., their motto is "Be prepared."

The attacker had wrapped the knife in a Maldives national flag as he stood among a crowd waiting for Gayoom, 70.

A police Web site identified the attacker as Mohamed Murshid, 20. No motive was given, and other details were not disclosed.

Shareef, speaking by telephone from Male, said the assassination attempt may have had a "political motive," but it was too early to say if Islamic militants were involved. Opposition to Gayoom's three-decade rule has grown in recent years and there have also been concerns about increased Islamic militancy in the Muslim nation.

After the attack, Gayoom addressed the nation by radio, thanking the teenager and calling for calm, according to the Web site of the Minivan newspaper.
"We should not resort to violence even if we have differences between the parties," Gayoom was quoted as saying.

Gayoom has ruled this Indian Ocean atoll of 1,190 coral islands since 1978 and helped turn it into a major destination for tourists seeking a quiet vacation on virgin beaches surrounded by crystal blue waters.
However, the country of 350,000 people has also had its share of turmoil in recent months.

On Sept. 29, a homemade bomb blamed on Islamic militants exploded in a Male park, wounding 12 tourists. A week later, police and soldiers raided an island that was a reputed insurgent stronghold, sparking a battle with masked men armed with clubs and fishing spears that wounded more than 30 security officers.
Some high school graduates in the Maldives have studied religion at extremist institutions in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and spread their radical beliefs across the islands, according to Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based terrorism expert.

While many of the fundamentalists were not violent, a Maldivian was caught trying to join the Taliban in Afghanistan, another was arrested in India seeking to buy sniper rifles, and a third was jailed by U.S. authorities in Guantanamo Bay.

Gayoom has also faced opposition protests to his previously unchallenged rule in recent years. Under the pressure, he legalized opposition parties and agreed to hold the nation's first truly democratic election later this year.
Meanwhile, New Maldives Movement, a new opposition coalition formed to challenge Gayoom's three decades of rule in upcoming elections, condemned the attempted assassination.

"The NMM calls for an independent and speedy investigation into the attack and stresses the importance of making the results of the investigation public," the group said.

[15] Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces surge into the province, where masked Islamists rule by force and intimidation.
By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 9, 2008

SINSIL, IRAQ -- Under cover of darkness Tuesday, American soldiers crept across a bridge where just days before insurgents had left a chilling warning: a severed head with a message identifying the Iraqi victim as a U.S. collaborator scrawled across the forehead with a black marker.

Through the biting cold, the troops crunched down a winding gravel road, past frost-glazed reeds, empty storefronts and spacious homes surrounded by orange and pomegranate trees. Inside, anxious families told them about the masked gunmen who have ruled their lives, less than a mile away from where the U.S. military has maintained a small outpost in recent months.

About 4,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces, backed by warplanes and attack helicopters, swept into the northern Diyala River valley overnight in the opening salvo of the latest effort to flush the Sunni Arab militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates out of their havens across the nation, the U.S. military said.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have touted major successes in the last year, aided by the deployment of 28,500 additional U.S. troops and the decision of tens of thousands of Sunni tribesmen to fight the insurgents they once supported. Violence against civilians and military targets nationwide has dropped 60% since June, according to U.S. figures. But a spate of deadly suicide bombings, including one Monday that killed at least 14 people in Baghdad, has raised fears that bloodshed is on the rise again.

U.S. commanders have repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda in Iraq, a mostly local group that the military says is foreign-led, remains a dangerous foe.

"What we want to do . . . is put a stake in it and be done," said Brig. Gen. James Boozer, the deputy commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

But before the offensive began late Monday, he received reports that 50 to 60 senior insurgent leaders holed up northwest of Muqdadiya had fled, confirming a long-standing pattern: When U.S. and Iraqi forces attack, the insurgents drop their weapons and blend into the civilian population.

Boozer said the targets may have been tipped off by heightened activity that preceded the operation, but added that the military had positioned forces to help determine where the insurgents had gone. Iraqi officials also have been hinting for weeks that a push was imminent.

"Working closely with the Iraqi security forces, we will continue to pursue Al Qaeda and other extremists wherever they attempt to take sanctuary," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, in a statement announcing the nationwide effort. "We are determined not to allow these brutal elements to have respite anywhere in Iraq."

U.S. commanders estimated that about 200 lower-level militants remained in the encircled area, known as the breadbasket of Iraq, a place of isolated hamlets, citrus orchards and date palm groves that has rarely been penetrated by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Bomb blasts hit at least three U.S. vehicles, injuring three soldiers in one of them. U.S. soldiers had to leverage a prefabricated bridge over a large gash in the road to get their vehicles across. There were also brief exchanges of gunfire.

U.S. forces fired Hellfire missiles at a group of insurgents believed to have triggered one of the bombs, killing one and injuring three. Iraqi commandos detained three other suspects, and four weapons caches were found. But U.S. soldiers said it was a quieter start than they had expected.

Although violence in northern Iraq had declined by about 40% since June, the region accounts for more than 40% of the attacks nationwide. Of the 4,749 incidents reported in December, 2,014 took place in the north compared with 1,146 in Baghdad and 808 in Anbar province, according to military figures.

The insurgents appear to be concentrated in Diyala and around the northern city of Mosul. Others have flowed into Salahuddin and Tamim provinces, the military says.

Diyala, an agriculturally rich province stretching north and east from Baghdad to the Iranian border, is home to an explosive mix of 25 major tribes, including Sunni and Shiite Arabs as well as Kurds. Thousands of former officers of Saddam Hussein's army live here.

Al Qaeda in Iraq declared the provincial capital, Baqubah, the center of its self-styled Islamic caliphate. Its leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was killed in a U.S. airstrike outside the city in June 2006.

With the additional troops, U.S. forces last year were able to regain control of Baqubah, neighborhood by neighborhood. But U.S. commanders acknowledge that scores of fighters escaped the dragnet and regrouped 20 miles away in Muqdadiya and the Diyala River valley. From these sanctuaries, they continued to unleash attacks in the provincial capital, most aimed at Iraqi security forces and the former insurgents fighting alongside them.

When a company from the U.S. Army's 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, rolled into Muqdadiya in September to reinforce a U.S. Cavalry battalion, it found the roads were laced with bombs and houses were rigged to explode. Four soldiers in the Stryker company were killed by blasts in the first 48 hours in the city, three of them from suicide attacks.

"There is no doubt they [the insurgents] controlled it before we came in," said the company's former commander, Capt. Eric McMillan. "It was a hard fight."

As the rest of the battalion arrived, U.S. forces pushed through the city, sending the insurgents across a canal into the Diyala River valley. For months, at least two platoon-sized groups of skilled fighters sparred with the U.S. troops.

Security has gradually returned to Muqdadiya, which reflects the province's ethnic and religious diversity. Stores and schools have opened, and crowds fill the main market. Shiite parts of the city are plastered with banners and brightly colored flags marking an upcoming religious festival.

Crucial to the turnaround was the recruitment of more than 1,000 Sunni and Shiite volunteers, many of them former militants, who now run checkpoints and military safe houses across the city.

It is these volunteers, dubbed "concerned local citizens," who are now the focus of the insurgents' most deadly attacks. The grieving mother of two slain insurgents killed at least 16 people in Muqdadiya when she blew herself up at one of the safe houses Dec. 7. U.S. forces have also recovered at least five severed heads in the last week, most bearing messages on the foreheads.

U.S. forces hope to recruit more allies as they push through the northern Diyala River valley, searching for fighters, weapons, training facilities and other institutions of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq. They also plan to establish two new outposts to provide a continued U.S. and Iraqi military presence in the region, quickly followed by development aid.

In Sinsil village, residents wrapped in blankets against the cold weather told soldiers Tuesday that they had lived for more than a year under the authority of a Sharia court that enforces a harsh form of strict Islamic law, handing out death sentences for even minor infractions. Smoking and drinking are banned, and women have been required to wear an all-enveloping black robe that leaves only a slit for their eyes.

Masked gunmen kidnapped at least 60 people from the village, one family said. Many never returned. The family welcomed the arrival of the Americans, but worried about what would happen when they left.

"Maybe the masked men will come; we don't know," Rasheed Khalaf Khadreesh said.

His fears were underscored by shots fired at soldiers as they prepared to leave his house. U.S. snipers on the roof responded with a loud volley of gunfire.

Elsewhere in Iraq on Tuesday, a suicide bomber dressed as a woman infiltrated a national police checkpoint in Madaen, southeast of Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding three, government officials said. Police said that two officers had died and nine were injured.

In the Yarmouk neighborhood in the western part of the capital, gunmen planted a bomb in the car of a city council member, killing him and injuring two people.

And in southeast Baghdad, insurgents gunned down an Interior Ministry officer.

The U.S. military reported the killing of three suspected insurgents and the arrests of 28 others in operations in central and northern Iraq.

[e-mail]

Times staff writer Kimi Yoshino in Baghdad contributed to this report.

See Part Three

[iris89]

Part Three

[16] By Louis Charbonneau Fri Jan 11, 7:00 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Friday strongly condemned an attack by Sudanese army troops on a peacekeeping convoy and threatened action against anyone hindering the deployment of international peacekeepers.

"The Security Council expresses its readiness to take action against any party that impedes the peace process, humanitarian aid or the deployment of UNAMID," a council statement said, referring to the joint mission of the United Nations and the African Union in Darfur.

The council said it "condemns in the strongest possible terms" Monday's attack, blaming it on what it called "elements of the Sudanese armed forces," as reported by UNAMID earlier this week.

Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, told reporters that since the statement used the wording "elements" of the army, Khartoum did not view it as a condemnation of the Sudanese government.
"Elements can mean anything," he said.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters there was a "range of things" the council could do if there were any more such attacks on UNAMID, including the imposition of sanctions.

Abdalhaleem dismissed the threat of possible action by the council. He said the 15-nation body had issued many warnings in the past but had never followed through.

"Unfortunately the council has yet to take any action against this because it has failed to take action on the rebels who massacred the (former African Union) forces," he said, referring to an attack in the town of Haskanita in September.
Sudan admitted on Thursday its troops had opened fire on the peacekeeping convoy, despite an earlier denial by Abdalhaleem, who blamed it on the Chadian-backed Justice and Equality movement, a rebel group in Darfur. A spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces said the attack was a "shared mistake."
Abdalhaleem insisted on Friday that "the government did not attack UNAMID."
The Sudanese army spokesman said UNAMID had failed to ask for permission to pass through the area, Sudan's state news agency reported. The United Nations has said it did tell the Sudanese army about the convoy's route in advance.
The United States and Britain have accused Sudan of dragging its feet in approving the full deployment of U.N.-AU forces, due to number 26,000 compared with the present 9,000.

But human rights groups have accused U.N. member states of failing to provide helicopters and other equipment necessary for the peacekeepers to effectively carry out their mission.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in Darfur in 2003, accusing the central government of neglecting the remote region. Khartoum says the West is exaggerating the conflict.

[17] by Katherine Haddon 1 hour, 16 minutes ago [01/14/2008]
OXFORD, England (AFP) - Security was discreetly stepped up as the new term started Monday at Oxford University, where Benazir Bhutto's son has vowed to complete his student life despite being named her political heir.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari returned to his first-year history studies at Oxford college Christ Church after being named his mother's long-term successor as Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader after her assassination in December.
Scotland Yard police have been drafted in to protect the 19-year-old in a top secret operation which one security industry source said would cost "thousands and thousands" of pounds a month.

Despite this, visitors were still being admitted to Christ Church Monday with no security checks and allowed to roam relatively freely around the college, which was founded in the 16th century.

As usual, bowler-hatted porters manned its gates rather than police, although there seemed to be more officers than normal patrolling the street outside and students have been instructed not to speak to the media.

While the college has reassured students they have no reason to suspect a "direct threat" to Bilawal, some in Oxford have already expressed concerns that his presence could threaten the safety of others.

"Go home, you endanger us all here in Oxford by being here," one person wrote on the website of the local Oxford Mail newspaper, while another was also hostile to the idea that British taxpayers would pay for his security.
"Idiots from HIS country want to kill HIM but I bet the British taxpayer is footing the bill for HIS security," another added.

"Go home now and take the dangers you pose to others with you."
Scotland Yard, which is overseeing the security operation, would not discuss arrangements to protect Bilawal, while Oxford University and Christ Church also declined to comment in detail.

But Mike Faux, of private security firm Executive Group Holdings, who has worked with footballer David Beckham, the British royal family and singer Michael Jackson, told AFP it would cost "thousands and thousands" of pounds a month to guard him.
He said he thought Bilawal would likely have armed guards 24 hours a day who would use tactics such as decoys and convoy vehicles to protect him.
Faux said Bilawal was now a higher security risk than anyone in Britain, including future king Prince William, and questioned the wisdom of his returning to university so soon after his mother's killing.

The officers protecting him would currently be on "code red", he added.
"You've got a man here whose mother has been killed, he's now a very high threat himself and he's going about his life as a normal individual," he said.
"What happens is the client wants to live a normal life, particularly at that age with parties... his advisors should be telling him no, he can't do that.
"He wants to live a normal life but unfortunately he can't... she (Benazir) did -- she said I'm going to carry on as I have -- but it cost her her life."
Christ Church seems keen to help Bilawal realise his stated aim of being just like any other student at Oxford, where his mother also studied.

In an email sent to students just before the start of term, an official wrote: "We have at present no reason to suppose that there is any direct threat to Bilawal, but we do have a responsibility to try to ensure that he is able to lead a normal life as an undergraduate and benefit to the full from his time at Christ Church," the Oxford Student newspaper reported.

But this may prove even more difficult than anticipated by authorities at the college, which was also attended by Bilawal's grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, like his mother a former Pakistani prime minister.
While Oxford is used to high-profile students -- others in recent years include Chelsea, daughter of then United States president Bill Clinton, and former British premier Tony Blair's son Nicky -- none came with such a bloody political pedigree as Bilawal.

[18] By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago [01/15/2008 ]
BEIRUT, Lebanon - An explosion targeted a U.S. Embassy vehicle Tuesday in northern Beirut, killing four Lebanese and injuring a local embassy employee, American and Lebanese officials said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said two embassy employees - including the driver - were in the vehicle damaged in the blast, which could be heard across the Lebanese capital and sent gray smoke billowing near the Mediterranean coast.

The driver was slightly wounded and the other staffer is fine, McCormack told reporters. He said no American diplomats or American citizens were in the car.
"My understanding is there were four Beirut residents who do not work for the embassy who were killed in the blast," he said. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families.

A senior U.S. official, who was not authorized to release the information and spoke condition of anonymity, said no Americans injured or killed.
A Lebanese security official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military rules, told The Associated Press the explosion targeted the U.S. vehicle and was in the predominantly Christian Dora-Karantina neighborhood.
McCormack could not offer specifics about the blast or whether the vehicle had been targeted, but said it had been hit directly "by the explosion itself."
He said agents from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security would be working with Lebanese authorities to investigate the blast and that the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was reviewing its security.

"We are going to take a look at what implications, if any, there are for our security posture in Beirut," McCormack said.

Television footage showed several damaged cars, including an SUV with tinted windows. Plainclothes security agents were seen removing an automatic rifle from the SUV.
In the past three years, a series of explosions in Lebanon have targeted mainly anti-Syrian politicians and journalists.

The last car bombing on Dec. 12 in Beirut's suburb of Baabda killed Lebanese army Maj. Gen. Francois Hajj and two other people.

[18] 14 minutes ago [01/17/2008]
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suspected suicide attacker detonated a bomb at a Shiite mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar late Thursday, killing at least three people and injuring 20, police said.

The blast comes as minority Shiite Muslims prepare to mark the Ashoura festival, which in previous years has been marred by sectarian violence involving rival Sunnis.

Dawn TV cited witnesses saying six people were killed. It reported the Imambargah Qasim Baig mosque was crowded with worshippers at the time of the attack. Footage showed men loading a wounded man into an ambulance on a narrow street.

A crowd of enraged Shiites, crying and beating their chests, prevented an Associated Press reporter from reaching the scene of the attack.
Police official Abdullah Khan said the bomb went off as police stopped to search a man before entering the mosque.
"It was apparently a suicide attack," Khan said.
A senior Interior Ministry official confirmed it was reported to be a suicide attack.

A police officer in Peshawar said three people had been injured and 20 wounded.
The police officer and the Interior Ministry official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Fears of sectarian violence have added to tensions in Pakistan. Suspected Islamic militants have launched a wave of suicide blasts against security forces and politicians in recent months as the nation gears up for crucial parliamentary elections Feb. 18.

Thursday's bombing happened in the same quarter of Peshawar where a suicide attack last year during Ashoura killed 11 people.
Ashoura, which falls this weekend, is the culmination of Shiite rites during the holy month of Muharram when they mourn the seventh century death of the prophet Mohammad's grandson, Imam Hussein - an event that led to the split in Islam between the Shiite and Sunni sects.

Shiites stage processions and beat their bare backs with chains and blades, bloodying themselves in a sign of penitence.
While most Shiites and Sunnis live peacefully together in this overwhelmingly Islamic nation of 160 million people, extremist groups from both sides are blamed for attacks. Sunnis outnumber Shiites at a ratio of about four to one in Pakistan.

Such violence breaks out during Muhurram each year. In 2005, about 50 people were killed when a bomb ripped through a Shiite shrine in southwestern Pakistan.

[19] By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 7 minutes ago [01/18/2008]
NEW YORK - He pleaded guilty more than five years ago to plotting bomb attacks on American embassies, but the case against al-Qaida member Mohammed Mansour Jabarah has been shrouded in secrecy until now.

Jabarah was to emerge from the shadows Friday to be sentenced, likely to life in prison, for his brief career in terror. It included training with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and unsuccessfully planning to bomb embassies in the Philippines and Singapore, prosecutors said in court papers.
The Canadian citizen's appearance in a Manhattan courtroom will be his first time in public since his detention in 2002. Thursday marked the first time the court system made public any details of his case, which has been under seal since his arrest.

Prosecutors said there was a good reason for the secrecy.
Jabarah, 26, initially worked as a government informant after he was brought to the U.S. from Canada in 2002 after his capture in Jordan. He pleaded guilty to the terror charges that summer in a secret proceeding, without mounting a defense, and briefly lived in an FBI-arranged housing facility rather than a prison while he worked as a collaborator.

"Jabarah was extensively debriefed by the FBI and prosecutors and provided a considerable amount of valuable intelligence," prosecutors said in court papers.
That changed, authorities said, when agents searched his quarters and found weapons, bomb-making instructions and materials suggesting he intended to murder some of the agents with whom he was dealing.

He was transferred to a federal detention center in Manhattan and spent the next four years isolated in a cell where he was under video surveillance 24 hours a day. He was moved to a different prison in 2006. Talks to renew his cooperation broke down.

Attempts to e-mail and phone the lawyer who court records said was present for Jabarah's guilty plea in 2002 were not successful Thursday. It was unclear who is representing him now.

Court records show Jabarah was a major coordinator of a plot to bomb embassies in Manila and Singapore, but the attacks were foiled in December 2001. Jabarah was arrested after fleeing to Oman, Jordan, and was deported to Canada, where he agreed to plead guilty in the U.S. and provide information about other terrorists.

Prosecutors in New York said Jabarah had been living at an undisclosed location for several months when his attitude abruptly changed following the death of a childhood friend who had attacked U.S. Marines posted in Kuwait.
Agents found a newspaper article about the armed attackers in Jabarah's quarters, with a handwritten note at the top: "By Allah I will avenge your death."

They also discovered pictures of bin Laden, maps of Fort Dix, memos about New York's drinking water supply and letters that bemoaned the fall of the Taliban and railed against the evils of America.

[20] CIA, Pakistan concur on Bhutto's killer

An agency inquiry finds 'strong indications' that Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud and his associates were behind the slaying.

By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer , January 18, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The CIA believes that Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mahsud and his associates, some linked to Al Qaeda, were responsible for the assassination last month of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a U.S. intelligence official said Thursday.

"There are strong indications that Baitullah Mahsud was behind the Bhutto assassination," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. "There is certainly no reason to doubt that Mahsud was behind this."

The intelligence official said he could not disclose how the CIA had reached that conclusion, including whether the assessment was based, at least in part, on a telephone call that Pakistani authorities say they intercepted shortly after Bhutto was killed. In that call, a man said to be Mahsud congratulates a cleric who claims that his associates carried out the killing.

Mahsud has denied involvement in the attack on Bhutto on Dec. 27 after a political rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. But Mahsud, a tribal leader in northwest Pakistan, has not publicly commented on the purported call.

The CIA assessment concurred with that of Pakistani officials, who have said they believe that Mahsud was most likely behind the assassination, as well as an attack on Bhutto's convoy in October, hours after she returned to Pakistan from a self-imposed eight-year exile.

But an associate of Bhutto's said Thursday that her Pakistan People's Party was deeply skeptical of the CIA's assertions, especially when so little in the way of a forensic criminal investigation has been done. Party officials say that most, if not all, of the evidence in the case was destroyed by police and firefighters who hosed down the site within hours of the shooting and suicide attack, making it virtually impossible to gather evidence to help determine who else might have been involved.

"Whoever is now identified as responsible by state sources, we would need to know how they came to any conclusions, as we are uncomfortable with the cover-up that was done on the ground after Ms. Bhutto's assassination," the party official said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by Pakistani officials.

Bhutto had contended that the rise of extremism in Pakistan could not have happened without support from government agencies, including the military and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. And she said that though Mahsud had reportedly threatened to send suicide bombers against her if she came back to Pakistan, the real danger came from extremist elements within the government that were opposed to her return.

"I'm not worried about Mahsud, I'm worried about the threat within the government," she told the Guardian newspaper of London. "People like Mahsud are just pawns. It is the forces behind them that have presided over the rise of extremism and militancy in my country."

Pakistani officials angrily denied such allegations. And the U.S. intelligence official said, "We don't have information that points to the involvement of the ISI or any other organization within the Pakistan government in the plot."

Robert Grenier, the CIA's station chief in Islamabad, the capital, from 1999 to 2002, said he too believed that "extremists within Pakistan and folks associated with Baitullah Mahsud" were the likely culprits.

One former Pakistani official, however, cautioned that even if Mahsud was involved, that did not mean that elements in the Pakistani army or intelligence agencies did not play a role in the slaying, , even if only to look the other way or help stymie an investigation.

"My view is that this was a combination of elements from the intelligence agencies with people from the extremist groups with whom they have working relationships," said Hassan Abbas, a former official in the administrations of Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf and author of the book "Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror."

The CIA's conclusions about Mahsud's involvement were first reported in the Washington Post, based on comments made to the newspaper by CIA Director Michael V. Hayden.

The U.S. intelligence official also said Mahsud's organization poses a serious internal threat to Pakistan.

American counter-terrorism officials have said recently that Mahsud has amassed a large force of fighters that has been responsible for potentially dozens of suicide bombings and other serious attacks.

"Mahsud is a die-hard militant with strong ties to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations," the U.S. official said. "He and his followers, who operate out of the tribal areas, pose serious security risks inside Pakistan and have to be among the first suspects to look at if terrorist attacks occur there in the future."

[e-mail]

[21] the plotters and would have been sent next had she survived the attack.

By Shahid Husain and John M. Glionna, Special to The Times, January 20, 2008

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Authorities said they had arrested a teenager who told them he would have been the next suicide bomber sent to target former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had she survived the Dec. 27 attack.

The teen, identified as Aitzaz Shah, was arrested Friday in a mountainous region of the North-West Frontier Province and told investigators that he was not in Rawalpindi on the day Bhutto was slain.

"But he was part of the group that planned the assassination," said one police official who asked not to be named. He said the boy was between 15 and 18.

A second suspect, Sher Zaman, identified as the boy's handler, was also arrested as the pair drove on a rural road near the border. A search of the car revealed explosives; police said Shah had been assigned by his handler to target a religious meeting nearby, according to Pakistani media.

Police said Zaman's arrest was a breakthrough in the Bhutto attack investigation. "He is the real catch," an official told Dawn newspaper.

In Karachi, police arrested five militants and recovered a cache of explosives they say were to be used to attack religious commemorations.

The arrests late Friday came amid fears of more of the sectarian violence that often flares during the Ashura holiday, when Shiite Muslims mourn the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

A suicide bombing Thursday on a Shiite prayer hall in the northern city of Peshawar killed nine people, and in Iraq clashes and attacks during the holiday period left scores of people dead.

In the Karachi arrests, investigators confiscated from a rented house more than 13 pounds of explosives used in suicide vests, 4 pounds of steel ball bearings and 2 pounds of nails.

Also seized were several hand grenades, handguns, a detonator and a quantity of cyanide that investigators believe the attackers were planning to use to poison drinks at several refreshment posts along the Shiite mourners' procession route, Police Superintendent Omar Khatab said.

The group's leader, Mohammad Aijaz, had been conducting training courses and was a teacher at a militants camp in South Waziristan, Khatab said. His four accomplices acquired training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan's tribal area last year, the police superintendent said.

Police believe one of the militants was planning to become a suicide bomber, and the others were accomplices.

"They planned to carry out suicide and grenade attacks on processions," provincial police chief Azhar Ali Farooqi said at a news conference.

In the North-West Frontier Province, Shah told investigators that had Bhutto "survived in the Rawalpindi attack, he would have carried out the next suicide bombing," the unidentified official said.

He said a five-person squad was sent by Baitullah Mahsud, a militant leader with ties to Al Qaeda and an alliance with the Taliban in nearby Afghanistan. A spokesman for Mahsud has denied any connection to Bhutto's killing.

Shah and Zaman were arrested near Dera Ismail Khan, a town 180 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad. Three other men were also later taken into custody, police said.

President Pervez Musharraf has allowed a team of Scotland Yard investigators to assist in the investigation of Bhutto's assassination, which many Pakistanis blame on his administration.

The arrests came at the end of a bloody week in Pakistan that saw two fatal bombings. On Monday, 12 people were killed and 40 injured in Karachi when a bomb exploded on a path crowded with food and vegetable vendors.

The device, strapped to a motorcycle left nearby, also included nails and ball bearings, police said. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which authorities said was designed to cause chaos prior to the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections.

The suicide attack Thursday in Peshawar involved a teenage bomber and left 25 people injured at the crowded prayer hall.

There were also skirmishes in the mountain region near Afghanistan in which as many as 90 Islamic militants were killed Friday by government troops, with 40 more being captured Saturday.

The army had launched an operation to clear out fighters who had overrun several military outposts, scattering soldiers and forcing others to surrender. Fifteen troops were reported missing.

[e-mail]

Special correspondent Husain reported from Karachi and Times staff writer Glionna from Islamabad. Special correspondent Zulfiqar Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.

[22] By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer 49 minutes ago [01/22/2008]
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Tens of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah.

The border breach was a dramatic protest against the closure of the impoverished Palestinian territory imposed last week by Israel.
Jubilant men and women crossed unhindered by border controls over the toppled corrugated metal along sections of the barrier, carrying goats, chickens and crates of Coca-Cola. Some brought back televisions, car tires and cigarettes and one man even bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds.

They were stocking up on goods made scarce by the Israeli blockade and within hours, shops on the Egyptian side of Rafah had run out of stock. The border fence had divided the Rafah into two halves, one on the Egyptian side and one in southern Gazan.

Ibrahim Abu Taha, 45, a Palestinian father of seven, was in the Egyptian section of Rafah with his two brothers and $185 in his pocket.
"We want to buy food, we want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese," Abu Taha said, adding that he would also buy cheap Egyptian cigarettes.
Abu Taha said he could get the basic foods in Gaza, but at three times the cost.
Police from the militant Islamic group Hamas, which controls Gaza, directed the traffic. Egyptian border guards took no action, imposing no border controls for those who crossed.

"Freedom is good. We need no border after today," said unemployed 29-year-old Mohammed Abu Ghazal.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told reporters in Cairo his border guards originally had forced back the Gazans on Tuesday.
"But today a great number of them came back because the Palestinians in Gaza are starving due to the Israeli siege," he said.
No starvation has been reported in Gaza. But many of the 1.5 million residents have faced critical shortages of electricity, fuel and other supplies over months because Gaza has been virtually sealed since Hamas seized control of the territory by force in June.

"I told them to let them come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they were not carrying weapons," Mubarak said.
Egypt has largely kept its border with Gaza closed since the Hamas takeover amid concerns of a spillover of Hamas-style militancy into Egypt. But the government is under public pressure at home to help the impoverished Gazans.

The collapse of the border, although likely temporary, is a boon to Hamas. It briefly eases the international blockade of Gaza and gives the Islamic militants possible leverage in demanding new border arrangements.
At the same time, it will likely raise tensions between Egypt and Israel, which fears militants and weapons will flood Gaza in growing numbers.
Hamas supreme leader Khaled Mashaal said from Syria that Hamas was willing to work out a new border arrangement with Egypt and the rival Fatah faction led by moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In Gaza, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called for an urgent meeting with Egypt and Fatah to work out a new shared arrangement for Gaza's border crossings and suggested that Hamas would be prepared to cede some control to the rival government of moderate Abbas in the West Bank.
"We don't want to be the only ones in control of these matters," Haniyeh said, speaking from his Gaza City office live on Hamas TV.
But the call was swiftly denounced by Abbas' government. Ashraf Ajrami, a Cabinet minister in Abbas' government, said Haniyeh's call for participation was meant to sidestep Abbas' demand that Hamas return all of Gaza to his control.
"Everything Haniyeh is saying is simply to exploit this situation to win political gains. ... It is a part of the problem, not the solution," Ajrami said.

Hamas seized control of Gaza by force in June, routing pro-Fatah security forces. Israel and Egypt sealed their border crossings with the coastal territory in response, and Abbas established another government in the West Bank. The two bitter rivals have not had formal contact since.
Israel expressed concern that militants and weapons might be entering Gaza from Egypt amid the chaos, and said Egypt is responsible for restoring order.
Israel also is in a difficult situation. It is concerned about the free flow of militants and weapons into Gaza, but cannot be seen as criticizing Egypt too strongly, for fear of alienating one of the few Arab countries it has a peace treaty with.

"Israel has no forces in Gaza or Egypt, and the Egyptians control the border, and therefore it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly according to the signed agreements," said Arye Mekel, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry.

"We expect the Egyptians to solve the problem," he added. "Obviously we are worried about the situation. It could potentially allow anybody to enter."
Palestinians have broken through the Egypt border several times since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and stopped patrolling the border. But none of the previous breaches approached the scale of Wednesday's destruction, which demolished two-thirds of the seven-mile partition.

The border wall erected by Israel after the outbreak of a second Palestinian uprising in 2000.
Moussa Zuroub, a 28-year-old Palestinian, carried his young daughter Aseel on his shoulders, trudging through the muddy streets of Egyptian Rafah.
"I'm coming just to break that ice - that all my life, I'd never left Gaza before," Zuroub said.

In Egyptian Rafah, a market stall selling pistols and ammunition clips for Kalashnikov assault rifles had no customers Wednesday. Weapons are generally brought into Gaza through smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.
An off-duty Hamas policeman, who only gave his first name as Abdel Rahman, said there was no need to buy weapons from Egypt.

"You can buy weapons in Gaza, guns and RPGs," he said, adding that they were easier to find than Coca-Cola.
The destruction of the wall began before dawn Wednesday, when Palestinian gunmen began using land mines to blow holes in the border partition that divides Rafah, witnesses said.

There were 17 explosions in all, Hamas security officials said. At first, Hamas and Egyptian security officers prevented people from getting through, witnesses said. But by morning thousands of Gazans had massed at the border and overwhelmed police began letting people cross.
Most Egyptian security and police were later pulled out from the immediate vicinity of the border, Egyptian security officials said.

International reaction was muted. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. wants to see stability in the region, but that "most importantly both the security concerns of Israel and the humanitarian concerns of Gazans be met."
Wednesday's chaotic scenes came almost a week after Israel imposed a tight closure on Gaza, backed by Egypt, in response to a spike in Gaza rocket attacks on Israeli border towns.

Pictures of children marching with candles and people lining up at closed bakeries in a blacked-out Gaza City evoked urgent appeals from governments, aid agencies and the U.N. for an end to the closure.
Israel maintained that Hamas was creating an artificial crisis but nonetheless eased the closure slightly on Tuesday, transferring fuel to restart Gaza's only power plant, and also sent in some cooking gas, food and medicine.
Israel has pledged to continue limited shipments because of concerns about a possible humanitarian crisis, but Israeli defense officials said Wednesday there would be no new shipments for the time being.

"We don't want a humanitarian crisis, but the Hamas government who is responsible for the launching of rockets into Israel had to be weakened by all means," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday on a visit to Paris.
The rocket fire by Gaza militants has sent residents in Israeli border communities scrambling for shelter several times a day. The rockets have traumatized many area residents and killed 12 Israelis in six years. The attacks have persisted despite the closure.
In a clash early Wednesday with Israeli forces near the closed Sufa crossing into Gaza, a Hamas militant was killed, Palestinian officials said. The Israeli military said soldiers exchanged fire with Palestinian militants in the area.
_____
Associated Press reporters Sarah El Deeb and Ashraf Sweilam contributed to this report from Gaza City and Rafah, Egypt.

[23] The army routed Islamic fighters months ago, but the country remains beset by violence, threats and political deadlock.
By Borzou Daragahi and Raed Rafei, Special to The Times , January 23, 2008

AMIOUN, LEBANON -- The young man had been through a miserable few years. He had been rejected by the army and failed to finish his studies. Security officials kept summoning him for talks.

At 25, he left his parents' home in the city, telling them he wanted to be a shepherd. They heard nothing more from him until newspapers reported that he was wanted in Germany for involvement in a plot to bomb a pair of trains.

But here was Saddam Hajdib in a sleepy mountain town above the olive groves along the rocky Mediterranean coast, outside a tiny bank branch nestled amid shops selling knickknacks and cheap rugs.

According to police, he and two accomplices put stockings over their heads and burst in. A surveillance tape shows two of them wielding handguns. One of them is seen carefully taking money out of the safe.

Within hours, security officials had cornered the three at an apartment complex in nearby Tripoli, Hajdib's hometown. Lebanese security officials say Hajdib and 10 others were killed in a four-hour gun battle.

But the fighting was far from over. The robbery sparked a 3 1/2 -month war that led to the demise of an Al Qaeda franchise seeking to turn a weak state into a new base of operations, as other Al Qaeda-related organizations have in Afghanistan, Iraq and parts of Pakistan.

Operating out of a Palestinian refugee camp, the militants planned attacks to further destabilize the country, and to target United Nations forces keeping the peace along the Israeli border, Lebanese officials said.

But in this case, the state fought back -- with tremendous casualties. The battle at the Nahr el Bared refugee camp left hundreds of soldiers, militants and civilians dead and more than 40,000 people homeless.

Months after last summer's fighting, Lebanon remains beset by assassinations and mired in political deadlock. Authorities believe Al Qaeda is continuing to try to make inroads. On Dec. 18, authorities charged 31 Lebanese, Syrians and a Saudi with plotting to attack a church and other religious sites. Officials continue to investigate whether Al Qaeda may have been responsible for the Dec. 12 assassination of Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj, the military commander who oversaw the summer war.

The leader of the group, a charismatic former fighter pilot named Shaker Abssi, managed to escape.

"This was only the beginning," said an audio recording posted Jan. 7 on an Internet site frequently used by Islamic militants. The recording was attributed to Abssi, but not verified.

"By God, you will not live safely," it said. "The mill of war has started to grind . . . between the infidels and the believers."

Even so, officials said the war effort was worth it.

"The country would have been in great chaos and the price we would have paid would have been much higher," said Ashraf Rifi, chief of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces.

Trouble stirs

The militants were few at first, arriving at the camp as members of a long-established Palestinian group called Fatah al Intifada.

They were amongmany political groups within the community of 400,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants living in Lebanon since the 1948 founding of Israel.

In November 2006, the group dropped its Palestinian nationalist agenda and proclaimed itself Fatah al Islam, or Islamic Victory, and declared it had embraced Islam.

The militants offered use of their Internet connection to lure youngsters to their offices. They got into gunfights with other Palestinian political groups. They began attracting like-minded Lebanese and others from the wider Muslim world to the camp.

The militants fed off the malaise of the camp, as well as the radicalization of Sunni Arab youths after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Security officials said more than a few of those who arrived were veterans of the Iraq insurgency.

[24] By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer 21 minutes ago [01/25/2008]

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A car bomb exploded in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut on Friday killing at least five people, including a top police official who dealt with terrorist bombings and had previously been targeted, authorities said.

The blast in Hazmieh on the Lebanese capital's Christian eastern edge set dozens of vehicles ablaze and ripped a giant crater in the asphalt.
The national police chief, Brig. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, said one of those killed was Capt. Wissam Eid, a senior police intelligence official. Eid was an engineer who was handling "very important" files, including "all those having to do with the terrorist bombings" in Lebanon, Rifi said.

Lebanon has been hit by a series of explosions, some of them political assassinations, amid a deepening 14-month political crisis. Syria has been blamed in many of the bombings, but it has denied any role.
The police intelligence department is close to the Lebanese government's anti-Syrian majority, and has been frequently criticized by the pro-Syrian opposition.

Interior Minister Hassan Sabei said there were two previous tries to kill Eid.
Eid's bodyguard also was killed, Rifi said, in addition to three or four civilians. The Lebanese Red Cross said four people were killed and 20 wounded, the state-run National News Agency said.
Television footage from the scene showed a huge plume of black smoke rising from street and orange flames shooting up into the sky.

Several cars could be seen burning in a blackened area some 20 yards wide, near a highway overpass. Firefighters struggled to put out the flames. Dozens of cars were also wrecked in a nearby parking lot.
TV footage showed at least three bodies, one slumped behind the wheel of a delivery truck that was ripped apart, and two others on the ground under a highway tressel.

Friday's blast came a day after a labor strike that was largely peaceful, and 10 days after a car bomb aimed at a U.S. Embassy car killed three bystanders. In December, a car bombing killed a top general in the army.
It was the second attack against the police intelligence department in less than two years.

On Sept. 5, 2006, Lt. Col. Samir Shehade, deputy head of the intelligence department in Lebanon's national police force, was wounded when his convoy was targeted by an explosion in the town of Rmeileh, just north of the southern city of Sidon. The explosion killed four people in his convoy.

The biggest of Lebanon's recent bombings killed former Premier Rafik Hariri and 22 others in February 2005. His assassination triggered political upheaval and international pressure that forced Syria to withdraw its army from Lebanon.

Damascus has denied any role in the bombings, which killed a number of anti-Syrian politicians and journalists.
While attacks have continued, their targets have become more diverse in the past few months, with the killing of a top army general close to the opposition and the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy vehicle.

[25] by Vitor Vilaskas Sat Jan 26, 1:55 PM ET
NAZRAN, Russia (AFP) - Security forces fired in the air and beat stone-throwing protestors Saturday to disperse a banned anti-government rally in Russia's largely Muslim province of Ingushetia.

Automatic rifle fire erupted as police and paramilitary forces chased protestors through the centre of Ingushetia's biggest town, Nazran, near Chechnya in the Caucasus mountains of southern Russia.

There were no immediate reports of serious casualties, indicating that the shooting was in the air.
Smoke and flames poured from the offices of the state newspaper Serdalo and at Ingushetia's main hotel Assa. It was not clear who started the fires.
A local state television employee told AFP that a mob had attempted to torch the television offices, but had been beaten back.

The approximately three hours of violence broke out after about 500 demonstrators ignored warnings and a heavy security presence to rally on Nazran's central square against corruption and human rights abuses.
They carried placards calling for the resignation of the province's widely unpopular president, Murat Zyazikov.

Hundreds of police, including special forces wearing helmets and black masks, beat the protestors off the square and pursued them in side streets. Demonstrators fought back with stones and bottles, including one filled with burning petrol.

"Why are you attacking us? We are brothers!" protestors shouted to the police, who were also apparently local ethnic-Ingush.
Hundreds of special forces, police, and regular troops, as well as two armoured fighting vehicles, could be seen deployed. A military helicopter circled over the town.

Half a dozen Russian journalists were detained while attempting to cover the incident, reported Echo of Moscow radio, two of whose reporters were among those taken to a police station.

Two members of the human rights organisation Memorial were also detained while attempting to monitor the rally, Echo of Moscow reported.
On Friday Russia's FSB secret services announced that Nazran and other parts of Ingushetia had been declared "counter-terrorism zones". The designation gives emergency powers to security forces to stop traffic and enter homes and businesses.

Organisers of the rally said it was called to protest against corruption and dozens of disappearances and murders blamed by human rights activists on government death squads. They called another rally for February 23, the news site www.ingushetiya.ru said.
Idris Khamkhoiyev, an unemployed resident of Nazran, said the Ingush were fed up with the authorities' failure to address widespread poverty and human rights abuses.

"If they didn't disperse us but had listened to us today, then we might have avoided this situation. We have to shout for them to notice us," he said.
In November police fired automatic weapons in the air to disperse hundreds of people taking part in a similar protest.
The Ingush share close ethnic links with the Chechens, as well as the Sufi Muslim religion.

However they have never joined Chechnya's independence movement and were largely spared two devastating wars conducted in Chechnya by Russia's armed forces over the last 15 years.

Meanwhile, The Other Russia coalition said that a demonstration in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad planned for Sunday had been banned and two of their activists arrested for what it said were political reasons.
"We are abandoning the protest tomorrow, because the police called us and warned us all the protestors would be arrested if they came to demonstrate," said Sviatoslav Voronin, spokesman for the coalition's local branch.

[26] In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and secular political groups rally for Gazans -- and against Mubarak.
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 29, 2008

CAIRO -- Egypt's main Islamist party and other opposition groups are strengthening their appeal by using images of desperate Palestinians streaming out of the Gaza Strip to provoke wider protests against President Hosni Mubarak's 26-year-old government.

Demonstrations in Cairo and throughout the country by the Muslim Brotherhood and other political groups ostensibly have been staged to declare Egyptian solidarity with the residents of Gaza. But they are also aimed at weakening Mubarak, whom the groups accuse of oppression and criticize for economic shortcomings and close ties to Washington.

It is political theater punctuated with dangerous rhetoric. Mubarak's vast intelligence and security forces are attempting to prevent pro-Palestinian protests from erupting into sustained nationwide anti-government rallies. But the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya, Arabic for "Enough," an umbrella opposition group of leftists and nationalists, are determined to make just that happen. The Muslim Brotherhood has sponsored 80 demonstrations since Wednesday, when hundreds of thousands of Gazans began pouring into Egypt through a breached border wall.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which favors a government guided by Islamic law, known as Sharia, has a platform of nonviolence but has been accused over the years of bombings and other militant acts.. Despite the arrests of hundreds of its members, the group enjoys extensive support among the poor and middle class and poses the nation's most significant political threat to Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party.

The Palestinian cause is the crystallizing passion in the Arab world, but the Gaza border crisis has brought new urgency to a public relations battle between Islamists and secular governments, especially in Egypt. It has also demonstrated that Hamas, the militant Islamist party that controls Gaza and is ideologically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, remains a major factor in the future Palestinian equation, contrary to the wishes of the U.S., Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

At the Rafah border crossing Monday, Hamas cooperated for the first time with an Egyptian effort to reassert control over the frontier. Egyptian guards and Hamas forces coordinated security and used concrete and barbed wire to close at least two gaps in the barrier opened by explosions. At least four gaps remained open, including two for cars.

Thousands of Palestinians went back and forth. Traffic, thinned by rain Sunday, was heavier Monday but down from last week's massive levels. Shoppers, however, found little to buy in the Egyptian Sinai, where prices began rising and the government limited the availability of goods.

While Egyptian authorities debated how to further shrink the number of Palestinians in Sinai, they also concentrated on domestic dissent. Police in recent days have broken up a number of protests and arrested scores of Muslim Brotherhood members and Kifaya activists.

Opposition groups in Egypt have historically been disparate, with various religious and secular agendas and lacking a unifying spirit other than disdain for Mubarak's government, which receives nearly $2 billion a year in U.S. aid and upholds an unpopular peace treaty with Israel.

The current political maneuverings between the government and opposition come as this nation of 73 million people is enduring persistent inflation, shrinking government subsidies and budget deficits.

The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, whose members ran as independents and won about 20% of the seats in Parliament in 2005, said its chief aim is to support Palestinians and condemn U.S. and Israeli policies. But the organization acknowledged that the protests had grown wider in scope. Banners in a Cairo demonstration of 2,000 protesters last week included slogans sympathetic toward Palestinians and vitriolic against Egypt, such as "A Country Without Justice."

"The regime dealt brutally with demonstrators because it is concerned about domestic stability," said Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. "The regime knows that there is public outrage for other reasons including inflation, unemployment and other accumulated problems. It fears that things will explode."

Egyptians are "terribly depressed by the domestic situation and want to express themselves by any means," said George Ishaq, a Kifaya leader. "They seized [the Gaza border dispute] as a chance to express their views."

Mohammed Sayed Said, deputy head of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said support for the Palestinians is giving the Muslim Brotherhood "a great deal of legitimacy."

"They're anti-Israeli and anti-American. They see themselves as the most vehement resistors, and this is a big payoff for them. They have been very clear in focusing on the Palestinian issue," he said.

Mubarak, for his part, is attempting to show that he is just as roused as the Islamists over what he calls Israel's "collective punishment" of Palestinians. The president criticized Israel for retaliating against Hamas missile strikes with a fuel blockade of Gaza; days later, Hamas blew the holes in the border wall. Mubarak has received praise across the Arab world for allowing upward of 500,000 Palestinians to shop for supplies and unwind in Sinai.

The main problem the 79-year-old Mubarak faces in the Arab street, however, is his grudging support of U.S. and Israeli policies that isolated Hamas after the group seized Gaza from Fatah, the faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Egypt was wary of Hamas exporting militants, but the containment strategy, which included economic sanctions, failed.

The Rafah crossing was largely open until militants burrowed under Gaza's border with Israel and captured Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit in June 2006. The Israelis tightened Gaza's borders in response. A year later, when Hamas fighters routed Fatah forces and took control of Gaza, the frontier was sealed.

"You cannot go back to that same policy," Said said. "Egypt does not want to recognize Hamas as a legitimate government in Gaza. But you just can't leave a total vacuum. Egypt's concerned about extremists, but you can't clash with Palestinians [crossing the border]. You don't want to look like Israel at all."

A slight readjustment appears to be underway. Aside from cooperating on limiting border traffic Monday, Hamas is expected to send a delegation to Egypt on Wednesday to discuss ending the crisis. That's the same day officials from the rival Palestinian Authority, whose forces Mubarak would prefer control the border crossing, will travel to Cairo for a separate meeting.

A central question in coming months will be Egypt's long-term relationship with Hamas and how the militant group will fit into a new Palestinian-Israeli peace initiative spurred by the Bush administration. Most Egyptians are skeptical of the peace effort, regarding it as a hurried plan by a lame-duck U.S. president that may embarrass their nation and other regional U.S. allies.

jeffrey.fleishman @latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem and Noha El-Hennawy of The Times' Cairo Bureau and special correspondent Rushdi abu Alouf in the Gaza Strip contributed to this story.

See Part Four

[iris89]

Part Four

[27] KANDAHAR, Afghanistan)[01/31/2008] - A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing Helmand province's deputy governor and five other people, officials said.
Top of Form

Bottom of Form
The bomber struck while people were praying inside the mosque in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said.
Helmand's deputy governor, Pir Mohammad, was killed in the blast, said Nisar Ahmad, a provincial health official.

The blast killed five other people and wounded 11, Ahmad said.
Taliban regularly attack Afghan officials as part of their attempts to weaken the control of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai's government.
Helmand, the center of the world's opium and heroin production, is focus of intense clashes between militants and British, American and Afghan government forces.

The mosque blast happened hours after another suicide bomber in a car targeted an Afghan army bus in Kabul, killing one civilian and wounding four other people, officials said.
The blast shattered the bus windows and badly damaged a passing taxi in Kabul's Taimani neighborhood, said police officer Jan Agha. A soldier was among the wounded.

A series of attacks last year targeted buses carrying Afghan security forces, a key element of U.S. efforts to beat back the insurgency gripping the country's south and east.

In September a suicide bomber blew himself up in an army bus in Kabul, killing 28 soldiers and two civilians. In June a bomb ripped through a bus carrying police instructors in Kabul, killing 35 people.
Last year was Afghanistan's most deadly since the ouster of the Taliban in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001. More than 6,500 people - mostly insurgents - died in the violence, according to an Associated Press count of figures provided by local and international officials.

In eastern Nuristan province, militants beheaded four road construction workers and dumped their bodies on the side of the road Wednesday, said deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Daoud Nadim.
The four were kidnapped 10 days ago while working on a road project in Kamdesh district, Nadim said.

In Kabul, hundreds of people demanded the release of an Afghan journalist who was sentenced to death last week after he was found guilty of insulting Islam.
The demonstrators from the small, secular Solidarity Party rallied in front of the United Nations office in support of 23-year old Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, who was sentenced by a three-judge panel in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif for distributing to journalism students a report he had printed off the Internet.
The article asked why Islam permitted men to have four wives but women could not have multiple husbands.

Kaambakhsh has appealed his conviction.
International human rights groups have condemned the sentence but Afghanistan's upper house of parliament welcomed the ruling and criticized "international interference" in the matter.
Associated press reporters Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.

[28] By HAMID AHMED, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 25 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - A female suicide bomber blew herself up at the main pet market in central Baghdad, killing at least 46 people and wounding dozens in the deadliest bombing to strike the capital since 30,000 more American troops began flooding into central Iraq last spring, police said.

About 20 minutes later, a second female suicide bomber struck another bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad. That blast killed at least 18 people and wounded 25, police said.

The attacks shortly before the weekly Islamic call to prayer resounded across the capital were the latest in a series of violent incidents that have been chipping away at Iraqi confidence in the permanence of recent security gains.
The first blast occurred about 10:20 a.m. when the woman detonated explosives hidden under her traditional black robe at the central al-Ghazl market. The pet bazaar had recently re-emerged as a popular shopping venue as Baghdad security improved and a Friday ban on driving was lifted.

Firefighters scooped up debris scattered among pools of blood, clothing and pigeon carcasses.
Police initially said the bomb was hidden in a box of birds but later determined it was a suicide attack after finding the woman's head, an officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

Female suicide bombing is widely believed to be a tool increasingly used by al-Qaida in Iraq.

Many teenage boys were among the 46 people killed and 82 wounded in al-Ghazl, according to police and hospital officials. It was the deadliest explosion in the capital since an April 18 car bombing killed 116 and wounded 145 in central Baghdad.

A bomb hidden in a box of small birds also exploded at the al-Ghazl market in late November, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens. The U.S. military blamed the November attack on Iranian-backed Shiite militants, saying they had hoped al-Qaida in Iraq would be held responsible for the attack so Iraqis would turn to them for protection.

There were conflicting details about the second blast in the New Baghdad area.
The U.S. military said initial reporting indicated it was a suicide car bombing carried out by a woman, but Iraqi police said the female attacker detonated an explosives belt at the entrance to the bazaar.

Casualty tolls also differed, with the military saying about 10 people were killed and 20 wounded and Iraqi police reporting 18 killed and 25 wounded.

[29] By Tina Susman and Raheem Salman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers, February 2, 2008

BAGHDAD -- Bombs carried by women tore through two popular pet markets here Friday, killing 77 people, in the worst violence to hit Baghdad since a U.S. troop buildup reached its peak in July.

The apparently coordinated attacks, occurring within 10 minutes of each other, were reminiscent of large-scale suicide bombings before the buildup and underscored what U.S. military officials have warned are the shifting tactics of insurgents: the use of female attackers, and of suicide vests and belts.

American and Iraqi officials say such methods are signs that insurgents loyal to the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq are struggling to recruit Iraqi men, and are also finding it difficult to maneuver large vehicle-borne bombs past checkpoints. They say insurgents have been forced to resort to other types of attacks, such as the targeting of volunteer security workers who form the backbone of U.S. efforts to bolster American and Iraqi forces.

Since November, at least six women have been used to carry explosives that killed themselves and others. They include the two who hit central Baghdad's Ghazel pet bazaar Friday and another market that sells birds in southeastern Baghdad. An Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim Musawi, told Iraqi television that the woman was mentally disabled and that the explosives were detonated by remote control, and at a news converence early today, a U.S. military official said there was evidence to support that but did not go into details.

"These are the bombers," said Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, as he displayed photographs showing the severed heads of two women. "There are some indications that these women were mentally handicapped."

The increased use of suicide vests is highlighted in U.S. military statistics on Iraq's violence. In October, six such incidents were recorded. The number rose to eight in November, 10 in December and 15 in January. Vehicle-borne bombings fell each month, from 45 in October to 24 for Jan.ƒ|1 to Jan. 25, the last date included in the military report.

U.S. military and Iraqi officials note that overall attack and civilian casualty numbers are at their lowest levels since the spring of 2005. But they say the state of security still is "tenuous." Iraqis, analysts and U.S. military commanders acknowledge that Iraq could turn more violent again if the government does not make progress in easing tensions between Sunni Arabs and Shiites.

"I am indeed optimistic, but at the same time I'm realistic. This place could go back," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands U.S. forces in the strategic belts south of Baghdad.

Other factors most commonly cited as having the potential to derail security gains are withdrawing U.S. forces too quickly and impatience by Sunni security volunteers who have allied themselves with U.S. and Iraqi forces. Many such volunteers once supported the insurgency, but they now are being targeted by those groups.

"We are essentially hanging in the balance," said Aseel Abdullah, a Baghdad accountant. When asked to rate security on a scale of 1 to 10, he gave it a 5 and said it would not improve until political leaders improve life for Iraqis. "People can only take so much, and sooner or later they will decide they have had enough and revert back to violence," he said.

Friday's violence was a reminder of what that would be like for Baghdad residents, who in recent months have begun to enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle. Nightly curfews have been eased, and restrictions have been lifted that kept vehicles off the streets on Fridays, the Muslim day off.

The Ghazel pet market is a favorite place to spend Fridays. It also is a favorite target of insurgents looking to inflict high casualties. This was the second bombing there since late November and the fifth since June 2006.

Ahmed Jimaa Badr, 30, was at the market Friday against the wishes of his wife and parents, who felt that security still was too shaky. But Badr, whose hobby is raising pigeons, wanted to buy some new birds. He chose four and entered a pigeon expert's shop to ensure that one of the birds was a male, for breeding purposes.

"When the man was examining the bird, a very huge explosion rocked the area," Badr said. The shop windows shattered, and the bird flew away. "I saw white smoke and a hill of bodies, and a lot of animals."

The smell of gunpowder mixed with that of burned flesh, and the heat from the blast sent the temperature inside the little shop soaring, "as if it is July," said Badr, who helped evacuate wounded people to hospitals.

In the Ghazel blast, police said at least 37 people died and 83 were injured.

Minutes later, a blast rocked a smaller market specializing in birds in the southeastern part of the city. That attack killed at least 27 and wounded 67, including a 17-year-old named Haider who said his life was saved by sacks of bird seed that stopped flying shrapnel.

Haider, who gave only his first name, said he was about 120 feet from the blast. "Birds scattered here and there. A great ball of fire came out of the place where the explosion was," he said.

Officials said early today that 13 people had died overnight in hospitals, but it wasn't known in which of the attacks they had been injured. Some police officials said the death toll was as high as 99 early today, and they based their number on hospital reports, but the figure remained unconfirmed. The U.S. military said 27 people died.

The attacks come as U.S. military officials weigh how to pull troops from Iraq without losing the security gains achieved since July, when the last of 28,500 extra American forces arrived in the country. The extra combat power was intended to quell violence and give Iraqi politicians a stable environment in which to work toward reconciliation.

It also enabled troops to launch a series of offensives that flushed insurgents out of Baghdad and neighboring Anbar province and led to large declines in violence in those areas.

But the White House plan calls for withdrawing the additional troops by July, and one brigade of about 5,500 soldiers already has left. As more leave, Iraqi security forces will have to fill the gaps, along with the security volunteers.

Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, chief American military spokesman in Iraq, said the increased attacks on the volunteers "was perhaps one of the clearest indications of the importance" of their role helping U.S. and Iraqi forces.

An attack on a volunteer group leader last month in north Baghdad illustrated insurgents' latest adjustments, said Hammond, who commands U.S. forces in the capital. A bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up next to the leader. The convoy rushing the man to the hospital was then hit by a car bomb. At least 14 people died, including the group leader.

"That's the first time I've seen a suicide vest and [car bomb] coordinated attack," Hammond said.

Nobody knows if Iraqi forces are ready to take on the job of security, or if the volunteer groups will remain loyal to Iraq's government once Americans are gone. Most of the volunteers are Sunni Muslims, and there is no guarantee that the Shiite-run government will find jobs for them once their services are no longer needed.

"Say I'm a Sunni . . . and I'm paid to provide security," Hammond said. "If one day that job were to disappear, I'd still have a requirement to sustain my family. There's no doubt that there are bad people out there who'd be willing to offer me money to fill that [financial] gap."

Iraqis as well as outside experts say no amount of military power will end the violence until Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders resolve their differences, and until the government improves basic services such as power and water.

"These different factions have to come together and resolve their issues, but it doesn't seem like that's happening any time soon," said Leith Sattar, who runs a cellphone shop in Baghdad's relatively secure Karada neighborhood. "Sure, Karada is safe compared to other areas, but until when?" he said. "Everyone is a target."

[e-mail] Times staff writer Said Rifai and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.

[30] Suicide bomber strikes in Israeli desert town

Email Picture
Menahem Kahana / AFP/Getty Images
Forensic experts inspect the site of a suicide bomb attack today in the southern Israeli town of Dimona. It was the first suicide attack in Israel in a year, and officials were investigating whether the attackers came in through Egypt after Palestinian militants breached the Gaza-Egypt border last month.
The attacker and a woman die. Police shoot another bomber as he reaches for explosives. Two groups have claimed responsibility for the attack, the first in Israel in more than a year.
By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer February 5, 2008

JERUSALEM -- A Palestinian blew himself up Monday in an Israeli town near the Egyptian border, killing a woman and wounding 10 other people in the first suicide attack in Israel in just over a year.

Police prevented a second blast at the same strip mall in the southern desert town of Dimona by fatally shooting another attacker as he reached for his explosives-laden belt.

The violence was the latest to sour the climate for U.S.-backed peace talks since they were revived in December after a seven-year hiatus. It followed stepped-up Israeli army raids against rocket-firing militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the tightening of an Israeli blockade there, and Hamas' demolition of a border wall that allowed hundreds of thousands of Gazans to pour into Egypt for 11 days.

Speaking in parliament after the blast, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would continue peace talks with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and strike hard against militants trying to derail them.

"This war will continue," he declared. "Terrorism will be hit. We will not relent."

Dimona, a working-class town of 35,000 people, is home to Israel's heavily protected nuclear reactor. But officials said it was not the target of the bombing, which occurred about six miles away.

Conflicting claims of responsibility for the attack left it unclear who sent the assailants and where they came from.

Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an outlawed militia loosely affiliated with the legal Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said the two men entered Israel after crossing from Gaza to Egypt through the breached border.

The militia identified them as Luay Aghawani, 22, and Musa Arafat, 24, and released a videotape of the two Gaza men reading farewell messages. Relatives in Gaza said both had left for Egypt last week.

Aghawani, a member of the Al Aqsa group, said on the video that he intended to die to protest Israel's blockade of Gaza and "restore dignity to the Palestinian people." Arafat was identified as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is affiliated with neither Fatah nor Hamas.

News of Al Aqsa's claim reinforced Israelis' fears that large numbers of Gaza militants had passed through the border breach, which was closed Sunday, and possibly entered Israel over its long, porous frontier with Egypt's Sinai region. Dimona is about 35 miles from that border.

Abu Fouad, a spokesman for Al Aqsa in Gaza, said it had more militants inside Israel ready to strike.

Hours later, however, Reuters quoted an unnamed official of Hamas' armed wing as saying that it had carried out Monday's bombing and that the attackers had reached Dimona from the West Bank city of Hebron, not from the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli army spokesman said security officials were investigating both claims. Israel's Channel 10 cast doubt on Al Aqsa's account by showing video of the second Dimona assailant before he was shot and observing that he appeared larger and older than the two Gazans in the farewell video.

Hamas' official spokesman, Ayman Taha, declined to comment on the Reuters report but praised the bombing as a "glorious act." If Hamas was responsible, it would be the group's first known suicide attack inside Israel since 2004 and would signal a major escalation of the conflict.

Hamas, which advocates Israel's destruction, has taken control of Gaza from Abbas' movement and allowed the territory to be used as a launch pad for near-daily rocket attacks against nearby Israeli communities.

Whoever carried it out, Monday's attack reinforced doubts over Abbas' capacity to silence militants' weapons as he negotiates with Israel over the borders of a future Palestinian state, the status of refugees and a possible division of Jerusalem.

Abbas condemned the bombing, and Al Aqsa's West Bank leaders denied any involvement. But the videotape issued in Gaza indicated that his followers are splintered and beyond his control.

Monday's blast sprayed ball bearings from the bomber's belt and pieces of his body in all directions. Clothing from a shattered store flew onto the sidewalk as bloodied pedestrians scattered.

The bomber's severed head came to rest near his companion, who was felled by the blast.

Baruch Mandelzweig, an Israeli doctor, ventured from a nearby clinic with his nurses and saw the bomber's companion bleeding from the head. As he opened the wounded man's shirt, "we saw an explosive belt," the doctor later told Channel 10. "We ran away."

When police officer Kobi Mor reached the scene minutes later, the bomber was lying on the sidewalk and reaching for his belt, he told Channel 10. "I fired and his hand fell," he said. "Two and a half minutes later he lifted his hand again, again toward the belt, and I knelt down and fired four bullets to the center of his head."

[e-mail]

Special correspondent Rushdi abu Alouf in Gaza City contributed to this report.

[31] By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 36 minutes ago [02/09/2008]

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide bomber struck at an election rally in northwestern Pakistan Saturday, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 25, police and civilian officials said.

The blast occurred at a rally of the Awami National Party - a secular, ethnic Pashtun group - in the town of Charsadda in the turbulent North West Frontier province, where Islamic extremists operate.
Area police chief Mohammed Khan said 18 people died. Local television stations quoted party officials as saying 20 were killed.

Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said the attack was believed carried out by a suicide bomber who detonated his explosives "very close to the stage" where party officials were assembled.
Afrasiab Khattak, the party's provincial leader and a prominent human rights champion, was addressing the rally but told Dawn television that he was not hurt.

Nawaz said Islamic militants were threatening all the political parties in the northwest ahead of the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections.

"They are against everyone," he told Dawn News TV.
Charsadda has witnessed several attacks in recent years. More than 50 people died in the town in December when a suicide attacker detonated a bomb amid hundreds of holiday worshippers at a mosque at the residence of former interior minister Aftab Khan Sherpao.

[32] By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 39 minutes ago [02/10/2008]
BAGHDAD - Car bombs and gunmen struck new U.S. allies, police and civilians Sunday in northern Iraq, killing as many as 53 people. The spate of attacks came even as the American military released a captured diary and another document they say show al-Qaida in Iraq cracking under a Sunni revolt against its brutal tactics.

The violence coincided with a visit by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Baghdad, where he warned that hard choices face Iraq's political leaders on how to stabilize the country despite promising new signs of progress toward reconciliation.

The deadliest bombing on Sunday was near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, against a checkpoint manned jointly by Iraqi police and members of an awakening group.

Iraqi police said a suicide truck bomber targeted a checkpoint manned by U.S.-allied fighters and Iraqi police at the entrance of a bridge in the district of Yathrib on the outskirts of Balad. Security forces opened fire on the driver, but he managed to detonate his payload, devastating a nearby car market and other stores.

Police in the joint coordination center of the surrounding Salahuddin province and hospital officials said 34 people were killed and 37 others were wounded. Capt. Kadim Hamid said many residents in the predominantly Sunni area had removed victims directly from the site because they feared going to the hospital in Balad's mostly Shiite center.

The U.S. military put the casualty toll at 23 killed, 25 wounded and said a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi checkpoint in a market in Balad, but it did not confirm it was a suicide attack. U.S. and Iraqi forces had secured the area and the wounded had been evacuated to hospitals, according to a statement.
It was one of the worst bombings this year amid a recent lull in violence and underscored U.S. warnings that al-Qaida in Iraq remains a serious threat despite military offensives that have severely curtailed its operations.
The explosion came hours after suspected al-Qaida-linked insurgents stormed two villages near the Syrian border but were repelled by U.S.-allied fighters and Iraqi security forces in clashes that left at least 22 people dead.
Sheik Fawaz al-Jarba, the head of the Mosul anti-al-Qaida group, and other officials said the 22 killed included 10 militants and six members of the so-called awakening group in the area, as well as four women and two children.
The U.S. military in northern Iraq confirmed an attack on compound housing its Sunni allies against al-Qaida in Iraq near Sinjar, about 60 miles west of Mosul, saying five U.S.-allied fighters were killed, five wounded and 10 insurgents were killed.

Insurgents also attacked a group of civilians elsewhere in the northern Ninevah province on Sunday, killing two men and one child and wounding two other men, two women and two infants, according to the military.
Iraqi police also said four civilians were killed Sunday when a tanker truck laden with explosives blew up near an Iraqi army checkpoint on Mosul's southern outskirts.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has promised a "decisive battle" against the terror network in Mosul but given no start date. The U.S. military has warned it will not be a swift strike, but rather a grinding campaign that will require more firepower.
An al-Qaida front group for northern Iraq warned last week in an Internet statement that it was launching its own campaign in Mosul and surrounding areas.
In all, 70 people were reported killed or found dead by police on Sunday, one of the highest nationwide death tolls in recent months. That figure included three policemen who perished in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in the Anbar city of Fallujah and 10 bullet-riddled bodies showing signs of torture.
Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman, said the documents released Sunday offered proof that al-Qaida in Iraq had been severely disrupted by the so-called awakening movement and changing U.S. tactics, but he stressed the terror network was by no means defeated.

The military said the two documents were discovered last year by American troops in November as the Sunni movement that began in Anbar province was spreading to Baghdad and surrounding areas.

One was a 39-page memo written by a mid- to high-level al-Qaida official with knowledge of the group's operations in Iraq's western Anbar province; the other a 16-page diary written by another group leader north of Baghdad.
The documents tell "narrow but compelling stories of the challenges al-Qaida in Iraq is facing," Smith told reporters in Baghdad. "This does not signal the end of al-Qaida in Iraq, but it is a contemporary account of the challenges posed to terrorists from the people of Iraq."

He said the documents are believed to be authentic because they contain details that only al-Qaida in Iraq leaders could know about battlefield movements and tactics. The U.S. military gave reporters partially redacted copies of the full diary but only four pages of the Anbar document, citing security reasons. Both were provided in the original Arabic and an English translation.

In the Anbar document, the author acknowledges a growing weariness among Sunni citizens of militants' presence and the U.S.-led crackdowns against them. He also expresses frustration with foreign fighters too eager to participate in suicide missions rather than continuing to fight.

"The Islamic State of Iraq is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar," the author wrote, referring to an umbrella group of insurgents led by al-Qaida.
Smith also quoted the document as lamenting the loss of "cities and afterward, villages," adding "we find ourselves in a wasteland desert."
It said U.S.-led forces had learned from their mistakes and improved security had made it harder to transport weapons and suicide belts and forced foreign fighters to go underground because of their distinctive dialects.
The military said the memo was believed to have been written last summer and was intended for the author's superiors.

The diary, seized by U.S. troops south of Balad, was written in autumn 2007 by Abu Tariq, who refers to himself as sector leader for al-Qaida in Iraq. Tariq wrote that he was once in charge of 600 fighters, but only 20 were left "after the tribes changed course" - a reference to how many Sunni tribesmen have switched sides to fight alongside the Americans, Smith said.
The Sunni tribes' alliance with U.S. forces is credited with helping reduce violence across the country, along with an influx of some 30,000 American troops. A security crackdown that began in Baghdad and surrounding areas a year ago also has driven the militants north.

Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad and the capital of Ninevah province, is believed to be the last major urban stronghold for al-Qaida in Iraq.
"The diary shows that al-Qaida regards these volunteer citizen groups as a grave threat, and that terrorists are targeting them," Smith said.
In recent months, attacks on the Sunni volunteers have spiked while overall violence has steadily declined, he noted, adding that at least 77,500 volunteers have partnered with U.S. and Iraqi troops countrywide.

[33] Members of Islam love mass murders as shown by the following news account:

SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 4 minutes ago [02/14/2008]

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Throngs of Lebanese came out Thursday for two opposing gatherings: Hezbollah backers for the funeral of a slain militant suspected in hundreds of American deaths, and their pro-Western opponents to mark the assassination of an anti-Syrian former prime minister.

It was a showcase of Lebanon's divided soul, and it raised fears of violence between the two sides, prompting authorities to deploy thousands of troops and block major roads.

Hezbollah urged crowds to south Beirut to march behind the coffin of Imad Mughniyeh, the group's former security chief who was killed in a car bombing in Syria on Tuesday night. The funeral was expected to fully be underway in the early afternoon as the downtown Beirut rally marking the third anniversary of former premier Rafik Hariri's killing wound down.

Mughniyeh was a long-sought fugitive suspected in a series of attacks against the U.S. and Israel, including the bombings of the U.S. Marines barracks and two embassy compounds in Beirut in 1983-84 that killed about 260 Americans. He was also the suspected mastermind behind the kidnappings of Americans and other Westerners in Beirut in the 1980s, including former Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson.

"Let us make our voice heard by all the enemies and murderers that we will be victorious, no matter the sacrifices," said a Hezbollah statement aired on the militant group's Al-Manar TV.

Hezbollah and its top ally, Iran, have accused Israel of Mughniyeh's slaying. Israel denied any involvement, but officials made no effort to conceal their approval of his death. The United States welcomed it.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah - himself in hiding because of fears of assassination since the 2006 summer war with Israel - was expected to address mourners through a video broadcast over a giant screen.
Mughniyeh's death from a bomb that blew up his SUV in Damascus could raise tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as with the militants' allies, Syria and Iran. Some Lebanese figures close to the Shiite group called Wednesday for attacks against Israel.

In Israel, officials instructed embassies and Jewish institutions around the world to go on alert Thursday for fear of revenge attacks, and the army raised its awareness on its border with Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories.
Mughniyeh's slaying also could stir up more domestic turmoil in deeply divided Lebanon, where the Hezbollah-led opposition is locked in a bitter power struggle with the Western-backed government.

By midmorning, thousands poured into Beirut's main Martyrs' Square for the third anniversary of Hariri's assassination, braving the rain and the cold, waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader.
Crowds paid respects at Hariri's gravesite next to the downtown square as his brother, Shafik, unveiled a statue of him at the spot where he was killed, a few hundred yards away on a seaside boulevard.

A flame was lit and a taped message broadcast from Hariri's widow, Nazek, who lives in Paris, urging against "falling into hatred" and calling on "unity to save the country."

The anti-Syrian parliamentary majority had hoped a massive show of popular support, perhaps by hundreds of thousands, on the Hariri anniversary would force the Hezbollah-led opposition to compromise in a 15-month political stalemate that has paralyzed the country.

The anniversary rally also meant to send a message to Syria to stay out of Lebanese politics. Billboards on major highways called for supporters to attend: "Come down, so they don't come back."
Hariri's supporters blame Syria for killing the prominent politician in a massive suicide truck bombing in Beirut three years ago and for a series of bombings and assassinations since. Hariri's assassination ignited mass protests and international pressure that forced Syria to withdraw its army from Lebanon after 29 years of control.

But statements from government coalition leaders offering condolences in the wake of Mughniyeh's killing indicated that majority leaders were toning down their sharp rhetoric, dominant in recent days, so as not to further inflame tensions with the opposition.

Authorities deployed some 8,000 troops and policemen to protect the Hariri rally and leading roads. Armored carriers took up positions on major intersections, and additional razor wire was brought in to separate the two sides on rain-drenched streets.

The U.S. Embassy encouraged American citizens in Lebanon to limit all but essential travel Thursday. Across Beirut, businesses and shops put off popular Valentine's Day celebrations for later in the week.
Mughniyeh's body was brought to south Beirut from Syria on Wednesday and laid in a refrigerated coffin, wrapped in Hezbollah's yellow flag.
His father - Fayez, a south Lebanese farmer - as well as Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheik Naim Kassem, and other Hezbollah officials received condolences inside a hall from allied Lebanese politicians and representatives of militant Palestinian factions.

Mughniyeh was also on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists, and the State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

Besides his suspected role in the Marine barrack and embassy compound attacks, he was indicted in the U.S. for his role in planning the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed.
A string of kidnappings he was believed to have directed included taking captive the AP's chief Mideast correspondent, Anderson, who was held for more than six years until his release in 1991, and CIA station chief William Buckley, who was tortured by his captors and killed in 1985.

Israel accused Mughniyeh of involvement in the 1992 and 1994 bombings of the Israeli embassy and a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, attacks that killed more than 100 people.

He vanished in the early 1990s, reportedly undergoing plastic surgery and moving between Lebanon, Syria and Iran on fake passports.

[34] Now members of Islam want to attack others because a mass murderer got his just deserts; can you imagine such a thing, see the proof below:

by Albion Land Fri Feb 15, 10:13 AM ET [02/15/2008]
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel is bracing for threatened retaliation by Hezbollah over charges that it assassinated one of the Lebanese militia's top commanders, with fears running high of a high-profile attack abroad.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah declared "open war" on Israel in a fiery speech at Thursday's funeral in Beirut of Imad Mughnieh, a shadowy figure on America's Most Wanted list who was killed in a Damascus car bombing.
Israel has denied any involvement in the assassination, but Nasrallah said that by killing Mughnieh, it had taken its battle with Hezbollah beyond Lebanon's borders and should therefore expect attacks anywhere.

"The big... question arising from the killing in Damascus is not whether Hezbollah will respond, but how and when," Israeli columnist Yossi Melman wrote in the Haaretz newspaper.

Mughnieh, who was killed on Tuesday, was wanted for his suspected involvement in a string of anti-Jewish attacks including the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people, and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre there that killed 85.
Israel has since stepped up security at home and abroad, fearing reprisals from Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim group it battled in a devastating war across the border in Lebanon in 2006.

"Israel is a strong state, the Jewish people are strong and our answer to terror is clear," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said in Washington. "Statements by this or that terrorist won't change this and we are not panicking."
Livni's office quoted her as saying "Israel has been under threat from its creation. We know how to deal with these threats and we will know how to do so now."

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack described the threat as alarming, saying: "Hezbollah has a long record of carrying out violent acts, acts of terrorism around the globe."

The Haaretz newspaper quoted security sources as saying they expected Hezbollah to do something in the "immediate future" followed by a "showcase attack" in the medium term that would require greater planning and effort.
It said there could be a suicide bombing by Palestinians through groups funded by Hezbollah or attempts to kidnap Israelis abroad.
In the long run, it said the concern was that Hezbollah would target "high-value targets, such as embassies, a delegation travelling abroad or an aircraft."
On Thursday, Israeli army chief Gaby Ashkenazi ordered land, air and naval forces on alert, particularly on the northern border, to prepare for any military assault by Hezbollah fighters.

In southern Lebanon along the border with Israel, the UN peacekeeping force said on Friday it was not implementing any special measures.
"We are already adequately postured to implement our mandate under (UN Resolution) 1701 and our operations, in close coordination and coordination with the LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) continue at the same pace in order to maintain the cessation of hostilities," spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.
Israel's counter-terrorist agency has urged citizens abroad to maintain a high level of alert and awareness and to avoid places known to be popular with Israelis.

It warned them to "absolutely avoid visiting or staying in Arab/Islamic countries for which travel advisories have been issued, to reject any enticing or unexpected proposals and refuse to accept any unexpected gifts or offers from suspect or unknown sources."

Israel has already tightened security at its embassies, consulates and foreign offices of the Jewish Agency, which deals with immigration.
Stepped-up security was also recommended for national airline El Al, for shipping and for synagogues and Jewish institutions around the world.
"The more reasonable and likeliest possibility is that Hezbollah, with Iranian approval, will try to make a revenge attack against Israel overseas, in particular against an embassy," Melman wrote in Haaretz.
"In this case it seems they will look for areas that are Israel's 'soft underbelly' such as the Israeli embassy in Jordan, Egypt or certain African capitals -- where it will be easier for them to act surreptitiously."
The Jerusalem Post quoted defence officials as saying Hezbollah has advanced infrastructure overseas, mainly in South America and Africa.
Hezbollah -- Arabic for Party of God -- emerged as a vastly stronger force in Lebanon after the 2006 war, which many in Israel regard as a failure for arguably the most powerful military in the Middle East.
The Shiite militia also claimed victory when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 after more than two decades of occupation.

[35] Car bomb kills 35 Afghan civilians, hour, 15 minutes ago [2/18/2008] AP

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber targeting a Canadian military convoy killed 35 civilians at a busy market in southern Afghanistan, a police official said.

At least 28 people were wounded in the attack in Spin Boldak, a town in Kandahar province near the border with Pakistan, said Abdul Razeq, the Spin Boldak border police chief. Three Canadian soldiers were lightly wounded, he said.
The attack comes one day after Afghanistan's deadliest bombing since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. More than 100 people were killed by a suicide bomber outside Kandahar city on Sunday.

The back-to-back bombings could indicate a change in tactics by militants. Though attacks occasionally have killed dozens, insurgents in Afghanistan have generally sought to avoid targeting civilians.
The country saw a record level of violence last year, and analysts and military leaders here have predicted that 2008 could turn even deadlier.
One of the Canadian military vehicles was heavily damaged in the attack, as were several shops and civilian vehicles, said Abdul Razeq, the Spin Boldak border police chief.

Khalid said several of the wounded were in critical condition and that the death toll could rise. Though the Afghan-Pakistan border had been closed Monday because of elections in Pakistan, several of the wounded were taken to Chaman, Pakistan, for treatment, Razeq said.

hour, 15 minutes ago
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber targeting a Canadian military convoy killed 35 civilians at a busy market in southern Afghanistan, a police official said.

At least 28 people were wounded in the attack in Spin Boldak, a town in Kandahar province near the border with Pakistan, said Abdul Razeq, the Spin Boldak border police chief. Three Canadian soldiers were lightly wounded, he said.
The attack comes one day after Afghanistan's deadliest bombing since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. More than 100 people were killed by a suicide bomber outside Kandahar city on Sunday.
The back-to-back bombings could indicate a change in tactics by militants. Though attacks occasionally have killed dozens, insurgents in Afghanistan have generally sought to avoid targeting civilians.
The country saw a record level of violence last year, and analysts and military leaders here have predicted that 2008 could turn even deadlier.
One of the Canadian military vehicles was heavily damaged in the attack, as were several shops and civilian vehicles, said Abdul Razeq, the Spin Boldak border police chief.

Khalid said several of the wounded were in critical condition and that the death toll could rise. Though the Afghan-Pakistan border had been closed Monday because of elections in Pakistan, several of the wounded were taken to Chaman, Pakistan, for treatment, Razeq said.

See Part Five

[iris89]

Part Five

[36] 38 killed, dozens injured in Afghanistan as suicide bomber targets military convoy

By STEPHANIE LEVITZ, CP, Winnipeg Sun [2008/02/19]

KANDAHAR -- Canadian military chiefs were bristling yesterday at suggestions a bloodbath from another brutal bombing could have been avoided had troops heeded Afghan warnings.

Thirty-eight Afghans were killed and dozens injured when a suicide bomber blew up his car next to a Canadian convoy patrolling the Afghan-Pakistan border yesterday afternoon. Four Canadian soldiers were also hurt.
The blast in a busy market area in Spin Boldak came one day after the worst explosion in Afghan history -- more than 100 people were believed killed in the suicide attack at a dog-fighting festival on the outskirts of Kandahar city.
The target of Sunday's attack was believed to have been a local police commander who was killed in the blast, while yesterday's target appeared to be the Canadian Forces.

Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said he tried to warn the police commander away from Sunday's event, much like he warned Canadians away from Spin Boldak yesterday. ...

[37] Bomb kills 10 in northwestern Pakistan , hour, 55 minutes ago [2/22/2008] Associated Press,

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A roadside bomb exploded Friday as a wedding party was passing nearby in Pakistan's volatile northwest, killing at least 10 people and wounding four others, police said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast in Swat valley, a former tourist destination about 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad. The area is home to Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants.
Many of the victims in the blast were wedding guests, said Ayaz Khan, a local police official.

[38] By SADAQAT JAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 54 minutes ago [2/25/2008] Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A suicide bomber hit a car carrying the army's surgeon general along a busy road in Rawalpindi on Monday, killing him along with at least seven other people, the army said.

Lt. Gen. Mushtaq Ahmed Baig appears to be the highest-ranking military official to have died in an attack since President Pervez Musharraf sided with the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The blast was the latest in a series of attacks in Rawalpindi, a city just south of the capital where the military has its headquarters, and it is likely to revive concern about Islamic militancy in Pakistan just days after moderates won parliamentary elections.

Meanwhile, Musharraf's spokesman dismissed suggestions from three U.S. senators that the embattled Pakistani leader make a "graceful" retreat from power after his opponents' election victory.
Musharraf was elected to a new five-year presidential term last year by Pakistani lawmakers, "not by any senator from the United States," his spokesman Rashid Qureshi told Dawn News television. "So I don't think he needs to respond to anything that is said by these people." Baig, his driver and his guard were killed along with five civilians in Monday's blast, the army said in a statement. Musharraf himself survived at least three attempts on his life before he retired as army chief in November.

City police chief Saud Aziz told reporters at the scene that a black car whose roof was ripped off by the blast and dumped on the grassy median belonged to the army. Dozens of troops and plainclothes security officials cordoned off the area, where at least six other cars lay damaged. Plastic-gloved investigators gingerly gathered debris, including pieces of flesh, and put them in plastic bags. Iqbal Ali, who had been walking toward a nearby government office to get an identity card, said he saw a man run into the road shortly before the explosion.

Suicide bombers have struck repeatedly in Rawalpindi in recent months, mostly targeting security forces. A gun and suicide bomb attack also killed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in the city on Dec. 27.
Bhutto's party finished first in last Monday's parliamentary elections, while supporters of Musharraf were trounced. However, all major political leaders have said they are committed to fighting extremism.
Several U.S. senators met Musharraf after last week's parliamentary vote in which his political allies were routed. Some Pakistani leaders and many media commentators have called for him to resign.
The Bush administration appears to want Musharraf to continue in office.

However, Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday that he would advise Musharraf to seek a dignified way to leave office. "I firmly believe if they (political parties) do not focus on old grudges - and there's plenty in Pakistan - and give him a graceful way to move," then it could happen, Biden, a Democrat, said on ABC television. Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Chuck Hagel also endorsed a negotiated retreat. They stopped short of saying he should be pushed from power.

The parties of Bhutto and another former premier, Nawaz Sharif are expected to form a coalition government. However, they fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to impeach Musharraf, whose popularity plummeted last year after he declared a state of emergency and clamped down on the opposition, the judiciary and the media. Western officials are concerned that an attempt to force Musharraf from power would spark a constitutional crisis and hobble Pakistan's effort to fight growing Islamic extremism.
Taliban-style militants battling government forces near the Afghan border said Sunday say they want dialogue with the winners of the elections and urged the new leadership to abandon the war on terror.

[39] By JOHN AFFLECK, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 43 minutes ago [2/25/2008] AP

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed four Shiite pilgrims and wounded 15 south of Baghdad Monday in at least the third fatal attack on people traveling to one of their sect's most sacred gatherings, officials said.

The death toll rose from 40 to 56 from a suicide bombing Sunday - one of Iraq's deadliest attacks this year.
In eastern Baghdad, another roadside bombing wounded three pilgrims. A second bomb that went off a few minutes later about 70 yards away wounded a traffic policeman riding to the scene on his motorcycle.
The suicide bomber went after travelers enjoying tea and refreshments Sunday in a tent near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad. The blast killed at least 56 people and wounded 68, according to police and Babil health department director Dr. Mahmoud Abdul-Rida, driving the total number of pilgrims to 63 in two days.

Extremists had attacked another group of pilgrims with guns and grenades hours earlier in the predominantly Sunni Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, killing three and wounding 49, Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta said. He said the extremists fired from a mosque at the pilgrims and that a counterattack killed five of them, while two were captured.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have increased the number of checkpoints and imposed car bans and other measures in major Shiite cities to protect the worshippers traveling to Karbala, the burial site of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who died in a seventh-century battle nearby and became one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures. Ceremonies will culminate in Karbala Wednesday to commemorate the end of the 40-day mourning period following the anniversary of his death Major Shiite events have frequently been targeted in the past by suspected Sunni insurgents led by al-Qaida in Iraq in their drive to stoke sectarian violence.

Recent commemorations - including the Ashoura festival in mid-January to mark Imam Hussein's death - have passed without major bloodshed amid an overall decline in violence across Iraq. But the pilgrims who walk for days to reach the shrine of Hussein are vulnerable despite the increased security. Suicide attacks and car bombings are frequently blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq, but U.S. Col. Tom James, commander of the 4th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, which is responsible for the area around Sunday's attack, said it was too early to say who was behind that bombing.

Sunni leaders denounced the bombing, with hard-line politician Adnan al-Dulaimi's bloc blaming it on foreigners "aiming to create sectarian strife and to destabilize the country."

In other violence Monday:
• A suicide bomber in a wheelchair talked his way into the city's operations center and blew himself up, killing the deputy commander, Abdul Jabbar Rabeia, according to police and witnesses who also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to release the information. Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, is the site of the golden domed Askariya mosque - a Shiite shrine that was bombed two years ago, sparking waves of sectarian violence.
• Gunmen opened fire on a police convoy in the northwestern city of Mosul, which the U.S. military has said is the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq. Four officers were killed in the attack, police said.
___
Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi and Hamid Ahmed contributed to this report.

[40] By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 58 minutes ago [2/26/2008]

KABUL, Afghanistan - A roadside bomb hit a vehicle carrying five policemen and a child in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing all six, officials said.

Taliban militants have increasingly aimed their attacks at police, killing more than 925 officers in 2007 alone. Afghan police often work in small groups in remote and dangerous territory, where they are outnumbered and outgunned by insurgents.

The blast happened in the eastern Khost province close to the border with Pakistan, said police chief Gen. Mohammad Ayub. He blamed the attack on Taliban militants.
The victims included five policemen and a 3-year old child, said Lutfullah Babakarheil, a local government official. They were traveling in a private vehicle, he said.

The lack of an effective training program for the police is often cited as one of the West's biggest failings in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban regime for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida bases.

Police here are poorly paid, and many complain that superior officers skim from their paychecks or that they are not paid at all.

The U.S. began a new training program this year that will see small teams of American soldiers mentor and train police officers over the course of several months. The program, which also gives the police upgraded weapons and equipment, is expected to last four years.

Insurgent violence in Afghanistan flared last year, when a record 6,500 people - mostly militants - were killed, according to figures from Western and Afghan officials.

[ ] Morocco's unlikely group of terrorism suspects
template_bas
template_bas
The 35 recently netted in raids include professionals and politicians, with influences said to be both Sunni and Shiite.
By Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 27, 2008
RABAT, MOROCCO -- They are politicians and businessmen, bureaucrats and pharmacists, a police commander and a TV journalist.

Police arrested them and seized an arsenal in nationwide raids this month, the biggest crackdown in Morocco since suicide bombings killed 45 people, including the 12 bombers, in Casablanca five years ago.

During the last week, Moroccans have clustered on rainy mornings around kiosks along this capital's colonnaded downtown avenues, marveling at the latest newspaper reports on the case. The profile of the 35 suspects contrasts sharply with the Casablanca bombers, a dozen young men from a slum who assembled homemade explosives and died wearing identical wristhingyches that were a last gift from their handler.

The recently arrested alleged leader of the group was a well-off Moroccan immigrant in Belgium who is accused of financing his activity with multimillion-dollar hold-ups and committing assassinations in that European country dating back 20 years. Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said in an interview that the group plotted to assassinate Cabinet ministers, military chiefs and Jewish leaders to destabilize this moderate Muslim nation.

Benmoussa and other investigators say the alleged plot helps illustrate threats converging here.Morocco finds itself in the eye of a storm radiating across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

"The leaders of this network had the opportunity to train in Afghanistan, to meet leaders of Al Qaeda, and to go to Algeria to train in [rural outposts] in 2005," Benmoussa said.

Some aspects of the case against the suspects perplex analysts. The three politicians arrested belong to small parties that mix Islamist and leftist ideologies. Their defenders say they are moderates.

Their longtime ties to Shiite Muslim movements, including Hezbollah, may have been a factor in their arrests. Sunni Muslims are the majority here, but authorities worry about the danger of extremism among the small Shiite minority and sympathetic Sunni radicals.

Sunni and Western governments fear that the recent assassination of a Hezbollah military chief in Syria could foment Shiite-inspired violence around the world, says Abdellah Rami, an expert on Islam at the Moroccan Center for Social Studies.

But Rami sees contradictions in the official version alleging that the Moroccan group of suspects was influenced by both Sunni-led Al Qaeda and Shiite Hezbollah.

"I find it hard to believe that all these movements were mixed together in the same cell," said Rami, who knows the jailed politicians.

Authorities say they have documented connections, such as attempts to arrange training with Hezbollah in 2002. The jailed journalist, Abdelhafid Sriti, was a correspondent for Hezbollah's Al Manar network. Al Manar has been banned from broadcasting in France, Spain and the U.S., which accuse it of airing extremist and anti-Semitic programming.

Western security experts agree that there are unanswered questions.

"It's a real mix of things, kind of bizarre, but if everything is confirmed I think it is a big, big affair," said Claude Moniquet, director of a Brussels think tank who works with the Moroccan government.

Morocco is relatively open and democratic, modernizing quickly and trying to reduce inequality. The monarchy promotes a tolerant Islam in which the king is the leader of the faithful, an effort to maintain a bulwark against extremism. But its geography makes it a gateway to Europe and a crossroads for migration, crime and extremism.

"The Moroccans have worked hard since Casablanca so they haven't had more attacks," said a Belgian anti-terrorism official who knows North Africa well. "But they have a lot of radicals to watch, guys going to Iraq who could come back. And there are all the problems [in countries] around them, like a sandwich effect."

On the east, Algeria has endured a campaign of suicide bombings by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a network also blamed for recent gun attacks to the south in Mauritania on French tourists and the Israeli Embassy. The threat of extremist violence caused the cancellation last month of the annual Dakar Rally off-road race to have run from Portugal to Senegal. Next year it will be held in South America instead.

Meanwhile, Moroccan militants flow abroad for training and combat. Some fight in Iraq; some trek to clandestine training outposts in the deserts of southern Algeria and northern Mali, the vast and lawless Sahel region.

"We know that there are several pipelines that connect to Iraq, others to Algeria, others to the Sahel," Benmoussa said. "Some of these pipelines function with the goal of creating a reserve of fighters down there. And others with the idea of training them to come back to Morocco. . . . What is going on in the Sahel worries us a great deal."

Extremists benefit from a boom in Europe-bound cocaine along traditional smuggling routes, said Benmoussa, 49, who is an MIT graduate.

"It is a zone where there is a lot of money circulating, with cocaine traffic that is growing fast," Benmoussa said. "A certain number of terror networks exploit this situation because these groups guarantee, secure the routes."

Morocco feels vulnerable because it relies heavily on European tourism. Tourism dipped after the Casablanca attacks, but bounced back, reaching a record monthly figure of 1.2 million visitors last July.

The aggressive policing aimed at preserving a safe image spurs cooperation with foreign anti-terrorism agencies -- and periodic complaints of abuse. Authorities arrested Abdelkader Belliraj, 51, the alleged leader of the plot, last week while he was on a visit from his home in Belgium, where he lived comfortably with his wife and three children.

But Moroccan investigators say that during his youth, he was a hit man for a terrorist group led by the late Abu Nidal, a Palestinian and an Arab nationalist who later embraced Islamic extremism.

They accuse Belliraj of committing half a dozen killings in Belgium in the 1980s. The victims include a leader of Belgium's Jewish community, the rector of a mosque and a Syrian diplomat, according to Belgian anti-terrorism sources.

In 2000, Belliraj's group allegedly took part in stick-ups of Brink's trucks in Luxembourg and Belgium that netted at least $24 million. About $5 million was laundered through Moroccan hotels and real estate, and was used to finance the group, police say. The sum dwarfs the usual budgets of Al Qaeda-linked cells.

Belgian police were caught off-guard by the Moroccan charges, the Belgian anti- terrorism official said.Though expressing some doubts, they haveopened an investigation.If Belliraj was a major player, he avoided detection for a long time, the official said.

Benmoussa said several of Belliraj's followers traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 to train alongside militants who founded a Moroccan group there with the blessing and financial help of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

That group carried out the Casablanca attacks and played a lead role in the Madrid train bombings in 2004. Last spring, alert citizens and frenetic police work foiled another bombing campaign, authorities say. The bombers did manage to kill a police officer; two assailants blew themselves up in Casablanca, one outside the U.S. Consulate, the other near an American language center.

The alleged mastermind of the attacks, chemist Saad Housseini, arrested in March, is also accused of sending 17 recruits to Iraq. Moroccan fighters in Iraq outnumbered Egyptians and Jordanians in a recent U.S. study of rosters of captured Al Qaeda in Iraq members.

More recently, the Belliraj group got training from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb as that group expanded from Algeria, authorities say.

Operating in Casablanca, Rabat, Nador and Marrakesh, the Belliraj group allegedly stockpiled AK-47 assault rifles, Skorpio machine pistols, Uzi machine guns and other weapons seized early last week, authorities said. New raids Friday in Nador netted three more suspects and a cache of detonators and ammunition, authorities said.

It is the most formidable arsenal seized in a terrorism case here, authorities say.

"This is a long-term network. If it were just for an attack today, assembling makeshift explosives costs a lot less," Benmoussa said. "But we are dealing with the logic of a long-term project with a strategy of infiltration and subversion."

[e-mail]

[41] (KABUL, Afghanistan) - A suicide car bomber attacked a government building Tuesday in eastern Afghanistan, killing a policeman a day after a similar blast left four people - including two NATO soldiers - dead. [03/04/2008]

A NATO air strike hit an insurgent base in southern Afghanistan Friday, knocking out some 30 Taliban...
Bottom of Form 1
The car bomber tried to hit a government building in the Tani district of eastern Khost province, but Afghan guards opened fire toward the car, said Khost Gov. Arsallah Jamal.

A policeman was killed and five other people, including an Afghan soldier, were wounded in the explosion that followed, said district police chief Guldat Hamim.
The attack came a day after another bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the gates of another government building in the Yaqoubi district of Khost province on Monday, causing a part of the building to collapse and trapping soldiers inside, officials said.

Four people - two NATO soldiers and two Afghan civilians - were killed in that attack and 19 other people, including 15 soldiers, were wounded, officials said.
Initially, NATO officials said four soldiers were wounded in the explosion, but later Tuesday revised that figure.

"Because of the damages, it took the recovery team an extended time to assess the number of people affected by the explosion," a statement from NATO's International Security Assistance Force said.
NATO did not disclose the soldiers' nationalities. However, the majority of international forces in Khost province are American.

Militants regularly use suicide and roadside attacks in their fight against Afghan and foreign troops in the country.
Last year was the deadliest in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. More than 6,500 people - mostly militants - were killed in insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press count.
Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

[42] Four Killed in Pakistan Bombings
Tuesday, Mar. 04, 2008 By AP/ASIF SHAHZAD , [03/04/2008]

(LAHORE, Pakistan) - Two suicide bombers blew themselves up on the premises of a naval college Tuesday, killing four people and wounding 14 in the eastern city of Lahore, officials said.

Asif Ali Zardari, co-chairman of the party expected to lead the new government, condemned the bombing as "inhuman, barbaric and most despicable."
Pakistanis must unite against "conspirators and extremists," said Zardari, the widower of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in a gun and suicide bomb attack in December.

Officials provided differing accounts of what happened.
City police chief Malik Iqbal said two bombers rode up to the gate of the parking lot of the Pakistan Navy War College on a motorcycle.
The passenger dismounted and destroyed the gate with a bomb, allowing his accomplice to ride inside and unleash a much more powerful blast, Iqbal said, discarding earlier accounts that the bombers had been riding in a delivery truck.

"The first blast was low intensity and was meant to crash the gate. The other blast was high-intensity and was aimed at causing big losses," Iqbal told reporters at the scene.
He said the four dead and 14 wounded were all employees of the college. None were senior military officials, he said.
An Interior Ministry spokesman, however, said a car bomber rammed a navy bus on its way into the compound and other explosions were caused by the fuel tanks of parked vehicles.

There will be "no let up in the campaign to root out extremism and terrorism from the country, which poses the gravest threat to our national security," Javed Iqbal Cheema said at a news conference in the capital.
The police chief said investigators were still gathering body parts and debris from the scene and that it was too early to speculate about who was responsible.
Earlier, television footage showed black smoke billowing from inside the college compound and several injured people with bloodstained clothes walking out. Two wrecked cars and a half-dozen damaged buses were visible behind the mangled metal gates.

Muhammad Safdar, a 23-year-old chauffeur, said he had dropped off an officer at the college and was sitting in the cafeteria when he heard the first blast and rushed outside.

"There was smoke and vehicles on fire ... several people were lying on the ground injured and crying for help, but I, too, was injured as something hit me in the neck," he told reporters.
Security personnel quickly sealed off the area, a high-security neighborhood that houses the state governor's residence, a luxury hotel and several government offices.
The college trains senior naval officials from Pakistan and other countries.

[42] Members of Islam Picking on Others:

Chaldean Archbishop Kidnapped in Iraq
Posted by The Associated Press on Saturday Mar 1, 2008.
"This act of abduction against a Christian clergy member will increase our fears and worries about the situation of Christians in Iraq"
Gunmen abducted a Chaldean Catholic archbishop soon after he left Mass in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the latest in what church members called a series of attacks against Iraq's small Christian community.
The gunmen killed three people who were with Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, said Iraqi Brig. Gen. Khalid Abdul Sattar, a spokesman for the Ninevah province police.

It was not known who was behind the kidnapping, said an aide to Iraq's Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, leader of the church.

[43] By TIM MCGIRK AND AARON J. KLEIN/JERUSALEM Thu Mar 6, 5:55 PM ET
Neighbors of the Mercaz Harav seminary in Jerusalem at first thought the noise was the popping of firecrackers for the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim. But it was gunfire and, in fact, the deadliest terror attack in the city in the last four years.

A Palestinian armed with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire on a dining room full of Jewish religious students on Thursday night, killing eight and wounding eight others. Police officials say that the unnamed assailant, believed to be from Jbel Mukabar village in East Jerusalem, arrived at the seminary carrying a large box. Police told TIME that the terrorist walked into the unguarded seminary, up two flights of stairs to the library, where hundreds of male students, many of them teenagers, were having a celebratory feast. The intruder then pulled his weapon out of the box and began spraying the room with bullets. Eyewitnesses told police that students tried hiding under tables and behind bookshelves. But as the students began to scatter, he hunted them down, killing each victim, one by one, with shots to the head at close range.

Police say that, finally, a reserve paratrooper living next to the seminary and two detectives burst into the library and shot the attacker dead. "The terrorist came to the entrance and I shot him twice in the head," the paratrooper reportedly said. By late Thursday evening, no Palestinian militant group had yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

In Gaza, news of the seminary killing was greeted with celebratory gunfire, cars honking their horns, and people passing out candy in the streets. Sami Abu Zuheri, a spokesman for the Hamas militant group, said: "This martyr attack was in response to the Israeli assault on Gaza." Last week, more than 110 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli offensive aimed at stopping militants from firing rockets into southern Israel. Three Israelis also died during the fighting.

Unlike most Palestinian terrorist attacks, intended to cause the highest number of casualties, usually in cafes or bus stations, Thursday's attacker chose a highly symbolic target. Mercaz Harav seminary is the birthplace of the Jewish religious nationalist movement, which is behind the push to build Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank. Now, one senior police officer told TIME, there is concern that some bands of armed settlers may take revenge against nearby Arab villages.

The same source said that on Thursday night, Israeli police received a credible tip that a Palestinian suicide bomber, possibly from Islamic Jihad, was trying to enter Jerusalem, and were frantically searching for him, mounting checkpoints on the roads in from Bethlehem. But police are not sure if the would-be suicide bomber was connected to the seminary rampage.

Israeli authorities are waiting for more evidence before determining whether the seminary attacker was acting alone or, more likely, was dispatched by a militant group on a suicide mission. One police official told TIME that "based on the kind of weapons he was carrying, we think he was part of a terrorist cell and that it was a well-organized attack." In either case, it is doubtful that Israel will let these killings go unpunished, which will have the consequence of sending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into yet another downward spiral. Both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned the seminary massacre. To avoid riots in Jerusalem, police have banned all Muslim worshippers under the age of 45 from attending the Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount.

The fate of the U.S. sponsored peace initiative, which aimed to give the Palestinians an independent state by the end of this year, had already been de-railed by the fighting in Gaza, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had flown to Israel to try to jump-start the process, returned to Washington with only the vague promise that Palestinians might resume talks with the Israelis, nothing more. Now, after the Jerusalem killings, peace prospects look even dimmer.With reporting by Jamil Hamad/BethlehemTime.com
Related articles on Time.com:

[44] More of the usual violence by members of Islam:

The blasts at a top shopping area spark fears of a return to sectarian unrest.
By Borzou Daragahi and Saif Hameed, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
March 7, 2008
BAGHDAD -- A carefully orchestrated suicide bombing Thursday in a crowded shopping district killed at least 68 Iraqi civilians and security officials and injured 120 people.

The death toll was expected to rise overnight as hospitals in the capital struggled to contend with shrapnel and burn victims, many of them women and children enjoying an evening out at the start of The bombing followed by three days an attack that killed 26 people in Baghdad's Bab al Muadam district and by a month suicide attacks against Shiite Muslim pilgrims that killed nearly 100 people.

Thursday's assault raised fears of an upsurge in the kind of large-scale Sunni Arab attacks on Shiite Muslim civilians that inspired sectarian reprisals and pushed Iraq toward civil war in 2006.

The bombing also showed the insurgents' ability to evade the most elaborate security precautions officials can employ to protect Iraqi civilians. It took place in the upscale Karada neighborhood along one of the capital's most tightly guarded urban corridors.

The bombing came at a time when the U.S. military is slowly pulling out the 28,500 additional troops it deployed to central Baghdad last year to reduce sectarian and insurgent violence. The buildup reduced by 60% the number of violent attacks in Iraq late last year, but the violence has crept back up in recent weeks with a string of attacks, including coordinated suicide bombings Feb. 1 that killed 99 people at two Baghdad pet markets.

Thursday's attack appeared designed to inflict maximum casualties.

An initial explosion went off before 7 p.m. in a dumpster near an outdoor produce market in Karada, one of the capital's liveliest areas. The blast killed three civilians and injured a dozen other people.

The disruption attracted a crowd of onlookers, rescuers and security officials. A suicide bomber wearing an explosives-packed belt beneath what some described as a leather jacket was among the crowd.

He set off his bomb about five minutes after the first explosion, security officials said.

"I ran outside to see what was going on, only to have the second blast going off," said Kareem Abdullah, the 27-year-old proprietor of a clothing shop 200 yards from the bombing site. "I could see fire and smoke. I saw people thrown to the ground. I couldn't tell if they were unconscious or dead."

Karada had just begun emerging in earnest from the doldrums of war. Long a center of commerce and civic life, the neighborhood was being hailed as a success story of the Baghdad security plan. In recent weeks, new shops had begun to open, catering to the mostly Shiite Muslim and middle-class residents of the area, one of the city's few neighborhoods to remain vibrant well past dark.

But Karada has been the target of attacks by Sunni insurgents. It is a stronghold of supporters of cleric Abdelaziz Hakim's Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the country's dominant Shiite political party.

The explosions erupted as shoppers and pedestrians walked along the streets on what one witness called "an unusually crowded" evening.

Pandemonium erupted. "It was chaotic and everyone was screaming," said Ali Abdul-Hussein, 37, owner of a cellphone shop 150 yards from the blast site.

"I saw 20 helpless, dead bodies with my own eyes, children and women among them," he said. "It was a very miserable situation. I knew it. I knew something like this would happen."

Young men hurried to help, handing victims water and cleaning wounds. Ambulances and good Samaritans transported victims to 13 hospitals throughout east Baghdad.

At Medical City hospital, where as many as 30 of the victims had been brought, Redha Mohammed awaited word on the fate of his son Hisham. Mohammed had rushed to the site of the blasts, only to be told his son had been taken to the hospital.

"He has deep wounds in his abdomen and severe burns," he said of his son, who peddles costume jewelry in Karada. "They're trying to stop the bleeding."

At the scene of the blasts, pools of water used by firefighters to douse the flames mixed with the blood of victims. At least 16 of the dead and 28 of the injured were security officials on hand to help the victims of the first explosion. The blasts crushed shops and mangled more than a dozen vehicles.

Abdul-Hussein, the cellphone shop owner, said he almost preferred the constant stream of attacks that once beset the country, and kept him mostly at home until six months ago, to the stop-and-go violence these days.

"This is an unbearable situation that we are living," he said. "It calms for a while and then goes crazy like this. I saw so many bodies and wounded it was unbelievable."

[e-mail]

[45] Muslims are at it again, they move into an area of a country, then try to break off their area as an independent nation as they did in Kosovo where they moved in from Albania became a majority and then kicked the Serbs out who it really belonged to. Now they are trying this same technique in China, see the following:

Officials say an insurgent group planned to strike at Beijing Olympics. Separately, they said, a bid to crash a plane is foiled by the flight crew.
By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 10, 2008

BEIJING -- The crew of a commercial airliner foiled a plot to crash the plane late last week and Chinese police recently killed two separatists suspected of planning an attack targeting the Olympics, government officials said Sunday.

The government accounts of the apparently unrelated incidents came as China tightens security in preparation for the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics, which are expected to draw 2 million visitors. Across the country, there has been a general government crackdown against civic groups, the media, laborers, foreigners and those who might politically threaten or otherwise embarrass the government.

Both incidents occurred or originated in Xinjiang, a far western province bordering Afghanistan and Kazakhstan where there have been campaigns by ethnic Uighurs for greater autonomy from China's Han majority.

Wang Lequan, the top Communist Party official in Xinjiang, said the killing of two and arrest of 15 members of a "terrorist gang" in January, in which knives, axes, grenades and books were seized, was linked to the Games.

"The Olympic Games slated for this August is a big event, but there are always a few people who conspire to sabotage," Wang said Sunday.

Wang did not indicate why the government took six weeks to link this incident and the Olympics, or what evidence it has. Beijing said the 17 suspects collaborated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a militant group that seeks an independent state for the Turkic-speaking Uighur minority in Xinjiang. Both the U.S. and the United Nations have labeled the group, which has been mostly quiet in recent years, as a terrorist group.

Wang, a Politburo member, vowed a first-strike policy against terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists who will be "battered resolutely." These "evil forces" often try to deceive the world under cover of ethnic and religious causes, he said.

Separately, the official New China News Agency reported Sunday that an attempt to crash a China Southern jet Friday traveling from Xinjiang to Beijing was stopped by the flight crew. Officials didn't provide details, citing an ongoing investigation, but said it involved more than one person.

"Some people were attempting to create an air disaster," said Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, speaking on the sidelines of China's parliament, which is in session through mid-March. "We can be sure that this was a case intending to create an air crash."

In another recent case, a suspect was shot and killed by a police sniper after he held 10 Australian travel agents hostage on a bus for three hours. His motives were not disclosed. The incident happened in the prime tourist destination of Xian, famous for its terra-cotta warriors.

The government has held numerous security and role-playing exercises in preparation for the Games. "I think it's completely reasonable to tighten security during the Olympics," said a former Chinese diplomat and Mideast expert who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the issue. "It shows China is fully responsible for the security of foreign athletes."

Security experts said China represents an obvious target for extremists given the high-profile nature of the Olympics and promised attendance by various heads of state, including President Bush. But Beijing also may have an interest in linking various plots to the Olympics to increase public support for a broad crackdown, the experts said.

"It's not a surprise that somehow terrorism would show its head at the Olympics, but it strikes me as awfully early," said Ed Turzanski, senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

"The Olympics are a high-risk venture," he added. "But I also wouldn't put it past them to use the threat of terrorism to clean up problems they feel they have internally and to get people off their backs, such as human rights groups."

Police on Saturday released human rights lawyer Teng Biao, 34, after 40 hours in detention with a warning not to speak to the media about human rights or the Olympics.

Another activist, Hu Jia, who has campaigned for HIV/AIDS patients, was detained in December and is expected to face charges of "inciting subversion of state power," a vague charge China commonly levies against its critics.

In recent weeks, the government has also stepped up deportation of foreigners, silenced civic groups and advised migrant laborers to leave Beijing.

China has certain advantages against extremists, analysts said. As a police state with a system of watchful neighborhood officials and a largely homogenous population, outsiders tend to stand out. Gaining access to enough materials needed to mount a dramatic terrorist incident, such as the fertilizer used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing or the aircraft used on Sept. 11, 2001, would also be more difficult than in a relatively open society, analysts said.

Furthermore, the Chinese government has few qualms about suspending civil liberties, denying access or acting without explanation, warrants or other steps expected in a democracy.

But analysts said a growing gap between the rich and the poor and the country's enormous size also present a risk from homegrown groups, even for a nation with a massive police and military force.

"No country has perfect security," said Andrew Yang, secretary-general with the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies in Taiwan. "China is very concerned and will continue to tighten security in the coming months."

[e-mail]

[46] By ASIF SHAHZAD, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 28 minutes ago
LAHORE, Pakistan - Massive suicide bombs ripped through a seven-story police headquarters and a business on Tuesday, killing at least 24 people and wounding more than 200 others in attacks that deepened Pakistan's security crisis.

The two blasts happened about 15 minutes apart in different districts of this eastern city. The first tore the facade from the Federal Investigation Agency building as staff were beginning their working day.
City police chief Malik Mohammed Iqbal said a car packed with explosives was driven into a parking lot and detonated next to the building, which houses a department of the federal police's anti-terrorism unit.
Twenty-one people were killed, including 16 police, officials said. Doctors at Lahore hospitals said the wounded included 32 girls who were hit by flying debris at a school near the police building.
Paramedics carried a bloodied body on a stretcher from the building, while volunteers sifted through the rubble with bare hands, apparently searching for survivors.

Uzair Ahmed, a watchman guarding a bungalow, said he heard a deafening boom and something hit him in the head and face.

"I rushed out in panic ... Everybody was running and crying. Smoke was all around and that was it. I only came to my senses in the hospital," Ahmed, his head bandaged, said from his hospital bed.

Scores of nearby houses sustained major damage. Gates and doors were torn off, windows blown in and air conditioners dislodged and left in the street.
"It was like hell let loose on us," said homeowner Fazal Muqeem, 42.
Tariq Pervez, the director-general of the Federal Investigation Agency, said it had earlier received information that it could be attacked, but the reports had pointed to an attack against its headquarters in the capital, Islamabad, not in Lahore. He gave no further details.

The second bombing hit an advertising agency at a house in an upscale neighborhood less than 50 yards from a residence owned by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and co-chairman of her party.
Police officials declined to speculate on whether that was the intended target. Zardari was in Islamabad at the time.
Salman Batalwi, chief executive of the SB&B agency, said the children of his gardener had been killed and several workers seriously wounded.
"Nobody would want to target us. Maybe it's the wrong address or whatever," Batalwi told Dawn News television.
The bombings come amid a spate of violence that authorities are blaming on Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants, spreading beyond their strongholds along the Afghan border, and as the victors of last month's elections prepare to form a new government.
There have been at least seven suicide attacks in the three weeks since the Feb. 18 vote.
The party of Nawaz Sharif, set to be the junior partner in the incoming coalition, blamed military operations ordered by U.S.-backed President Pervez Musharraf for destabilizing the country and called for him to resign.
"He has carried out indiscriminate operations in the tribal areas that have opened up new fault lines in Pakistani society," party spokesman Ahsan Iqbal said.

A spokesman for the country's largest Islamic group, Jamaat-e-Islami, blamed Musharraf's friendship with the U.S. for a campaign of attacks inside Pakistan.
"It started when we started having a friendship with America. There were no suicide bombings in this country before that," Syed Munawar Hasan told Dawn News television service. "Unless there are whole domestic and foreign policy changes, I don't think this is going to stop."

Musharraf condemned the "savage" bombings and said they "cannot deter" the government's resolve to fight the scourge of terrorism "with full force," according to a statement carried by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
After the attacks, small groups of city residents enraged by the bombing gathered on Lahore's main Mall Road, chanting "Musharraf is a dog, Musharraf is a pimp." Police were deployed to keep order but no trouble was reported.
Until recently, Lahore had been spared the suicide attacks that have struck all other major cities in the past year.

But now it has suffered three attacks within two months. On Jan. 10, a militant walked into a crowd of police guarding a courthouse and blew himself up, killing 24. A double suicide attack in Lahore killed four people at a navy training college last week.

Tuesday's violence was the first major act of terrorism since Sharif's and Bhutto's parties announced over the weekend they would form a coalition government after routing Musharraf's allies in the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections.

The parties are vowing to restore judges axed by Musharraf to secure his own re-election last year - setting them on a collision course with a key U.S. ally in its war on terror.
___
Associated Press writers Munir Ahmad, Sadaqat Jan and Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.

[47] Members of Islam indulging in their love for violence, greed, and hate including the murder of a Christian archbishop - clearly shows their tolerance or should I say intolerance for other religions and their members. Also, showing that some members of Islam clearly adore or love to an excess violence.

By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago [03/13/2008] [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080313/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq]
BAGHDAD - The body of a Christian archbishop kidnapped last month was found in northern Iraq Thursday while in Baghdad, a car bomb exploded and killed 18 people.

Gunmen abducted Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho and killed three of his companions soon after they left Mass in the city of Mosul on Feb. 29. It was the latest in a series of attacks against Iraq's small Christian community.
Monsignor Shlemon Warduni, the auxiliary bishop of Baghdad, said the church in Mosul had received a phone call from the kidnappers on Wednesday telling them the archbishop was dead. They also told church officials where they could find the body.

The Chaldean church is an Eastern-rite denomination that recognizes the authority of the pope and is aligned with Rome. The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI was "deeply saddened" by Rahho's death. "We had all kept hoping and praying for his release," said Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi. "Unfortunately the most absurd and senseless violence keeps dogging the Iraqi people, and especially the small Christian community."

In Baghdad, the car bombing took place off a bridge in Tahrir Square, a district of clothing shops just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The policeman and a hospital official said 18 people died. The hospital official said 57 others were injured. There has been a resurgence of violence in Iraq's capital after several months of relative calm that followed an increase of U.S. forces last year.

...

Excluding al-Iqabi, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded at least 127 journalists and 50 media support workers killed since the U.S.-led war began in March 2003.[ RYAN LENZ, Associated Press Writer]
[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080313/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq]

[48] Members of Islam seek Recognition Through Their Love of Violence - See the Proof
[source - www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/....?track=ntothtml on 03/17/2008]

Foreign fighters in Iraq seek recognition, U.S. says
Interrogations of 48 detainees to understand their motivations provide a picture of typically young, lonely recruits.
By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 17, 2008
BAGHDAD -- Young, lonely and struggling to make a mark.

The U.S. military Sunday presented a profile of foreign fighters, who are blamed for about 90% of the suicide bombings that have claimed thousands of lives in Iraq. It was based on interrogations of 48 men captured by U.S.-led forces here in the last four months, Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith told reporters at a briefing inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Smith said most militants were single men in their late teens and early 20s recruited by Al Qaeda in Iraq, a largely homegrown Sunni Arab militant group that the U.S. military says is led by foreigners. They typically come from large, lower-income families in which they struggled to be noticed.

"Most of these young men wanted to make an impression, but paradoxically they did not tell their families they were going off to Iraq to fight for Al Qaeda out of fear of disapproval," said Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.

Smith's presentation comes at a time when the number of high-profile suicide attacks in Iraq has inched up, many of them carried out by bombers with explosives strapped to their waists.

U.S. officers stress that the number of attacks overall remains down since the military finished sending an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq in June. But Smith acknowledged that a modest rise in attacks using explosives vests, including 18 in February, was troubling.

"It is a difficult target to stop, and the only effective way is to take down the networks that feed this type of terrorism," he said.

In the latest such attack, a man blew himself up Sunday in front of a Kurdish political party office in the northern city of Mosul, injuring a guard and six civilians, police said. Two policemen were injured by a roadside bomb on their way to the scene, police said.

Fighters also have started to wear explosives vests and blow themselves up when captured, Smith said, a tactic previously used only by senior leadership.

The interviews conducted with detainees are helping U.S. forces to understand the backgrounds, motivations and recruitment of foreign fighters. Smith said most were from the Middle East and North Africa, including about 40% from Saudi Arabia.

More than half of the approximately 240 foreign fighters in U.S. custody come from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, according to figures provided separately by the military.

Smaller numbers were recruited in Jordan, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. In addition, several hundred foreign fighters are in Iraqi custody.

Most described their upbringing as religious but not extremist, Smith said. Many said their fathers were harsh and often abusive. Most reported little or no previous military experience. Before they were recruited, many worked as taxi drivers, construction workers and in other low-paying jobs. Others were students.

Their recruiters preyed on their desire for recognition, acceptance and friendship, Smith said.

Many detainees told their interrogators that they were first approached at their mosques. Others were approached at work and invited to attend discussions at the mosque.

These conversations would begin as a harmless discussion about Islam that over several weeks would shift to the war against U.S.-led forces in Iraq, he said.

The recruits were often shown videos of Americans purportedly abusing Iraqis and were urged to help avenge the mistreatment by killing Americans, Smith said. Insurgent strikes against U.S. forces also were shown.

Once they agreed to join the fight, most of the young men were flown to Syria and then smuggled into Iraq by road, he said. The facilitators who met them in Syria often entertained them at nightclubs and bars during the months it sometimes took to get them to Iraq, Smith said.

But when they reached Iraq, those destined for suicide missions were sequestered in safe houses with copies of the Koran and few other amenities. They complained that their Iraqi handlers looked down on foreigners, did not give them enough food and treated them harshly, Smith said.

Some spoke of their disillusionment on discovering that most of the attacks carried out by insurgents were directed against the Iraqi people rather than U.S. forces.

"Again and again, we heard this reality bothered the recruits," Smith said. "They had not come here to kill Iraqi civilians. . . . They felt misled."

Eventually, most just wanted to go home, he said. But their handlers had their passports and their money, so they felt trapped.

All 48 fighters interviewed by U.S.-led forces were men, but a growing number of suicide attacks have been conducted by Iraqi women.

U.S. officers have suggested that the insurgents are using women because they attract less attention. The insurgents may also be having difficulties recruiting foreign volunteers.

About 120 foreign fighters were entering Iraq each month at the peak of the influx in mid-2007, but that figure has dropped to about 40 to 50, Smith said.

[e-mail] [source - www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/....?track=ntothtml on 03/17/2008]

[49] By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer 26 minutes ago [3/17/2008][source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080317/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq on 3/17/2008]
BAGHDAD - A female suicide bomber attacked a group of Shiite worshippers near a mosque in Karbala on Monday, killing at least 32 people and wounding 51, officials said.

The worshippers were gathered about half a mile from the Imam Hussein shrine, one of the holiest sites for Shiites.
Karim Khazim, the city's chief health official, said the 32 killed included seven Iranians.

Police said the attacker was a woman but provided no other immediate details. Karbala is located about 50 miles south of Baghdad.
Also Monday, two U.S. soldiers were killed when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb north of Baghdad. The soldiers were clearing a road when they were killed in the blast, which took place about 12:20 p.m., the military said.
At least 3,990 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Elsewhere in the capital, Vice President thingy Cheney and Sen. John McCain vowed in meetings with Iraq's prime minister that the U.S. would maintain a long-term military presence in Iraq until al-Qaida is defeated there.
Explosions went off near the heavily fortified Green Zone shortly after Cheney arrived. Helicopter gunships circled central Baghdad, but no details were immediately available on the cause of the explosions.

The presumptive Republican candidate for president, who has linked his political future to military success in Iraq, met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shortly before the Iraqi leader began separate talks with Cheney.
Al-Maliki said he and the vice president discussed ongoing negotiations over a long-term security agreement between the two countries that would replace the U.N. mandate for foreign troops set to expire at the end of the year.
"This visit is very important. It is about the nature of the relations between the two countries, the future of those relations and the agreement in this respect," the prime minister told reporters. "We also discussed the security in Iraq, the development of the economy and reconstruction and terrorism."
McCain stressed that it was important to maintain the U.S. commitment in Iraq, where a U.S.-Iraq military operation is under way to clear al-Qaida in Iraq from its last urban stronghold of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
"We recognize that al-Qaida is on the run, but they are not defeated," McCain said after meeting al-Maliki. "Al-Qaida continues to pose a great threat to the security and very existence of Iraq as a democracy. So we know there's still a lot more of work to be done."

McCain, who arrived in Iraq on Sunday, told reporters that he also discussed with the Shiite leader the need for progress on political reforms, including laws on holding provincial elections and the equitable distribution of Iraq's oil riches.

At a news conference with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, Cheney said that given the nearly 4,000 U.S. troop deaths and billions of dollars spent on the war, it is very important that "we not quit before the job is done."

Cheney credited reductions in violence to President Bush's decision to deploy an additional 30,000 troops to the war zone. He said one of Bush's considerations in whether to draw back more than the 30,000 before he leaves office will be whether the U.S. can continue on a track toward political reconciliation and stability in Iraq.

"It would be a mistake now to be so eager to draw down the force that we risk putting the outcome in jeopardy," said Cheney, on an unannounced visit to Iraq. "And I don't think we'll do that."
Violence has dropped throughout the capital with the U.S. troop buildup as well as a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq and a cease-fire by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
The U.S. military has said attacks have fallen by about 60 percent since last February.

McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was accompanied by Sens. Joe Lieberman, an independent, and Republican Lindsey Graham, two top supporters of his presidential ambitions. The weeklong trip will take McCain to Israel, Britain and France.

Police said they found the bodies of three members of a U.S.-allied group fighting al-Qaida in Udaim, 70 miles north of Baghdad. Members of the mostly Sunni groups have been increasingly targeted by suspected al-Qaida members seeking to derail the recent security gains.

A bomb in a parked car in Baghdad's central Karradah neighborhood killed three civilian bystanders and wounded nine, police said, while a separate roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad killed one and wounded three others.
___
Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report. [source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080317/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq on 3/17/2008]

[50] Female suicide bomber kills 3 in Iraq
By BUSHRA JUHI, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 19 minutes ago [03/19/2008][ source -http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080319/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq]

BAGHDAD - Iraqi police say a woman suicide bomber has killed three people and wounded 12 in an attack near a bus terminal northeast of Baghdad.

A senior police officer says the attack occurred Wednesday morning in a commercial area of Balad Ruz in the Diyala province. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to release the information.
Extremists are making greater use of women as suicide bombers. Explosive belts are easier to conceal under women's clothing and they are often not treated with the same suspicion as men.[ source -http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080319/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq]

See Part Six

[iris89]

Part Six

[51] By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 13 minutes ago [
source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080323/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq on 03/23/2008]
BAGHDAD - Rockets and mortars pounded Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone Sunday and a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army post in the northern city of Mosul in a surge of attacks that killed at least 57 people nationwide.

The latest violence underscored the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups as the war enters its sixth year and the U.S. death toll in the conflict approaches 4,000.
Attacks in Baghdad probably stemmed from rising tensions between rival Shiite groups - some of whom may have been behind the Green Zone blasts. It was the most sustained assault in months against the nerve center of the U.S. mission.
The deadliest attack of the day was in Mosul when a suicide driver slammed his vehicle through a security checkpoint in a hail of gunfire and detonated his explosives in front of an Iraqi headquarters building, killing 13 Iraqi soldiers and injuring 42 other people, police said.

Iraqi guards opened fire on the vehicle but couldn't stop it because the windshield had been bulletproofed, said an Iraqi army officer. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the information.
Mosul, Iraq's third largest city about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has been described as the last major urban area where the Sunni extremist al-Qaida group maintains a significant presence.

In Baghdad, rockets and mortars began slamming into the Green Zone about sunrise, and scattered attacks persisted throughout the day, sending plumes of smoke rising over the heavily guarded district in the heart of the capital.
A U.S. public address system in the Green Zone warned people to "duck and cover" and to stay away from windows.

At least five people were injured in the Green Zone, a U.S. Embassy statement said without specifying nationalities. The zone includes the U.S. and British embassies as well as major Iraqi government offices.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to release the information, said those injured included an American and four third-country nationals, meaning they were not American, British or Iraqi.

Iraqi police said 10 civilians were killed and more than 20 were injured in rocket or mortar blasts in scattered areas of eastern Baghdad - some of them probably due to misfired rounds.

Also in the capital, seven people were killed and 14 wounded in a suicide car bombing Sunday in the Shiite area of Shula in the capital, police reported. Such attacks are the hallmark of Sunni religious extremists.

Gunmen opened fire on passengers waiting for buses in a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad, killing at least seven men and wounding 16 people, including women and children, according to police.

Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of 12 people - six in Baghdad, four in Mosul and two in Kut, scene of clashes between government troops and Shiite militiamen.

Elsewhere, several mortars or rockets struck a U.S. base in the Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, Iraqi police said. The American military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the attack.
No group claimed responsibility for the Green Zone attacks, but suspicion fell on Shiite extremists based on the areas from which the weapons were fired.
The attacks followed a series of clashes last week between U.S. and Iraqi forces and factions of the Mahdi Army, the biggest Shiite militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr led two uprisings against U.S.-led coalition forces in 2004. Last August he declared a six-month cease-fire to purge the militia of criminal and dissident elements.

U.S. officials have cited the truce, which al-Sadr recently extended, among the reasons behind a 60 percent drop in violence since President Bush ordered 30,000 U.S. reinforcements to Iraq early last year.
But the cease-fire has come under severe strains in recent weeks. Al-Sadr's followers have accused the Shiite-dominated government of exploiting the cease-fire to target the cleric's supporters in advance of provincial elections expected this fall.

Al-Sadr recently told his followers that although the truce remains in effect, they were free to defend themselves against attacks. Al-Sadr followers have demanded the release of supporters rounded up in recent weeks.
U.S. officials have insisted they are not going after Sadrists who respect the cease-fire but are targeting renegade elements, known as special groups, that the Americans believe have ties to Iran.

But the pattern of the attacks against the Green Zone could be a signal to the Americans and their Iraqi partners to ease their pressure against mainstream Sadrists or the special groups.

Elsewhere, 12 gunmen were killed Sunday in a raid against a suspected suicide bombing network east of Baqouba, the U.S. military said.
Iraqi police reported a dozen civilians killed in an airstrike in the same area. But the military said those killed in the raid were insurgents, including six who had shaved their bodies apparently in preparation for suicide operations.
A police commander was shot to death along with his driver in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad.
A roadside bomb near the northern city of Tuz Khormato killed four Iraqi soldiers, including an officer.
The violence was reported by police officials who declined to be identified because they weren't supposed to release the information.[source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080323/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq on 03/23/2008]

[52] Muslim baptized by pope says life in danger [source - news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080323/wl_nm/pope_muslim_dc on 03/23/2008]

By Philip Pullella Sun Mar 23, 2:35 PM ET
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A Muslim author and critic of Islamic fundamentalism who was baptized a Catholic by Pope Benedict said on Sunday Islam is "physiologically violent" and he is now in great danger because of his conversion.

"I realize what I am going up against but I will confront my fate with my head high, with my back straight and the interior strength of one who is certain about his faith," said Magdi Allam.

In a surprise move on Saturday night, the pope baptized the 55-year-old, Egyptian-born Allam at an Easter eve service in St Peter's Basilica that was broadcast around the world.

The conversion of Allam to Christianity -- he took the name "Christian" for his baptism -- was kept secret until the Vatican disclosed it in a statement less than an hour before it began. Writing in Sunday's edition of the leading Corriere della Sera, the newspaper of which he is a deputy director, Allam said: "... the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual."

Allam, who is a strong supporter of Israel and who an Israeli newspaper once called a "Muslim Zionist," has lived under police protection following threats against him, particularly after he criticized Iran's position on Israel.
He said before converting he had continually asked himself why someone who had struggled for what he called "moderate Islam" was then "condemned to death in the name of Islam and on the basis of a Koranic legitimization."
His conversion, which he called "the happiest day of my life," came just two days after al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused the pope of being part of a "new crusade" against Islam.

The Vatican appeared to be at pains to head off criticism from the Islamic world about the conversion.
"Conversion is a private matter, a personal thing and we hope that the baptism will not be interpreted negatively by Islam," Cardinal Giovanni Re told an Italian newspaper.

Still, Allam's highly public baptism by the pope shocked Italy's Muslim community, with some leaders openly questioning why the Vatican chose to shine such a big spotlight it. "What amazes me is the high profile the Vatican has given this conversion," Yaha Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, vice-president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community, told Reuters. "Why could he have not done this in his local parish?"

ANOTHER DEATH SENTENCE
Allam, the author of numerous books, said he realized that his conversion would likely procure him "another death sentence for apostasy," or the abandoning of one's faith. But he said he was willing to risk it because he had "finally seen the light, thanks to divine grace." Allam defended the pope in 2006 when the pontiff made a speech in Regensburg, Germany, that many Muslims perceived as depicting Islam as a violent faith. He said he made his decision to convert after years of deep soul searching and asserted that the Catholic Church has been "too prudent about conversions of Muslims."

At a Sunday morning Easter mass hours after he baptized Allam, the pope, without mentioning him, spoke in a prayer of the continuing "miracle" of conversion to Christianity some 2,000 years after Christ's resurrection.
The Vatican statement announcing Allam's conversion said: "For the Catholic Church, each person who asks to receive Baptism after a deep personal search, a fully free choice and adequate preparation, has a right to receive it."
It said all newcomers to the faith were "equally important before God's love and welcome in the community of the Church."
(Reporting by Philip Pullella, editing by Mary Gabriel)

[source - news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080323/wl_nm/pope_muslim_dc on 03/23/2008]

[53] CIA director: Afghan, Pakistan border 'danger' to West [03/31/2008]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The situation in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan where al Qaeda has established a safe haven presents a "clear and present danger" to the West, the CIA director said Sunday.

CIA director Michael Hayden: Border region likely to be origin of possible next terror attack.

Michael Hayden cited the belief by intelligence agencies that Osama bin Laden is hiding there in arguing that the U.S. has an interest in targeting the border region.

If there were another terrorist attack against Americans, Hayden said, it would most certainly originate from that region.
"It's very clear to us that al Qaeda has been able for the past 18 months or so to establish a safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, and that they're bringing in operatives into the region for training," he said.

Hayden added that that those operatives "wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport, outside Washington) with you when you're coming back from overseas -- who look Western."
Washington has sought reassurance that Pakistan's new coalition government will keep the pressure on extremist groups using the country's lawless northwest frontier as a springboard for attacks in Afghanistan and beyond.

Over the weekend, Pakistan's new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, pledged to make the fight against terrorism his top priority. But he said peace talks and aid programs could be more effective than weapons in fighting militancy in tribal areas along the Afghan border.

It was the new government's latest rebuke of President Pervez Musharraf's military tactics, which many Pakistanis believe have led to a spike in domestic attacks.
On Sunday, Hayden declined to comment on reports that the U.S. might be escalating unilateral strikes against al Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas out of concern that the pro-Western Musharraf's influence might be waning. Hayden only would say that Pakistan's cooperation in the past has been crucial to U.S. efforts to stem terrorism there.
"The situation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border presents clear and present danger to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the West in general and United States in particular," he said. "Operationally, we are turning every effort to capture or kill that leadership from the top to the bottom."

On Iraq, Hayden said it could be "years" before the central government might be able to function on its own without the aid of U.S. combat forces. Hayden said he would defer to the specific assessments of Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, top U.S. diplomat in Baghdad, who

[54] Bomb plot suspects had other targets in mind, London court told
template_bas template_bas Prosecutors say eight British Muslims charged with plotting to blow up airliners also had information and photos on other potential targets in Britain and the U.S. By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 5, 2008

LONDON -- A group of young British Muslims accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic jetliners had accumulated files on a wide range of other potential targets, including a tunnel under the River Thames at Greenwich and a major gas pipeline, a prosecutor said Friday.

In the second day of the trial of the eight men on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and acts of terrorism, prosecutors presented surveillance of a "bomb factory" the men allegedly set up in a run-down London apartment. The prosecution also played portions of six "martyrdom videos" in which the men declared their readiness to be killed attacking the U.S. and Britain for the nations' roles in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.

The solemn-faced young men in the videos acknowledge that they are not foreign antagonists but British citizens, raised in the West but determined to punish what they see as the complacency of fellow citizens in the face of Muslim suffering.

"I do not consider anyone innocent . . . while their sons and their daughters and their soldiers or whatever are . . . pillaging the Muslim lands of its resources and dishonoring our Muslim brothers and sisters," Umar Islam, 29, says against the backdrop of a black flag inscribed in Arabic, in a video excerpt played to the jury.

"Most of you are too busy, you know, watching 'Home and Away' and 'EastEnders,' complaining about the World Cup, drinking your alcohol, to even care [about] anything," he says of fellow Britons. "I know, because I've come from that."

Tanvir Hussain, 27, says in his video that the group is aiming at "economic, government and military" targets.

"Collateral damage is going to be inevitable, and people are going to die, because, you know, it's work at a price," Hussain says. "I only wish I could do this again, you know, come back and . . . just do it again and again until people come to their senses and realize, you know, don't mess with the Muslims."

Following the arrests of nearly two dozen suspects in August 2006, British authorities were tight-lipped about the investigation, dubbed Operation Overt, that had triggered the arrests and weeks of searches throughout suburban London.

Only as the trial has opened in London's Woolwich Crown Court has the massive extent of the police surveillance operation become apparent. Prosecutor Peter Wright has presented a detailed picture o***roup of disparate men in their 20s united in their alleged determination to blow up at least seven transatlantic passenger jets with homemade liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks.

The evidence includes surveillance of the men on shopping trips to buy suitcases, wires, batteries and large quantities of explosive hydrogen peroxide.

Photos shown to the jury depict the suspects entering and leaving a Walthamstow area apartment, which was purchased for $280,000 and stocked with the makings of their would-be bombs. Records of searches reveal stashes of bomb-making equipment in woods near the suspects' homes and CDs featuring videos of beheadings and executions and of roadside bombs killing U.S. servicemen in Iraq -- along with computer files containing what prosecutors say were plans for suicide bombings and lists of what authorities believe were targets.

Two compact discs found at the home of one of the suspects had 25 photographs of the area around a 1,217-foot pedestrian tunnel under the Thames, along with photographs of a nearby university campus and the locations of closed-circuit television cameras.

Files on computer memory sticks included information about a key gas pipeline linking Britain and Belgium, Britain's electricity grid, the nation's major Internet service provider exchange, the new control tower at Heathrow Airport, several oil refineries and nuclear power stations.

In surveillance tapes made after police planted a bug in the Walthamstow apartment, Hussain and a man identified as one of the ringleaders, Abdullah Ahmed Ali, 27, discussed "locations in the USA" and "the desire to find out the 10 most popular destinations for British travelers," Wright told the jury.

And in a hint that the defendants may not have been acting alone, prosecutors revealed passport records and tickets showing that one of the defendants, Assad Sarwar, 27, had flown to Pakistan just two months before his arrest.

Wright also read from handwritten quotations found at Ali's house, noting that the defendant had a wife and 9-month-old son at the time of his arrest.

"If I was given the news that I will be marrying the most beautiful wife and the news of having a baby boy just born," it said, "it is more dear to my heart that I'll be waiting in a tent in the cold, dark, chilly wind, waiting for dawn so that I may attack the enemy."

At that point, Justice David Calvert-Smith prepared to dismiss the jury for the weekend.

"Go home, and as best you can, empty your minds," he admonished. "And by Sunday night, maybe you won't be thinking of what Mr. Wright's been telling you."

[e-mail]

[55] Hundreds flee Baghdad fighting
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer 22 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - Hundreds of people fled fighting in Baghdad's Shiite militia stronghold Monday as U.S. and Iraqi forces increased pressure on anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who faces an ultimatum to either disband his Mahdi Army or give up politics.

Al-Sadr's aides said he would only dismantle the powerful militia if ordered by top Shiite clerics - who have remained silent throughout the increasingly dangerous showdown.

Although al-Sadr holds considerable influence through the Madhi fighters - estimated at up to 60,000 - political exile for his movement would shatter his dream of becoming the major power broker among the country's Shiite majority.
Gunbattles raged around the sprawling Sadr City district that serves as the Baghdad nerve center of the Mahdi militia, which has been under siege since last week by about 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Police said at least 14 civilians were killed in clashes Monday in the Baghdad area, nine of them in Sadr City. Frightened families poured out of Sadr City - some carrying their belongings in sacks or piled in pushcarts.
Three American soldiers were killed Monday in separate attacks in the capital - one by small arms fire and two others by a rocket-propelled grenade, the U.S. said without specifying the neighborhood or whether Shiite extremists were responsible. At least 10 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since Sunday.
The rapid tumble back to street battles in Baghdad - at an intensity not seen since last year's flood of U.S. troops into the city - is a worrisome backdrop to Wednesday's planned appearance before Congress by top commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to report on progress in Iraq and prospects for further troop reductions.

With the crisis showing no sign of abating, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki raised the stakes.
The Shiite prime minister told CNN on Sunday that al-Sadr and his followers would not be allowed to participate in politics or run in provincial elections this fall "unless they end the Mahdi Army."
Al-Maliki's statement followed a weekend declaration by top Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders to support legislation banning any party that maintained a militia.

Facing broad political opposition, key al-Sadr aides went on the defensive Monday, insisting that banning them from politics would be unconstitutional. They proposed talks to resolve the standoff.

"We are calling for dialogue as a way to solve problems among Iraqi groups," al-Sadr aide Salah al-Obeidi told AP Television News in the holy city of Najaf. "Al-Sadr's office affirms that the door is open to reach an understanding regarding these problems."

Another al-Sadr aide, Hassan al-Zarqani, told The Associated Press by telephone from Iran that the Sadrists would consult Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and other top Shiite clerics in Iraq. If they "recommend he disband the Mahdi Army, he will obey," al-Zarqani said.

But it was unclear whether the statement signaled any significant change in strategy by Sadrist movement. Al-Sadr has maintained for years that only the sect's top clergy could disband the Mahdi militia.

Equally unclear was whether al-Sistani and other top clerics would take a public position on the showdown or leave it to the politicians to resolve. The aged, Iranian-born al-Sistani has remained silent since the latest crisis erupted.
Shiite clerics intervened to resolve the two uprisings against the U.S.-led coalition which al-Sadr led in 2004. Those agreements allowed al-Sadr to build his followers into a formidable political movement.

But al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, has never faced such intense pressure from a broad political spectrum. His 30 seats in the 275-member parliament would not be enough to block legislation banning his movement from politics.

Al-Sadr has called for a mass rally in Baghdad on Wednesday - the fifth anniversary of the U.S. capture of the city - to demand an end to the American military presence.
In Washington, White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto called the planned demonstration "interesting timing" as it coincided with the Petreaus and Crocker testimony on Capitol Hill.

During a press conference Monday, senior Sadrist legislator Bahaa al-Aaraji called for an end to military operations around Sadr City and urged all political parties to help create an "atmosphere of calm" to "end this crisis."
Al-Aaraji also cited an Iraqi government report last year that identified 28 militias - some believed linked to al-Sadr's Shiite rivals in the government.
"All these militias have infiltrated the government security and military institutions," al-Aaraji said. "The government has to restructure the security institutions, especially the Interior and Defense ministries, and to lift the cover of legitimacy enjoyed by some militias."

That referred to long-standing allegations that militias from al-Maliki's Dawa party and its allies, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, were simply absorbed into the army and police but maintain clandestine links to their former political sponsors.

"The disbanding of militias is not meant to apply to just one party or one group," al-Maliki adviser Sadiq al-Rikabi told the AP. "Every political party that wants to contest the next election must disband and disarm its militia."
Hundreds of people fled Sadr City on Monday, trudging past U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints which prevent vehicles moving in and out of the district.
"The situation is getting very tense, said Abu Haider, 50, who left his home with a dozen family members. "News reports are not encouraging and battles are ongoing. It reminds me of when the war started and we had to leave our home. Regrettably, history is repeating itself."

The crisis erupted March 25 when al-Maliki launched a crackdown against Shiite militias and so-called "criminal gangs" in Basra. U.S. and Iraqi officials insisted the crackdown was not aimed at al-Sadr's followers but against criminals and Iranian-backed splinter groups.

However, Mahdi militiamen and other Shiite fighters responded with a wave of attacks across the Shiite south and Baghdad, where extremists pounded the U.S.-controlled Green Zone with rockets and mortars.
Violence eased March 30 when al-Sadr called on his followers to stop fighting under a deal brokered in Iran. But clashes have continued in Mahdi strongholds in Baghdad as al-Maliki insisted that the crackdown would continue until the government prevails.

"They were making allies with other groups against the government," al-Maliki aide Sami al-Askari said of the Sadrists. "In parliament, they opposed the government. But in the south, their opposition came with weapons."
___
Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.
[source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080407/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq on 04/07/2008

[56] By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer Mon May 26, 3:17 PM ET [05/26/2008][source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080526/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq on 5/26/2008]
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi military on Monday displayed a group of weeping teenagers who said they had been forced into training for suicide bombings by a Saudi militant in the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Four of the six boys were lined up for the media at police headquarters in the northern city of Mosul, where they said they had been training for a month to start suicide operations in early June.
The United Nations and the Iraqi and U.S. militaries say they fear that al-Qaida in Iraq is increasingly trying to use youths in attacks to avoid the heightened security measures that have dislodged the group from Baghdad and surrounding areas.
The youths, three wearing track suits and one with a torn white T-shirt, began crying as they were led into the police station.
"The Saudi insurgent threatened to rape our mothers and sisters, destroy our houses and kill our fathers if we did not cooperate with him," one of the youths, who were not identified, told reporters in Mosul, where security forces are cracking down on al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents.
Iraqi soldiers acting on tips found the youths, who ranged in age from 14 to 18, in the basement of an abandoned house on Monday after the Saudi militant who was training them was killed in military operations last week, deputy Interior Minister Kamal Ali Hussein said.

In April, the U.N. said rising numbers of Iraqi youths have been recruited into militias and insurgent groups, including some serving as suicide bombers. It called them "silent victims of the continued violence." There have also been several recent suicide bombings by women.

The U.S. military released several videos in February seized from suspected al-Qaida in Iraq hideouts that showed militants training children who appeared as young as 10 to kidnap and kill. The U.S. military said at the time that al-Qaida in Iraq was teaching teenage boys how to build car bombs and go on suicide missions.

Children have also been used as decoys in Iraq.
Mosul is believed to be al-Qaida in Iraq's last urban base of operations. U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a crackdown this month in the city of nearly 2 million people 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The boys were found during a raid in the insurgent stronghold of Sumar, one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in southeastern Mosul. Police declined to say what charges they could face pending a final investigation.
Kamal said they came from different social backgrounds, one the son of a female physician, another the son of a college professor and four who are member of poor vendors' families.

"They were trained how to carry out suicide attacks with explosive belts and a date was fixed for each one of them," Kamal said.
The U.S. military in northern Iraq said American forces were not involved and had no information about the arrests.

The Iraqi government is trying to assert control over the country with the Mosul offensive and two operations against Shiite extremists, in Baghdad's Sadr City district and the southern city of Basra.

A U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded Monday in a roadside bombing in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad. The military announced that another soldier in Baghdad died due to non-combat related causes on Saturday. It did not elaborate.

The deaths raise to at least 4,082 the number of American service members who have died in Iraq since the war started in March 2003.
Despite a cease-fire by militia fighters loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a roadside bomb struck a U.S. mine-resistant armored vehicle on the southern edge of Sadr City, engulfing it in flames and smoke. The U.S. military said there were no casualties.

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted the house of the local leader of a U.S.-allied Sunni group that has turned against al-Qaida in Iraq, killing four people, including a policeman, two guards and a civilian, and wounding four others, police officials said.

There was a rare roadside bombing near an Iraqi army checkpoint on the heavily guarded road that leads to the Baghdad International Airport. An Iraqi soldier and four civilians were wounded, police said.

[57] By ISHTIAQ MAHSUD, Associated Press Writer 5 minutes ago[06/16/2008][source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080616/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_mosque_blast on 6/16/2008]
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - A bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing at least four people and wounding five others, police said.

The bomb exploded near the outer wall of the mosque in downtown Dera Ismail Khan as worshippers were leaving after evening prayers, said Abdul Ghafoor, a local police officer.

The blast shattered the mosque's front wall and damaged its dome. Twisted fans hung from the ceiling inside the mosque and prayer mats were scattered across the bloodstained floor.

Police cordoned off the area as people sifted debris looking for survivors. An Associated Press reporter saw a crater near the shattered wall where the bomb went off.
Ghafoor said four people had died in the bombing and five were wounded, three seriously.

Pakistan is struggling to combat a tide of Islamic militancy particularly in its volatile northwest. It has a history of violence between the majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims.

While most members of the two sects co-exist peacefully, violence by extremist elements is common.

Last month, gunmen opened fire on a car killing four Shiite Muslims in Dera Ismail Khan. Hours later, a Sunni was shot dead elsewhere in the city.
The Sunni-Shiite schism originates in a dispute dating back to the seventh century over who was the true heir to Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

[58] By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer 9 minutes ago [6/17/2008][source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080617/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq on 6/17/2008]
BAGHDAD - A car bomb ripped through a busy commercial street in a Shiite area of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 51 people and wounding scores more in the deadliest blast in the capital in more than three months.
Many victims were trapped in their apartments by a raging fire that engulfed at least one building, according to police and Interior Ministry officials, who also said about 75 people were wounded. Stunned survivors stumbled through the rubble-strewn street, which was filled with the smoke from burning vehicles, witnesses said.

The attack shattered the relative calm in the capital since a May 11 cease-fire ended seven weeks of fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Shiite militants in the Sadr City district. Ironically, it came the same day the Iraqi parliament announced plans to move outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone.

Angry survivors blamed the army and police for failing to protect them.
"The blast occurred because there wasn't any security presence by the Iraqi army or police at the scene, not even any checkpoint," said Khalid Hassan, 40, who suffered shrapnel wounds and burns. "People were confused, upset and running in all directions. We are all victims of terrorism and carelessness."
The bomber struck about 5:45 p.m. near a market and bus stop in the Hurriyah district of west Baghdad, scene of some of the most horrific sectarian massacres during the wave of Sunni-Shiite slaughter in 2006.

Kamil Jassim, a witness, said the blast set fire to a generator used by residents and shopkeepers to supplement city power. The fire quickly spread to a two-story building containing both shops and apartments where many of the victims were found.

Haider Fadhil, a 25-year-old metal worker, said he was shopping with two friends when the blast hurled him to the ground.
"When I regained consciousness, I found that my left hand and leg were broken," Fadhil said from his bed in a nearby hospital, where anguished families wept as they jammed the waiting rooms. "Thanks be to God for saving me and thanks to those who carried me in their pickup truck to the hospital."

The blast was the deadliest attack in Baghdad since March 6, when a pair of bombs detonated in the mostly Shiite district of Karradah, killing 68 people and wounding about 120.

No group claimed responsibility for Tuesday's blast, and both Sunni and Shiite militants have used car bombs in their attacks.
U.S. officials said American soldiers were attending a meeting of a neighborhood action committee about 150 yards from the blast site but it was unclear if they were the target.

"This is a senseless and tragic event," said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a spokesman for the U.S. military's Baghdad command. "What's to gain by terrorizing the population? ...This is simply an evil act."

U.S. commanders have warned repeatedly that the relative peace in Baghdad is fragile because extremists, including al-Qaida in Iraq and Shiite militant groups, remain capable of high-profile attacks.
The Americans hope that security measures are enough to prevent extremists from mounting a sustained campaign of bombings against civilians that could provoke a return to sectarian reprisal attacks.

Despite the uncertainty, Iraqi officials have been eager to promote a sense of confidence among the war-weary Iraqi people after months of declining bloodshed in the capital.

Deputy parliamentary speaker Khalid al-Attiyah told lawmakers Tuesday that they will move from the convention center in the Green Zone to the Saddam Hussein-era National Assembly building for their next legislative term, which begins Sept. 1.

The move could help parliament affirm its independence from the Americans and shed its public image as an institution isolated from its people inside the U.S.-protected enclave.

"There is progress in the security situation and the reconstruction has been completed of the new building," al-Attiyah said, adding the new accommodations will be large enough for the full 275-member legislature and staff members.
The National Assembly building was used by the Iraqi parliament under Saddam and is located in the Allawi district, a religiously mixed area about 500 yards from the blast walls that form the perimeter of the Green Zone on the west side of the Tigris River.

It was looted and burned during the chaos that followed the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces in April 2003. But al-Attiyah said its reconstruction has been completed.

Also Tuesday, an Iraqi state television journalist, Muhieddin Abdul-Hamid, was shot to death near his apartment in the northern city of Mosul, officials said.
Colleagues said the 50-year-old journalist was a local anchor for the TV station in Mosul, the focus of an ongoing U.S.-Iraqi operation against the last major urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Excluding Abdul-Hamid, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 129 journalists and 50 media support workers have been killed since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

In other violence Tuesday, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck a Baghdad checkpoint manned by U.S.-allied fighters, killing one and wounding four, officials said.

Another suicide car bomber attacked a police checkpoint in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding 19 other people, officials said.
Gunmen also killed a senior police officer and two of his guards near Aziziyah, a Shiite area 35 miles southeast of Baghdad.
___
Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.

[59] By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer 2 minutes ago [source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080702/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_bulldozer_attack on 7/02/2008]
JERUSALEM - A Palestinian man plowed an enormous construction vehicle into cars, buses and pedestrians on a busy street Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding at least 45 before he was shot dead by security officers.

The violence, the first major attack in Jerusalem since March, wreaked havoc in the heart of downtown. Hundreds of people fled in panic through the streets as medics treated the wounded.

Three Palestinian militant groups took responsibility for the attack, but the claims could not be independently verified. Israeli police referred to the attacker as a "terrorist" acting on his own and said he was a bulldozer operator who worked in the area for a local construction firm.
The attack took place in front of a building housing the offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets. British Broadcasting Corp. footage captured the huge front loader crushing a vehicle and an off-duty soldier shooting the perpetrator in the head several times at point-blank range as onlookers screamed.

Israel's national rescue service confirmed three deaths, and the bodies lay motionless on the ground covered in plastic.

Hen Shimon, a 19-year-old soldier, said the whole scene was a "nightmare."
"I just got off the bus and I saw the tractor driving and knocking everything down in his path," she said. "Everything he saw he rammed."
Eyal Lang Ben-Hur, 16, was in a bus when the driver yelled "Get out of the vehicle! Everyone out!" People fled in a panic, he said, and the bus was hit an instant later.

Eli Mizrahi, an officer in a special anti-terror unit, said he and his partner sped to the scene on a motorcycle from the nearby Mahane Yehuda market in downtown Jerusalem. An off-duty soldier had just shot the attacker, but not killed him.

"I ran up the stairs (of the vehicle) and, when he was still driving like crazy and trying to harm civilians, I fired at him twice more and, that's it, he was liquidated," Mizrahi told reporters.

Esther Valencia, a 52-year-old pedestrian, said she barely escaped the carnage.
"He almost hit me. Someone pushed me out of the way at the last moment. It was a miracle that I got out of there."

The attack occurred in an area where Jerusalem is building a new train system. The project has turned many parts of the city into a big construction zone.
Wednesday's attack represented a departure from militants' previous methods, which were mostly suicide bombings and shootings.
During the second Palestinian uprising, which erupted in late 2000, Jerusalem experienced dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks. The city has been largely quiet in the past three years, though sporadic attacks have persisted. In March, a Palestinian gunman entered a Jerusalem seminary and killed eight young students.

The three organizations that took responsibility for the attack included the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, which is affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The other two are the Galilee Freedom Battalion, which is suspected of being affiliated with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a fringe left-wing militant group.
The Hamas militant group, which runs the Gaza Strip and is currently maintaining a fragile cease-fire with Israel, said it did not carry out the attack but nevertheless praised it.

"We consider it as a natural reaction to the daily aggression and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank and all over the occupied lands," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Abbas aide Saeb Erekat condemned the violence.
"We condemn any attacks that target civilians, whether Israelis or Palestinians, and President Abbas has been consistent in his position to condemn any attacks, including the one in west Jerusalem, that target civilians," he said.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev called the attack a "senseless act of murderous violence."

Despite the Palestinian claims of responsibility, Israeli police chief Dudi Cohen said the attacker appeared to be acting alone. "It looks as if it was a spontaneous act," he said.

Major Israeli retaliation appeared unlikely given the police chief's claim that the attacker acted alone and the Jewish state's desire to maintain the Gaza cease-fire and to support Abbas' security forces in the West Bank.
Israeli police said the man, a father of two children, was an Arab in his 30s from east Jerusalem and had a criminal background. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said he had worked as a construction worker on the railway project.
Later Wednesday, five military vehicles gathered outside the man's two-story home in east Jerusalem. Family elders sat on the balcony, and several dozen villagers sat in front of the home.

Friends of the family identified the attacker as Hussam Dwikat. They said the 29-year-old was a devout Muslim, but had no known ties to any militant groups.
"Everybody is in shock. When I was told what happened I started to curse Hussam because this is the first time he has done something like this," said Salayan Weyed, a friend of the attacker's wife.

In contrast to West Bank Palestinians, Arab residents of Jerusalem have full freedom to work and travel throughout Israel. About two-thirds of Jerusalem's 700,000 residents are Jews, and the rest are Palestinians who came under Israeli control when Israel captured their part of the city in 1967.

Israel's national rescue service said at least 45 people were wounded in Wednesday's attack. At one point, a paramedic lowered a screaming baby into an ambulance.

Wounded people sat dazed on the ground amid piles of broken glass and blood stains on the street. A half-dozen cars were flattened and others were overturned by the Caterpillar vehicle. A bus was overturned and another bus was heavily damaged.

A woman sprinkled water over a baby's bloodied face, a rescue worker stroked the hair of a dazed elderly pedestrian and a loved one raised the bleeding leg of a woman sitting outside the overturned bus.

Yosef Spielman, who witnessed the attack, said the construction vehicle picked up a car "like a toy."

"I was shocked. I saw a guy going crazy," he said. "All the people were running. They had no chance."

Cassia Pereira, office manager for AP's Jerusalem bureau, watched the attack unfold outside her window.

"I saw him but it was too late and there was nothing to do," she said, with tears in her eyes. "I was in panic I couldn't say a word ... I realized something was not normal, something was wrong."

The mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, said his daughter was on one of the buses rammed by the attacker, but she was not injured.
"To our regret the attackers do not cease coming up with new ways to strike at the heart of the Jewish people here in Jerusalem," Lupolianski said.
___
Associated Press Writer Aron Heller contributed to this report.

[60] By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 54 minutes ago [source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080707/ap_on_re_as/afghan_explosion on 7/08/2008]

KABUL, Afghanistan - A car bomb ripped through the front wall of the Indian Embassy in central Kabul on Monday, killing 40 people in the deadliest attack in Afghanistan's capital since the fall of the Taliban, officials said.

The massive explosion detonated by a suicide bomber damaged two embassy vehicles entering the compound, near where dozens of Afghan men line up every morning to apply for visas.

The embassy is located on a busy, tree-lined street near Afghanistan's Interior Ministry in the city center. Several nearby shops were damaged or destroyed in the blast, and smoldering ruins covered the street. The explosion rattled much of the Afghan capital.

Shortly after the attack, a woman ran out of a Kabul hospital screaming, crying and hitting her face with both of her hands. Her two children, a girl named Lima and a boy named Mirwais, had been killed.

"Oh my God!" the woman screamed. "They are both dead."

Najib Nikzad, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said the blast killed 40 people. Earlier, Abdullah Fahim, the spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said the explosion killed at least 28 people and wounded 141, but an update of the number of injured was not immediately available. The Interior Ministry said six police officers and three embassy guards were among those killed.

In Delhi, India's foreign minister said four Indians, including the military attache and a diplomat, were killed in the attack. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India will send a high-level delegation to Kabul in coming days.

The blast also killed five Afghan security guards at the nearby Indonesian Embassy, where windows were shattered and doors and gates broken. Two diplomats were slightly wounded, Indonesia's foreign ministry said.

In Washington, Gordon Johndroe, a White House national security spokesman, offered condolences to the victims.

"Extremists continue to show their disregard for all human life and their willingness to kill fellow Muslims as well as others," he said. "The United States stands with the people of Afghanistan and India as we face this common enemy."

Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in violence from Taliban militants in recent months. Insurgents are packing bombs with more explosives than ever, one reason why more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in June than any month since the 2001 invasion.

Still, a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied that the militants were behind the bombing. The Taliban tend to claim responsibility for attacks that inflict heavy tolls on international or Afghan troops, and deny responsibility for attacks that primarily kill Afghan civilians.

"Whenever we do a suicide attack, we confirm it," Mujahid said. "The Taliban did not do this one."

The 8:30 a.m. explosion was the deadliest attack in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and the deadliest in Afghanistan since a suicide bomber killed more than 100 people at a dog fighting competition in Kandahar province in February.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing and said it was carried out by militants trying to rupture the friendship between Afghanistan and India.

The Interior Ministry, meanwhile, hinted that the attack was carried out with help from Pakistan's intelligence service, saying that "terrorists have carried out this attack in coordination and consultation with some of the active intelligence circles in the region."

In Delhi, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the attack would not deter the mission from "fulfilling our commitments to the government and people of Afghanistan." The Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said Pakistan condemned the attack and terrorism in all forms.

Afghanistan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta visited the embassy shortly after the attack, ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmed Baheen said.

"India and Afghanistan have a deep relationship between each other. Such attacks of the enemy will not harm our relations," Spanta told the embassy staff, according to Baheen.

The Indian ambassador and his deputy were not inside the embassy at the time of the blast, Baheen said.

Militants have frequently attacked Indian offices and projects around Afghanistan since launching an insurgency after the ouster of the Taliban at the end of the 2001. Many Taliban militants have roots in Pakistan, which has long had a troubled relationship with India.

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the Islamic militia was supported by Pakistan, India's arch-rival. Pakistan today remains wary of strengthening ties between Afghanistan and India.

The United Nations' envoy to Afghanistan said that "in no culture, no country, and no religion is there any excuse or justification for such acts."

"The total disregard for innocent lives is staggering and those behind this must be held responsible," the envoy, Kai Eide, said.

The U.N. sent an e-mail to its staff advising them to stay off Kabul's roads because of reports that a second suicide car bomber was in the city.

The embassy attack was the sixth suicide bombing in Kabul this year. Insurgent violence has killed more than 2,200 people - mostly militants - in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count of official figures.

The embassy in the last several days had beefed up security by installing large, dirt-filled blast walls often used by military forces.

While Afghanistan has seen increasing violence in recent months, Kabul has been largely spared the random bomb attacks that Taliban militants use in their fight against Afghan and international troops.

In September 2006, a suicide bomber near the gates of the Interior Ministry killed 12 people and wounded 42 others. After that blast, additional guards and barriers were posted on the street.

In two separate bombings Monday against police convoys in the country's south, seven officers were killed and 10 others were wounded, officials said.

In Uruzgan province, a roadside bomb killed four police on patrol and wounded seven others, said provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat.

In the Zhari district of Kandahar, another roadside blast killed three officers and wounded three others, said district chief Niyaz Mohammad Sarhadi.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force, meanwhile, said one of its soldiers died in an attack in the south on Sunday.

Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

See Part Seven

[iris89]

Part Seven

[61] 3 killed in explosions on buses in China [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-webbus21-2008jul21,0,5977714.story?track=ntothtml ]
Authorities blame 'sabotage' as at least two blasts target buses in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province. Security is tightened at airports and train stations across the country.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 21, 2008
BEIJING -- Explosions this morning in the southern Chinese city of Kunming killed at least three people and injured 13 in what appears to have been a coordinated terrorist attack.

One explosion at 7:05 a.m. on a commuter bus was followed by another an hour later on a bus downtown.

Chinese police have not yet given any explanation other than to say that the attacks were "sabotage," according to the New China News Agency.

There were unconfirmed reports in Chinese state media that there had been a third explosion.

Passengers on the second bus told a local newspaper, Life Daily News, that they saw two men leave an unidentified object on board.

"Later two men got off the bus, then it exploded. One-third of the bus was seriously damaged. The fire wasn't very big, but the smoke was dense and there were strong odors," the newspaper reported. One person was killed in the second bus explosion, and two in the earlier one.

An explosion on a bus in Shanghai in May killed three people in an attack that Chinese authorities blamed on a passenger carrying flammable liquids. Few public details have been released about the incident. Terrorist attacks are relatively rare in China.

Authorities have announced in recent months roundups of Islamic separatists who they say planned to disrupt the Beijing Olympics. Security has been tightened at airports and train stations across the country. Commuters in Beijing are screened as they enter the subway and Shanghai is also installing a surveillance system in its subways.

[62] A Palestinian driving a backhoe loader rams a bus and cars, injuring six Israelis before he is fatally shot. [source - www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/....?track=ntothtml ]
By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 23, 2008

JERUSALEM -- About 10 hours before Sen. Barack Obama checked into the King David, Avi Levi was driving by the hotel and felt a construction vehicle strike the rear of his No. 13 bus.

He stopped, thinking it was just an accident on the heavily guarded route past West Jerusalem's classiest hotels and shops, an area dotted with construction sites.

But within seconds, the yellow backhoe loader's massive shovel was smashing the side of his bus like a battering ram, nearly tipping it over and showering 30 screaming passengers with glass.

It was the start of a rampage Tuesday that ended with six Israelis injured and the Palestinian assailant dead, shot by a pistol-toting Jewish settler and a border policeman in front of scores of terrified onlookers.

The dead man, wearing shorts and the white skullcap typical of an observant Muslim, was identified as a 22-year-old Jerusalem resident employed for years driving construction vehicles. Israeli authorities called it a terrorist attack but said he may have acted alone, inspired by a similar rampage three weeks ago.

Obama, speaking from Jordan before his arrival here amid heightened police vigilance, deplored the attack as "a reminder of what Israelis have courageously lived with on a daily basis for far too long." He added, "I will always support Israel in confronting terrorism and pursuing everlasting peace and security."

In fact, it's been years since the second Palestinian uprising petered out and most Israelis stopped fearing suicide bombings on buses and in crowded cafes. The army has sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip more effectively. But Tuesday's rampage appears to be part of a new threat. Like two deadly attacks on the Jewish side of the city this year, it was carried out by a Palestinian whose residence in mostly Arab East Jerusalem gave him license to travel throughout Israel.

And as in the previous attack, in which three Israelis were killed July 2, the weapon was a heavy construction vehicle to which the perpetrator apparently had access through his job.

"They keep on inventing ways to attack us," Mayor Uri Lupolianski told reporters, after hearing the nearby commotion and rushing to the scene. "Every work tool has become a weapon."

The string of attacks has raised tensions between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, the city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lupolianski joined Public Security Minister Avi Dichter in demanding that the latest assailant's home be demolished as a deterrent. The mayor also called for "rethinking" the kinds of jobs Jerusalem Palestinians are allowed to hold.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem after capturing it, along with the West Bank, in the 1967 Middle East War. The 208,000 Palestinians who live there make up about one-third of the city's population but lack citizenship. Many identify with the Palestinian struggle to achieve statehood and regain control of East Jerusalem.

Police said Tuesday's attacker, identified as Ghassan abu Teir, apparently drove the loader from a construction site in Jerusalem's upscale Yemin Moshe district, blocks from the scene of destruction.

Seeking to prevent anti-Israeli demonstrations, police went to Um Tuba, his home village on the city's southern edge, and forbade his relatives to set up a traditional mourning tent.

Family members interrogated by the police said Ghassan had not been involved in politics or militant Islam, even though a relative from the same village, Mohammed abu Teir, was elected to the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006 as a member of the militant Islamic group Hamas.

The lawmaker, now imprisoned, is well known in Israel, where he was lamthingyed on television because of an orange-dyed beard worn as a symbol of his fundamentalist Islamic beliefs. He was arrested two summers ago in a broad Israeli crackdown on Hamas after the group's capture of an Israeli soldier, who is still being held.

Hamas' spokesman in Gaza praised Tuesday's attack. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas' U.S.-backed rival who is leading peace talks with Israel, condemned it. The attack occurred shortly before 2 p.m. as Abbas was meeting a few blocks away with Israeli President Shimon Peres.

With passengers screaming, "Open the doors!" and the shovel swinging toward his head, Levi turned his bus abruptly onto a side street and escaped further damage. The loader kept moving along King David Street for about 500 yards, zigzagging to attack pedestrians and smash a pickup truck and three sedans.

"The first thing he tried was to lower the shovel on a female pedestrian right near me," said Moshe Feiglin, a passerby. "There was a boom when the shovel hit the street. He missed by centimeters."

One car was flipped on its roof and its driver suffered a severe leg injury. Rescue workers said five other people sustained less serious injuries and 23 were treated for shock.

Bentzi Gottesman, a shopkeeper, said he pulled pieces of glass from a 6-month-old boy's head, leg and hand wounds after carrying him from the bus and calming his hysterical mother.

As the loader targeted cars stopped at a traffic light during the sweltering midafternoon heat, Yaki Asael, a 53-year-old West Bank settler and former army platoon commander, emerged coolly from the panicked crowd and fired his pistol upward into the cabin.

"After a few shots, I saw the driver shake and fall, and then he didn't move," said Moshe Shimshi, a passerby.

But when border policeman Amal Ganem arrived at the scene and also fired into the cabin, a man nearby shouted, "He's not dead! He's not dead!" Ganem moved to another side of the loader for a better angle and fired again.

The driver was found sprawled backward in the cabin, which had been punctured by 20 bullets before the loader came to rest on a sidewalk outside the King Solomon Hotel.

[e-mail]

[63] By CHARLES HUTZLER, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 40 minutes ago [source - news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080804/ap_on_re_as/china_attack on 8/042008]
BEIJING - Two men rammed a truck into a group of jogging policemen and tossed explosives, killing 16 officers Monday in an attack in a restive province of western China just days before the Beijing Olympics, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Though it happened on the far side of the country - near the Afghan-Pakistan border - the attack came as security forces were on alert for the Games, which open Friday. It was among the deadliest and most brazen attacks in years in Xinjiang province, site of a sporadically violent rebellion by local Muslims against Chinese rule.

About 20 people upset at having been evicted from their homes staged a brief demonstration near Tiananmen Square, Beijing's heavily guarded political center. Uniformed police quickly surrounded the group until members of a neighborhood committee came and pulled the protesters away, scuffling with some.

In the Xinjiang attack, the two men drove a dump truck into the group of border patrol police officers as they passed the Yiquan Hotel during a routine 8 a.m. jog in the city of Kashgar, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

After the truck hit an electrical pole, the pair jumped out, ignited homemade explosives and "also hacked the policemen with knives," Xinhua said.
Fourteen died on the spot and two others en route to a hospital, and at least 16 officers were wounded, Xinhua said.

Police arrested the two attackers, one of whom was injured in the leg, the report said.

Authorities closed off streets, sealed the Nationalities Hospital down the street from the explosion, and ordered people to stay inside, said a man answering phones at the hospital duty office.

Local government officials declined comment Monday. An officer in the district police department said an investigation was launched.

Kashgar, or Kashi in Chinese, is a tourist city that was once an oasis trading center on the Silk Road caravan routes and lies 80 miles from the border with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. Its mountainous, remote environs have allegedly provided cover for terrorist training camps, one of which Chinese police raided early last year.

Chinese security forces have been on edge for months, citing a number of foiled plots by Muslim separatists and a series of bombings around China in the run-up to the Olympics. Last week, a senior military commander said radical Muslims who are fighting for what they call an independent East Turkistan in Xinjiang posed the single greatest threat to the games.

A spokesman for Beijing's Olympic organizing committee said he did not have enough information to comment on the bombings. But he said security arrangements were being increased around the Olympic venues.

"We've made preparations for all possible threats," the spokesman, Sun Weide, told reporters. "We believe, with the support of the government, with the help of the international community, we have the confidence and the ability to host a safe and secure Olympic Games."

A Chinese counterterrorism expert, Li Wei of the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, said the attack was likely the work of local sympathizers, rather than trained terrorists who sneaked across the border into China.

Xinhua said that Xinjiang's police department earlier received intelligence reports about possible terrorist attacks between Aug. 1 and 8 by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement. The movement is the name o***roup that China and the U.S. say is a terrorist organization, but Chinese authorities often use the label for a broad number of violent separatist groups.

In Xinjiang, a local Turkic Muslim people, the Uighurs (WEE'-gurs), have chafed under Chinese rule, fully imposed after the communists took power nearly 60 years ago. Occasionally violent attacks in the 1990s brought an intense response from Beijing, which has stationed crack paramilitary units in the area and clamped down on unregistered mosques and religious schools that officials said were inciting militant action.

Uighurs have complained that the suppression has aggravated tensions in Xinjiang, making Uighurs feel even more threatened by an influx of Chinese and driving some to flee to Pakistan and other areas where they then have readier access to extremist ideologies.

One militant group, the Turkistan Islamic Party, pledged in a video that surfaced on the Internet last month to "target the most critical points related to the Olympics." The group is believed to be based across the border in Pakistan, with some of its core members having received training from al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban, according to terrorism experts.

Terrorism analysts and Chinese authorities, however, have said that with more than 100,000 soldiers and police guarding Beijing and other Olympic co-host cities, terrorists were more likely to attack less-protected areas.

[64] By Augustine Anthony 47 minutes ago [source - news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080821/wl_nm/pakistan_violence_dc on 8/21/2008]

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside Pakistan's main defence industry complex on Thursday as workers were leaving at the end of their shift, killing nearly 50 people, police said.

Pakistani Taliban [[Sunnis]] claimed responsibility.
Pakistan is on the front line of the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism and al Qaeda-linked militants have launched a wave of attacks on the security forces over the past year, bombing military camps, patrols and transport.

The violence combined with political uncertainty has helped undermine investor confidence and send the country's financial markets on a downward spiral.
"There were bodies lying everywhere and wounded people soaked in blood were screaming for help," said Shah, the manager of a petrol station near the industrial complex in Wah, 30 km (20 miles) northwest of Islamabad.

"Many of the wounded were either without legs or hands. I could see body parts hanging on trees," he said.

A Pakistani Taliban spokesman said the blasts were retaliation for military operations against militants in the northwestern region of Bajaur, on the Afghan border.

"If it doesn't stop we will continue such attacks," Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar said by telephone.

Police said nearly 50 people were killed and about 70 wounded in the blasts near the heavily guarded complex, the hub of Pakistan's defence industry where about 25,000 workers produce explosives, ordnance and weapons in about 15 factories.
Hundreds of workers were milling about outside the complex at the end of their shift when the bombers struck.

GOVERNMENT VOW
One of the bombers blew himself up outside the complex's main gate while the second detonated his explosives at almost the same time near another gate, said police officer Sardar Shahbaz.

Soldiers cordoned off the area and kept reporters back as ambulances arrived to take away casualties, a witness said.

Pakistani Taliban said last week they were behind a bomb attack on an air force bus in the city of Peshawar which killed 13 people. The blast was in retaliation for military operations in the northwest, a militant spokesman said.
Since July last year, Pakistan has suffered a wave of militant violence, particularly in the northwest, in which hundreds of people have been killed including many security force members.

Violence subsided when a coalition government that came to power after a February election opened talks with militants but it picked up again after their top leader, Baitullah Mehsud, suspended the talks in June.

This week's resignation of President Pervez Musharraf, under threat of impeachment from the ruling coalition, has raised questions about the government's commitment to tackle violence.

Although Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism was deeply unpopular, the government has vowed to keep up efforts to fight the militants.
But the first days since Musharraf's departure have seen squabbling among the ruling parties, raising concern about the government's ability to deal with security and economic problems and bring political stability.

Share and currency markets have dropped in the last two days after initial gains on Musharraf's exit. Pakistan's stock market, which rose for six years to 2007, and was the best performing in Asia in that period, has fallen about 27 percent this year.

(Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Jerry Norton)

[65] 3 Britons convicted of conspiracy to bomb targets
They are among eight accused in an alleged plot to use liquid explosives to blow up U.S.-bound airliners. The accused ringleader is acquitted.
By Janet Stobart and Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 9, 2008 [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-terror9-2008sep09,0,7060837.story?track=ntothtml]

LONDON -- Jurors convicted three young Britons on Monday of conspiracy to commit murder in a trial involving an alleged plot to blow up airplanes bound for North America, but they acquitted the accused ringleader and failed to reach a verdict on four other suspects.

The jury did not reach a verdict on a central allegation of the case: that the suspects planned to explode liquid bombs on seven transatlantic flights. Investigators have called the plot Al Qaeda's most ambitious since Sept. 11, 2001. The alleged plot resulted in worldwide restrictions on liquids in carry-on luggage.

Nevertheless, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith declared that law enforcement officials had "saved countless lives" by disrupting the group on the basis of surveillance conducted by British, U.S. and Pakistani investigators. She welcomed the guilty verdicts for Abdullah Ahmed Ali, 27; Assad Sarwar, 28, and Tanvir Hussain, 27, all of Pakistani descent.

But other officials expressed disappointment, and prosecutors must now decide whether to retry four suspects, who although not convicted Monday remain in jail because they pleaded guilty to lesser charges of conspiring to cause a public nuisance. Prosecutors also have the option of seeking to retry all seven on the charge of targeting planes.

The jury deliberated for about 56 hours with time off for August vacations. The evidence included clandestine video and intercepts of the suspects in a hide-out as they filmed "martyrdom" statements, worked with explosives components, singled out flights and discussed bypassing airport security, prosecutors said.

Defendants allegedly plotted to sneak the liquid explosives aboard planes in sports drinks and other containers, and then assemble and ignite bombs that would explode when the planes were over the ocean.

The jury acquitted the alleged ringleader of the plot, Mohammed Gulzar, 27, who did not make a suicide video. Prosecutors accused him of being a senior operative who arrived from Pakistan via South Africa to take charge of the attack in its final stages.

Jurors found that Ali, Sarwar and Hussain conspired to bomb "unknown" targets, apparently based on evidence that they scouted refineries and other sites around London in addition to flights bound for the United States and Canada.

"Not to get a conviction on plotting to murder on airplanes is a bit hard to swallow," said a British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. "There were timetables, suicide videos, the known preference for Al Qaeda to focus on airplanes.

"Apparently juries need stronger evidence than they are getting. But when you are physically watching young Muslims known to be extremists recording suicide videos, there comes a point in a plot when you have to interfere, and run with what evidence you can get," the official said.

The defendants denied any violent intent despite the videos they made that resembled the farewell messages filmed by suicide bombers who killed 52 people on the transport system here July 7, 2005.

During the five-month trial in Woolwich Crown Court, the defendants testified that they planned only to set off a harmless device at a terminal used by U.S. airlines to protest mistreatment of Muslims.

Also, government scientists who conducted tests for the prosecution had difficulty igniting the hydrogen peroxide mixture found in police searches, raising questions about its deadliness, officials said. And there was the perennial obstacle to prosecuting terrorism cases in Western courtrooms: Intelligence frequently cannot be used as evidence.

Within months of the arrests in August 2006, Western anti-terrorism officials said they had put together a detailed portrait of the plot. Six defendants traveled to Al Qaeda compounds in Pakistan in 2005 and 2006 to train with explosives experts led by Abu Ubaida al Masri, the network's operations chief at the time and alleged mastermind of the London bombings, they said.

Rashid Rauf, a Briton living in Pakistan, allegedly arranged travel and training, and was the hub for communications for the alleged plot.

Pakistani police arrested Rauf at the urging of U.S. investigators who worried that a major plot was gathering steam as the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks neared, according to Western officials. In contrast, British authorities say they wanted to continue the surveillance to gather more evidence and detect any additional plotters.

But news of Rauf's arrest led the defendants to speed up preparations. The British official recalled the reaction at a meeting of top anti-terrorism officials here when police reported they had heard a man recording an apparent martyrdom video in the bugged house.

"A tremor went around the room," he said. "It was believed they were on their way to martyrdom."

Nonetheless, the jury heard little about possible Al Qaeda connections or training in Pakistan because the allegations involved activity outside Britain and were based largely on intelligence from several countries, officials say. Scotland Yard hoped to question Rauf, but he escaped from Pakistani police shortly before his expected extradition.

Restrictive rules also excluded evidence potentially linking the case to the 2005 plots against London's public transportation system. The British official said phone records revealed extensive contact between Ali and Muktar Said Ibrahim, who was later convicted of leading a failed follow-up bombing attempt on the transport system on July 21, 2005.

Coming soon after a trial in which three alleged accomplices of the 2005 bombers were acquitted, the verdict may reinforce a sense that some Britons have that their government exaggerates the threat. The jury's decision may also suggest sympathy for Muslims who say extremism results from alienation and injustice.

[e-mail]

Stobart reported from London and Rotella from Madrid.

[66] Hi Everyone

Members of Islam, the Sunnis, are at it again - fulfilling their lust for violence, greed, and hate even if they must give their own lives in the pursuit of the lust for violence.

Bombs kill at least 35, Iraqis say
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer Christopher Torchia, Associated Press Writer - 45 mins ago
[source - news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080915/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq ]

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber blew herself up Monday among police officers who were celebrating the release of a comrade from U.S. custody, killing at least 22 people, Iraqi officials said. Separate bombings in Iraq killed 13 other people.
The suicide attack happened in Diyala, a province northeast of Baghdad where Sunni insurgents have carried out persistent attacks despite security gains elsewhere in the country. The female bomber targeted the home of a police commissioner who had been detained by American troops for allegedly cooperating with the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim al-Rubaie, the military commander in Diyala, said most of the 22 fatalities were police and that 33 people were wounded in the evening attack in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. Two police captains and three lieutenant colonels were among the dead, said a police officer who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
The U.S. military confirmed that the bomber was a woman but gave a lower casualty toll, saying 17 Iraqis were killed, including the city's deputy chief of police, and eight other people were wounded.

Al-Rubaie said police had gathered to celebrate Iftar, the meal that breaks the sunrise-to-sunset fast during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, with Adnan Shukr al-Timimi, a police commissioner who was held at U.S.-run Camp Bucca, a detention center in southern Iraq. Al-Timimi, who had invited friends and relatives to a banquet, and his parents and two children were among the dead, a hospital official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Al-Rubaie also said the attacker was a woman. Insurgents are increasingly turning to women for suicide attacks because they can conceal explosives more easily under long garments and evade searches by male security guards, and possibly because the male pool of suicide recruits is smaller than in the early days of the war.

In a similar attack on Aug. 24, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a celebration to welcome home an Iraqi detainee released from U.S. custody, killing at least 25 people. The attack occurred inside one of several tents set up outside a house in the Abu Ghraib area on Baghdad's western outskirts, according to residents and police.

The U.S. military said Monday that it had released 1,167 detainees in Iraq over the first two weeks of Ramadan, and that projections for releases in the third week "are more ambitious and assume no delays or unexpected interruptions to the release process."

In a statement, the military said there were about 18,900 detainees in detention, down from a high of 26,000 in November 2007.
In Baghdad, a double car bombing struck a busy commercial district, killing 13 people in one of the deadliest attacks in the capital in weeks. Iraqi officials said the explosives-laden cars were parked between a passport office and a courthouse when they blew up almost simultaneously in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Karradah.

Encouraged by security gains, authorities several months ago lifted a ban on parking vehicles in the area that had been imposed to prevent such attacks, although the buildings remained surrounded by concrete walls for protection.
Police and an Interior Ministry official said the dead were civilians. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information, said 35 people were wounded and dozens of cars were burned or damaged.

The U.S. military blamed the Baghdad attacks on al-Qaida in Iraq, which has been severely weakened by military campaigns but retains the ability to carry out devastating strikes. Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the No. 2 American commander in Iraq, said key measures of insurgent violence today are about 80 percent lower than one year ago but cautioned that it would be a mistake to push the U.S.-trained Iraqi army and police into a leading security role before they are ready.

The attacks came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad to meet Iraqi officials and preside over Tuesday's handover ceremony to mark the transition of command of U.S. forces in Iraq.
Also Monday, Iraq's chief government spokesman said Iraq now needs less foreign aid and funds than in the past and dismissed criticism from some U.S. politicians that Iraq is not sharing enough of the burden of security and reconstruction.

"What we need now is expertise and training programs rather than funds," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. "I think it is unreasonable that someone sitting in Washington can talk about this issue, without understanding the volume of difficulties we are facing on the ground here."
Lawmakers in Washington have called for Baghdad to pay more for its own reconstruction, which has been heavily supported by American taxpayers.

[67] Al Qaeda suspected of Pakistan's Marriott bombing
By Kamran Haider Kamran Haider - 1 hr 43 mins ago, 9/21/2008 [source - news.yahoo.com/story//nm/20080921/ts_nm/pakistan_blast_dc on 9/21/2008]
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The suicide truck bomb attack that killed at least 53 people at the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital on Saturday evening bore the hallmarks of an al Qaeda operation, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
Searchers combing the burnt shell of the hotel found more charred bodies the morning after the blast that reduced the Marriott to an inferno.
The Czech ambassador, and an American and German national, were among those killed, while some 271 were wounded in the devastating blast, according to senior government officials.

Most newspapers estimated the toll would rise to 60.
Internal security in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country vital to the war against al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups, has deteriorated at an alarming rate over the past two years.

The bombing bore the signs of an attack by al Qaeda or an affiliate, U.S. and Pakistan intelligence officials said.

"The sophistication of the blast shows it's the work of al Qaeda," a Pakistani intelligence officer told Reuters.

Another officer noted similarities with a truck bomb attack on the Federal Investigation Agency's office in the eastern city of Lahore that killed 20 people in March.

A civilian government led by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was sworn in six months ago, after nearly nine years of rule by former army chief Pervez Musharraf, and is faced with the mounting militant challenge an economy on the verge of collapse.

"They want to destabilize the country. They want to destabilize the democracy. They want to destroy the country economically," Gilani told journalists on Sunday.

Gilani also confirmed the death of the Czech envoy.
Hospital officials said less than 20 foreigners had been wounded. Most were discharged.

The attack came hours after new President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, made his first address to parliament a few hundred meters (yards) away, calling for terrorism to be rooted out.

The tightly guarded hotel, part of a U.S.-based chain and popular with foreigners, diplomats and rich Pakistanis, was engulfed in flames for hours after the blast.

Zardari made a televised address to the nation on Sunday and said the bombing was cowardly.

"This is an epidemic, a cancer in Pakistan which we will root out," he said. "We will not be afraid of these cowards."

Pakistan's army is in the midst of a major offensive against al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border, while the United States has intensified attacks on militants on the Pakistani side of the border, infuriating many Pakistanis.

"The Army stands with the nation in its resolve to defeat the forces of extremism and terrorism," army chief General Ashfaq Kayani said in a statement on Sunday.

Militants have launched bomb attacks, most on security forces in the northwest, in retaliation for the strikes on them.

"They're giving a very clear, unambiguous message that if the government pursues these policies, this is what (they) will do in response," Talat Masood, a retired general and defense analyst, said of the attack.
"They are saying 'we can strike anywhere, at any time regardless of how good you think your security is'," he said.
An al Qaeda video, released to mark the seventh anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, included a call for militants in Pakistan to step up their fight.

20-FOOT CRATER
Saturday's attack was the worst yet in the capital. It came six months after a civilian government took power and a month after it forced U.S. ally Musharraf to step down as president.

A crater up to 20 feet deep was in the road in front of the gates of the hotel, which had been bombed twice before. The Interior Ministry said the bomb probably contained more than 500 kg (1,100 lb) of explosives.

Flames and smoke poured out of the 290-room, five-storey hotel located in a high security zone. Dozens of cars were destroyed and windows shattered hundreds of meters away.

Most people inside managed to flee before the fire spread, but a Reuters photographer saw a dead body lying on a top floor balcony on Sunday morning.
Many of Islamabad's expatriate community were considering leaving, having shrugged off earlier attacks in the city.

"I'll be speaking to my boss tomorrow," said Steve, a British man who has worked in Islamabad for a Pakistani firm for several years and did not want to use his full name.

A wounded hotel security official said a truck had been stopped at the hotel's security barrier and two small explosions had gone off minutes before the main blast.

The Pakistani owner of the Marriott, one of only two five-star hotels in the city, said guards exchanged fire with the attacker before he set off the explosives at the gate.

Clemens Steinkanp, a German who was slightly wounded, said hotel security men had warned guests to move to the back of the building shortly before the bomb went off.
"Nothing happened for five minutes ... but then there was a huge blast," he said.

The United States, Britain and the U.N. secretary general condemned the bombing.
Zardari, who won a presidential election this month, left for the United States on Sunday, and is scheduled to meet Bush in New York on Tuesday before the U.N. General Assembly.

(Additional reporting by Robert Birsel, Zeeshan Haider, Aftab Borka, Augustine Anthony, Randall Mikkelsen and Tabassum Zakaria; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Jerry Norton)

[68] Iraqi police: bombs kill 19 near Shiite mosques
Thursday, October 02, 2008 12:17:56 PM
By VANESSA GERA [source - www.mail.com/Article.aspx?articlepath=APNews\General-World-News\20081002\ML-Iraq.xml&cat=world&subcat=&pageid=1 on 10/02/2008]

Iraqi police: bombs kill 19 near Shiite mosques

No group claimed responsibility, but attacks on Shiite civilians are widely associated with Sunni extremists like al-Qaida in Iraq hoping to re-ignite the sectarian conflict that pushed the nation to the brink of civil war two years ago.
In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber in a white Mercedes sedan detonated his explosives about 20 yards from a mosque in Zafaraniyah in southeastern Baghdad. He set off the bomb when Iraqi soldiers tried to stop him from approaching the building, police said. That attack killed 14 people, including three Iraqi soldiers, and injured 28, police said.
In the other attack, a suicide bomber who appeared to be in his teens detonated his explosive belt as worshippers were leaving the Rasoul mosque in the capital's eastern New Baghdad district. Five people died and 22 were injured, police said.

The attacker approached the mosque and set off the explosion as a suspicious guard tried to keep him from entering. The guard was among those killed, police said.

The police officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

A witness to the Zafaraniyah attack said he saw a white car speed toward the mosque and then heard a huge explosion that sparked a fire and heavy smoke. Ammar Hashim, 25, who runs a car parts shop nearby, rushed to the site and saw "a damaged and burned Humvee with dead and burned bodies and many injured people crying out in pain."

"Pools of blood and the smell of burned flesh was everywhere and I saw a man of about 70 bleeding and lying on the ground from injuries," said Hashim, whose brother was also injured by broken glass in his shop.
Hashim said civilian cars began to rush people to a nearby hospital before ambulances arrived.

Footage from Associated Press Television News showed slippers and shoes scattered on the bloodstained ground. The blasts blew out windows nearby and slightly damaged some shops.

The faithful at both mosques are followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's top Shiite cleric. Sunnis and other Shiite groups celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holiday earlier in the week.

Separately Thursday, a bomb in western Baghdad wounded four American soldiers, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Steven Stover said. He gave no other details, but Baghdad police said the attacker was a suicide bomber in a car who detonated his explosives on a U.S. convoy.

Two Iraqi civilians were also wounded, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
------
Associated Press writers Hamid Ahmed and Saad Abdul-Kadir contributed to this report.

[70] By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 43 minutes ago [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081006/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan on 10/05/2008]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A suicide bomber attacked a lawmaker's house in eastern Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 50, officials and a witness said.

The blast was the latest in a string of bombings against government, military and Western targets in Pakistan, an important ally in the U.S. war on terror.
It came as Pakistan insisted Monday it has not made a deal allowing the U.S. to fire missiles at militant hide-outs in Pakistani territory after The Wall Street Journal quoted President Asif Ali Zardari as suggesting otherwise.
Zardari also told the Journal that "India has never been a threat" to his country, and called Islamist militant groups in the disputed Kashmir region "terrorists."

The reported comments could undermine Zardari just a month into his presidency, especially with Pakistan's powerful military. Pakistan's army traditionally views India as its No. 1 enemy and has denied making any agreement with the U.S. on cross-border operations.

The newspaper paraphrased Zardari as saying the U.S. has been carrying out missile strikes on Pakistani soil with his government's consent.
"We have an understanding, in the sense that we're going after an enemy together," it then quotes him as saying. The interview appeared Saturday.
Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Zardari, said the journalist had read too much into Zardari's comment and that the president was talking in generalities about fighting terrorism.

"The official position is that we do not allow foreign incursions into Pakistani territory," Babar said.

The U.S. has long carried out missile strikes against suspected al-Qaida and Taliban hide-outs in the northwest, but a recent surge in the American attacks has prompted official Pakistani condemnation.
Washington complains that Pakistan is unwilling or unable to take strong action against the extremists.

In Monday's bombing in eastern Pakistan, the attacker barged into the home of legislator Rasheed Akbar Niwani, who belongs to the main opposition party.
Police officer Khan Baig said at least 15 people were killed and more than 50 others were wounded. It was not immediately clear whether Niwani was among them or why he was targeted.

"Everything has turned black here," witness Mohammad Ashraf told The Associated Press by phone moments after the blast. "I am seeing body parts lying everywhere. There are many heads lying here. There is blood everywhere."
Punjab, Pakistan's most populous and prosperous province, has largely been spared the militant-led violence that has gripped the nation's northwest, where Taliban and al-Qaida militants have bases.
On Sunday, suspected militants fired rockets near the home of the top provincial official in northwestern Pakistan.
Last week, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the house of a leading pro-government politician, killing four people.
___
Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad and Zarar Khan contributed to this report.

CONCLUSION:

As can clearly be seen, the bombing of the Oklahoma City, Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by a Catholic 'nut case'; but members of Islam would rather dwell on these anomalies than fact up to the real Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) within Islam with regard to uncalled for violence. However, members of Islam bring up these anomalies to try divert attention from their SOP of continued violence from the founding of Islam until today.

Now why is this? There are several reasons, many of them just lust for violence even if it means blowing themselves up to create violence – suicide bombings, and others in Islam do NOT want to face up to reality, but would rather try and deny it so they do NOT have to deal with it.

However, their religion is directly responsible for this violence as it permits many of their religious leaders to preach hate, greed, and a lust for violence, but fails to take action such as excommunication. In other words, Islam tacitly approves of violence ever since its violent beginning.

What does this all mean, 95% of the world’s violence could be eliminated by just disbanding Islam!


To learn more, check out the following:

[1] religioustruths.proboards59.com/ An Educational Referral Forum

[2] www.network54.com/Forum/403209 A Forum Devoted to Exposing The False Religion of Islam

[3] jude3.proboards92.com/ A Free-Speech Forum For All

[4] www.freewebs.com/iris_the_preacher My web site.

Your Friend in Christ Iris89