US Senate holds closed door session on spy scandal
(Updated at 0130 PST)
WASHINGTON: The US Senate held a rare secret session Tuesday to discuss a scandal that led to the resignation of a top White House official last week and the intelligence used to justify the 2003 war in Iraq.
Clashes erupt as Israeli troops push into Jenin
(Updated at 2320 PST)
JENIN, West Bank: At least 40 Israeli tanks and jeeps converged on the northern West Bank city of Jenin late Tuesday, sparking fierce clashes, Palestinian security sources and
witnesses said.
Two Palestinians were wounded, the sources said, while troops arrested Adib Abu Hussein, 30, a local chief of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is loosely affiliated with Palestinian leader Mahmud
Abbas's Fatah party.
Troops backed by two Apache helicopters spread quickly through the city, surrounding a building in which local Islamic Jihad leader Salah al-Saadi was holed up along with several other militants, the sources said.
Two bulldozers were also seen entering the city, which is known for its fierce resistance to the Israeli occupation.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the incursion.
US dealt a deadly October in Iraq
(Updated at 2300 PST)
BAGHDAD: The US military announced Tuesday the death of another soldier in Iraq, bringing October losses to 94, the fourth biggest monthly toll since the invasion, after a car bomb killed 18 people in the normally quiet city of Basra.
The soldier's death in a roadside bombing near the Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold of Fallujah on Monday also brought the overall US toll to at least 2,022 since the invasion in March 2003,
according to an tally.
Monday evening's car bombing in the southern port city of Basra ripped through a market packed with shoppers ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr later this week, and had apparently targeted a police patrol.
Eighteen people died and 59 were wounded according to a revised, lower toll, the province's chief medical officer Raad Daud Salman said, while governor Mohammed Mosbah al-Wali added that two suspects had been arrested.
"The owner of the car bomb was arrested early Tuesday a few hours after the attack, followed by that of the operation's planner, who is Iraqi, from Basra, and who belongs to an apostate group" of Sunni fundamentalists, he said without providing details.
The bombing was the latest of several attacks in and around Basra, an overwhelmingly Shiite city which had been far more accepting of the US-led invasion than Sunni areas north and west of the capital.
Meanwhile, the US toll paled in comparison with Iraqi civilian deaths which total an estimated 30,000 since 2003. Yet the price paid in October by Iraqi civilians and security services was less than in recent months, official figures indicated Tuesday.
At least 407 Iraqis were killed, a 42 percent drop on the 702 who died in September, according to the figures from the health, interior and defense ministries. They included 83 police and at
least 25 soldiers.
Since January, 4,780 Iraqis -- 3,314 civilians, 1,053 police and 413 soldiers -- have been killed in insurgent violence, according to the ministry figures.
In violence on Tuesday, a boy wearing an explosives belt blew himself up in the northern oil centre of a Kirkuk, wounding the city's police chief General Khattab Abdullah Areb and his driver.
Just south of Baghdad in the unrest hotspot dubbed the Triangle of Death, at least three Iraqi policemen were killed in a roadside bombing near the town of Mahmudiyah.
Loyalists of Al-Qaeda's Iraq frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi posted an Internet statement saying they had ended their investigation of two Moroccan embassy personnel held hostage and had
"referred them to trial."
The group has executed its captives in the past after finding them guilty of working for the Iraqi government and its US backers.
In the Iraqi capital, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari called on the United Nations to extend the mandate of the US-led multinational force in Iraq by one year, state television reported.
Jaafari "has asked, in a letter to the Security Council, for a one-year extension of the multinational force", Iraqia television reported.
A US unit spearheading that force said it has begun paying Iraqi contractors in dinars instead of dollars, laying a milestone as the war-torn country regains monetary sovereignty.
And US commanders moved out of a complex of palaces in Tikrit, northern Iraq, that once belonged to Saddam Hussein near his birthplace, a site Iraqi officials hope to turn into a tourist
destination.
US replacements from the 101st Airborne Division will dig in at a former Iraqi air base a few kilometers (miles) away.
Meanwhile, the Eid festival was good news for around 675 inmates who were freed in Iraq Tuesday, including about 500 from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, Iraqi and US authorities said.
One man freed from a jail run by interior ministry commandos in the capital told reporters his dream "was to leave Iraq and never come back."
An interior ministry spokesman said his services had nabbed the mastermind behind a spectacular triple suicide attack against the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in central Baghdad that killed 17
people on October 24.
"We arrested Jassem al-Thur and 13 accomplices who planned the attacks," said Colonel Ali Abu al-Hassan of the ministry's elite Wolf Brigade.
Oil-rich nations urged to boost food aid for southern Africa
(Updated at 2122 PST)
GENEVA: The UN food agency on Tuesday launched a rare appeal to oil-rich nations to fill a 157 million dollar gap in food supplies that is threatening nearly 10 million people southern Africa countries.
"No funds have yet been pledged by the oil-rich states to our current regional appeal, even though oil prices have been reaching record highs for most of this year," said World Food Programme regional director for southern Africa Mike Sackett.
Sackett said the WFP had started lobbying for more funding from Gulf states through a new office in Dubai. "They have given assistance in the past to southern Africa, we
would very much like to see them become major donors," he added.
Some 9.7 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe are in urgent need of food aid to tide them over until the next harvests in April 2006, the WFP said.
Fierce clashes as Israeli troops push into Jenin
(Updated at 2120 PST)
JENIN, West Bank: Fierce clashes erupted in the northern West Bank city of Jenin late Tuesday as at least 40 Israeli tanks and jeeps converged on the city, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
Investigation clears Canadian PM over finance
(Updated at 2040 PST)
OTTAWA: An official investigation into a political funding scandal in Canada on Tuesday cleared Prime Minister Paul Martin but criticised former premier Jean Chretien.
Gaza lead Israeli air strike has 'started war': Hamas
(Updated at 2035 PST)
GAZA CITY: Israel has "started a war" with its airstrike on northern Gaza which killed a local leader of the Hamas armed wing and another militant leader, a senior Hamas official told media.
"Israel has started a war with this assassination and it will pay a heavy price," he said speaking on condition of anonymity shortly after two militants were killed when an Israeli missile hit their car in northern Gaza.
Iraq arrests hotel blast planners
(Updated at 2030 PST)
BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces have arrested the ringleader and 13 accomplices behind suicide attacks against hotels in central Baghdad that killed 17 people on October 24, security officer said on Tuesday.
"We arrested Jassem al-Thur and 13 accomplices who planned the attacks," said Colonel Ali Abu al-Hassan of the interior ministry's Wolf Brigade.
He said the arrests took place overnight Monday-Tuesday following raids by the commando unit against "a terrorist hide-out" in Sayafiah, south of Baghdad.
Firefights with insurgent gunmen had lasted 36 hours, Hassan added, and led to the seizure of two car bombs, one of which was disguised in a garbage truck.
On October 24, triple car bomb blasts slammed the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, used by foreign journalists and contractors in the centre of the Iraqi capital.
The sundown attack came as Iraqis were set to break daylong fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.
The blasts rocked Firdus Square, where the statue of ousted president Saddam Hussein was pulled down when US troops marched into Baghdad in April 2003.
On Saturday, the defense ministry said it had arrested a suspect three days earlier in connection with the bombings.
"Many images of the Palestine and Sheraton hotels were found" in his portable telephone, the ministry said in a statement.
Material used to make false passports was also found in the man's possession, but the ministry did not say where he had been arrested.
Two Palestinian militants killed in Israel Gaza raid
(Updated at 1955 PST)
GAZA CITY: Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike targeting a car near the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a Palestinian interior ministry spokesman said.
Hundreds of Iraq prisoners freed for Muslim holiday
(Updated at 1920 PST)
BAGHDAD: Around 675 inmates were freed on Tuesday, mostly from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, ahead of a Muslim holiday, Iraqi and US authorities said.
An 18-year-old freed from a jail in the capital told reporters his dream "was to leave Iraq" forever.
The US military said: "In the spirit of Eid al-Fitr, a day of rejoicing that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, the Iraqi government requested a special release board and worked with
Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) to expedite the release of approximately 500 security detainees from Abu Ghraib."
Deputy Prime Minister Abed Motlaq al-Juburi, Justice Minister Abdul Hussein Shandal and Human Rights Minister Hashem Ashibli were on hand for the event.
"These detainees were selected for release following a careful and thorough review of their files by a special Iraqi-led review board which determined they had not committed serious crimes against Iraqi Forces, the citizens of Iraq or coalition forces," the US military said in a statement.
Excluded were those convicted of violent crimes such as bombings, torture, kidnap or murder.
The US-run jail at Abu Ghraib, also notorious during the Saddam Hussein regime, was at the heart of revelations of abuses of prisoners that seriously tarnished the reputation of the US military last year.
Elsewhere, 175 Iraqis held in interior ministry facilities were also freed ahead of the three-day Eid al-Fitr holidays which begin on Wednesday or Thursday.
G8 meeting discusses climate change
(Updated at 1850 PST)
LONDON: The world's emerging economic powers, including China and India, were encouraged Tuesday to join their Group of Eight seniors to develop sustainable clean energy sources in response to climate change.
Meeting in London, energy and environment ministers from the G8 leading industrialised nation and from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa sought common ground on the pressing issue.
"We face a timetable that is driven by nature, science and by the predicted effect of climate change on our world, not by our own negotiating processes," said British Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett, who chaired the dialogue.
"The focus of our agenda for this meeting is on energy, and on how we can make better use of technology to make the transition to a low-carbon economy," Beckett said.
"We need to make substantial reductions in emissions to achieve a stable climate."
She also stressed that the business community needed to be fully involved.
The London meeting is the product of a decision by G8 leaders at their Gleneagles summit in July, hosted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to widen the global discussion on climate change to the developing world.
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