Israel Pulls Out in Time for Air Strikes

The Courier-Mail: Israel strikes Gaza again [27sep05]

Israel strikes Gaza again
By Sakher Abu El Oun in Gaza City
27sep05

ISRAEL has launched more air strikes in Gaza despite Hamas saying it would halt rocket attacks, casting a shadow over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bid to stave off a leadership challenge.

The Israeli air force conducted six overnight raids and bombed a field used as a missile launch site by militants in an upsurge of violence that has put in doubt an expected summit between Mr Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.

Desperate to deflect accusations from his leadership rival Benjamin Netanyahu that his decision to pull troops out of Gaza a fortnight ago had bolstered the Islamist movement Hamas, Mr Sharon's camp said the air strikes and a series of mass arrests had forced the Islamists into a climbdown.

But the spike in violence appeared to deflate Mr Sharon's argument that leaving Gaza would ease friction with the Palestinians and strengthened former premier Netanyahu's hopes of ousting him from the helm of their Likud party, which was voting to decide on the date of a leadership ballot.

Gaza-based militants had fired dozens of rockets into Israel over the weekend, with the Palestinian Authority doing little to stop the barrage.

After an embarrassed Mr Sharon gave his army carte blanche to stop the attacks, Hamas said yesterday its fighters would hold their fire.

"Under our commitment to the national agreement made in Cairo to a cooling down period until the end of 2005, the movement announces it has stopped its operations from the Gaza Strip against the Zionist occupation," Mahmud Zahar, the Hamas leader in its Gaza stronghold, said.

His announcement, however, did not prevent a further six overnight raids on targets that the Israeli army said were used to make or store weapons.

Israeli jets repeatedly broke the sound barrier over Gaza City and the air force bombed an open field in northern Gaza that it said had been used to fire rockets.

Although two members of Hamas and two Islamic Jihad militants were killed in weekend air strikes, there were no reports of casualties in the latest raids.

Iraqi Police Die - British Unlawful Combatant Terrorists Arrested

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050915/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Thu Sep 15, 7:51 PM ET

...bombers inflicted another day of mayhem in the capital Thursday, killing at least 31 people in two attacks about a minute apart that targeted Iraqi police and Interior Ministry commandos. The carnage left nearly 200 people dead just two days.

A dozen bombings during a nine-hour spate of terror Wednesday killed at least 167 people and wounded nearly 600 — Baghdad's worst day of bloodshed since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The massive bombings took place with both Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in the United States.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/09/24/iraq.basra.ap/

Saturday, September 24, 2005; Posted: 11:18 p.m. EDT (03:18 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- An Iraqi judge said on Saturday he had renewed arrest warrants for two British soldiers who were rescued from jail early this week by troops using armor to crash through the prison walls.

The British government said the warrants are not legally binding, as the soldiers are subject to UK law.

The two British soldiers were arrested by Iraqi authorities on Monday after allegedly shooting two Iraqi policemen who tried to detain them. One of the policemen reportedly was killed.

The two British soldiers, operating undercover, were subsequently taken into custody.

A British armored patrol then surrounded the jail where the two were held, prompting a riot in the Basra, Iraq's second largest city and the southern hub of the country's oil industry.

Angry residents attacked the British armor with Molotov cocktails and pelted soldiers with stones as they jumped from the burning vehicles.

Later Monday, British armored vehicles crashed through the prison walls in an operation to rescue the two soldiers. They were subsequently found in a nearby house in the custody of militiamen, Britain said.

Basra authorities said the operation violated Iraqi sovereignty, and the governor ordered all government employees to stop cooperating with the British, who have 8,500 troops in the Shiite Muslim-dominated region.

Judge Raghib al-Mudhafar, chief of the Basra Anti-Terrorism Court, said Saturday that he reissued homicide arrest warrants for the two soldiers on Thursday.

But the British government said they are not legally binding on the British soldiers.

"There is no legal basis for the issue of this arrest warrant. Rather, we have a legal obligation to investigate the allegations ourselves. That is being done as we speak," a spokesman at the British defense ministry said in London on Saturday.