Month: January 2010

Baghdad, January 05: Baghdad is weighing how to best react after a US court dropped charges against American guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack in 2007, a government spokesman said Monday.

Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraq’s options were limited by the US legal system and a bilateral agreement between Baghdad and Washington.

“The US government is studying two possibilities,” Dabbagh told state-funded Al-Iraqiya television channel.

London, January 05: Attacks by Al Qaeda-linked rebels have led to the suspension of food distributions in large swathes of Somalia, leaving one million people outside the relief net, the UN food agency said Tuesday.

“Rising threats and attacks on humanitarian operations, as well as the imposition of a string of unacceptable demands from armed groups, have made it virtually impossible for the World Food Programme (WFP) to continue reaching up to one million people in need in southern Somalia,” it said in a statement.

Jerusalem, January 05: Israel has delayed a visit by senior military officers to Britain amid fears the group could be arrested there on war crimes charges, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Tuesday.

“These officers were invited by Great Britain, but they will stay in Israel as long as we do not have a 100 percent guarantee that they will not become objects of criminal lawsuits in that country,” Ayalon told public radio.

Sanaa, January 05: US-Yemeni imam Anwar al-Awlaqi, who may be linked to the botched attack on a US airliner, is accused by the United States of instigating “terrorism.”

A White House aide has directly accused Awlaqi of having links with the man suspected of shooting dead 13 people at a Texas military base in November, Major Nidal Hasan.

US Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan has also said the US-born imam might have had contact with the man who allegedly attempted to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Cairo, January 05: Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed the largest tomb yet discovered in the ancient Saqqara necropolis, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Monday.

One of two tombs found, which were carved out of stone, consists of a vast chamber that branches off into many alcoves. One alcove contained skeletons and pottery, and led to another chamber with a seven-metre-deep (23-foot) well.

“This is the largest tomb in Saqarra,” Hawass said. “It took me two hours to look round all of it.”

Egypt, January 05: Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has assured Saudi Arabia his movement is loyal to Arab states, the kingdom’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said on Tuesday.

“I asked Khaled Meshaal whether the movement stood with Arabs or with others,” Prince Saud said, referring to Iran, a strong regional backer of Hamas, the democratically elected Palestinian movement ruling in Israeli-besieged Gaza.

Amman, January 05: A suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA base in Afghanistan was an Al-Qaeda triple agent who duped Western intelligence services for months before turning on his handlers, websites reported on Tuesday.

The Jordanian intelligence services, believing the bomber to be their double agent, brought him to eastern Afghanistan with the mission of finding Al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the websites and Western intelligence agents cited by US media said.

Baghdad, January 05: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said his country would file a lawsuit against US private security firm Blackwater over the killing of Iraqi civilians here two years ago.

Maliki has rejected a US judge’s decision to drop charges against five Blackwater security guards who were involved in killing unarmed civilians at a crowded intersection in western Baghdad in 2007.