Prince Pundit

Eight insurgents have been killed and at least four United States Marines wounded during fierce fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, where an uneasy ceasefire had been in place for a week, the US -led coalition said.
A "significant" number of insurgents reportedly attacked Marines, prompting hours of fighting in the northern district of the city.
" Initial reports were eight enemy killed and four Marines wounded ," Colonel John Coleman, chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters.
Marines were fired upon from a mosque which was then targeted by US forces and the minaret destroyed, an embedded pool reporter with the marines told CNN.
He said another six Marines were injured by shrapnel but the reports could not be immediately confirmed.
" Unfortunately the opposition forces ? took it upon themselves to occupy a mosque ," Mr Coleman said.
" Instead of serving as a centre of religious life, it was employed as a bastion in the attack ."
He said Marines used small arms and a tank machine gun against the insurgents in the mosque during the battle in the northern district of Jolan.

US Marines and Iraqi guerrillas have exchanged heavy fire in two districts of the besieged town of Fallujah, local residents say.
Clashes in the Golan and Shuhada districts broke out around 11:20am local time and are continuing.
Insurgents are firing rocket-propelled grenades, while the troops use heavy machineguns mounted on vehicles.

US troops who were at a chemical storehouse that exploded in Baghdad on Monday appear to have included members of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) hunting for weapons of mass destruction.
Residents have shown a Reuters reporter at the scene identity cards belonging to members of the ISG.
The residents say they found the cards after US soldiers evacuated their casualties.
The reason for the blast is not immediately clear but witnesses say it happened when about 12 US soldiers tried to break into the building.
The structure was destroyed in the explosion and at least one unidentified body and four wounded Iraqis have been evacuated.

A powerful explosion in Baghdad's northern neighbourhood of Waziriyah has blown up two US Humvees and caused a nearby house to collapse.
Reporters at the scene say two Humvees can be seen burning as US forces close off the area.
An Abrams tank and a Bradley armoured vehicle are also at the scene as fire trucks rush to the area, where several chemical plants are located.
Residents say they saw rocket propelled grenades being fired into the Humvees as they passed by.

A powerful bomb has exploded in Baghdad's northern neighbourhood of Waziriya, destroying four US military vehicles.
No occupation forces spokesman was prepared to comment on casualties after the Monday morning attack, but as many as 12 marines may be dead.
An Iraqi policeman, who refused to give his name, said he saw "three US soldiers wounded or killed in each vehicle".
Heavy black smoke could be seen rising above a chemical storehouse that appears to have been booby-trapped.
One witness, Imad Hashim, said the bomb went off " when they [US marines] tried to force their way in, there was a huge ball of fire and I was thrown to the ground ".
Hashim said he was about 100 metres away from the blast.
Four Humvees were seen burning as US forces closed off the area, residents said they also saw rocket propelled grenades being fired into the Humvees as they passed by.

Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists planned a chemical attack on Jordan's spy headquarters that could have killed 20,000 people, officials have said.
Earlier this week King Abdullah said a massive attack had been thwarted by a series of arrests, but named no target.
Now unnamed officials say the suspects have confessed to plotting to detonate a chemical bomb on the Amman HQ of the Intelligence Services.
The plot was reportedly hatched by al-Qaeda suspect Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.
Washington has accused the 38-year-old Jordanian radical of masterminding a string of spectacular suicide bombings in Iraq.
An official involved in the inquiry in Jordan told AFP news agency: " We found primary materials to make a chemical bomb which, if it had exploded, would have made nearly 20,000 deaths ? in an area of one square kilometre.
"The target of this bomb was the headquarters of the Intelligence Services ," situated on a hill in the western suburb of Amman, he added.
The official said another operation planned by the network was to use " deadly gas against the US embassy and the prime minister's office in Amman ? and other public buildings in Jordan".

Jordan's King Abdullah revealed on Saturday that vehicles reportedly containing chemical weapons and poison gas that were part of a deadly al-Qaida bomb plot came from Syria, the country named by U.S. weapons inspector David Kay last year as a likely repository for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
" It was a major, major operation. It would have decapitated the government ," King Abdullah told the San Francisco Chronicle.
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King Abdullah said that trucks containing 17.5 tons of explosives had come from Syria, though he took pains not to implicate Syrian President Bashir Assad in the al-Qaida plot, saying, " I'm completely confident that Bashir did not know about it ."
In his testimony before Congress last year, weapons inspector Kay said U.S. satellite surveillance showed substantial vehicular traffic going from Iraq to Syria just prior to the U.S. attack on March 19, 2003.
While Kay said investigators couldn't be sure the cargo contained weapons of mass destruction, one of his top advisers described the evidence as "unquestionable."
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A car belonging to the al-Qaida plotters, containing a chemical bomb and poisonous gas, was intercepted just 75 miles from the Syrian border.

Supporters of outlawed Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr say they expect US forces to attack the holy city of Najaf after mediation efforts failed today, while coalition officials were hopeful talks in Fallujah would end a bloody stand-off between US troops and Sunni Muslim rebels.
Sadr and his supporters said mediation efforts with the US -led coalition had failed in Najaf and they were preparing for what they believed to be an imminent US attack.
Talks halted " because the mediators have told us the Americans are putting obstacles towards finding solutions to the crisis and the situation is getting worse ," Qais al-Khazaali, the head of Sadr's office, said.
" We are expecting the Americans to attack Najaf any moment now ."

Gunmen opened fire on a US convoy near the Spanish base at Diwaniyah, east of Najaf, today and US forces fired back, a spokesman for the Spanish contingent in the occupation force, said.
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US Marines repositioned some of their forces to allow cars to reach the general hospital in Fallujah as part of confidence-building measures, an Iraqi mediator said.

A US soldier was killed and two wounded when their patrol hit an anti-tank mine near the Iraqi city of Tikrit, the military said today.
" One 1st Infantry Division soldier was killed and two wounded when their patrol struck an anti-tank mine near Tikrit at around 10.45am April 16 ," the military said.
" The wounded were evacuated to a nearby military medical facility and were listed in stable condition ."

The US led coalition in Iraq has announced the closure of all major highways into and out of Baghdad.
Coalition spokesmen have denied the closure has anything to do with threats by insurgents.
The statement said highways one and eight to the north and south of Baghdad had become targets for anti-coalition forces and were damaged and too dangerous to travel. They would be closed indefinitely.
The main highway to the west, which runs through Fallujah, has been closed for a week now.
Military spokesman Mark Kimmitt says motorists would be directed to alternate roads.
He dismissed suggestions that the closure was due to posters and flyers being distributed around Baghdad warning people to stay at home this week because of a major offensive to be launched by insurgents and said if the fight were taken to the capital, the First Cavalry Division would be waiting.

The two crew members of a U.S. Apache helicopter were killed when it was shot down in Iraq on Sunday, the U.S. army said.
The helicopter was downed five km (three miles) west of Baghdad airport, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S. army in Iraq, told a news conference.

Japan has placed three aircraft on standby in Kuwait, in case three hostages being held by Mujahadeen fighters in Iraq are released.
But there is still no word on the captives' fate.
Two aid workers and a journalist were taken hostage in Iraq on Thursday.
The kidnappers threatened to kill the trio if Japan did not withdraw its troops from Iraq by last night.
A Japanese official says three C-130 transport planes have now been put on standby in Kuwait, but declined to indicate whether this means the hostages are about to be released.

The Japanese Government says it has made no progress in winning the release of three hostages being held in Iraq.
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An Iraqi man claiming to have spoken to the kidnappers says the hostages will be executed one by one from later tonight if the demands are not met.
The Japanese Government has not able to confirm the report and one official says attempts to free the hostages have made no progress.

The Iraqi group holding a US hostage has agreed not to kill him, Mezher Dulaimi, a self-described Iraqi mediator, said today.
Dulaimi, who heads an Iraqi human rights group, said the affair of the missing American had been settled, and he was in good health.
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Dulaimi said that the US hostage had received medical attention.
However there was no immediate word on when he might be released.

The ceasefire in the besieged Iraqi town of Fallujah has been extended by 24 hours until Monday night local time.
A senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party which is leading the mediation effort, says both US forces and insurgents agreed to the extension.
Residents of Fallujah are burying their dead and trying to get out of the city during the lull in the fighting.
Local hospital officials say more than 600 people have been killed, most of them civilians.
The marines insist most of the dead are fighters.
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Mediators continue efforts for a negotiated solution but the US military is re-enforcing its troops to resume the offensive if talks fail.

Police deployed in the central Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf Monday following an agreement, involving the US -led coalition, for the pullout of armed militiamen from the streets, police said.
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Across the city, police forces deployed in all police stations which had been taken this week by Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
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Police deployed in force in Najaf, taking over police stations and public buildings.
No Mehdi Army militiamen were seen on the streets.

A battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah earlier this week to support U.S. Marines battling for control of the city, senior U.S. Army officers here said, disclosing an incident that is casting new doubt on U.S. plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces.

It was the first time U.S. commanders had sought to involve the postwar Iraqi army in major combat operations, and the battalion's refusal came as large parts of Iraqi security forces have stopped carrying out their duties.
The 620-man 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Armed Forces refused to fight Monday after members of the unit were shot at in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad while en route to Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold, said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who is overseeing the development of Iraqi security forces. The convoy then turned around and returned to the battalion's post on a former Republican Guard base in Taji, a town north of the capital.
Eaton said members of the battalion insisted during the ensuing discussions: " We did not sign up to fight Iraqis ."
He declined to characterize the incident as a mutiny, but rather called it "a command failure."
The refusal of the battalion to perform as U.S. officials had hoped poses a significant problem for the occupation. The cornerstone of the U.S. strategy in Iraq is to draw down its military presence and turn over security functions to Iraqis.
Over the past two weeks, that approach has suffered a severe setback as Iraqi security forces have crumbled in some parts of the country. In recent days perhaps 20 percent to 25 percent of the Iraqi army, civil defense, police and other security forces have quit, changed sides, or otherwise failed to perform their duties, a senior Army officer said Saturday.
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A soldier with the 1st Armored Division, who has recently been engaged in combat in Baghdad, said many of the Iraqi security troops with whom he has worked are no longer reporting for duty. "I think what we are seeing is not some mass quitting and mutiny by ICDC [Iraqi Civil Defense Corps], but rather just plain fear," the soldier said. "And all it takes is one Iraqi to take the lead in leaving, and they all do out of fear."
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One of the problems, Eaton said, was that the Iraqi troops were not told they would be given a relatively benign role, and assumed they were being hurled into the middle of a bloody fight, battling on the side of the Americans against Arabs. " The battalion thought it was going to be thrown into a firestorm in Fallujah ," he said.
Complicating communications, he said, was that the battalion had 10 new U.S. advisers who rotated into their jobs April 1, just four days before the incident, replacing the advisers who had trained the unit for months.

• Was the Sadr Revolt plotted in London? The Sunday Herald says claims that last month representative of the Mahdi Army, the Islamic Path Party, and Hezbollah met in London with Syrian and Saudi Islamists to add a Shi'ite component to the insurgency.

• Speaking of Sadr, BBC Monitoring has a translation of an al-Sharq al-Awsat article claiming that he is considering political assylum in Iran. Perhaps he's fleeing the quagmire ?

• Why did Pakistan put a premature end to military operations in Waziristan? Asia Times suggests that it has to do with the number of troops lost during the operation, which the newspaper places at 800 in contrast to the official figures cited by the Pakistani government. If true, this would mean that Pakistani casualties in a single military engagement now exceed the total number of US forces KIA in both Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.

• The Daily Times , meanwhile, is reporting that bin Laden left Pakistan altogether during the summer of 2003.

US marines told today how they killed one suicide bomber and discovered a suicide bomb workshop in the Sunni Muslim bastion of Fallujah, apparently run by Iraqis and foreigners.
The building, found on Thursday when marines chased a sniper, provided new evidence of the growing role of Iraqis in suicide bombings, the marines said.
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Iraqi police and judges have recently expressed alarm about the increasing involvement of Iraqis in suicide bombings, which US officials had previously blamed on foreign fighters thought to be slipping across the border.
Police in the holy city of Karbala charged that some Iraqis were indoctrinated and high on drugs when they were dispatched on suicide missions.

Top US military officials warned the radical Islamic current in Iraq relied more heavily on Iraqi nationals than foreign elements.
Members of the 1st Battalion 5th (1-5) Marines said they stumbled on the workshop when they were trying to locate a sniper position.
" There was an open storage area and a living room. There were four belts packed with explosives ," said Lance Corporal James Walter, one of the men who discovered the arsenal in Fallujah's southeastern industrial sector.
A box of old US military uniforms were also found, issued by the US Army's 82nd Airborne, said Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne.
Marines said that they believed about 15 to 20 people had been working in the facility.
Also on Thursday, marines from the 1-5 battalion shot dead a suicide bomber, captured a second individual and found a third blood-stained belt.
Marines had come under fire and entered a home where they shot and killed the bomber.
The marines then lobbed grenades at the body to blow it up amid fears the corpse was booby trapped, said Captain James Smith.
He showed pictures of the corpse before the marines blew up the body, with a white belt and wiring attached to a bearded man lying on a tile floor.
The suicide belts were fashioned in the style of the radical Palestinian group Hamas , with a hand-held detonator, Byrne said.
Asked about the people using the workshop, he said: " It seems a mix of nationalities ."

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Friday Thailand was reconsidering its military deployment to Iraq and would order the troops home if it remained too dangerous to carry out their humanitarian mission.
" The Thai military will remain in Iraq as long as they can carry out their humanitarian mission, but if they cannot then they will return ," Thaksin told reporters.
A contingent of 451 troops including engineers, medics and a surveillance platoon was sent to the central city of Karbala last September, as Thailand joined the US -led coalition after remaining neutral during the invasion of Iraq.

An international delegation including Australian Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, set up to investigate the political situation in Iraq, has cancelled its trip.
Senator Nettle left Australia earlier today, but she will be intercepted when she reaches Bangkok to be told of the decision.
Senator Nettle's spokesman Jon Edwards says the escalating violence has left organisers with no other choice.
" The people whom Senator Nettle, together with international parliamentarians from around the world, was scheduled to meet will no longer be able to travel around Baghdad ," he said.
" The NG Os (non-government organisations) themselves, who were organising these meetings, are now trying to leave Baghdad because of the grave security situation ."

A British journalist has been released after being taken hostage in Iraq by two separate groups.
Stephen Farrell, the correspondent for the Times newspaper, says he was threatened with death after being abducted near Fallujah.
But he says he was freed when he managed to convince his captors that he was a genuine journalist.
" The first group who sees this very clearly appeared to be outlaws, bandits, robbers, thieves, who claimed to be part of the resistance, the fighters against the Americans ," he said.
" But half an hour later we ran into the people who called themselves the Mujahideen, clearly a very different group. Disciplined, organised, a chain of command and they took us away from our original captors, so we were abducted twice if you like ."

United States governor of Iraq Paul Bremer appointed a new Iraqi interior minister on Friday and appointed a Governing Council member to the new position of national security adviser.
Mr Bremer said Samir Sumaidy, a Sunni Muslim political independent on the Governing Council, had been appointed interior minister, replacing Nouri Badran, a Shiite, who resigned on Thursday.
Mr Bremer also said that Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, a Shiite independent on the Governing Council, would take on the newly created national security adviser role.

Thousands of Palestinians staged pro-Iraq rallies Friday to mark the first anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, calling on Iraqis to rise up against the United States in a holy war.
Following Friday prayers, thousands of protesters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip burned Israeli and US flags and chanted slogans against US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In Gaza City, about 2,000 Islamic Jihad supporters, including children holding the militant group's black flags, chanted "Death to America," and burned effigies of Bush and Sharon.
"Our message to the world, to our brothers in Iraq, we are fighting against the same enemies, the same occupation, we are fighting in the same battle," Mohammed al-Hindi, an Islamic Jihad leader, told reporters. "Our people in Palestine and our brothers in Iraq are slaughtered by the knife, the knife of Bush and Sharon."

An explosion echoed over north-east Baghdad on Friday and a plume of smoke rose from the area, but there was no immediate sign that it had been caused by a bomb, a Reuters witness said.
Some residents suggested that a rocket-propelled grenade fired in the air had caused the blast, near the Um al-Qura mosque where worshippers were gathered for Friday prayers.

Shiite Muslim militiamen have killed a British soldier after shooting down a drone over the southern Iraqi town of Amara, Iraqi police said on Friday.
Warrant officer Mohammad Attiya Obeid, who witnessed the incident, said: "At 10:15pm (local time), rebels opened fire on a pilotless aircraft and shot it down over a public park in the Hay al-Hussein area of Amara."
The rebels rushed to pick up pieces of the downed drone and took them as a trophy to the local headquarters of Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr, Mr Obeid told AFP.
Shortly afterwards, a unit of about 20 British soldiers arrived on the scene of the crash and the rebels opened fire "killing one British soldier and wounding two others," the police officer said.

We tell you that three of your children have fallen prisoner in our hands and we give you two options - withdraw your forces from our country and go home or we will burn them alive and feed them to the fighters

Residents started to flee the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday on the fifth day of ferocious street fighting between United States forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents in the western town, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
Men, women and children were fleeing on foot through backstreets and paths that cut through fields, carrying small bags, food and medicines.
Most were seen heading toward the nearby village of Naimiyah

Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat personally intervened on Friday to seek the release of two Palestinians kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq, his office said.

"President Arafat has contacted our brothers in Iraq and other international bodies and friends today to help in releasing the two kidnapped Palestinians, Nabil George Razouk and Ahmed Yassin Tikati, both held in Iraq," a statement said.
According to a Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem, the United States is handling the case of the two Arab residents of East Jerusalem, who were kidnapped Thursday by a previously unknown group in Iraq.

Everyone is apprehensive, there is some talk that April 9th and 10th are going to be bloody days. Most people haven't gone to work the last few days, although it seems that the rest of Baghdad is ?normal' (if you can define what normal is). There are rumours about preparations by slum dwellers for another looting spree against banks, governmental and public property similar to the one that took place last April, and I have already overheard youngsters in my neighbourhood joking about it and saying things like "This time we will be the first to loot, we didn't get anything the last time".

Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne , commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, said his forces were given the go-ahead to resume offensive operations.
The halt was called at noon to allow a delegation from the city to meet with U.S. commanders, let humanitarian aid into the city and give city residents a chance to tend to their dead.
Byrne did not know why the suspension was called off but believed the negotiations with the delegation never took place. It was not immediately known if offensive operations had actually resumed