At least 35 killed in twin blasts north of Baghdad (AFP)

BAGHDAD (AFP) – At least 35 people were killed and 28 wounded in a double bomb attack in the city of Taji north of Baghdad on Tuesday, an interior ministry official said.

"Thirty-five people were killed and 28 wounded when a car bomb and an improvised bomb exploded simultaneously outside a government office where national identification cards are issued, and the provincial council offices," the official said.

He said the blasts struck at 12 pm (0900 GMT). Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta confirmed the attacks.

He also said that at least five people were killed by a rocket strike on the grounds of Baghdad's Al-Rasheed hotel late on Monday.

"A Katyusha rocket struck at 9 pm (1800 GMT) on Monday in the grounds of the Rasheed Hotel where workers live in mobile homes," he told AFP.

"Five people were killed and 25 trailer homes were destroyed," he said.

Atta said that security forces had arrested two men in the south Baghdad Shiite district of Zafraniyah, from where the attack was launched.

He said another Katyusha rocket launcher and a video camera were seized from the men.

The violence came after June saw the highest monthly death toll for Iraqis so far this year. A total of 271 were killed in attacks, according to government figures.

Officials: 3 killed, 2 hurt in SKorea shooting (AP)

SEOUL, South Korea – A South Korean Marine Corps corporal went on shooting rampage Monday, killing three fellow marines and wounding two others on a Yellow Sea island base near the country's tense border with North Korea, officials said.

The marine was taken into custody, but his motive remained unclear, Defense Ministry officials said. The officials, who declined to give their names because of office policy, said the corporal, surnamed Kim, was wounded, but it was unclear whether he tried to kill himself or was hurt when he was apprehended.

One of the slain marines was an officer, while the other two were rank-and-file marines, the officials said.

The shooting on Ganghwa Island, about 40 miles (70 kilometers) west of Seoul, was being investigated, the officials said.

The weapon in the shooting could not be identified immediately, officials said, adding that no explosives such as grenades were involved.

South Korea stations hundreds of marines on front-line islands within easy striking distance of North Korea. Last year, North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing two civilians and two marines.

The waters are claimed by both countries. Boats routinely jostle for position during crab-catching season, and three deadly naval clashes since 1999 have taken a few dozen lives.

In 2005, a South Korean soldier tossed a hand grenade and opened fire at a front-line army unit in a shooting rampage that left eight colleagues dead and several others injured. Pfc. Kim Dong-min later told investigators he went on the killing spree after being enraged by superiors who verbally assaulted him.

The shooting raised questions about the level of discipline in South Korea's 650,000-member military. All able-bodied South Korean men must serve about two years in the military under a conscription system aimed at deterring aggression from North Korea.

2 killed, including officer, in Memphis hotel (AP)

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A police officer and another person died from their injuries after being shot Sunday night in a Memphis hotel located in the middle of the city's entertainment district filled with people celebrating the Fourth of July. A suspect was in custody.

Police Director Toney Armstrong said Officer Timothy Warren, a patrol officer with the department since 2003, died at Regional Medical Center.

Warren was among several officers responding to a call at the Doubletree Hotel around 7 p.m. Sunday. A civilian victim was also shot and later died in what officials said started as a domestic dispute.

Armstrong has been director of Memphis police department for just a couple months.

"Even if you had been the director 20 years, this is the one phone call that you hope you never have to get," he said.

WMC-TV reported that police had responded earlier in the night to a disturbance call involving the same suspect, but let him go. When they were called back, the officer who was shot took the stairs while other officers took the elevator.

Police cars and heavily armed officers swarmed the hotel and surrounding area. The hotel sits at a busy intersection adjacent to the historic Peabody hotel and the Memphis Redbirds minor-league stadium. A game was in progress and fireworks were planned after the game.

Joel Miller of Maryland was attending a family reunion at the hotel. He told The Commercial Appeal that he got in an elevator with the suspect, who was wearing shorts and a plaid shirt.

He "seemed off," Miller told the newspaper, "like he was out of it."

Miller said as the man got off on the third floor, he pulled a gun from his pocket. "He looked at us and pointed his finger and did like this," Miller said, pretending to fire a weapon.

6 killed, tanks near Iraq as Syria faces backlash (AFP)

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Six civilians were killed Tuesday and tanks were deployed near Syria's border with Iraq, activists said as President Bashar al-Assad came under sharp pressure to halt a crackdown on democracy protests.

"Six civilians perished in the past few hours in Ariha," east of Jisr al-Shughur, an activist told AFP in Nicosia, without providing further details.

The latest deaths came after fresh protests erupted in the eastern town of Deir Ezzor, a rights activist said, and troops pursued a scorched earth campaign in northern mountains, sending thousands fleeing into Turkey.

Activists said security forces were continuing their operations and the sweep of the villages near Jisr al-Shughur, the flashpoint northeastern town which the army took by force on Sunday.

Forces stationed in Jisr al-Shugur shot dead a family of four on Monday, London-based rights activist Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Violence has claimed the lives of 1,297 civilians and 340 security force members in Syria since the unrest erupted mid-March, according to the latest toll by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released Tuesday.

The United States meanwhile accused Iran of backing Syria's assaults on pro-democracy protesters, and again called on Assad to cease the violence and allow for a political transition or step aside.

"Iran is supporting the Assad regime?s vicious assaults on peaceful protesters and military actions against its own cities," Clinton said, comparing its response to Iran's crackdown on pro-reform protests in 2009.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said earlier: "President Assad needs to engage in political dialogue. A transition needs to take place. If President Assad does not lead that transition then he should step aside."

European powers meanwhile kept campaigning for a draft resolution condemning the crackdown, with one top envoy saying the delay in Security Council action has cost hundreds of lives.

Russia and China strongly oppose UN action against Assad and could veto any resolution.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan telephoned Syria's President Assad on Tuesday, urging him to stop the crackdown and launch reforms, Anatolia news agency reported.

Erdogan told him to "refrain from violence and end the unrest" and stressed "it would be useful to draw up a timetable of reforms as soon as possible and urgently implement them," said the agency.

The two leaders have enjoyed close personal ties amid flourishing Turkish-Syrian ties in recent years, but Ankara's insistent calls on Damascus to initiate reforms have gone unheeded so far.

Last week, Erdogan toughened his tone, accusing the Syrian regime of perpetrating an "atrocity" against the demonstrators, as thousands of fleeing Syrians crossed into Turkey to seek refuge from bloodshed.

The prominent Syrian poet Adonis, in an open letter published Tuesday in a Lebanese daily, called on Assad to let Syrians decide their own future.

"It seems your destiny is to sacrifice yourself for the mistakes and to give back voice to the people and let them decide," he wrote in the letter.

The United Nations said more than 10,000 Syrians have fled into neighbouring countries to escape the crackdown.

There are 5,000 people in Lebanon, said UN humanitarian affairs spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker. A Turkish official said Tuesday there are now more than 8,500 Syrians who have crossed into Turkey.

UN emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos made a new appeal to the Syrian government to let a UN humanitarian team make a proper assessment.

Syria has refused to let UN aid experts visit stricken towns and blocked rights investigators from entering the country.

Refugees arriving in Turkey said fighting had also broken out among Syrian troops on Sunday as soldiers bent on destroying the area were confronted by others trying to defend the townsfolk.

Elements from one tank division had even taken up positions by bridges leading into the town in a bid to defend it, they said.

"The troops are divided," said 35-year-old Abdullah, who fled Jisr al-Shughur on Sunday and sneaked over the border into Turkey to find food.

"Four tanks defected and they began to fire on one another," he said, adding troops had now reached Ziayni, a town just six kilometres (four miles) from the Turkish border.

"They torched all the crops, they slaughtered the goats, the cows," he said.

Those claims could not be confirmed, as Syria has prevented journalists from entering the area.

Syria blames what it says are foreign-backed "armed terrorist gangs" for the unrest, and says troops launched operations in Jisr al-Shughur at the request of residents and after 120 policemen were massacred there.

Rights activists say those being killed are unarmed protesters and deny a massacre in Jisr al-Shughur, saying bloodshed erupted during a mutiny by soldiers who refused to fire on the town's residents.

Al-Qaeda's E. Africa chief killed in Mogadishu: sources (AFP)

MOGADISHU (AFP) – The presumed head of Al-Qaeda in east Africa, Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, wanted for blowing up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, died this week in a Mogadishu shootout, officials said Saturday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reacted immediately, saying his death was a major setback for the group and its affiliates.

Speaking in Tanzania's commercial capital during an Africa tour, she called Fazul's death "a significant blow to Al-Qaeda, its extremist allies and its operations in East Africa."

"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere -- Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis and our own embassy personnel."

The 38-year-old is thought to have planned the massive truck bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224 people in 1998 and had a $5 million bounty on his head, making him Africa's most wanted man.

"We have confirmed by DNA tests carried out with our partners that it definitely was Fazul Abdullah," an official at Somali's National Security Agency told AFP.

A commander of Somalia's rebel Al-Shebab movement said earlier this week that Fazul was among two men killed near Mogadishu.

"He is not dead as thousands like him are still in the fight against the enemy of Allahm," the commander added.

A senior official from US President Barack Obama's administration said Fazul's death "removes one of the terrorist group's most experienced operational planners in East Africa and has almost certainly set back operations."

The official credited the "good work" of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government forces in killing Fazul. His death was also confirmed by Kenya's top police officer Matthew Iteere.

TFG officials said the men were killed at a roadblock on Tuesday night.

"Our forces fired on two men who refused to stop at a roadblock. They tried to defend themselves when they were surrounded by our men," said TFG military commander Abdikarim Yusuf.

"We took their ID documents, one of which was a foreign passport," he said, adding that an investigation was under way.

The incident took place on the northwestern outskirts of the Somali capital, a regional security source said.

The two men were driving in a pickup truck full of medicine, laptops and mobile phones.

The same source said they appeared to have taken a wrong turn while trying to reach a Shebab position and ended up in an area under TFG control.

A Somali source close to the investigation said the man identified as Fazul was in possession of a South African passport in the name of Daniel Robinson which gave his date of birth as 1971.

The passport, issued April 13, 2009, indicated that its bearer left South Africa for Tanzania on March 19 and was granted a visa there. The Tanzanian visa was the only one in the passport.

The man was also in possession of $40,000 in cash, the same Somali source said. He appeared to have come from Lower Juba in southern Somalia where he was heading a group of foreign fighters under the name of "Abu-Abdirahman the Canadian."

The second man killed was known Kenyan extremist Mohammed Dere, a Nairobi-based security source told AFP, adding that the Kenyan intelligence services were checking the DNA of the two men.

Contrary to normal practice when such incidents occur, the bodies of the two men were picked up by the Somali intelligence services and given to US officials for identification.

Photos taken shortly after the incident show a bloodied corpse lying on its back, with the face turned up and a pickup truck with an armoured windscreen peppered with bullet holes.

The face bears a resemblance to the "Wanted" photos put out by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The United States had been hunting Fazul for the past decade and had put a $5 million bounty on his head.

Fluent is several languages and using a variety of pseudonyms, Fazul was a master in disguise and moved freely round the whole region, while still keeping a low profile.

He had been fighting for several years in the ranks of the Shebab and was in charge of foreign fighters and volunteers.

The Shebab deliberately cultivates mystery around its foreign fighters, made up mostly of Somalis from the diaspora and east Africans, who are thought to be implicated in many of the suicide attacks carried out by the rebels.

Fazul's death came a month after that of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, killed by US Navy SEALs on May 2 in Pakistan.

Fazul joined Al-Qaeda in 1991 and was believed to be behind the August 1998 embassy bombings, the worst attack by Al-Qaeda until the September 2001 attacks on the United States.

Starting in 2002, he was put in charge of the group's operations throughout east Africa. That same year, he planned anti-Israeli attacks in Mombasa that killed 15 people.

He survived a US raid in January 2007 that left dozens of people dead at Ras Kamboni in southern Somalia.

Somalia says killed top African al Qaeda operative (Reuters)

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali police said on Saturday that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of Africa's most wanted al Qaeda operatives, was killed in the capital of the Horn of Africa country on Tuesday.

Mohammed was reputed to be the head of al Qaeda in east Africa, operated in Somalia and is accused of playing a lead role in the 1998 embassy attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 240 people.

Police said they shot Mohammed at a checkpoint in Mogadishu after an exchange of fire at midnight on Tuesday.

Washington says several al Qaeda members involved in the embassy bombings sought sanctuary in neighboring Somalia, where Islamist al Shabaab insurgents, who claim links to al Qaeda, are fighting a weak Western-backed administration.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

"We have confirmed he was killed by our police at a control checkpoint this week," Halima Aden, a senior national security officer, told Reuters in Mogadishu.

"He had a fake South African passport and of course other documents. After thorough investigation, we confirmed it was him, and then we buried his corpse," Aden said.

The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of the Comorian, who spoke five languages and was said to be a master of disguise, forgery and bomb making.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed the killing.

"Harun Fazul's death is a significant blow to al Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa," she told reporters while on a visit to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere -- Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis and our own embassy personnel."

A senior U.S. official in Washington added that his killing removed one of the group "most experienced operational planners in East Africa and has almost certainly set back operations."

U.S. officials say Mohammed, believed to be in his mid 30s, also masterminded an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel along Kenya's coast in November 2002 that killed 15 people.

WRONG ROAD

Mohammed sought sanctuary among mixed-race, minority communities that live in villages dotted along the coast between Mogadishu and the Kenya border, where his Comoran looks blended in well with the coast's Benadir and Bajuni people of mixed Somali, Arab, Persian, Portuguese and Malay ancestry.

Aden said Mohammed may have intended to take a road that diverted into an al Shabaab base, but mistook the road and stopped at the checkpoint -- the southernmost point controlled by the government before passing into al Shabaab territory -- thinking it was manned by al Shabaab.

When he realized he was in the wrong place, he opened fire at police who shot back.

"He was killed on Tuesday midnight in the southern suburbs of Mogadishu at ... (a) checkpoint. Another Somali armed man was driving him in a four-wheel drive when he accidentally drove up to the checkpoint," Aden said.

"We had his pictures and so we cross-checked with his face. He had thousands of dollars. He also had a laptop and a modified AK-47," he said.

A U.S. official familiar with the events said: "He was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time -- for him, that is. It was the right place and time for enemies of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups."

There was no immediate comment from Somali's transitional government, which was rocked on Friday by the killing of the country's interior minister claimed by al Shabaab rebels.

A Western security source in east Africa, speaking about al Shabaab as well as al Qaeda, said: "It might tone down their capability in the region. He would have been the top man to bring in resources and coordinate operations."

J. Peter Pham, director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, said that Mohammed's death would have little impact operationally on the Islamist insurgency in Somalia, which is led by al Shabaab.

"Even the foreign fighters present in Somalia are under Shabaab control, rather than the aegis of al Qaeda in east Africa," he said.

"Likewise, al Shabaab has its own ties with the nearest effective al Qaeda branch, the Yemen-centered al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," J. Peter Pham said.

(Additional reporting and writing by James Macharia in Nairobi; Mark Hosenball and William Maclean in London; Editing by Alison Williams)

Thirty killed in south Yemen amid Saleh power vacuum (Reuters)

ADEN/SANAA (Reuters) – Twenty one al Qaeda members and nine Yemeni soldiers were killed in fighting on Saturday in a province where the main city was seized by Islamist militants during the chaos of the country's bloody political crisis.

Thousands of people have already fled the clashes between the army and al Qaeda in the southern province of Abyan, whose capital Zinjibar fell to the militants last month.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh's opponents have accused him of handing over Zinjibar to Islamists to reinforce his threat that the end of his three-decade rule, as demanded by protesters, would amount to ceding the region to al Qaeda.

The leader has not appeared in public since an attack on his palace eight days ago which left him with injuries that forced him to undergo surgery in Saudi Arabia, although Yemen's ambassador to Britain said on Saturday he was recovering and in a "stable condition."

"He's in his wing in the hospital, no longer in intensive care. He's conscious and talking," Ambassador Abdulla Ali al-Radhi told Reuters.

Saudi medical sources and Yemeni officials said the Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Megawar and another cabinet member injured in the attack had been taken for more surgery, and described their condition as "serious."

Saleh has withstood nearly six months of protests and multiple diplomatic attempts to ease him out -- all but paralyzing Yemen and threatening even greater violence.

Oil giant Saudi Arabia and Western countries fear protracted chaos could give al Qaeda a foothold in the impoverished Arabian peninsula state, which straddles oil export routes and has been a cornerstone of U.S. counterterrorism strategy.

His loyalists pledge Saleh, in his fourth decade of rule and a pillar of U.S. counterterrorism strategy, will return in days. His opponents demand he formally hand over power immediately.

Thousands of protesters from each camp filled the streets of the capital Sanaa after Friday Muslim prayers.

CONFLICT

Even before protests against Saleh, which have been met with increasing violence, broke out, Yemen was gripped by conflict with separatists in the south and periodic fighting with Shi'ite rebels in the north.

In a statement sent via text message, the Defense Ministry said army forces had killed 18 "terrorists" in Zinjibar, and another three in Lawdar, a second provincial city. The army destroyed a weapons and ammunition cache in Zinjibar, it said.

State television said fighting continued across the province, and residents of an area near Zinjibar said state forces launched air strikes on the city.

Gunmen also attacked a Yemeni military truck in Lawdar, officials said, wounding 10 people including civilian passersby. The gunmen looted the vehicle, which was loaded with foodstuffs and headed for a military base, before fleeing, officials said.

Despite the violence in the south, a ceasefire has held in Sanaa since Saleh left, after more than 200 people were killed and thousands fled over two weeks in clashes between his loyalists and the forces of tribal leader Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar, who backs the protesters.

A group of opposition parties have told Saleh's ruling General People's Congress party it would form its own transitional assembly in a week if he did not cede power.

It is not clear that those parties have any significant influence over many of the protesters.

"The parties think the youth can continue to be their weapon in the face of Saleh, but in negotiations pay no attention to them," said Adel Saleh, an organizer with one of the youth groups active in protests demanding Saleh's departure.

"The opposition has become part of the regime we want to bring down, and are no different than it."

Many government ministries are not functioning as staff stay away and Sanaa is suffering from cuts in electricity, fuel and water supplies.

The situation has grown even more dire in Zinjibar.

Health officials have described bodies lying in the streets of the city, which once had a population of some 50,000 and is now nearly empty, and without water or electricity.

Yemen's state news agency Saba said on Thursday the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees was arranging humanitarian aid for 10,000 people fleeing Abyan after attacks from al Qaeda.

Saudi's state news agency quoted a Yemeni Health Ministry official saying there could be as many as 20,000 Abyan refugees.