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BAGHDAD — From the air Sunday morning, this looked like a city restored. You could see paddle boats skimming the pond at Zawra Park, and go-karts and water slides. And in every direction, new schools and soccer fields and bustling warehouses — all taking shape under the canopy of the new Iraq. But down below, it turned out to be a morning from hell. Terrorists exploded two massive car bombs at the Justice Ministry and the Baghdad provincial administration, killing more than 100 and wounding more than 500. It was the worst day of violence this year, and it was,...

Azerbaijan media publish segments from hearing of 2 Lebanese, 4 locals accused of planning terror attack on Israeli embassy in capital city, Baku. According to indictment, suspects admit to being sent by Hezbollah, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and al-Qaeda Ynet Published: 07.09.09, 00:20 / Israel News

Note: The following text is a quote: 09 July 2009 EGYPT ARRESTS TERRORIST CELL OF 25 MEMBERS CAIRO, July 9 (Xinhua) The Egyptian authorities have arrested a terrorist cell of 25 members, 24 Egyptians and one Palestinian, for plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in Suez Canal, Egyptian Interior Ministry said in statement issued on Thursday. According to the statement, the members of the cell who believe in Jihad (Holy War) were located in Cairo, Alexandria and Daqahlia governorates and communicated through internet with other terrorist groups outside Egypt. The cell's members, mostly engineers, were developing high-tech and electronic devices...

PRESS RELEASE SNIPPET - QUOTE: HP-1313 Washington, DC--The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated three members of a German Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) cell under Executive Order 13224 (E.O. 13224), which targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. "We commend the vigilant and effective work of German authorities in apprehending this terrorist cell before it could carry out its brutal and horrifying attack plans," said Adam Szubin, director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "In concert with this important law enforcement action, United Nations global sanctions provide a tool of unparalleled scope to...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2008 – Coalition forces in Iraq today captured 11 suspects in operations aimed at dismantling Baghdad’s car-bomb networks, military officials reported. Troops captured a man early this morning in Baghdad’s Karkh neighborhood who was wanted as a suspect in an Oct. 12 car-bomb attack that killed five civilians and wounded 12 others in the Rasheed area of the city, officials said. They detained seven additional suspects during a search of the home where the man was found. During a separate operation in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood, coalition forces captured another man wanted in connection with the city's al-Qaida...

An explosion has been reported in central Stockholm. Police confirmed on Sunday morning that a bomb squad was at the scene and that no casualties had been reported. Neighbours reported to police early on Sunday morning that a large explosion had rocked the area around Surbrunnsgatan 4 in central Stockholm. Twenty windows were blown out as result of the blast. According to Eva Nilsson at Stockholm police something exploded under a parked car. "To the naked eye the car is in principle intact." A large area was cordoned off by police after the explosion, and Surbrunnsgatan was closed off between...

OAKDALE, Minn. (WCCO) An Oakdale family and their neighbors fear for their safety after two car bombs went off on the same day. They exploded in the driveway on the 2700 block of Grenada Avenue. Police are now asking for your help to find out who's behind this. "I was just waking up in the middle of the night with an earth shattering bang and it was definitely an explosion," said the victim's neighbor Stacie Demer. Demer and her family were asleep in the early morning hours when a bomb went off in their neighbors driveway. "It was incredibly strong....

Three men have been arrested for planning attacks on Frankfurt's international airport and the U.S. military base in Ramstein, the German Defense Minister said Wednesday. "There was an imminent threat," Franz Josef Jung told Germany's ARD broadcaster. He declined to elaborate. Two of the suspects had German citizenship while the third was Pakistani, Germany's Sudwestrundfunk public broadcaster said. German federal prosecutors said they had arrested three suspected members of "an Islamic motivated terrorist organization." It was not immediately clear whether the three were suspected of having links to al Qaeda. Sudwestrundfunk said the men were arrested Tuesday evening and were...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military on Saturday said coalition forces south of Baghdad found a site where people were executed and bodies dumped. The discovery was made during an operation Tuesday through Thursday in the Arab Jabour area, a region where al Qaeda in Iraq has a presence. "The ground forces found human skulls, decomposing bodies and bones wrapped in bloody clothes," the military said in a statement. "Wild dogs were rampant around the area, which was characterized by a crater where most of the human remains were dumped. Inside a nearby building, the ground forces found blood...

After another terrorist incident last week, it is obvious that Great Britain is paying a huge price for allowing millions of Muslims to enter the country largely unsupervised. If those bombs had gone off in central London, scores might have been killed, and it was just luck the lethal cars were discovered before they blew. Even though the British authorities have much more latitude to detain terror suspects than American police do, London remains a soft target. Muslims dominate entire neighborhoods and the jihadists can hide in plain sight, as there is plenty of sympathy for mass murderers among the...

With each revelation made in Britain and in the West about a foiled plot or after an actual attack, a shower of questions is raised within the mainstream media, some of which contradict the other. The June 29 British success in averting two (maybe more) car bombs in London has also been accompanied by an endless series of issues, revealing among other things how the counterterrorism culture within Western democracies is still lacking in terms of cohesiveness. By comparison with previous conflicts, the analytical behavior of the global war on terror deserves a serious review. Following are a few questions...

Car Bomb Jihad By Dr. Walid Phares FrontPageMagazine.com | July 2, 2007British authorities are to be commended for successfully averting two (maybe more) car bomb attacks in London last week. At the same time, much of the reaction of Britain’s counter-terrorism community reveals that the country is not wholly prepared to deal with the terrorism threat. Let's begin with the contradictory statements made by British authorities after the car bombs had been identified. On one hand, Britain’s new home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said after an emergency meeting of top officials that “we are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat...

THE suspected ringleader of a plot to unleash a blitz of car bombs on Britain is an Iranian doctor arrested with his burka-clad wife. Neurologist Dr Mohammed Asha, 26, and his wife, 27, were dramatically held as they drove on the M6 in Cheshire with their two-year-old son. Five people were being quizzed — at least two of them medics — as it became clear the attacks in London and Glasgow were by the same gang. Swoop ... cops grapple with fanatic burned in attack Sources said one of two men held while trying to smash a blazing vehicle into...

THE terrorists who attempted to bomb central London last week deliberately placed the second vehicle to catch rescuers attending the injured from the first explosion, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. The senior security source also said the primitive gas and petrol devices were most likely the work of determined terrorists struggling - because of the security crackdown - to get their hands on the ingredients needed to create high explosives. Yesterday, a huge police manhunt was under way for the terrorists responsible as forensic experts continued to examine the vehicles involved for clues. The attack was thwarted after fumes were...

Homeland Security: The London bomb plot reminds us that terrorists never rest. Like gnats, they keep coming in the hopes we'll tire of swatting them. They have to get lucky just once. We have to be lucky all the time. In Piccadilly Circus, only a stroke of good luck prevented an explosion that could have toppled a three-story nightclub and killed hundreds. Authorities had no inkling terrorists planned to blow up cars packed with petro bombs and nails. An ambulance crew tipped off police after noticing vapors building up inside one of them, a Mercedes parked outside a popular nightclub.

The “patio gas” bomb defused in Haymarket would have generated a fireball the size of a house and a shock wave spreading out over a diameter of at least 400 yards, explosives experts said today. The propane cylinders and petrol used in the device would have triggered a huge conflagration, as well as causing shrapnel and blast injuries from the exploding car chassis and the nails packed around the bomb, according to Hans Michels, Professor of Safety Engineering at Imperial College, London. Just one 13kg propane canister — the type sold by Calor under the brand name “Patio Gas” —...

Preview and Analysis for Weekend of June 30th and July 1st, 2007 Guest lineup for the Sunday TV news shows: NBC's "Meet the Press" Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT CBS's "Face the Nation" Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind. Fox News Sunday Homeland Security Secretary Michael ChertoffMichael Gallagher, conservative talk radio hostMark Green, President Air America Radio CNN "Late Edition" Homeland Security Secretary Michael ChertoffHouse Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C.Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.Lanny Davis, former Clinton special counselBen Ginsberg, former counsel to the RNCommitteeFormer national security adviser Zbigniew BrzezinskiFormer Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. ABC's "This Week" Homeland Security Secretary Michael ChertoffSen. Joe...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday. The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. "Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said. The general said...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two car bombs exploded in an outdoor market in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 56 people and injuring scores in the deadliest attack since U.S. and Iraqi forces began a major security push around the capital last week. The twin blasts tore through the open-air market in the mostly Shiite district of New Baghdad. The death toll was reported by police and ambulance service officials on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. At least 127 people were injured, said a police official.

Can Car Bombs, Terrorism Be Prevented In Baghdad, Iraq? By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem ----- February 17, 2007 .... The headline has become so familiar, so callous that it appears no different than a daily weather report. "Two Car Bombs Kill Over 100 in Baghdad," a headline reads from last Monday. Today, the same headline rings out, only the numbers are different. What is the US doing wrong? Can car bombs be stopped in Baghdad? The answer is yes. But it will take a different military approach to warfare and terrorism in Baghdad to succeed. In western Baghdad,...

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Three suicide car bombs exploded outside Somalia's government base of Baidoa, killing at least six people, including the attackers, a senior official said Thursday. A witnesses said many people were wounded. "The three drivers were killed on the spot, and three others who were with them," Deputy Defence Minister Salad Ali Jellethe told The Associated Press by telephone. "We have captured three who were with them who have tried to flee. The dead include non-Somalis, they are al-Qaida supporters." No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

A string of car bombs rocked Baghdad on Monday, killing 10 people and wounding nearly 80 in an apparent campaign to discredit Iraq's new leadership. At least 15 people were killed in other bombings and shootings. Police also discovered the bodies of 28 people in the capital and the northern city of Mosul. They included 15 police recruits from Ramadi who were kidnapped Sunday and slain by insurgents, police said. The seven car bombs exploded over a five-hour period in six widely separated neighborhoods across the capital. The first blast occurred near the Health Ministry and killed five people, Lt....

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents exploded 13 car bombs across Iraq on Sunday, including eight in Baghdad within a three-hour span, but the New Year's Day onslaught killed no one and injured only 20 people, police said. A Sudanese official, meanwhile, announced that six kidnapped employees were freed after Sudan announced it would close its Baghdad embassy as demanded by the kidnappers. A Cypriot man kidnapped four months ago also was freed after his family paid a ransom, a relative said. The day's first car bomb in Baghdad exploded at about 8:15 a.m., wounding two Iraqi soldiers in an army patrol...

Two car bombs exploded in the centre of Baghdad Friday, sending a thick column of black smoke rising into the sky, an interior ministry official said. A number of casualties were being rushed to hospital, he added.

American Science and Engineering of Billerica, MA received a $9.5 million firm-fixed price contract for eight Z-Backscatter Vans to meet U.S. Central Command requirements for Afghanistan and Iraq. AS&E's Z Backscatter Van (ZBV) is a low-cost, extremely maneuverable screening system built into a commercially available delivery van. The ZBV employs AS&E's patented Z Backscatter technology, which offers photo-like images that reveal contraband that transmission X-rays miss - such as explosives (including car bombs), people and plastic weapons - and provides photo-like imaging for rapid analysis. The ZBV is also capable of identifying low levels of radioactivity from both gamma rays...

Australian military outpost which was the target of the suicide car bomb. Two dead bodies on the street in lower left of photo. (photo by Dahr Jamail) The thundering blast rocks me awake at 7:05am. The first thing my eyes see are the curtains of my room flowing in, as if a strong wind is blowing into my room. 'Holy shit, they hit the embassy,' I think to myself, 'the blast was so close.' I leave my windows cracked and curtains drawn for just this reason-while my door was blasted open, splintering the frame where it was locked shut, none...

In July 2003, when President George Bush was asked about the growing number of attacks by insurgents in Iraq, he said: "Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation." That assertion was being questioned again yesterday after a fresh wave of suicide bombings that has killed nearly 400 people in the past fortnight. According to a western diplomatic source in Baghdad, 135 car bombs exploded in Iraq in April, up from 69 in March. And if May continues as it has started, it could be the worst month yet. The situation is causing consternation and...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — At least 23 people died and another 80 were injured Friday in a series of car bombs and mortar attacks in Iraq while an Iraqi soldier died in an explosion near the southern city of Basra. Also Friday, an audio tape purportedly from Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search) urged more attacks on U.S. forces so that President Bush would not enjoy "peace of mind." "You, Bush, we will not rest until we avenge our dignity," the voice said. "We will not rest while your army is here as long as there is a pulse in our...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Five car bombs targeting Iraqi soldiers and police exploded within a 15-minute span Friday morning in Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 30 others, Iraqi police said. All of the deaths were the result of four of the bombs that exploded within a few hundred yards of each other in northern Baghdad neighborhoods, police said.

I read a letter today from a soldier in Iraq. He wrote about what he has seen and done since being deployed several months ago. I have checked out several of the soldier blogs, and while I don't contest their authenticity, it was interesting to hear what's happening from the horses mouth. The news we get from Iraq these days concerns car bombs, IED's and kidnappings. Since our election in November, I have noticed that most TV news outlets don't even mention the numbers of dead and wounded anymore. This really bothers me. We are at war, and whether or...

Mon Jan 3,10:55 AM ET A suspected insurgent asks residents for mercy after they caught him planting explosives under civilian vehicles, at a busy area in Baghdad,January 3, 2005. Insurgents killed 17 Iraqi police and National Guards on Monday in another bloody spree of ambushes, bombings and suicide attacks aimed at wrecking Iraq (news - web sites)'s January 30 national election. REUTERS/Str Mon Jan 3,10:54 AM ET Iraqi men and police officers guide a suspected insurgent after catching him planting explosives under civilian vehicles, at a busy area in Baghdad, January 3, 2005. Insurgents killed 17 Iraqi police and...

SAMARRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Two car bombs exploded north of Baghdad Saturday, killing eight people and wounding at least 20, police at the scene said. They said the blasts in the city of Samarra, 62 miles north of the Iraqi capital, targeted the town hall and a nearby joint Iraqi police and National Guard checkpoint. "I saw a dead National Guard burning on the ground," said one witness. "I saw people carrying away another corpse." Most of the those killed in the blast, which took place at 9 a.m. (0600 GMT), appeared to be Iraqi civilians, police said. Insurgents bent...

WAR ON TERRORHomeland Security to cops: Prepare for Qaida car bombsConfidential memorandum advises taking high-threat measures for end of Ramadan Posted: November 24, 20035:40 p.m. Eastern By Paul Sperry© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has advised federal agencies to initiate emergency counterterrorism measures to prevent possible al-Qaida car bombings planned during the last days of the Muslim holiday Ramadan, according to a confidential department memo obtained by WorldNetDaily. Citing al-Qaida's "increasingly sophisticated" car-bombing tactics, it recommends security guards tow all vehicles parked illegally in and around government facilities, if their owners cannot be identified, and inspect the...

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has advised federal agencies to initiate emergency counterterrorism measures to prevent possible al-Qaida car bombings planned during the last days of the Muslim holiday Ramadan, according to an internal department memo obtained by WorldNetDaily. Citing al-Qaida's "increasingly sophisticated" car-bombing tactics, it recommends security guards tow all vehicles parked illegally in and around government facilities, if their owners cannot be identified, and inspect the undercarriage and other areas of vehicles entering sensitive areas, among other high-threat protective measures.

By Paul Sperry © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has advised federal agencies to initiate emergency counterterrorism measures to prevent possible al-Qaida car bombings planned during the last days of the Muslim holiday Ramadan, according to a confidential department memo obtained by WorldNetDaily. Citing al-Qaida's "increasingly sophisticated" car-bombing tactics, it recommends security guards tow all vehicles parked illegally in and around government facilities, if their owners cannot be identified, and inspect the undercarriage and other areas of vehicles entering sensitive areas, among other high-threat protective measures. Al-Qaida could also target "liquid natural gas, chemical or...

If this were the opening salvo in a murderously dirty battle for Baghdad, it misfired badly. Not because the bombers failed, but because, on the first day of the month of Ramadan that Islam devotes to prayer, fasting and good deeds, they so sickeningly succeeded. This is not an unthinking endorsement of George W’s assertion that these explicitly terrorist assaults, Iraq’s first experience of coordinated suicide bombings, underlined the desperation of men out to reverse the progress made by coalition forces. Bush should have cut out self-congratulation, saluted the courage of the thousands of Iraqis risking their lives to rebuild...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Coalition forces in Iraq have detained two Al-Jazeera staffers on allegations they had prior knowledge of a car bombing in Baghdad, the editor of the Arab satellite television station said Tuesday. Coalition military officials said they understood some journalists had been detained but had no details. U.S. soldiers detained Iraqi cameraman Samer Hamza and a driver while they were covering an explosion at a police station in western Baghdad, Al-Jazeera editor Ibrahim Hilal told The Associated Press. The blast was one of a series of car bombings Monday that killed dozens of people and...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq — A series of car bomb attacks on Monday killed 34 people, excluding the homicide bombers, in Baghdad, shattering what should have been a solemn day as Iraq began observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.</p> <p>About 12 people were killed at the International Committee of the Red Cross (search) building in central Baghdad and 27 others were slain in attacks on three police stations. Most of the victims were Iraqis. The U.S. military said one American soldier was killed in one of the police station attacks.</p>

I put up another post regarding protection from flying glass in an explosion in which I mentioned airports. This topic deserves a separate post. After the WTC was attacked, an immediate federal order came down that cleared the parking lots closest to the terminals. Authorities were afraid that someone would park a car bomb. Federal regulations require a terminal to survive a 400-lb car bomb from 300 feet away. I am aware of one airport in the nation that has its parking garage far enough away and actually has a barrier between the terminal and parking structure. The rest do...