Mansoor Ijaz: corpse has been sent to Baghram AFB for DNA testing where Ayman al Zawahir's son Khalid al-Zawahiri is in American custody. Son gives clues to al-Qaeda lairs - SpecialsGlobalTerrorism - www. ...
Mansoor: Task Force 121 were the ones to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri but wants the Pakistanis to get the credit.
Bill Cowan on Fox News: The apprehension of the Pentagon to admit to American troops being on the ground in Pakistan is because it would bring all types of trouble to Pervez Musharraff. The Pentagon will never admit to this.
Greg PalkotPresently there are negotaitons going on for the surrender of the militants, Al Queda's rainbow coalition. There have been hundreds killed, many on both sides.
Major Bob Bevelacqua:As it should be is downplaying or in all honesty stated that Task Force 121 never crossed into Pakistan, so how do we know if the corpse is that of Al-Zawahiri. Bevelacqua does not buy the phone intercept scenerio. I get the feeling that Bevelacqua does not care for the reporting of Mansoor Ijaz. I wonder if Mansoor has bodyguards.
Meanwhile another war has broken out in another area of Afganistan Afghan Minister, 50 to 100 Others Killed
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Soldiers loyal to a local commander shot and killed Afghanistan's aviation minister Sunday in the western city of Herat, setting off a big gunbattle in which as many as 100 people died vicious factional fighting, the commander told The Associated Press.
In Kabul, President Hamid Karzai's Cabinet convened in emergency session after the killing of minister Mirwais Sadiq — a son of Herat's powerful governor — and dispatched extra troops to try to calm the city.
Presidential spokesman Khaleeq Ahmed said only that the minister had been shot in his car and circumstances were unclear.
However, a top Herat military commander, Zaher Naib Zada, told AP by telephone Sunday night that his forces had killed Sadiq in a confrontation after the minister went to Zada's home to fire him.
Afterward, Zada's forces and soliders loyal to Sadiq began fighting with machine guns, tanks and rockets for control of the city's main military barracks. Zada said between 50 and 100 soldiers were killed in the first hours of the ongoing battle.
Sadiq is the third leading figure of Karzai's government, and the second aviation minister, to be killed.
The father of the slain minister, Ismail Khan, is a former anti-Soviet commander who runs a large private army and has had firm control over Herat since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. But there have been persistent tensions — and occasional factional fighting — between his men and those loyal to rival warlords. Sadiq was widely viewed as his father's representative in Karzai's government.
State television had reported that Sadiq's father, Khan, had escaped a separate attack unhurt. The presidential spokesman and other officials, however, said there had been no attack on Khan.
Aid workers in the city speaking by phone reported gunfire and heavy explosions and said they had been ordered to stay indoors. U.N. workers scrambled into a bunker at their headquarters.
A police officer, Fahim, reached by telephone at the main police station, gave a different account, saying Sadiq had gone to Zada's residence to ask him about the killing of three civilians by Zada's forces two days earlier.
Karzai's defense and interior ministers were preparing to travel to Herat to try to determine the circumstances of the killing, and the battles that followed, his spokesman said.
The president, who escaped a 2002 attempt on his life, said in a brief statement from Kabul that he was "deeply shocked" by the killing and offered condolences to Ismail Khan.
Karzai's first civil aviation minister, Abdul Rahman, was assassinated Feb. 14, 2002, at Kabul's airport, in circumstances that remain unclear. Gunmen shot and killed Vice President Abdul Qadir in the capital on July 6, 2002.
Both of those killings remain unsolved.
Karzai has been constantly shadowed by Afghan and American bodyguards armed with automatic weapons since a September 2002 assassination attempt in the southern city of Kandahar. Three people, including the gunman, died in that attack.
His government includes an uneasy alliance of former warlords who had joined forces to help the United States rout the former Taliban government. His government still is trying to assert control nationwide, including over Herat and its customs revenue as a major port of entry on the Iranian border.
By DANIEL COONEY, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents fired a rocket at U.S. troops in western Iraq, killing two soldiers, while in Baghdad rockets fired toward the U.S.-led coalition headquarters Sunday killed two Iraqi civilians and injured a U.S. soldier, U.S. officials said.
The attack in Baghdad came a day after the first anniversary of the start of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein.
A 1st Infantry Division soldier was also killed Sunday in an apparent accident during a weapons firing exercise in Samarra, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, Army spokeswoman Maj. Debra Stewart said. The incident was under investigation.
One of three rockets fired in Baghdad landed inside the coalition headquarters, but did not cause significant damage, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. The wounded soldier was hit by flying glass. Staff and journalists in the compound were instructed to take cover inside a bunker.
Two rockets landed outside the compound in the upscale neighborhood of Mansour, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding five, the official said. However, officials at the nearby Yarmouk Hospital said one person died and 10 were wounded. Residents said the rockets landed in a street, damaging several cars and shops.
"This is a terrorist act. There are no military targets in Mansour," said Raed Abdul Saheb, a doctor at the hospital.
Mortar and rocket attacks on the coalition headquarters are common. The assaults often miss and hit nearby neighborhoods.
The rocket attack in western Iraq occurred Saturday evening near the city of Fallujah, where anti-U.S. rebels are active, the official said. Five soldiers and a sailor were also wounded, in addition to the two soldiers killed, she said. No other details were available.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, unidentified gunmen inside an ethnic Turkman youth center fired at Kurds waving flags to celebrate the Kurdish new year, killing one and wounding four others on Sunday, said Abdul-Salam Zangana, a security official at a hospital.
The millions of Iraqis who exulted in Saddam's downfall did not publicly celebrate the first anniversary of the start of the war, nor were there street protests from those who enjoyed his patronage — partly because public gatherings are vulnerable to suicide attackers, car bombs, shootings and other violence.
Even those who opposed Saddam are uncomfortable with the invasion and extended occupation of Iraq by foreign armies.
Many Iraqis fear daily they will be caught in the crossfire of the conflict between U.S. forces and anti-American insurgents and other shadowy assailants, and said they felt more insecure now than they did before the United States launched military strikes.
Hours after U.S. Marines officially took control Saturday from the 82nd Airborne Division of a swath of territory west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said rebels had killed a U.S. Marine in the area, Anbar province, a day earlier. Two Marines also died in combat Wednesday in Anbar, which includes parts of the so-called Sunni Triangle where guerrilla attacks have been fierce.
At the handover ceremony at a U.S. base in Ramadi, Marine commander Maj. Gen. James Mattis issued a warning to insurgents.
"We expect to be the best friends to Iraqis who are trying to put their country back together. And for those who want to fight, for the foreign fighters and former regime people, they'll regret it. We're going to handle them very roughly," he said.
Thousands of war protesters marched in Asian, American and European cities on the first anniversary of the invasion, demanding the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Iraq.
In other developments:
_A U.S. military helicopter was shot down Friday by rebels near the town of Amariya, west of Baghdad. The two crewmen escaped injury and the helicopter was recovered, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of U.S. military operations.
_The U.S. military said it charged six soldiers, members of a military police unit, Saturday over the alleged abuse in November and December of about 20 Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.