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KRASNODAR, Russia, July 24, (IslamOnline.net) - The United States has agreed to grant citizenship to 7,000 Ahiska Muslims who will be settled in Pennsylvania, reported a Russian newspaper on Friday, July 23. The first 11-strong batch of the Ahiska Muslims, living in the Russian province of Krasnodar, left for Geneva on Thursday, July 22, before flying to Philadelphia, reported Novie Izvestia. It added that the Muslims would be housed near the grand mosque in Philadelphia. The paper recalled that Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev was notified of the American decision on February 15. Izvestia said the Russian government does not treat...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government is considering offering an amnesty to Iraqi insurgents who fought the U.S.-led occupation, possibly including those who killed Americans, in an effort to tempt Saddam Hussein loyalists away from the campaign of violence. An Allawi spokesman went as far as to suggest attacks on U.S. troops over the past year were legitimate acts of resistance - a sign of the new government's desire to paint itself as nationalist in Iraqi eyes. "If he (a guerrilla) was in opposition against the Americans, that will be justified because it was an occupation force,"...

Trailer park girl turns into torturer By Patrick Sawer, Evening Standard 6 May 2004 Lynndie England's face is displayed on the Wal-Mart supermarket's wall of honour in her home town, a place where people are proud of their soldiers serving in Iraq. At the Mineral County Courthouse in Keyser the same face appears alongside those of other local servicemen and women, under a banner declaring: "We're hometown proud." But since that same face has been beamed across the world - this time grinning at the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners - there has been incomprehension in the small towns and trailer...

FALLUJAH, Iraq, - U.S. authorities on Thursday released a prominent Sunni Muslim cleric arrested last year in the tense city of Fallujah. Sheik Jamal Shaker Nazzal, the imam of Fallujah's Grand Mosque, said his release was part of a deal between the city's residents and U.S. occupation authorities seeking to defuse the ongoing crisis around the besieged city. "We suffered a lot in prison but with God's help and that of the people of Fallujah I gained my freedom," he said. "Thanks be to God for the victory of Fallujah." There was no comment from U.S. authorities on the release....

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Masked men carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers and waving Iraqi flags rode through the deserted streets of Fallujah on Saturday, claiming victory in the withdrawal this week of U.S. Marines after a month-long siege of the city. A day after the U.S.-led coalition announced it was handing over most security matters to a popular general from the former Iraqi regime, Fallujah residents tentatively stepped out of shuttered homes to find demolished buildings, uprooted palm trees, rows of shelled villas and car windows riddled with bullet holes. They took comfort in what they did not see: Americans. "The Americans...

Saddam's man takes over in Fallujah By Toby Harnden in Baghdad (Filed: 01/05/2004) A former senior general in Saddam Hussein's army made a triumphant entry into the besieged city of Fallujah yesterday and was greeted by flag-waving locals celebrating the departure of US marines. Maj Gen Jassem Mohammed Saleh, who headed Saddam's infantry forces, is to take over as head of what American officials are calling the "1st battalion of the proposed Fallujah Brigade". Maj Gen Jassem Mahmood Saleh arriving in Fallujah This is a new force to police the Sunni stronghold. His appearance came as two marines were killed...

THE soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines — the “Devil Dogs” — were stunned. After 25 days of intense urban warfare, hundreds of casualties and repeated declarations of America’s determination to crush the enemy, they and the three other US Marine battalions in Fallujah were abruptly ordered yesterday to pull out. “It’s kinda bad when you’ve had friends who’ve sacrificed everything, then you’ve had to hand it over to someone else,” Corporal Travis Box, staring at the ground in his forward base, said. “We weren’t doing it for tangible things. We were doing it for intangible things like pride...

FALLUJAH, Iraq ---- Two Marines were killed and at least 13 more wounded in Fallujah on Monday in a bloody street battle fought close enough that the combatants tossed grenades and fired pistols at each other, officials said. "It was total chaos," said Navy Corpsman Jason Duty, 20, of New Concord, Ohio, one of the medics who pulled wounded men out of buildings and streets during the worst of the fighting. "It was just gunshots everywhere." The midday fighting quickly escalated from an isolated ambush into a full-scale battle in which Marine Cobra helicopters raked a mostly abandoned Fallujah neighborhood...

U.S. Marines, backed by helicopter gunships and fighter jets, engaged in a raging firefight Monday with insurgents in Fallujah, a stronghold of resistance to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.CNN's Karl Penhaul described the scene Monday for the U.S. networks pool. PENHAUL: Sporadic gunfire can still be heard echoing across this northwest corner of the city of Fallujah. It was a very different picture though this morning and early afternoon because the area just behind me was the scene of some very intense gunbattles. The Marines say [it was] one of the most intense gunbattles that they have had in the...

developing tonight..header for now

A new agreement has been reached between United States forces and Iraqi negotiators in the besieged town of Fallujah. Under the deal, American soldiers will carry out joint patrols with Iraqi police in Fallujah from next Tuesday. From that day Iraqis in the town will no longer be allowed to carry firearms. Iraqi officials in Fallujah will also continue to collect heavy weapons under an arms amnesty that began last week.

General: Much of Iraq's Forces Have Quit By CONNIE CASS, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - About one in every 10 members of Iraq 's security forces "actually worked against" U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation, the commander of the 1st Armored Division said Wednesday. In an interview beamed by satellite from Baghdad to news executives attending The Associated Press annual meeting, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey said the campaign in Iraq was at a critical point. "We have to get this latest increase in violence under...

<p>Iraqi politicians are playing a growing role in blocking U.S. commanders from unleashing fatal force on insurgents.</p> <p>In the most glaring example, Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, insisted to American Administrator L. Paul Bremer that Marines cease their attacks on insurgents in Fallujah so he could initiate talks.</p>

BAGHDAD (AFP) - An Iranian foreign ministry delegation arrived in Iraq (news - web sites) to help settle a standoff between the US-led coalition and Shiite Muslim radical leader Moqtada Sadr, an associate of the cleric said. "We are going to meet with them, and they may meet with Sayyed Sadr," Haidar Aziz, who presents himself as a close aide and personal interpreter of Sadr, told AFP. But the foreign ministry's director for Gulf affairs, Hossein Sadeghi, told AFP upon arrival at a Baghdad hotel that there would be "no mediation" "There is no mediation. We are here to have...

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Sunni insurgents are smuggling weapons and fighters into Fallujah in aid convoys and ambulances, making it difficult for U.S. troops to stem the flow of weapons, Marines said Monday. On Monday alone, U.S. troops in Fallujah uncovered anti-aircraft guns buried in a load of humanitarian aid and saw an ambulance pull up to two shot insurgents and take away their weapons — leaving the casualties lying there. "One guy was found hidden in a sack of grain in the back of a truck," apparently intent on joining fighters in the city, Army Military Police Capt. Kurt Barclay,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities are hoping insurgents hold to a cease-fire in the volatile town of Falluja, but recent violence is not expected to delay the handover of the country's governance to Iraqis at the end of June, U.S. administrator Paul Bremer said on Sunday. "We haven't imposed any terms at the moment, we're just trying to get a cease-fire in place and we have asked the insurgents to stop attacking the Marines," Bremer said on ABC's "This Week." "What we are trying to do is simply get the forces to stop firing, have the insurgents stop firing on...

IRAQ'S Governing Council demanded an immediate ceasefire across the country and a halt to "collective punishment" today in a sign of a split between US-picked Iraqi leaders and American administrators over US military operations. Abdel Karim Mahud al-Mahamadawi, a secular Shi'ite member of Iraq's interim Governing Council, met with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia is battling US-led forces in the south. He said he was suspending his membership in the Iraqi Governing Council until the "bleeding in all Iraq" ends. Another member, Ghazi al-Yawer, threatened to quit the council over the Marines' bloody siege of the city of...

Developments as of this hour: United States forces halt offenses in Sunni Triangle flashpoint towns of Fallujah and Ramadi as casualties climb.Suspension of combat in Fallujah is confirmed.In Ramadi, US Troops withdraw from the town and redeploy.Senior security sources report: United States commanders decided to de-escalate warfare on major fronts in Iraq as pressing forward would entail massive civillian casualties.Unconfirmed casuality totals 51 United States and allied deaths this week, 450 Iraqi fighters killed in Fallujah. Expert hostage takers Mughniyeh and Hizballah team are orchestrating abduction campaign against foreigners in Iraq. Senior security forces predict hostage taking first seen in...

<p>An army of political reporters is marshaling its most well-oiled military cliches to describe Wesley Clark's march toward victory in the Democratic primary.</p> <p>From the moment the retired four-star Army general announced his candidacy last month, it's been cliches aweigh.</p>

<p>CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A Nobel Prize-winning member of the board investigating the space shuttle Columbia disaster says he fears NASA may be doomed to suffer more tragedies unless it changes the culture that has led to flawed decision-making.</p> <p>The "same faulty reasoning" that led to the 1986 Challenger accident also led to Columbia, said Douglas Osheroff, one of the 13 board members wrapping up the report on the Columbia accident.</p>