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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Syrian authorities, under heavy American pressure to prevent foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq, have extradited more than 30 Saudis who may have sought to join the Iraqi insurgency, officials said Monday. Also Monday, the head of Syria's state-run television urged Damascus to require entry visas to safeguard Syrian security. Syria does not currently require entry visas for citizens of Arab countries, making it both an attractive holiday destination and an easier route for Arab foreign fighters. This policy, Diana Jabbour wrote in an editorial published in the Al-Thawra government newspaper, can attract "fugitives and...

RIYADH, May 18 (KUNA) -- Security spokesman in the Saudi Ministry of Interior Major General Mansour Al-Turki denied the presence of thousands of Saudi fighters in Iraq. Al-Riyadh daily cited Wednesday Al-Turki denying recent media reports which claim that the majority of fighters in Iraq are Saudis and that their numbers reach around 2500.

Before Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani exploded himself into an anonymous fireball, he was young and interested only in "fooling around." Like many Saudis, he was said to have experienced a religious awakening after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and dedicated himself to Allah, inspired by "the holy attack that demolished the foolish infidel Americans and caused many young men to awaken from their deep sleep," according to a posting on a jihadist Web site

Before Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani exploded himself into an anonymous fireball, he was young and interested only in "fooling around." Like many Saudis, he was said to have experienced a religious awakening after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and dedicated himself to Allah, inspired by "the holy attack that demolished the foolish infidel Americans and caused many young men to awaken from their deep sleep," according to a posting on a jihadist Web site. On April 11, he died as a suicide bomber, part of a coordinated insurgent attack on a U.S. Marine base in the...

JARAMI, Iraq, May 10 -- Screaming "Allahu Akbar'' to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at U.S. Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade. [...] The Marines got their fallen man, suffering one more dead and at least five wounded in the process. And according to survivors of the battle, the foreign fighters near the Syrian border proved to be everything their reputation...

JARAMI, Iraq, May 10 -- Screaming "Allahu Akbar'' to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at U.S. Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade. Through Sunday night and into Monday morning, the foreign fighters battled on, their screaming voices gradually fading to just one. In the end, it took five Marine assaults, grenades, a tank firing bunker-busting artillery rounds, 500-pound bombs unleashed by...

“The sense is that many of the suicide bombers are in fact foreign jihadists, not Iraqis, for the most part,” the official said, speaking to reporters on background. “The ones that we’ve gotten our hands on are certainly foreigners,” he pointed out. Foreign insurgents operating in Iraq seem to be coming from about 25 countries, the official noted. The majority, he observed, are from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, U.S. military analysts in Iraq “don’t see that foreign fighters have become a significant force in the insurgency,” the official noted. Out of about 10,000 detainees now being held in...

A Jordanian family celebrates their son's suicide bombing -- which killed 132 Iraqis and injured 120 more. Since the fall of the Saddam regime in April 2003, Iraq has been victimized by hundreds of acts of terrorism, most of them perpetrated by foreign terrorists who have crossed Iraq's porous borders. The most lethal terrorist act was carried out on February 28, 2005, by a suicide bomber who detonated a car bomb in the predominantly Shi'ite City of Hilla, sixty miles south of Baghdad. The bomb exploded in front of a health office in a busy bazaar where new recruits to...

Since the fall of the Saddam regime in April 2003, Iraq has been victimized by hundreds of acts of terrorism, most of it perpetrated by foreign terrorists who have crossed Iraq's porous borders. The most lethal terrorist act was carried out on February 28, 2005, by a suicide bomber who detonated a car bomb in the predominantly Shi'ite City of Hilla, sixty miles south of Baghdad. The bomb exploded in front of a health office in a busy bazaar where new recruits to the police and armed forces were waiting to apply for health certificates, which are a prerequisite to...

Six months ago sergeant Mahmoud al-Harithi resigned from the Saudi military, said goodbye to his wife and two children, and left home for jihad in Iraq. A family man, the 32-year-old called home regularly. But he said little and resisted pleas for him to return. “He was looking for martyrdom. No matter who he would fight and no matter where, Afghanistan or Iraq, he was looking to be a martyr,” said one of his cousins, who asked not to be named. One Friday in late February his father had just finished midday prayers when he noticed two missed calls on...

MADRID (Reuters) - Armed Islamist militants that operate in Europe are also helping support the armed insurgency in Iraq, one of Europe's foremost experts on such groups told Reuters. Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has been investigating Islamist militants in Spain since 1991, warned that groups such as the Algerian Salafist movement and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group were particularly dangerous for Europe. "They are groups that have membership inside and outside Europe and in any case we have to keep close watch on the relationship these groups have with others like Ansar al-Islam," Garzon told Reuters in...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - A few weeks after his son Ahmed disappeared, Abdullah al-Shayea got a call from an Iraqi official saying the 19-year-old was an intended suicide bomber who barely survived blowing up a fuel tanker in a deadly Christmas Day attack in Baghdad. Ahmed is one of many Saudi youths - estimates run from the low hundreds to as many as 2,500 - who have slipped into Iraq in the past two years, often traveling through Syria to join other Arab and Muslim recruits eager to translate a fiercely anti-U.S., al-Qaida-inspired ideology into strikes against Americans and...

BAGHDAD — "Please, please," the young Saudi appeals in a whisper, "don't turn me over to the Americans." His face is charred and blistered. His head and arms are enveloped in gauze. Each word seems to beget pain. His haunted eyes dart about, his only noticeable movements. He is here to repent, under the stern guidance of an Iraqi intelligence agent. The setting is an anonymous office in the heavily barricaded Iraqi Interior Ministry. So what does he think now of "Sheik" Osama bin Laden, the interrogator asks? "He kills Muslims," the Saudi murmurs, his lips barely moving. And Abu...

Ansar al-Islam Emerges as Primary Extremist Group Funneling Fighters Into Iraq Copenhagen – When robbers stole more than $300,000 from an armored car here in 1997, investigators were taken aback by the size and brazenness of the heist. But they really became alarmed when they discovered that one of the culprits had been under surveillance as a suspected Islamic extremist. That man, Mustapha Darwich Ramadan, was arrested shortly before he planned to flee Copenhagen on a flight to Amman, Jordan, police said. He was convicted of robbery and served 3 1/2 years in prison. After his release in June 2001,...

PARIS (Reuters) - France said Friday U.S. forces were holding three Frenchmen captured fighting with insurgents in Iraq (news - web sites) last November, handing Paris a diplomatic headache on the eve of a visit by the new U.S. secretary of state. Paris is in touch with Baghdad about the fate of its three nationals, who were detained by a U.S. patrol during fighting in the city of Falluja 30 miles west of Baghdad, Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said. "I can confirm that we are aware of the existence of these three people of French nationality who are being...

TWO of the suicide bombers who staged attacks in Baghdad during the Iraqi election were Syrian and Chechen, an interior ministry source said today. The source also said some attackers had been detained during the day. "We have arrested some people, but I cannot give figures or nationalities." Several suicide bomb attacks, most by individuals who carried belts packed with explosives toward polling stations and other targets, were carried out during the election. The group of Iraq's al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed overnight it had carried out 13 suicide attacks to "spoil the party". The Internet statement could not...

Insider notes from United Press International for Dec. 17: WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- A European security think tank reports fresh movement of Islamist "volunteer" fighters on the Iraqi-Syrian border. But this time the mujahedin are not entering Iraq; they are leaving it. The Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center said in a study published this week that last month's coalition offensive against Fallujah destroyed the Sunni insurgents' main base and its ability to receive foreign volunteers and integrate them into the fighting. As a result many of the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 mujahedin -- mainly from other Arab...

FRENCH-ALGERIAN BELIEVED TO BE LEADING INSURGENCY GROUP IN IRAQ: OFFICIALS Received Wednesday, 15 December 2004 18:28:00 GMT PARIS, Dec 15 (AFP) - A French-Algerian man is believed to be leading an Islamic insurgency group of around 20 combatants in Iraq against US-led forces there, French intelligence officials said Wednesday. The suspect, identified as Fawzi D., was thought to have left his family in western France to go to Iraq via Syria in the middle of 2004, France's foreign intelligence service, the DGSE, said, confirming a report in Le Monde newspaper. "There are no more than around a dozen French citizens"...

Some 200 masked young men and women gathered at a Tehran cemetery Thursday to pledge their willingness to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israelis. The ceremony was organized by the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement, a shadowy group that has since June been seeking volunteers for attacks in Iraq and Israel. A spokesman, Ali Mohammadi, described Thursday's group as the "first suicide commando unit," though another official has claimed members already have carried out attacks in Israel. "Sooner or later we will bury all blasphemous occupiers of Islamic lands," Mohammadi said....

The 300 men filling out forms in the offices of an Iranian aid group were offered three choices: train for suicide attacks against US troops in Iraq, or train for suicide attacks against Israelis. Or train to assassinate British author Salman Rushdie. It looked at first glance like a gathering on the fringes of a society divided between moderates who want better relations with the world and hard-line Muslim militants hostile toward the United States and Israel. But the presence of two key figures – a prominent Iranian lawmaker and a member of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards – lent...