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Israeli ground troops completely encircled Gaza City on Sunday, and the Israel Defense Forces conducted a wide-scale attack on Hamas’s infrastructure both above and below ground in the evening, said Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. “There is now a northern Gaza and a southern Gaza,” he said, explaining Israeli ground troops have reached the Mediterranean coast south of Gaza City. “We are attacking with great force,” he said, adding that the attack was a combined air, ground and naval assault in order to “create pressure that will dismantle Hamas.” Hagari said the IDF is still keeping an open...

It's been obvious for some time that there is something weird about the way Canada approaches its relationship with China — a disconnect brought into sharp relief this week by the news that Global Affairs and the Department of National Defence were not on the same page when it came to military ties and training involving the People's Liberation Army In some respects, the volcanic online political eruption which followed stories in The Globe and Mail and other media outlets, based on exclusive access to information documents, was predictable, as was the flurry of finger-pointing in the House of Commons...

At the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean Conflict, Marine Colonel (later Lt. General) Chesty Puller told his men "We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things." We're surrounded too and that may simplify things for us as well. Chesty puller Colonel Puller's First Battalion of the First Marine Division, along with many thousands of other allied troops sent deep into North Korea to chase the North Korean forces to and across the Chinese border, had been placed in a nearly impossible situation. General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme...

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Hundreds of loggers and angry residents have surrounded eight Greenpeace members who tried to leave an Amazon town with a scorched tree trunk for an exhibit on global warming, the environmental group said Wednesday. The activists are holed up in the makeshift headquarters of the federal environmental agency in the town of Castelo dos Sonhos, Greenpeace campaigner Andre Muggiati said. "They are still surrounded and the situation is tense," he said by telephone. The region in the Amazon state of Para is part of the so-called "arc of destruction," the southern edge of the rain...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (March 28, 2006) -- The planned, insurgent attack against a small police station in Saqlawiyah, Iraq, on the afternoon of Oct. 26, 2005, began with a barrage of machine gun fire followed by rocket propelled grenades slamming against the compound. By the time a Marine Quick Reaction Force from a nearby forward operating base arrived, an estimated 6 insurgents were dead and several more were wounded. Still standing, were a small band of Marines, Iraqi soldiers and an interpreter who succeeded in holding off the insurgent onslaught. It was a scene which could have...

Anti-Semitism may seem to be a static, unchanging phenomenon but in fact the obsessive hatred of Jews has a history that goes back millennia and continues to evolve.Developments since World War II and the Holocaust have been especially fast-paced and portentous. Here are four of the most significant shifts: From right to left: For centuries, anti-Semitism was the hallmark of the right and merely episodic on the left. To take the ultimate examples of these trends, Stalin's Judeophobia was peripheral to his monstrous project, but Hitler's was central to his. Even a decade ago, this pattern still basically held true....

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi security forces surrounded a house in central Riyadh where suspected militants were believed to have fled after trading fire with security forces Sunday, security officials said. Police cars and armored vehicles filled the area, and blockades were set up at all the entrances to the al-Malaz district — a neighborhood that has been a focus in a widescale security sweep against militants following the slaying of American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr. Witnesses told The Associated Press that they saw shooting between suspects and police before some men fled on foot, seeking refuge in a...

Taliban surrounded as Afghan clashes go on August 30 2003 at 02:06PM By Yousuf Azimy Kabul - Afghan and American-led special forces have surrounded a group of Taliban fighters in the southern province of Zabul after another day of persistent bombardment of rebel positions, a senior official said on Saturday. As the operation to hunt down hundreds of guerrillas from the ousted Islamic regime entered its sixth day, provincial intelligence chief Khalil Hotak told reporters at least 12 rebels had been killed in Friday's action, and eight captured. "The operation is ongoing," he said from Zabul. "Enemy forces are surrounded...

<p>CNN saying troops are making good time, ignoring smaller towns in the run to Baghdad ..</p>

MIDI - LOOKIN' OUT MY BACK DOOR I want the Jews all gone…it won't take me very long We'll blow them up until there's no more They won't be stopping me…whoops, what do I see There are tanks right outside my back door I hear a big kaboom…I must hide in my room On my phone I'll call Amanpour They won't be stopping me…whoops, what do I see There are tanks right outside my back door My Intifada will put Sharon on the ropes They will not know what to do…they're such dopes They've got a lot of gall…soldiers...