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Australia is to increase its military presence in Iraq, sending 12 sailors to help rebuild the Iraqi Navy. The Australian sailors will be deployed to the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr next month to help establish a coastal defence force. They will work with British and US Navy personnel in training Iraqi sailors and navy personnel in patrol boat and small vessel operations. Defence Minister Robert Hill has also announced that Australian air traffic controllers deployed at Baghdad International Airport in the wake of the Iraq war will now stay until May. But 61 members of the security team that...

AMMAN, Jordan -- Twenty Jordanians arrived home Sunday after spending up to nine months in a U.S.-British detention camp in Iraq. "I'm happy to return home and to reunite with my family," Raed Abdullah Abul-Saqer told The Associated Press at Amman airport after alighting from an aircraft owned by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Abul-Saqer, 22, a trader, was released Saturday from a detention camp outside the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. He said he was arrested in Baghdad on April 10 on suspicion of links with President Saddam Hussein's guerrillas who were fighting the U.S.-led coalition...

Headquarters (Multi National Division) South East British Forces Post Office 641 PRESS INFORMATION CENTRE Telephone 00870 600 322 756 00870763 665 814 Mobile: 00965 9113350 Email: picbasrah@defencemediaops.co.uk PRESS RELEASE 1Dec 03 UMM QASR- GIFTS FOR THE CHILDREN Although the festivities normally associated with this time of year are not celebrated in Iraq, the spirit of Christmas was very much in the air for some very lucky children living in the southern Iraqi village of Umm Qasr. Soldiers from 100 Pioneer Squadron based at Cramlington near Newcastle assisted by colleagues from 45 Signal Squadron ‘Tiger Team’ based at Worcester visited three...

Port Open, Schools Renovated as Iraq Reconstruction Continues By K.L. VantranAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 31, 2003 – The work of Bechtel International Systems Inc., under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development in support of the Coalition Provisional Authority's reconstruction effort in Iraq, is well under way. The Port of Umm Qasr can receive large grain-bearing ships. More than 1,200 schools were renovated in time for the new school year. The water and wastewater facilities at Baghdad and Basrah international airports have been updated. Three bridges – Khazir, Al Mat and Tikrit – are under re-construction....

UMM QASR, Iraq (AP) - The U.S. military opened a hearing Wednesday into allegations that four U.S. Army reservists abused Iraqi prisoners of war at a camp in this southern port city. Possible charges include dereliction of duty, assault and maltreatment of prisoners. Three of the soldiers also could be charged with making a false official statement and one faces possible obstruction of justice counts. The hearing, being held at Camp Bucca, is the equivalent of a civilian grand jury investigation that will produce a nonbinding recommendation to be forwarded to senior military officials for a final judgment. The four...

<p>The intercepted vessel belongs to a United Arab Emirates company based in Dubai, British Navy Cmdr. Graeme Mackay said.</p> <p>The UAE vessel, Navstar 1, ignored three warnings from the HMS Sutherland to return to the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, prompting the Royal Marines to board the ship and arrest the master and crew.</p>

It still may be an experimental ship, but a new, high-tech support vessel the Corps is testing for future amphibious operations already has gotten its first taste of combat operations. Just hours after Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the High Speed Vessel X-1 “Joint Venture” sped into the shallow Persian Gulf waters near the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, acting as an afloat forward staging base for Marine Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Teams and Navy SEAL commandos. In one of the first raids of the war, the HSV deployed a commando team March 20 in Mark V and Rigid Hull Inflatable...

<p>BASRA, Iraq — British forces formally handed over control of the port city of Umm Qasr to a civilian government yesterday, the first such turnover since the war in Iraq ended.</p> <p>The handing over to a 12-member council in Umm Qasr was done in a small ceremony in the town, with the former military governor, Lt. Col. Peter Jones, presiding.</p>

US Troops Release Another 250 Iraqi POWs In So. Iraq UMM QASR, Iraq (AP)--U.S. forces released another 250 Iraqi war prisoners Tuesday in southern Iraq, as they continued to empty out U.S.-run detention camps which once housed some 7,000 men. In the past two weeks, more than 5,000 prisoners of war as well as civilian detainees have been released from Camp Bucca after a military tribunal determined they posed no threat, said Sgt. Maj. Ambrose Michelino, a U.S. military policeman. About 1,800 to 1,900 prisoners remain in captivity in this southern Iraqi port city, he said. He said most of...

<p>Chanting "Saddam no, Bush yes," some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were let go Sunday at the coalition's main internment camp in the desert near the southern port of Umm Qasr.</p> <p>The men, many of them barefooted, shook hands with the American soldiers guarding the camp before boarding buses and trucks to be driven to nearby Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.</p>

CAMP BUCCA, Iraq April 27 — Chanting "Saddam no, Bush yes," some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were let go Sunday at the coalition's main internment camp in the desert near the southern port of Umm Qasr.The men, many of them barefooted, shook hands with the American soldiers guarding the camp before boarding buses and trucks to be driven to nearby Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.Their departure brought to 700 the number of POWs released since Friday, said Maj. Stacy Garrity of the U.S. Army's 800th Military Police Brigade, which runs the camp. Around 5,800 more prisoners, including some from...

<p>Carolyn McIntyre can hardly wait to go back to Iraq.</p> <p>The Middle East director for San Francisco adventure travel company Geographic Expeditions last saw Baghdad in the late 1970s, just as Saddam Hussein was taking over and long before the first Gulf War and trade sanctions put Iraq off-limits for U.S. companies.</p>

From whiskey to religion, Iraqis tasted freedoms denied for years Saturday in a slow climb back to a normalcy an entire generation never knew. Completing their own journey to freedom, seven U.S. captives from the war flew to a Texas homecoming. In a widening sweep of officials from Saddam Hussein's toppled government, authorities arrested his former finance minister, hoping he can lead them to the former dictatorship's hidden wealth. They also took custody of the suspected mastermind of Iraq's nerve agent program, who gave up.Postwar recovery advanced in scattered steps.Thousands of Shiite pilgrims renewed a tradition banned for decades as...

A RAIL link between Iraq's only deep water port and Basra has formally reopened, paving the way for the swift delivery of aid to Iraq's second city, a British military spokeswoman said. Local railway workers and British army engineers had been working to mend the track between Umm Qasr and Basra which had fallen into disrepair and had not been used since the start of the war a month ago. Captain Jo Bowlt said today's trial run should be the precursor for trainloads of aid to be ferried down the track within the next few days. The route was "the...

All aboard the Basra express By Rupert Wingfield Hayes and Jennifer Glass BBC correspondents in Umm Qasr The first train of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq has left the southern port of Umm Qasr on a journey to Iraq's second city, Basra. On board to test the railway line were local dignitaries, British military brass and a large contingent of international media. The largely ceremonial train journey began amid much fanfare to the strains of a British military band. It is part of an effort by British and American forces to get Iraq's infrastructure working again and to help Iraqis get their...

THE first stop for any dignitary visiting Iraq is the sparsely furnished office of a British officer who has presided over this country’s most successful regime change. Taking control of Umm Qasr was a thankless task. This nasty little border port town of 45,000 people, home to gun-runners and bootleggers, took far longer for the allied armies to subdue than Baghdad did. When the British Army was given the job of running it, some in Whitehall suggested that a sheriff would have been a better bet than a military governor for Iraq’s answer to Dodge City. Everyone seems to have...

As Berlin Walls go, the 20-foot-high dirt berm around Iraq's southern port of Umm Qasr — the first wall to fall in the liberation of Iraq — isn't much to look at, but it's a fitting symbol for this war. It is a sand wall, easily breached by American power, exposing a rotten dictatorship with little popular support on the other side. This area is full of regimes protected by such sand walls. But unlike the Berlin Wall, whose fall unleashed a flowering of freedom all across Eastern Europe, the fall of the Sand Wall alone will not do that....

Filed at 2:56 p.m. ET UMM QASR, Iraq (Reuters) - Hurling rocks, bottles filled with sand and wooden stakes, detainees at the only permanent U.S. prisoner-of-war camp in Iraq riot almost daily, military officials said on Sunday. Anger over slow food lines or disputes between different ethnic groups can spark uprisings -- especially with ringleaders quick to incite riots inside the prison that houses about 6,000 Iraqis under long white open tents, they said. ``Pretty much every day there's a riot. It can get real ugly in there for the MPs (military police),'' said Maj. Joel Droba of the 13th...

Navy NewStand Story Number: NNS030411-08 Release Date: 4/11/2003 12:43:00 PM From Coast Guard Forces Southwest Asia, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command Public Affairs ARABIAN GULF (NNS) -- Coast Guard Cutter Wrangell (WPB 1332) and Navy Patrol Coastal ship USS Firebolt (PC 10), with embarked Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) 406, escorted the first commercially transported humanitarian aid shipment into the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr April 11. The Motor Vessel Manar, owned by Manar Marine Services of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), delivered almost 700 tons of humanitarian aid including food, water, first aid and transport vehicles. This aid...

<p>American soldiers have been disobeying orders. According to The Washington Times, some members of the Army's Civil Affairs Brigade stationed at Umm Qasr are routinely tucking extra cases of bottled water into their Humvees to distribute to thirsty Iraqi civilians. This is against regulations, as rations for soldiers are meant to be kept separate from relief to the civilian population.</p>