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Article from:  The Australian
BAGHDAD: The Iraqi military yesterday announced the capture of the man they say is the head of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, as at least 73 people were killed in two bloody suicide bombings.

"Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was arrested today in Baghdad," Iraqi security spokesman Major General Qasim Atta said.

"It was Iraqi forces who arrested him based on an intelligence tip-off."

Baghdadi is said to be the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, a self-styled umbrella organisation for al-Qa'ida-affiliated insurgent groups fighting US and Iraqi forces.

He has been reported captured or killed several times in the past.

But the US military claims there is nobody called Baghdadi in the Islamic State of Iraq, and that it is merely an internet-based organisation.

The Iraqi military's announcement came amid a surge of killings in two violent attacks yesterday.

In the deadliest strike, at least 45 people, including Iranian pilgrims, were killed when a suicide bomber struck a restaurant in a town northeast of Baghdad, a military official said.

And 28 people, including children, were killed in a suicide attack on a police patrol in southeastern Baghdad, Iraqi military and interior ministry officials said.
Security has improved in Iraq over the past two years as local and US forces cracked down on al-Qa'ida fighters and insurgent forces, but attacks targeting the security forces are still common in parts of the country.

In Muqdadiyah, northeast of Baquba, at least 45 people were killed and 55 wounded in the attack on the restaurant, which was packed with Iranian pilgrims who were on their way to the Shia holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad.

In southeastern Baghdad, 28 people were killed in the attack on a police patrol in Al-Riyadh, officials said.

"Iraqi police were distributing aid to displaced families when a suicide bomber blew himself up," an interior ministry official said. "At least 10 police and five children are among 28 dead."

Fifty-two people were wounded in the blast, Iraqi defence and interior ministry officials said.

A second interior ministry source said the suicide bomber was a woman, but this could not be immediately confirmed.

Two suicide attackers blew themselves up killing 55 people, including several Iranians, outside a shrine in Baghdad on Friday, the second deadly attack on religious pilgrims in two days.

The attacks took place as hundreds of worshippers gathered to pray at the Imam Musa Al Kadhim shrine in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Kadhimiyah in northern Baghdad, officials said.

"Fifty-five people were killed in the attack, including 20 Iranians. Another 125 people were wounded, including 80 Iranian pilgrims," an official in the defence ministry told AFP.

An interior ministry official confirmed the tolls.

The bombings come less than three months before US forces are to withdraw from all Iraqi cities and a day after suicide attacks in Baghdad and Iraq's Diyala province killed more than 80 people.

The two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowded market just outside the shrine -- one of the most revered Shiite holy sites in the world.

Major General Qassim Atta, the security forces spokesman for Baghdad, confirmed the attacks but could not immediately say how many people had been killed or wounded.

"There was a terrorist attack by two suicide bombers near Al-Kadhim shrine at about 11.56 am (0856 GMT) targeting pilgrims and civilians," he said.

The blast came as officials announced that the death toll from a Thursday suicide bombing in a restaurant northeast of Baghdad packed with Iranian religious pilgrims rose to 56.

That assault took place in the town of Muqdadiyah in the ethnically and religiously mixed Diyala province, which still sees regular attacks despite security improvements elsewhere in Iraq.

"The morgue received 56 bodies, among whom 52 were Iranian," said Ahmed Fuad, a doctor and morgue official in the provincial capital Baquba.

"Sixteen were women and 35 were men and there was one small child aged about six years," he added, detailing the Iranian casualties.

A security official said separately that 63 people had been wounded in the bombing, the force of which caused the restaurant's roof to collapse.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians visit Iraq's many Shiite holy sites each year despite the lingering violence in the country.

Another suicide bombing in southeastern Baghdad on Thursday killed 28 people displaced by the violence in recent years who had been sheltering in an abandoned building but come down to receive food aid from police.

And a US-allied militia leader and two other people were killed and six others wounded in a separate suicide attack in Baquba on Thursday night, a district official said.

"A suicide attack targetted Mobarak Ahmad, one of the Sahwa leaders in Al-Odhaim, close to his home, killing him and two others on Thursday night," said Ahmad Ezzat, a Diyala province official.

The Sahwa "Awakening" movement began in 2006 when mostly Sunni tribes and former insurgents allied with US forces to help drive out Al-Qaeda from the group's former strongholds across the country.

The surge in bloodshed comes less than three months before US troops are to withdraw from all major Iraqi towns and cities as part of a general drawdown required by a security pact signed with Washington in November.

US forces are to pull out of all Iraqi cities and major towns by June 30 and from the country as a whole by the end of 2011.

Violence has plummeted over the past two years as American and Iraqi forces have allied with the Sahwas to bring calm to vast swathes of the country.

However April is proving to be a deadly month, with more than 250 people already killed and more than 600 wounded, according to an AFP count based on reports from security officials.

Two Muslim converts and two Turks go on trial in a bomb-proof courtroom in Düsseldorf today accused of plotting to blow up German civilians and US soldiers.

“The world will burn!” boasted an intercepted e-mail sent between the accused, who are alleged to have wanted to wage an Islamic holy war in the heart of Europe.

A VIDEOTAPE showing a member of the United Arab Emirates royal family torturing a man is jeopardising a multi-billion-dollar nuclear power deal between the US and the Gulf kingdom.

The 45-minute tape shows a man the Government of Abu Dhabi has acknowledged is Sheik Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan - one of 22 royal brothers of the UAE President and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince - mercilessly and repeatedly beating a man with a cattle prod and a nailed board, burning his genitals and driving his Mercedes over him several times. He is assisted in the torture by a uniformed policeman.

TURBANED Taliban militants have seized government buildings, laid mines and fought security forces in the Swat Valley, as fear of a major operation led thousands to pack their belongings on their heads and backs, cram aboard buses and flee the northwestern region.
The collapse of a three-month-old truce with the Taliban means Pakistan will now have to fight to regain control of the Swat Valley, testing the ability of its stretched military and the resolve of civilian leaders who until recently were insisting the insurgents could be partners in peace.

The government feared the refugee exodus could reach half a million people.

The developments on Tuesday brought Islamabad's faltering campaign against militancy into sharp focus as President Asif Ali Zardari was preparing to hold talks with President Barack Obama in Washington on how best to counter an increasingly overlapping spectrum of extremist groups behind surging violence here and in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Complicating matters, some of these groups have enjoyed support from Pakistan's intelligence services.

"We need to put the most heavy possible pressure on our friends in Pakistan to join us in the fight against the Taliban and its allies,'' Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Washington.

"We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without Pakistan's support and involvement.''

Pakistan has waged several offensives in the border region against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in recent years. Most have ended inconclusively or with peace deals amid public anger over civilian casualties and distaste for taking on fellow Muslims.

The army has long focused on the threat posed by longtime rival India and is not used to the demands of guerrilla warfare.

Fearing that war could consume the region, thousands fled the main Swat town of Mingora on Tuesday, witnesses said. Refugees clambered onto the roofs of buses after seats and floors filled up. Children and adults alike carried belongings on their heads and backs.

"I do not have any destination. I only have an aim - to escape from here,'' said Afzal Khan, 65, who was waiting for a bus with his wife and nine children.

"It is like doomsday here. It is like hell.''

Shafi Ullah, a student, said the whole town was fleeing.

"Can you hear the explosions? Can you hear the gunshots?'' he said, pointing to a part of town where fighting was continuing.

It is far from certain that the Pakistani public has the stomach for a long battle in Swat.
Given that the militants have had time to rest and reinforce their positions in the three months since the truce took effect, any operation would involve fierce fighting in an urban setting and almost certainly cause significant civilian casualties and damage to property.

In recent days, however, there have been signs of a turn in mood against the Taliban.

Many commentators now say the movement's true nature was exposed by its refusal to go along with the peace deal despite the government's best efforts.

Pakistan agreed to a truce in the valley and surrounding districts in February after two years of fighting with militants who had beheaded political opponents and burned scores of girls schools in their campaign to implement a harsh brand of Islam modelled on their counterparts in Afghanistan.

As part of the agreement, the government imposed Islamic law last month in the hope that insurgents would lay down their arms - something they did not do.

Last week, the Taliban moved from their stronghold in the valley into Buner, a district just 97km from the capital. That caused alarm at home and abroad.

The army responded with an offensive it says has killed more than 100 militants and was "progressing smoothly'' on Tuesday, according to a brief statement.

Fighting, which had been rising in Swat in recent days, escalated on Tuesday in Mingora and the neighbouring town of Saidu Sharif, according to Associated Press reporters in the towns and an army statement. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Black-turbaned militants were deployed on most streets and on high buildings in Mingora, and security forces were barricaded in their bases. Khushal Khan, the top administrator in Swat, said insurgents were laying mines in the town to hinder any army advance.

Late Tuesday, several dozen militants surrounded a police residential compound and an adjoining station in Saidu Sharif after occupying the offices of the police chief and the civil administration, said an officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

"The limited forces inside the police building cannot survive for long unless the militants are engaged from outside,'' he said from inside the station.

"We are in war conditions and need reinforcements and supplies.''

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for the North West Frontier Province, said up to 500,000 people were expected to flee the valley. Swat is already struggling to house half a million people driven there by fighting from other northwestern regions over the last year....

A MORTAR shell has hit a mosque in Somalia's capital, killing at least 14 people and raising the toll from days of clashes between Islamist militants and government forces to 39, witnesses say.

"The mortar shell struck at the gate of the mosque. I counted about 14 people who died instantly and 10 others were wounded,'' Hassan Abdifatah, a worshipper at the mosque in southern Mogadishu said.

Several other witnesses confirmed the attack.

"I was inside the mosque when I heard a heavy explosion and shrapnel was flying everywhere killing many people,'' Mumin Haji Yusuf, another worshipper, said.

The fighting erupted on Thursday, with a lull the following day, then escalated on Saturday as the two sides battled for control over key positions in war-ravaged Mogadishu.

The Islamist rebels said they had taken control of contested areas in southern Mogadishu, but the government dismissed the claim.

"We have taken control of the ares we fought over with the enemy of Allah,'' Sheikh Ali Mahmoud, the rebel Islamist official in charge of Mogadishu, said.

Mahmoud claimed the rebels had taken control of Mogadishu stadium, the defence ministry building and a key road all in the south of the seaside city.

But at a news conference, Information Minister Farhan Mohamoud said the insurgents "did not take any position from the government forces''.