Fighting terrorism continues:

Saudi Arabia extradites 16 Iraqi prisoners to Baghdad

Egypt frees 11 European tourists, 8 Egyptians taken hostage in cooperation with Sudan

5 killed in northern Lebanon explosion

Suicide bomber kills 3, injures 6 at checkpoint in Algeria

In a supplementary statement to the announcement of an official source at the Interior Ministry on Saturday, Ramadan 20, 1429H on receiving 8 Saudi detainees by Kingdom's concerned authorities from their Iraqi counterparts within the framework of preparation for an agreement on exchanging persons convicted of penalties depriving the freedom, the security spokesman at the Ministry of Interior pointed out that 16 Iraqi detainees were transferred from the Kingdom to Iraq and were extradited to the Iraqi concerned authorities on Monday, Ramadan 29, 1429H. after completion of regular procedures.

In Lebanon, a devastating explosion ripped through a bus packed with Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) soldiers in Tripoli, killing at least five people and wounding at least 33 others. The blast happened during the morning rush hour, at about 7.45 a.m., in the Al-Bahsas area of the city.

A parked car rigged with explosives was remotely detonated as the bus passed by. About 20 soldiers were traveling in the bus at the time of the explosion, and four were killed, along with a civilian passer-by. The blast also destroyed several nearby cars and shop fronts.

The dead soldiers were identified as Fouad Qadaweh, Ali Mohammed al-Ali, Anwar al-Khatib and Ahmad Shehab.

Many of the injured were taken to the nearby hospitals for treatment. Workers from the Haikal hospital said that families of the dead and wounded had gathered there in the hours after the bombing to seek information about their loved ones, and that the treatment of military and civilian casualties was "ongoing."

At the Al-Nini hospital, staff said that they were treating four or five people in a "serious condition" as a result of the blast, and one patient had died.

The bomb was packed with metal balls to maximize the damage it caused.

The army immediately sealed off the area and began investigations at the scene. Marwan Abdul Salam Sabra, the man who owned the car used in the blast, was taken in for questioning. Security sources told The Daily Star that he had parked his car at the blast site, and they believed the bomb was planted without his knowledge overnight.

The source said that the blast site was overlooked by hills from which the remote detonation could have taken place.

Monday's blast is the second such incident in Tripoli in as many months. In August, an almost identical attack left 15 people dead when a bomb hidden in a suitcase detonated at a bus stop in the city. The army was the apparent target of both attacks.

Army Command released a statement in which it said that this "new terrorist act" was trying to derail Lebanon's reconciliation process. It said a military investigation had begun to track down those responsible.

The bombing prompted an emergency meeting between Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud and Defense Minister Elias Murr. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said the attack was an act of revenge against the army and pledged that Lebanon would confront the "bloody challenge" of terrorism.

Tripoli had been enjoying a period of relative stability following a peace deal signed earlier this month between Sunnis loyal to Future Movement leader MP Saad Hariri and Alawites who support closer links to Syria. Fighting between the two factions over the summer had left at least 22 people dead, but violence has calmed in recent weeks.

The blast came two days after a massive explosion in the Syrian capital Damascus which left 17 people dead. The Syrian state news agency, SANA, said that a suicide bomber from a neighboring Arab country was responsible for Saturday's explosion. It did not specify the country, but several commentators in Syria have accused Lebanon-based militants of carrying out the attack.

Earlier this month, Syrian president Bashar Assad warned of "extremist forces" operating in and around Tripoli, and analysts said that the two explosions could be related.

"There could be a link," said Ahmad Mousalli, an expert at the American University of Beirut. "We are seeing these jihadist groups are ready to take on the state. They have the ideology, and they have the means."

He warned that there could be further trouble in coming months. "I'm expecting further attacks on civilians and the military," he said. "We are beyond a peaceful settlement with these groups. They are going to create problems."

Others pointed to common traits between the attacks on military targets in Tripoli that suggested that those behind the blasts were well organized.

"It's becoming a pattern," retired LAF General Elias Hanna, now a senior lecturer at Notre Dame University, told The Daily Star. "The terrorists are highly rational, and they are proficient enough to plan, carry out, and create an exit strategy for these attacks. They hit at the softest point."

He added that that the method used was a technique that had spread through the region since the US-led invasion of Iraq. "The use of IED's [improvised explosive devices] has proliferated. The knowledge is easy to access," he said.

He warned that militant who had traveled to Iraq to fight against US forces may have returned to Lebanon armed with the practical skills to wreak havoc on the local population. "When these people are squeezed in Iraq they go to the safest place, which in Lebanon are the camps. So in a sense what we see today is a direct result of [US military commander] General [David] Petraeus' success in Iraq."

In Cairo, Eleven European tourists and eight Egyptians abducted in a remote desert corner of Egypt have been freed unharmed and half of their kidnappers have been killed, Egyptian officials said.

The freed hostages arrived in Cairo aboard an Egyptian military plane. They descended the aircraft smiling, some holding bouquets of flowers, to be greeted by Egyptian military officers and government officials along with foreign diplomats.

The 19 were liberated in what Egyptian media called a "rescue and recovery operation", although officials gave scant and contradictory details on how authorities secured the release or how the hostage-takers were killed. The arrival of the hostages in Cairo brought an end to a 10-day ordeal that was an embarrassment to the Egyptian government, which depends on tourism for 6 percent of its gross domestic product.

"They have all arrived safely. No ransom was paid from any of the hostage countries," Tourism Minister Zoheir Garrana told reporters at the military airport.

"We will coordinate with security agencies to make sure this doesn't happen again," he said.

Masked gunmen seized the five Germans, five Italians, one Romanian and eight Egyptians on Sept. 19 from a desert safari near Egypt's borders with Sudan and Libya, then whisked them into Sudan and demanded a multi-million-dollar ransom.

Military helicopters flew the freed abductees to a Cairo hospital for health checks, and officials handed the freed hostages mobile phones to call their families.

"They seemed exhausted but said there was no ill treatment. They seemed elated to be free," said Omaima el-Husseini, a tourism ministry spokeswoman.

The Egyptian government and political analysts have said the kidnappers did not appear to have political motives. Tour operators say acts of banditry in the area from which the hostages were snatched have been on the rise.

One Egyptian security source speaking on customary condition of anonymity said Egyptian forces had ambushed and attacked the kidnappers around dawn on Monday, and that 150 people had taken part in the operation to free the hostages.

Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi said half the kidnappers had been "liquidated", state news agency MENA said without giving details. Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Italian special forces took part in securing the hostages' release, the Italian news agency Ansa reported. "It was an operation of excellent professionalism. We have to obviously thank our German friends who worked with us, Egypt as well as Sudan," Frattini told Italian television.

News of the release came a day after Sudan said it had killed six hostage-takers and arrested two more in a gun battle near the Egyptian and Libyan border. A Sudanese official gave a differing account of how the hostages were freed.

Ali Youssef Ahmed, head of protocol in the Sudanese foreign ministry, said the two men captured had told security forces the kidnappers planned to head to Egypt, and that Sudanese forces tried to cut off the remaining kidnappers near the border.

But by that time, the kidnappers had abandoned the hostages, who then crossed into Egypt independently before being rescued, Ahmed said.

"They were abandoned by the kidnappers. They left them somewhere and went away," he said.

Sudan has blamed the kidnapping on a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army, a Darfur rebel group. But it has not said which splinter faction it believed was responsible for the kidnapping, and many rebels operate under that name.

The remote region where the hostages were seized contains cave paintings thought to be about 10,000 years old. It is accessible by desert vehicle from the conflict zones of Darfur and eastern Chad.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini confirmed the release, telling AFP that the Italians "are in a good shape, they are on their way to Cairo, and then from Cairo to Italy."

Frattini said he was "very grateful to all those who have cooperated with Italian authorities and in particular, to the Egyptian authorities."

Bucharest confirmed the release in a foreign ministry statement, saying more details would be provided later.

However, a German foreign ministry spokesman did not confirm the release, saying the news should be "treated with caution."

Their release came after an Egyptian security official said kidnappers had agreed to let their captives go in return for a ransom, in a deal hammered out before a deadly shootout with Sudanese troops.

"The problem was solved. They had agreed to the ransom. It was merely a matter of receiving the hostages, but then this surprise happened," the official said, referring to the shooting.

A Sudanese official said the bandits had moved the hostages to a hideout in Chad, although N'djamena said it had "noticed nothing on Chadian national territory."

A Sudanese army spokesman said his forces were not involved in the release.

"We had nothing to do with the hostages, we were only dealing with the kidnappers who have been killed," Al-Sawarmi al-Islam Khaled said.

The kidnappers had demanded that Germany take charge of payment of a six-million-euro ransom to be handed over to the German wife of the tour organizer, one of those snatched.

Egypt's independent Al-Masry Al-Yom newspaper had quoted a German negotiator as saying the release had been delayed because the kidnappers were seeking assurances they would not be arrested.

After their kidnap, the group was first moved across the border to Sudan to the remote mountain region of Jebel Uweinat, a plateau that straddles the borders of Egypt, Libya and Sudan, before the bandits took them into Chad, according to Sudanese officials.

Sudan says the kidnappers belong to a splinter Darfur rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Army-Unity (SLA-Unity). An SLA-Unity spokesman denied his group's involvement, but warned that the hostages might be harmed if force were used against the bandits.

Kidnappings of foreigners are extremely rare in Egypt, although in 2001 an armed Egyptian held four German tourists hostage for three days in Luxor, demanding that his estranged wife bring his two sons back from Germany. He freed the hostages unharmed.

In Damascus, Syria hinted at foreign involvement in a deadly weekend car bombing, with its state-run media saying the objective was to undermine Damascus' efforts to emerge from years of international isolation.

Saturday's 440 pound car bomb near a Syrian security complex on the southern outskirts of the capital killed 17 people. It was the biggest — and deadliest — in the tightly controlled country since the 1980s when authorities fought an uprising by Muslim militants.

It also underlined weaknesses in the Syrian regime's tight grip and the conflicting pressures it is exposed to as it attempts to change course and adopt more moderate policies on its neighbors Lebanon and Iraq.

No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion, which also injured 14 people. Syrian officials have so far avoided accusing any group, saying only it was a "terrorist act."

The government-owned daily Al-Thawra claimed in an editorial Sunday that recent attacks in Syria were planned outside the country, but did not mention any names. However, the comment came a week after Syria massed thousands of troops on its borders with neighboring Lebanon.

Another government newspaper, Tishrin, said the bombing was carried out by some parties it said were angered by Syria's "victorious return to the international arena after the desperate attempts to isolate, besiege and punish it."

Officials blamed those attacks on Jund al-Sham, or Soldiers of Syria — an al-Qaida offshoot that was established in Afghanistan. Militants often denounce Assad's regime for its secularism and have at times called for its overthrow.

Meanwhile, The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu condemned the terrorist act that occurred in Sana'a, Yemen, on 17th September 2008, killing and wounding a number of military personnel and civilians.

Prof. Ihsanoglu reiterated the OIC's position that rejects inhuman terrorist attacks, noting such criminal acts run counter to the teachings of Islamic tolerance. He conveyed his sincere condolences to the families of the victims as well as to the government and people of Yemen, wishing for the Yemeni leadership and people safety and prosperity.

Yemeni police thwarted an attempt by armed men to abduct a US tourist and his family in the western province of Dhamar, the Interior Ministry said. The tourist and his family were in a Jeep, touring historical sites in Dhamar, some 100 kilometers south of the capital Sana'a, when three gunmen intercepted the car and tried to snatch them and their Yemeni driver, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

It said that a police patrol intervened and foiled the kidnap attempt and that no one was hurt.

Police launched a search for the assailants, whose identities or motives were not immediately known, the ministry said.

The US embassy in Sana'a is closed for the Eid al-Fitr holiday and US diplomats were not available for comment.

U.S. military raids against militants inside Pakistan threaten to hurt progress being made against them by Pakistani forces and are an intrusion on Pakistan's sovereignty, the country's new foreign minister said.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi said recent attacks by U.S. forces on Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents in tribal areas on the Pakistan side of its border with Afghanistan may set back the government's efforts to fight terrorism there.

"I'm afraid that a relatively recent element in this already difficult war threatens to undo what we have already achieved," Qureshi said in a speech at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. "I am referring to U.S. attacks in Pakistani territory."

Relations between the United States and Pakistan have been strained since the attacks. U.S. officials say Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked fighters use the tribal regions as a base to launch attacks into Afghanistan.

The U.S. actions risk further alienating the population of the tribal areas and the wider populace, Qureshi said.

"The Pakistan public rightly sees such attacks as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty," he said. "We must not take any action that hardens the resolve of those already committed to violence."

He said Pakistan's fight against terrorism has been further damaged because the raids have been carried out by its ally.

"It hurts us even more when the transgressor is our friend and ally, the U.S.," he said. "If there are actions to be taken, those actions will be taken by Pakistan."

He said Pakistani government forces have been fighting militants in the remote and rugged border areas since 2004 and suffered hundreds of casualties.

But he said military force alone cannot win the war there or in Afghanistan where governments, including the United States, must win support of the people through other means.

"Force must be complemented by political, economic and social engagement," Qureshi said. "Force alone is an insufficient objective to win the hearts and minds of the populace."

Qureshi said he was "bewildered" that Pakistan is seen by some Americans as a source of terrorism rather than a partner in the war against it. He acknowledged the presence of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in the border areas but rejected that there were safe havens there.

The minister called on the United States to provide more night-time fighting equipment, and urged Afghanistan to add hundreds more military posts along its side of the border to match those installed by Pakistan.

The United Nations and Britain said that they will withdraw the children of international staff from Pakistan in the wake of the deadly bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

The pull-out comes despite increased security measures by Pakistani authorities after last month's attack, in which 60 people died, and reinforces fears that Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants are destabilizing the country.

The insecurity was heightened when a suicide bomber killed four people as he tried to force his way into the house of a prominent member of the governing coalition in troubled northwest Pakistan.

"The United Nations has raised the security level... which provides for the movement of dependent children," Fikret Akcura, the UN resident coordinator for Pakistan, told AFP.

"They can either go to a third country outside Pakistan or to their home country," Akcura said, adding that the UN would monitor the situation and would reduce the security level "when we find it is safe."

He did not say how many children would be affected. There was no immediate comment on the evacuation from the UN headquarters in New York or from the Pakistani government.

The British Foreign Office said separately overnight that more than 60 children of British diplomats will be withdrawn from Islamabad over the next few weeks, the Foreign Office said.

They are all aged under eight, as older children tend to attend boarding school in Britain.

"Following a review of security in the wake of the attack on the Marriott Hotel, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has decided that the children of UK-based staff at the British High Commission in Islamabad should return to the UK," a spokesman told AFP.

Any dependents, such as spouses, could return to Britain if they chose.

The spokesman said the "core work of the High Commission will not be affected. The UK is committed to maintaining its strong relationship with Pakistan, especially at this difficult time."

"The attack on the Marriott Hotel reinforces our shared determination to tackle violent extremism," he added.

At present, Britain advises its citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, and cautions against using international hotels popular with Westerners.

Security has been tightened in Islamabad since the Marriott blast on September 20, with concrete barriers and police roadblocks creating a so-called "red zone" around government buildings and the city's diplomatic area.

But the measures have not been enough to convince many diplomats, with further attacks feared. Other foreign embassies in the capital are considering whether to pull out children, diplomatic sources said.

Pakistani officials say they suspect Al-Qaeda was behind the Marriott bomb and the extremist group's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in April described the UN as an "enemy of Islam and Muslims."

Meanwhile, armed Somali pirates attacked four ships, including an Italian crude-oil tanker, in what a maritime piracy watchdog said was a “critical level” of attacks in the Gulf of Aden.

“It is one of the highest number of attacks in a single day in the same area,” said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center in Kuala Lumpur.

He said the vessels were attacked on October 1 by Somali pirates armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the notorious waterway.

“We are warning ships to be on high alert. Pirates are attacking ships almost every day. It is at a critical level now,” he told Agence France-Presse.

“Three hijacked vessels were released a few days ago and it now appears this group of Somali pirates are looking for ships to hijack again.”

The first attack occurred at 11 a.m. when pirates armed with guns and traveling in speedboats tried to board a United Arab Emirates bulk carrier with 28 crew on board, heading from Europe to Asia.

“The master took evasive maneuvers and a coalition helicopter arrived and chased the pirates away,” Choong said.

Less than an hour later, a gang armed with rocket-propelled grenades attempted to board a Philippine-owned chemical tanker heading from the Middle East to Asia with 12 crew on board, but was chased away by a warship.

In the third incident pirates targeted a crude-oil Italian tanker but were foiled when the ship’s master took evasive action.

The final incident occurred when pirates armed with machine guns forced a Taiwanese container ship with 20 crewmembers to halt. The ship’s captain deployed fire hoses to retaliate and the vessel managed to escape.

Choong said it was not known if the same gang was responsible for all the attacks.

Somali pirates released three ships three days ago, an Egyptian vessel and two Malaysian ships owned by MISC Berhad, which reportedly paid a hefty ransom to secure the release of its vessels and crew.

Meanwhile, pirates holding a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and military hardware maintained their demand for a $20-million ransom as a blockade around them tightened.

In Algeria, a suicide bomber killed three people and injured six as he blew up his explosives-laden car at a military checkpoint east of Algeria's capital, a local security official said.

The attack occurred in the Dellys area of Boumerdes, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Algiers, during Iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the official and national media said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But most attacks in Algeria are claimed by al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, a local Islamic insurgency movement that joined Osama bin Laden's terror network in 2006.

An officer from the communal guards said two militants attempted to drive into a military barracks but came under heavy fire at a checkpoint.

One assailant blew himself up at the checkpoint while the other jumped out of the car, the security official told The Associated Press. The second militant was detained, he said.

Two soldiers, a communal guard and the bomber, were killed in the explosion, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the violence publicly.

Communal guards form an armed citizens' unit that supplements police in rural areas. Two guards were executed last week by gunmen manning a fake check point in the mountainous region inland from Boumerdes, an area known for violence by Islamic extremists.

The six people injured in Sunday's attack were in stable condition at a local hospital, said the official APS news agency, which reported on the attack, citing security officials who described it as a suspected suicide bombing.