Indonesian cops storm suspected militant hide-out

By IRWAN FIRDAUS, Associated Press Writer

BEJI, Indonesia – Southeast Asia's most wanted terror suspect was reportedly killed during a 16-hour siege on a suspected militant hide-out that ended Saturday when police stormed the house.

Local TV stations reported militant chief Noordin Mohammad Top, who is blamed for last month's attacks on two American hotels in the capital Jakarta, was killed in the bathroom of the house in a rice-growing village in central Java province following a lengthy bomb and gun battle.

Those reports were not confirmed by police. DNA tests will likely have to be performed to ensure the identification.

The suicide attacks on the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in the capital, Jakarta killed nine people, most of them foreigners, and broke a four-year gap in terror strikes in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Noordin is also believed to have played a major role in four other bombings in Indonesia since 2002, including nightclub attacks on the resort island of Bali that year that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

Killing or capturing him would be a major victory in Indonesia's fight against militants and could significantly weaken the chances of more attacks, given the key planning, financial and motivational role he is believed to have played in terror networks.

Police spokesman Nanan Sukarna said officers believed Noordin, who is Southeast Asia's most wanted militant suspect, and two or three of his followers were inside, but could not immediately confirm their fate.

Minutes after the raid, witnesses said officers outside the house took off their helmets and were shaking hands with each other, suggesting all those inside had either been killed or captured. The firing ceased.

A police officer at the scene said a body was found in the bathroom of the house and authorities brought a coffin there. After about one hour, three ambulances left the home.

Earlier Saturday, officers raided a second house close to the capital Jakarta where they shot and killed two suspected militants and seized bombs and a car rigged to carry them, said Police chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri.

Danuri said one of those arrested had reserved a room in one of the hotels that was used by the terrorists before they attacked.

The house was about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the residence of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The Detik.com Web site, quoting an unnamed police source, said officers believed Yudhoyono's house could have been planning an attack there.

Officers circled the house in central Java province late Friday afternoon after making arrests in a nearby town. At one point, they sent remote-controlled robots into the isolated building to search for bombs

Not long before they stormed the red-tiled building, officers dressed in black behind a shield fired into the house from close range, while others fired repeated volleys from a hill behind it.

Indonesian police have been met with booby traps and suicide bombers in at least one other raid on a terrorist hide-out and approached the house with extreme caution.

Noordin is a Malaysian citizen who claimed in a video in 2005 to be al-Qaida's representative in Southeast Asia and to be carrying out attacks on Western civilians to avenge Muslim deaths in Afghanistan.

Indonesian police have arrested more than 200 militants associated with the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network since 2002, including many with ties to Noordin, who they say has narrowly escaped capture several times.

Police have offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture. Experts say Noordin was likely being hidden by a small network of sympathizers who might not agree with his tactics, but nevertheless believe they have a duty to shelter him.

Java, home to more than half of Indonesia's 220 million people, has long been the focus in the hunt for Noordin and his associates.

In November 2005, Azahari bin Husin, a top Jemaah Islamiyah bomb maker, was fatally shot by counterterrorism forces in east Java. Sariyah Jabir, another explosives expert, was killed in April 2006 during a raid on a militant hide-out in central Java.

Prosecutors say Noordin orchestrated the 2002 bombings on Bali, an earlier attack on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in 2003, a blast outside the Australian Embassy in 2004, and triple suicide bombings on restaurants in Bali in 2005.

Al-Qaida is believed to have helped fund the first three attacks.

Together, the four strikes killed more than 240 people, many of them Western tourists.

The plight of the Uighurs

A remote, little-known people are at the center of China’s worst ethnic violence in decades.

What’s behind the recent unrest?
A concerted campaign by Beijing to assert control over a restive region that for centuries was dominated by the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), Turkic-speaking Muslims who migrated from Mongolia. Since the 10th century, the Uighurs have lived in and around the Tarim Basin, a vast, mountain-bound depression in northwest China bordering Tibet. The region’s rugged, arid terrain is so inhospitable that it was one of the last areas on earth to be settled. Historically, the Uighurs were money-changers and merchants who operated along the Silk Road, the legendary trading route between Asia and Europe. But today, most of them—about 10 million—live a harsh, uncertain existence in what is now Xinjiang, about 2,000 miles from Beijing. Last month, China’s worst unrest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre left some 200 people in Xinjiang dead and more than 1,000 injured. The killings were the latest result of longstanding ethnic tensions between the Uighurs and the Han, the ethnic group that makes up 92 percent of China’s population.

What happened?
The trouble began in late June, when a false rumor that Uighur men had raped some Han women sparked a melee involving hundreds of Han and Uighurs, who attacked each other with knives and metal pipes. Two Uighurs died. In response, several hundred Uighurs gathered for a protest march in Xinjiang’s capital city of Urumqi, during which Uighurs torched cars and shattered store windows with stones. Thousands of Han fought back with hammers, baseball bats, and pool cues, yelling, “Kill the Uighurs! Kill all Uighurs!” There were reports of police standing by while Uighurs were savagely beaten, and many bodies were burned beyond recognition. Police eventually brought the riot under control, but the situation remains tense.

Why are Uighurs under assault?
Beijing wants the Han to control the political and economic levers of Xinjiang, which boasts rich mineral, gas, and oil deposits. Toward that end, Beijing has been systematically crushing Uighur culture—banning the language from schools, forbidding Uighurs from wearing beards and head scarves, and razing large sections of their cities to make way for modern developments. Beijing has also been resettling millions of Han in Xinjiang while moving Uighurs to other areas throughout China—where, the government says, they have better opportunities. Only the Han in Xinjiang receive government perks such as health insurance, housing, and free transportation. Within a few hundred yards of the steel-and-glass towers where many Han live and work, Uighurs dwell in mud-brick homes without running water or sewers. “We all feel the difference,” said Ashan Saidi, who recently lost his job as a street cleaner. “There are seven people in my family. We want to buy an apartment, but we can’t afford it.”

When did this conflict start?
Its roots extend back to about 1760 in the Qing Dynasty, when China annexed Xinjiang. There were periodic conflicts over the next two centuries, but the region was largely left alone because it was so remote. In 1944, the Uighurs declared Xinjiang’s independence, renaming it East Turkestan—a name that Uighurs still use. But when Mao Tse-tung’s Communists took power in 1949, they regained control of Xinjiang and began resettling large numbers of soldiers there. A second wave of repression occurred in the 1990s, following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Fearful that Xinjiang might get separatist notions of its own, Beijing began labeling Uighurs traitors and terrorists. Violence has flared every few years since then, with the central government cracking down hard.

Are the Uighurs separatists?
Some of them are. Whenever blood is spilled in Xinjiang, the state-run media usually pins the blame on what it depicts as sinister forces bent on insurrection. Their favorite target is the World Uighur Congress, an umbrella group of expatriates. There’s also the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which wants to create an independent Islamic state of East Turkestan. The ETIM reportedly has links to al Qaida and has been labeled a terrorist group by both Beijing and Washington. Many Uighurs, though, simply want to be left alone, free to practice their religion and maintain their way of life in their own homeland.

Is that likely?
No. The Uighurs’ future appears grim. Unlike the Buddhist Tibetans, the Uighurs have yet to command the world’s sympathy, in part because they lack a charismatic, globe-trotting, multilingual leader like the Dalai Lama. Some Muslim nations are protesting China’s treatment of the Uighurs—Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has called it “a kind of genocide”—but the Western response has been muted. President Obama urged both sides in Xinjiang “to exercise restraint,” while the European Union declared that the Urumqi massacre was “a Chinese issue, not a European issue.” World Uighur Congress President Rebiya Kadeer, who now lives in Virginia, has been trying to generate support for her people. “Only if the world pays the same attention to Uighurs as to Tibet and Darfur,” she said through a translator, “is there a chance for this to change.”

The Uighurs of Guantánamo
Most Americans had never heard of Uighurs until earlier this year, when a small group of them became embroiled in a drama at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The saga of the Guantánamo Uighurs actually began soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, in 2001, when Pakistani bounty hunters turned over 22 Uighurs to the U.S. The Uighurs claimed they were in Afghanistan to receive military training in the fight for their people’s “liberation,” not to fight Americans. After keeping them in Guantánamo for years, the Bush administration determined they were neither enemy combatants nor security risks and, in 2006, released five to Albania. A federal judge ordered that the remaining 17 be freed, and in June the Obama administration released four more to Bermuda. The fate of the remaining 13 remains unclear. Congress voted overwhelmingly to prohibit any Guantánamo detainees from being resettled in the U.S., and most countries don’t want them out of fear of offending China. The Pacific island of Palau recently said it would take the Uighurs, though no formal offer has been made. The U.S. has promised Palau an additional $200 million in development aid.

Source: The Week.
Link: http://www.theweek.com/article/index/99263/The_plight_of_the_Uighurs.

'Did Western troops come here to kill my children?' Afghan villagers' despair as three boys are killed in airstrike

By Daily Mail Reporter

August 5, 2009

Outraged southern Afghan villagers said today that a pre-dawn airstrike killed three children and a man in the latest case of civilian deaths at the hands of Western troops.

The U.S. military said it had killed four insurgents on motorcycles in that area and could not confirm any civilian fatalities.

Residents of Kowuk were seen bringing the bodies of three boys and a man to the guesthouse of the Kandahar governor from their village, 12 miles north of the provincial capital, Kandahar city.

Afghan men transport the bodies of four civilians killed in an airstrike

The angry villagers shouted 'Death to America! Death to infidels!' as they displayed the corpses in the back of a pickup truck.

The issue of civilian casualties at the hands of foreign troops has caused deep resentment among Afghan people.

President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called on foreign troops to halt airstrikes and raids in Afghan villages.

Soon after assuming command of NATO and U.S. forces last month, Gen. Stanley McChrystal ordered troops to limit the use of airstrikes to prevent civilian casualties.

Abdur Rahim, the father of the boys and uncle of the slain man, claimed he heard a pair of helicopters circling over his compound at 1:30 a.m. before they fired two missiles that hit his home. His brother and another son were wounded, he said.

'What was the fault of my innocent children? They were not Taliban,' Rahim said. "Did they come here to build our country or kill our innocent children?'

A U.S. military spokeswoman said a helicopter had fired on four insurgents carrying jugs on motorcycles through a field away from a populated area of the local district, Arghandab.

'The helicopter engaged the militants with guns and rockets, however the explosions heard by locals were caused by the jugs the insurgents were carrying exploding,' said Capt. Elizabeth Mathias. Commanders on the ground were checking into reports of civilian deaths, she said.

Children among civilians killed by foreign troops in Kandahar

Pajhwok Afghan News

August 5, 2009

KANDAHAR CITY (PAN): Four civilians three of them children - were killed during an attack of foreign troops Tuesday night in Arghandab district of southern Kandahar province, civilians said.

Dozens of protesting villagers brought the bodies this morning from their village to the governor's house in Kandahar City, about 12 kilometers away.

ISAF said it is investigating the incident.

A tribal elder, Haji Bacha, told Pajhwok Afghan News that foreign fighter jets had bombarded a house in their village, killing four people and injuring two others.

The village residents came to the city with the bodies and laid them in front of the governor's house, chanting slogans against US forces. They demanded that the government investigate the attack.

After the protest, the injured people were taken to Merwais hospital for treatment and then, the villagers took the bodies of those killed back to the district for burial.

A statement from the ISAF press office said that a helicopter intercepted four insurgents on motorcycles in a field near Arghandab at 1:30 a.m.

The insurgents were in open ground with no residential areas in the vicinity. The insurgents were carrying weapons and plastic jugs and were identified as possibly emplacing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in an area known for IED attacks, the statement said.

ISAF shot rockets and small arms from the helicopter and killed the insurgents, and no bombs were dropped, the statement said.

There was a large explosion after the people were hit, indicating that they had explosive material, ISAF said.

Depleted Uranium Ammunition in Afghan War: New Evidence

German Bundeswehr manual challenges US and UK denials over depleted uranium in Afghanistan

International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons

A military manual that was handed over to German campaigners has reignited allegations that the US used DU ammunition in Afghanistan. If true, it runs counter to repeated assurances given by the US military that no DU was used. The manual, a war-fighting guide for Bundeswehrcontigents in Afghanistan is marked classified and for official NATO use only. It was written by the Bundeswehr's Centre for Communication and published in late 2005.

Campaigners have long suspected that the US military has not been entirely candid over the issue and papers have emerged showing that DU munitions were transported to Afghanistan. The use of A10 Warthog aircraft - one of the main users of DU ammunition - remains widespread to this day, although the number of armored targets is now much diminished. Estimates by Janes Defence in 2003 suggested that the Taliban had at least 100 main battle tanks and 250 armored fighting vehicles at the beginning of the conflict. It would be unusual if the US Army had chosen not to engage these targets with DU munitions from the air.

The section on DU munitions begins with:

During the operation "Enduring Freedom" in support of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban-Regime, US-aircraft used, amongst others, armor-piercing incendiary munitions with a DU-core. Because of its pyrophoric character, when this type of munition is used against hard targets (e.g. tanks, cars) the uranium burns. During the combustion, toxic dusts can be deposited, particularly at and around the targets, which can then be re-suspended easily.

It then warns troops how to recognize contaminated targets and of the potential health threat from DU munitions, suggesting precautions that troops should take. It is notable that they suggest the use of full Nuclear Chemical and Biological warfare suits:

DU-munitions can therefore induce toxic and radiological damage to exposed personnel through heavy metal poisoning and very low-level radiation. When it is suspected that these weapons have been used (burnt out cars or tanks, burnt out convoys, typical 30mm bullet holes) NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) protection suits and NBC masks have to be worn in the vicinity of the munitions’ impact, until NBC security troops can rule out any threat.

Bundeswehr precautionary measures:

- No unnecessary contact with munitions, munitionparts, or any other potentially contaminated material
- Examination through NBC troop for possible radiation
- Issuing of film dosemeters
- Putting on NBC-masks
- Sealing up of clothing or wearing personal NBC protection suit
- Documenting any contact with DU-contaminated material (who, where, when, what, how long, and dose)
- Immediate report with submission of the dosemeter
- Calling in of the responsible troop doctor

The contents of the manual raise a variety of questions. Not least of which is that if the Bundeswehr were required to record DU strike sites, is it possible to get access to that information? German campaigners and the German Green Party have submitted a Freedom of Information request asking for any data that the military holds. Also of interest is the decision by the US to deny that DU was used in Afghanistan - a decision that runs counter to their usual position, which justifies the use of DU because it is, apparently, safe.

German campaigners call for government to support DU ban

Release of the manual comes at a time of growing political interest in DU in Germany. In particular the Green Party has been agitating for action on the issue, however it has come across resistance from the country's centre and right-wing parties.

The UN's repeated resolutions on DU encouraged the Greens to propose that the German government implement a domestic ban on DU weapons, urge other countries through the EU, NATO and UN to agree on a moratorium and ultimately work towards a worldwide ban. In a hearing of the Subcommission for Disarmament, the Green proposal was dismissed after the Social Democrats voted against the plans and the Liberals abstained. The Conservative Union, who form part of the ruling coalition, refused to attend. The Subcommission heard evidence from Prof. Dr. Meineke, Head of the Institute for Radiobiology of the Bundeswehr.

German campaigners believe that government movement towards a ban or moratorium on uranium weapons seems unlikely at the moment; a position exemplified by Eduard Lintner of the Conservative Union, who said that DU munitions present no hazard to civilians and only minor threats to troops, which can easily be prevented with appropriate safety measures.

Nevertheless, there are potential signs of support among the Social Democrats and Liberals. The former have said that they are generally in favour of a moratorium, although coalition agreements meant that they dismissed the Green's proposal. Meanwhile the latter would be interested in further commitment on the DU issue but they abstained from a vote on the proposal because it included a clause about the prohibition of transit and storage of DU in Germany. During the hearing it emerged that the German Department of Defence couldn't tell committee members how much DU is stored in, or transported through Germany by its allies because it holds no data on shipments.

The German Parliament is now on its summer break and when it returns in September there will be a general election. This means that campaigners will have to wait a little longer for the results of their inquiries into the use of DU in Afghanistan to bear fruit.

U.S. OKs Advanced Air Missile For Jordan

August 06, 2009

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has approved a Jordan request for an
advanced air-to-air missile.

The administration of President Barack Obama has notified Congress of
plans to supply the AIM-120C-7 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile to
Jordan. Officials said Jordan would deploy AMRAAM on its fleet of upgraded
F-16A/B multi-role fighters.

Israeli Occupation is Profitable, It Should be Less So

Adi Dagan, Haoketz

The associations that come into the minds of most of us when hearing the common phrase "Israeli occupation" are generally tied to concepts such as army, settlers, terror and peace process. Few pay attention to the economic aspects of this ongoing project and generally when people do mention this, it’s in the context of the occupation being an economic burden on Israel. Fewer still ask who is profiting from the occupation, to which social groups do these profiteers belong and what political power do they possess. The idea is simple. Damage to these profits is liable to transform a continuation of the occupation into something less profitable. Such a discussion is relevant today in light of the increasingly powerful global campaign of economic actions against the occupation, or BDS—boycott, divestment and sanctions.

According to an estimate of Shir Hever of the Alternative Information Center, in 2008 Israel spent NIS 26.3 million on the occupation (including expenditures on defense, subsidies for settlements, etc.). Since the beginning of the 1967 occupation to 2008, the expenditures are NIS 381 billion. Shlomo Swirski from the Adva Center wrote a book about this, The Price of Arrogance. In his 2008 report on the price of the conflict, he emphasizes that the occupation reduces economic growth, destabilizes, and is a burden on the budget. According to Swirski, almost all economic areas are impaired by the occupation: tourism, credit rating, investments and welfare payments which are cut as a result of the investment in the security industry and settlements.

A few examples of profits:

* The employment of cheap Palestinian workers and its impact on the general deterioration in Israel’s working conditions. Today the employment of cheap Palestinian laborers in Israel is reduced as a result of the political and economic transition to the exploitation of migrant workers, but in the industrial zones of the "buffer area" exist Israeli-owned factories which employ Palestinian workers in harsh conditions of exploitation. Many Palestinians also work in settlements (a project of Kav Laoved tracks their conditions of employment and assists them to organize);
* The construction of settlements on cheap land in the West Bank instead of on more expensive land within the Green Line and the pushing of weakened populations into these settlements. For example, the cities of Modiin Ilit and Beitar Ilit were built beyond the Green Line for ultra-orthodox Jewish populations, immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are encouraged into the area of Ariel, and there is construction for young couples in East Jerusalem.
* Palestinian society represents a captured market for Israeli goods. As they have no alternatives, and because of the Israeli control over the borders and the internal blockades, the Palestinians are forced to consume the goods of Israeli companies. Israel further prevented throughout the years the development of Palestinian factories that could have represented competition for the Israeli market.
* The military-industrial complex: According to Naomi Klein in her excellent book, The Shock Doctrine, after the burst of the high tech bubble at the end of the 1990s, Israel increasingly moved into the niche of security high tech. This was particularly true following September 11, when the world demand for security increased. The occupation is an expansive testing ground that permits government investments in means which are afterwards sold throughout the world. There are companies that brag about testing their equipment on Palestinians.

According to Dan Babli, 200,000 people are employed in Israel in security services and another 100,000 are employed in the import and export of security services. Together they represent some 10% of Israel’s active work force. According to statistics cited by Yossi Melman in Haaretz, in 2008, Israel spent more on security per capita than any other country in the world. According to this research, last year every citizen in Israel financed $2,300 for security expenses in his country. In comparison, in the United States the security expenses are about $2,000 per capita. In Saudi Arabia, which acquires some of the most sophisticated weapons systems in the world, the amount per capita is $1,500. It is difficult to imagine that in a situation of regional peace, these businesses will continue to flourish.

It is on this background that in July 2005, some 170 Palestinian civil society organizations signed a declaration calling for boycott, divestments and sanctions against Israel "until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights." This campaign is called BDS.

Since 2005, the international BDS campaign against Israel has accelerated. Israel’s attack on Gaza provided it with another push, and recently it is beginning to be felt. A few examples:

* Veolia, a French company that works around the world, is partner through its daughter company Connex in building the light rail in Jerusalem, a railway that will also pass through territories occupied in 1967 that were annexed by Israel and on which Jewish neighborhoods were built. Connex also runs a garbage dump in one of the settlements and several bus lines to settlements. The company became a target for the BDS campaign under the slogan "Derail Veolia." As a result of this campaign, Veolia lost approximately US $4.5 billion after it did not win the tender for running the subway in Stockholm (after 10 years in which it did run the train). In additional cities throughout the world there were actions against the renewal of contracts with Veolia. In June this year, it was reported in the media that the company is interested in selling its part in the building and running of the light rail in Jerusalem.
* Following a public campaign in Belgium, Bank Deksia announced that its Israeli branch, "Deksia Israel," will cease to provide loans to settlements. In 2001 Deskia Bank purchased Bank Otsar Hashilton Hamakomi in Israel and provided, amongst other things, long-term loans to settlements.
* In the wake of a report published by three Swedish organizations in October 2008, Assa Abloy, the huge Swedish company, announced the closing of its "Multilock" factory in the Barkan Industrial Zone, near Ariel. The company announced that it would transfer the factory to another place, within the Green Line.
* In these very days the Norwegian public pension fund, one of the largest in Europe, is examining its investments in companies involved in the Israeli occupation.

A large amount of information about the profits of the occupation is centred in a project of the Coalition of Women for Peace called Who Profits. The project began in 2007 and in its website one can find a list of Israeli and foreign companies directly connected to the occupation. The project does not call for boycott or any other specific action against the companies on the list. The Coalition of Women for Peace to date has also not joined the list of organizations supporting BDS. However, the data base is an important tool for understanding the economic interests in the occupation. Through it, it is possible to understand how difficult it is to separate between the Israeli economy within the Green Line and the economy of the occupation: agricultural produce from the settlements are mixed and marketed together with produce from within the Green Line, what to mention that most of the banks, cellular phone companies and transportation companies operate on both sides of the Green Line. Alongside the Who Profits project works an Israeli group called "Herem" (boycott in Hebrew) which explicitly supports the Palestinian call for BDS and the various campaigns and attempts to increase awareness of actions of these types amongst residents of Israel.

The question is whether the BDS campaign is effective and if it is moral. What messages and actions can be supported and what not. These are questions that those who oppose the occupation should be asking. I and other activists in Israel and the world reached the conclusion that so many tactics of opposition to the occupation were tried, and the occupation is still here and is becoming increasingly cruel from year to year. I believe that countries and people generally act according to interests, such that the way to end the occupation is to render it unprofitable.

The rendering of economic investments tied to the Israeli occupation as unattractive because they are accompanied by losses to companies, will slowly crumble the ability of the occupation to become a generator of economic development and profits. Eventually the occupation will become a burden, as occurred in South Africa, where it was the business people who asked the apartheid government to stop its racist policies.

This is not an easy task, but it appears that the BDS campaign is beginning to trickle down. It is important to remember that this campaign is non-violent, uses a variety of tactics in accordance with the local contexts of the actions, and allows citizens from throughout the world to participate in a struggle against the occupation and not to leave this solely in the hands of the governments and politicians (for more about the principled aspects of the BDS campaign against Israel, please see the aforementioned research by Shir Hever).

Press Release: PRC visits Palestinian Refugees in Cyprus

Palestinian Return Center (PRC)

London: 5th August 2009

PRC visits Palestinian Refugees in Cyprus

As part of its continued work for the Palestinian Refugees in the Diaspora, Palestinian Return Center (PRC) visited in Cyprus, the Palestinian Refugees who recently fled their houses from Iraq to Cyprus.

PRC General Director, Majed al zeer, met around 70 members of the new refuge community in Cyprus, where he discussed with them the problems and hardships they face upon their arrival.

Al Zeer shared his sympathy and gave the entire support of the PRC in overcoming the countless problems they faced upon their arrival.

The refugees complained to PRC General Director, about the marginalization they face from their follow Palestinians in all aspects of their life.

"PRC is trying to help as much as possible all the Palestinian refugees across the world. We are to launch a legal unit in support of their cause which has been founded 61 years ago. This unit aims at solving their problems legally and address their concerns," Al zeer told them

Around 2000 Palestinians fled their houses in Iraq to Cyprus due to the violence against them, launched by Iraqi militias.

International organizations and other non-official sources estimate the number of Palestinian refugees in Iraq before the American occupation was around Twenty Six Thousand and now, only Fourteen Thousands remain in Iraq while the rest fled to other countries.

Some of them live in horrid desert camps between Jordan and Iraq (Camp album), as well as in the desert of Anbar, the Iraqi-Syrian border (Tanf camp from the Syrian side, and the nascent Iraqi side. They face lots of problems and carry many burdens from living under these conditions.

PRC earnestly calls and demands the Arabs to save the Palestinian refugees who fled their house. The PRC requests that they are to be received in Arab countries until they return to their homeland, Palestine.

Afghan police: US airstrike kills farmers

By NOOR KHAN and AMIR SHAH (AP)

August 5, 2009

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A local police chief says a Western airstrike has killed five farmers loading cucumbers into a taxi in southern Afghanistan.

A U.S. spokeswoman says the five were militants placing explosives in a van.

The U.S. imposed rules last month restricting airstrikes to limit civilian deaths causing deep resentment among Afghans.

District police chief Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi says the airstrike killed the five farmers at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday as they tried to move cucumbers from the rural Zhari district to the city of Kandahar.

Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker says the U.S. believes they were loading munitions.

She said the U.S. will review footage from the Apache helicopter's video camera to determine what happened.