Syrian forces have arrested two fugitives from Jordan who are believed to be former bodyguards of Saddam Hussein and linked to the Iraq insurgency. The manhunt followed a clash between militants and Syrian forces on Qassioun Mountain overlooking Damascus July 4. Condoleezza Rice offered rare praise for the Syrian regime upon news of the arrests. The July 4 clash was but the most recent in a series of skirmishes that come as Washington is pressuring Syria to seal its border with Iraq. (Lebanon Daily Star, July 7) In another sign of the Iraq insurgents' isolation from Damascus, Syria strongly denounced on the killing of an Egyptian diplomat in Iraq as a "horrible criminal action," the official SANA news agency reported. Egypt's Ambassador-designate to Baghdad Ihab el-Sharif was kidnapped near his home in Baghdad on July 3. The group "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" announced his death July 7 in an Internet statement. (Xinhua, July 9) The US and its client regime in Iraq have previously claimed evidence that Syria is supporting the insurgents.

More glowing reports of freedom on the march in Iraq. This from the July 7 New York Times, reprinted the following day in the International Herald Tribune.

Shiite theocracy takes hold in Iraqi oil city
By Edward Wong The New York Times

BASRA, The loudest sounds from musicians' row these days come from explosions.

Ahmed Ali walked through a shop that had sold musical instruments before it was gutted by a bombing a week earlier, the latest in a series of mysterious attacks in this narrow alley in the past six months, he said. The men here, just a block from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, sell instruments by day and perform at weddings in the evening.

Following the July 5 attack by presumed Islamic militants at the disputed Indian holy site of Ayodhya, protests have broken out throughout India. Over 2,000 were arrested in Delhi, where police used tear gas, and critics charge the protests have been particularly violent in states controlled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A previously unknown armed group, the Fatherland is First Popular Revolutionary Command (Comando Popular Revolucionario La Patria es Primero), has claimed responsibility for the July 6 assassination of former Guerrero state government secretary Ruben Robles Catalan, whose driver was also killed in the attack.

As this fairly comprehensive account from The Australian makes clear, the notion that the London attacks were carried out by a heretofore unheard-of "Secret Organization of the Jihad of al-Qaeda in Europe" originates from reports on the websites of Germany's Der Spiegel and the Italian news agency ANSA that a communique claiming responsibility in that name appeared on an unnamed Islamic militant website. The quoted rhetoric is entirely plausible:

Collected by Mazin Qumsiyeh:

http://www.masnet.org/takeaction.asp?id=2594
http://mpac.org/home_article_display.aspx?ITEM=790
http://icna.org/pr_london_attacks.htm
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050707/dcth034.html?.v=19
http://isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=220

See our last post on the attacks.

Jul. 7, 2005 22:59 | Updated Jul. 8, 2005 1:08
Arab world shocked at London attacks

By ORLY HALPERN

Some in the Arab world expressed shock at the bombings in a city for which many felt great affection and which is home to numerous Arab exile groups, newspapers and businesses.

In another sign that the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox is seeking to capitalize on the Zapatista rebels' new political direction to finally resolve the ongoing Chiapas headache, his government announced yesterday that it will release some 800 indigenous prisoners, finding that they were either innocent or had been manipulated into committing a federal crime, the daily El Universal reports July 7.