US military issues list of most wanted Iraqi leaders: coalition

DOHA, April 11 -- US commanders in Iraq have been issued with a list of 55 most wanted Iraqi leaders, which includes President Saddam Hussein, said a spokesman of the US Central Command in Qatar on Friday.

The Iraqi regime leadership and control groups have been broken, and some of the Iraqi leaders on the US wanted list may have been killed in coalition strikes, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a press conference.The suicide bombing against US troops in Baghdad on Thursday showed that there are still threats "terrorist in nature" in the capital city, Brooks said.

A man strapped with explosives blew himself up at a checkpoint near the Saddam City section of Baghdad Thursday night. One US Marine was killed and three other Marines were seriously wounded.

US forces signed a cease-fire agreement with the commander of the Iraqi 5th Army Corps in the northern town of Mosul on Friday, Brooks said.The US officer said Saddam International Airport will soon be open for commercial aircraft carrying humanitarian aid for Iraqis to land and take off, but it will be used in a very "selective" way over security concerns.-KM

Iran Condemns Murder of Shiite Leader in Iraq

TEHRAN, April 11 -- Iran on Friday condemned the murder of prominent Shiite cleric Seyyed Abdul Majid Al-Khoei who was stabbed to death in the Iraqi city of Najaf one day earlier. "Resorting to violence in order to achieve political ends is condemned," Iranian Foreign Minister spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

"The brave Iraqi people in the current sensitive juncture, while (maintaining) their unity, solidarity and vigilance, must not allow outside forces to impose their views on them by exploiting their disunity and conflicts," Asefi said.

He also voiced sympathy with and offered condolences to Khoei's family. The attackers reportedly dragged the cleric out of the Imam Ali Mosque, one of the holiest shrines for Shiite Muslims, and shot at him before killing him with several strokes of knife. The identity of the assailants and their motives were not known yet. Al-Khoei was the son of senior spiritual leader Ayatollah Abulqassem Al-Khoei, who died under hazy circumstances in the aftermath of a Shiite uprising against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 1991.

Following the uprising, Al-Khoei defected to London and established a charity group. He returned to Karbala, another holy city in central Iraq, and arrived in Najaf on April 3. This was the first known political assassination in Iraq following the collapse of Saddam's regime on Wednesday. The death of Al-Khoei is expected to raise tensions among Iraq's majority Shiite population and aggravate an already volatile situation in the absence of law and order.

Dead US marine's family complains of little concern from government

US Government Not Concerned About Dead Marines

LOS ANGELES, April 10 - "The US government only paid 3,000 dollars for my son's death. Only 3,000," said Rosa Gonzalez in an interview with an international news Agency on Thursday. Her son, Jorge Gonzalez, who served as a corporal in the US Marine Corps, was sent to Iraq to fight against Saddam Hussein's forces and was finally killed on the battlefield half a month ago.

"The money is for funeral service. Nothing except," Rosa Gonzalez told Xinhua at her small apartment in Rialto, 100 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles. Complaining the government paying little attention to the dead soldier's family, Rosa Gonzalez said: "They gave us nothing but the bad news." In this six-child Mexican family, Rosa is jobless, and her husband, Mario Gonzalez, is a truck driver with low salary. Twenty-year-old Jorge Gonzalez is their second child.

After graduating from a high school in Los Angeles in 2000, Jorge Gonzalez enlisted in Marine Corps immediately.Last year, he got married with Jazty, 25, who gave birth to a son on March 3. The corporal had shipped out weeks earlier.

Rosa Gonzalez said that before the Marine Corps delivered the news, they had learned of their son's death on March 23 via a Spanish-language TV channel. TV images showed the body of their uniformed son being picked up toward a camera."I saw his face," Rosa Gonzalez said, "I said to myself, 'calm yourself, Rosa, it can't be.'"

"Our eyes saw it, but our hearts were hoping it wasn't so," sherecounted, "a lot of them look alike." But next morning, Marine officials appeared at doorstep, confirming their worst fears. "When they came to inform me," Rosa recounted, "I said, 'I already know.'"On March 25, after learning officially of her son's death, RosaGonzalez received a letter from him. Dated March 10, Jorge Gonzalez wrote: "If you can wait just a little, I'll see you."

On Wednesday, the dead marine was buried at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery in South California. At the funeral, his widow, Jazty, said that when her 1-month-old son is old enough to understand, she will have the right words to explain the father he will never know.At least 106 US troops have been killed while 11 others remained missing since the US-led Iraq war began more than three weeks ago. Among the dead, 12 are from Los Angeles.

Britain to withdraw troops, military hardware from Gulf

Britain said on Friday that its troops and military hardware were about to be withdrawn from the Gulf region, including the HMS Ark Royal.In a written statement to the House of Commons, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said ships, planes, helicopters and field hospital units would shortly be withdrawn along with some of the Ark Royal's accompanying ships.

HMS Marlborough, HMS Liverpool and Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship GreyRover would now deploy to the Far East to take part in exercises, Hoon said in a statement to the lawmakers."A number" of fixed wing jets and helicopters would be withdrawn, starting with the return of Tornado F3 aircraft over the next few days, Hoon said.

"In the near term, the medical capacity in the region means that we can now withdraw 33 Field Hospital and RFA Argus," he said, adding that 34 Field Hospital and 202 Field Hospital (Volunteer) would "remain in the Gulf region for the time being."

"It is our policy to deploy personnel on operations for no longer than is necessary to achieve our military objectives," Hoonsaid."We will, therefore, continue to adjust our forces deployed to the Gulf as appropriate, withdrawing units whose tasks are complete, and in due course replacing those whose tasks continue," he added, "For example, elements of 101 Logistics Brigade will replace their counterparts in 102 Logistics Brigade during early May."

"We have no plans to deploy significant additional forces," Hoon stressed. Earlier, British Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram told a news conference here that some servicemen and women had already returned and others would return shortly.

"This is by no means the beginning of a full scale reduction," he said, "Our commitment to Iraq's future is undiminished and we are in the very early stages of beginning to look at the post-conflict phase." Britain, the firmest US ally in this ongoing war against Iraq, has committed about 45,000 troops to the conflict.-keralamonitor.com