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The sky is a brilliant blue, the leaves are beginning to turn, the weather is warm all day with an agreeable crispness in the air as it gets dark: the nicest season of the year. Ramadan finished yesterday, culminating, when the fast was broken at dusk, in Kadir, the first of nine nights of feasting, Christmas and Easter rolled into one: houses spring-cleaned, everyone togged up in smart new outfits, getting ready for the customary festive visits to relatives and friends.And instead, after four massive bomb blasts in central Istanbul in six days, the mood, one resident said, "is surreal"....

Britain on red alert as terrorist threat rises BRIAN BRADY WESTMINSTER EDITOR MINISTERS are preparing to place the UK on ‘red alert’ in an unprecedented peacetime move that would see the streets of Britain flooded with armed police. The plan to step up to the highest possible security state follows last week’s devastating terrorist attacks on British targets in Turkey and growing fears that a direct assault on the UK is inevitable. The nationwide alert would result in tougher security checks across the country and give intelligence agencies and police emergency powers to increase surveillance, phone-tapping and the detention of...

RIYADH (Reuters) - A senior al Qaeda militant orchestrated the bombing of a residential compound in Saudi Arabia earlier this month by telephone from Iran, a Saudi newspaper says. Okaz newspaper, quoting informed sources on Sunday, said the militant network's security chief Saif al-Adel gave orders for the attack in the capital Riyadh by satellite phone. Neither Saudi nor Iranian officials were immediately available to comment on the Okaz report. "The sources said Saif al-Adel led the bombing operation of the Muhaya residential compound, using a Thuraya phone to give instructions to the terrorists in the kingdom who carried out...

 World News » Time is GMT + 8 hours Posted: 23 November 2003 2132 hrs Erdogan questions al-Qaeda role as Istanbul prays for bomb victims ISTANBUL : Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan questioned whether the massive Istanbul bombings were the work of the al-Qaeda terror network, as the city's British community joined in solemn prayers for the dead. "We have some evidence of religious motives," Erdogan said in an interview with BBC television after the attacks on the British consulate and the offices of the HSBC banking group in which 28 people were killed and hundreds injured. "Is...

This Shabbat, there were no prayers uttered at the Beth Israel Synagogue. Instead, workers bricked up the front of the gutted house of worship, one of two struck by truck bombs in Istanbul last Saturday. In the Beyalu neighborhood on Shabbat, the bombed-out Neveh Shalom Synagogue was also bereft of worshipers. Twenty-three were killed in the dual terrorist attack attributed to the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front, a local Islamist group affiliated with al-Qaida. Taking extra security precautions, the Istanbul Jewish community kept secret the location of alternative sites for weekend services. At Beth Israel, what furniture that could be...

A few hours after the blasts in Riyadh, a chain of commentaries mushroomed around the world. These op-eds ran before the media broadcast the names of the victims. By the next morning, the official "version" of the attack (in Washington, D.C., and abroad) was to label it as a Muslim-on-Muslim attack, blaming the Islamist al-Qaida for mass murdering Muslims in their spiritual motherland Arabia, and during their holiest month of the year, Ramadan. A U.S. State Department official quickly spread the word. "This was is not against America and the West only, " he said, "it is also against Islam."...

Time is GMT + 8 hours Posted: 22 November 2003 2217 hrs Iraq suicide bombers kill at least 18; first missile hit on plane KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq : At least 18 people were killed in twin suicide attacks on Iraqi police stations, as a civilian cargo aircraft made an emergency landing after the first successful missile strike on a plane in the seven-month-old insurgency. The scale of the carnage from the almost simultaneous car bombings against the two police stations north of Baghdad overwhelmed local hospital staff. Police were forced to fire in the air to disperse anguished residents...

Algerian butchers in 'donkey scam' Saturday 22 November 2003, 16:31 Makka Time, 13:31 GMT Butchers allegedly sold more than 57,000kg of suspect meat  Related: Cairo food alert over dead donkeys Ten people, five of them butchers, have been arrested in Algeria for passing donkey meat off as beef during the holy month of Ramadan.The butchers, allegedly conspiring with four vets and the director of the El-Harrach abattoir in the eastern suburbs of Algiers, sold the meat in the form of minced steak and spicy sausages, Algerian radio reported on Saturday. Customers at markets in the city centre and the working...

In the fanatic Islamist mind, there are a thousand reasons to hit Turkey. It begins with history, and the fact that the Ottoman Empire, with its metropolitan centre in Istanbul, was the last universal Muslim caliphate. This fell in the upshot of the First World War — the empire was dissolved and distributed among the victorious European powers — but the Turkish heartland remained independent, becoming the nation-state of Turkey. Under Ataturk, it was vigorously secularized and Westernized, with outward signs of its Islamic past suppressed. The country has ever since wobbled back and forth between military authoritarianism and constitutional...

PARIS, Nov 21, 2003 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- Members of the al-Qaida international terrorist network warned Friday they will attack Tokyo as soon as Japanese troops are deployed in Iraq, Radio France reported. In a statement sent to an Arabic magazine, the al-Qaida members said they will infiltrate deep into Tokyo and attack the Japanese capital as soon as Japan's Self-Defense Forces troops set their feet on Iraq, the report said. The radio report said the members, admitting al-Qaida's involvement in Thursday's attacks on British targets in Istanbul, said in the statement that Japan will be easily destroyed and the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded near a police station in the town of Baqouba on Saturday, wounding at least six people, the U.S. military said. No members of the U.S.-led coalition were hurt in the morning rush hour attack, a spokeswoman said. The town, about 35 miles northeast of the capital, is part of the so-called Sunni Triangle that has seen fierce resistance to the U.S.-led occupation. Insurgents have increasingly targeted Iraqis collaborating with the U.S.-led occupation forces in recent weeks, including police, government officials and community leaders.

I was just on the phone with Nick Ashton in Baghdad. Reports are preliminary, but he believes that three more car bombs have gone off in Baghdad that targeted police stations. Sorry, he could only speak for a moment. Let's see if the news services have a report soon.

The heightened threat of suicide bombings was last night forcing UK embassies around the world to re-evaluate their defences against what an al-Qaida statement described as its "cars of death". The explicit warning of fresh "martyrdom operations" was published as police in Istanbul detained seven suspects in connection with the devastating blasts at the British consulate and the HSBC bank. All are understood to be Turkish passport holders. Two of them, tentatively identified by the Turkish media as Azad Ekinci and Feridun Ugurlu, were close friends of Mesut Cabuk and Gokhan Elaltuntas, the men who carried out the suicide bombings...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has issued an advisory warning of al Qaeda's "continued desire" to plot a terrorist attack on American interests abroad, but there has been no change in the U.S. terror threat level. A senior intelligence official said a classified advisory was sent to law enforcement and security personnel late on Thursday regarding "al Qaeda's continued desire to plot or plan terrorist attacks with an emphasis on U.S. interests abroad." But a Homeland Security spokesman said there was no change in the current colour-coded threat level, which remains at "yellow" or an elevated risk of attack....

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Rockets fired from donkey-drawn carts struck two major hotels used by foreign journalists and the Iraqi Ministry of Oil Friday in a barrage that shook downtown Baghdad. The Palestine and Sheraton Hotels, which are adjacent, were hit by a series of rockets fired by one unmanned donkey-drawn cart in the central Saydoon neighborhood of Baghdad at about 7:15 a.m. At about the same time, another series of rockets - also fired from an unmanned cart - hit the Oil Ministry, igniting a fire on the fifth floor of the sprawling office building, which was...

AL-QAEDA: The group's name again comes up. Experts see new organization, old violence. By Dave Montgomery and Warren P. Strobel INQUIRER FOREIGN STAFF RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - With al-Qaeda being linked to three devastating attacks in Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the last two weeks, the group appears to be leaving a new signature as an increasingly decentralized and unpredictable terrorist network that appears harder to fight.Experts and diplomats said the recent resurgence of al-Qaeda violence also showed that Osama bin Laden's 14-year-old terrorist fraternity was as lethal as ever, despite the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The organization essentially...

<p>Ramadan, the Muslim holy month devoted to contemplation, prayer and fasting, has become a synonym for violence this year, with unprecedented suicide bombings of targets friendly to the West, around the Islamic world.</p> <p>Attacks in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey alone have left more than 100 people dead and injured hundreds more since Ramadan began Oct. 27, including yesterday's bombing in Istanbul. Ramadan will end with the new moon Monday.</p>

<p>We suspect that President Bush's London visit this week will go down as one of the most memorable of his tenure, and not because of the protests everyone had predicted. Rather, it will be remembered for the speech he delivered Wednesday in which he eloquently laid down the principles behind the war on terror, and especially the Iraq portion of that war. In its timing and character, Mr. Bush's speech at Whitehall echoed Ronald Reagan's exposition of America's Cold War principles during his famous speech to Parliament in 1982. That speech too was delivered at a moment of enormous Western debate and protest. Soviet Communism, Mr. Reagan nonetheless correctly foretold at Westminster, will be consigned to "the ash heap of history." Middle East dictatorships, Mr. Bush said this week, have the opportunity to join the "democratic revolution that has reached much of the world."</p>

Bush, Blair: Attacks Are Proof By Matthew McAllester STAFF CORRESPONDENT November 21, 2003 London - President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke yesterday like two men whose main point had just been made for them by terrorist bombers in Istanbul, Turkey. "The nature of the terrorist enemy is evident once again," Bush told reporters at a news conference with Blair, a few hours after bombs hit a British bank and the British consulate in Istanbul, killing at least 27 people, including the British consul-general. "We see their contempt - their utter contempt - for innocent life....

Several people have been arrested in connection with the two devastating bomb attacks on British targets in Istanbul, the Turkish foreign minister said. Twenty-seven people were killed and hundreds wounded on Thursday in truck bomb attacks on the British consulate and the London-based global bank HSBC. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the attacks bore all the hallmarks of the al-Qaida network. "Some people have been arrested but it's too early to give any information about them," said Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul at a joint news conference with Straw in Istanbul on Friday. Turkish daily Hurriyet said on Friday...