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Putin orders hunt for hostages' killers

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 29, 2006

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered special services to hunt down and "destroy" the killers of four Russian hostages in Iraq - slayings that shocked Russia and prompted an angry outcry against the U.S.-led coalition.

The Kremlin did not specify whether Russia's top security agencies - the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Security Service - or others would take the lead in finding the al-Qaida-linked group that claimed it killed the four Russian Embassy workers.

Russia, a consistent critic of the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq, has no military forces there. However, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has stated that Russia has the right to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorist targets.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Krivtsov declined to say whether any Russian special forces were in Iraq, but noted that there are "people responsible for security at the embassy" in Baghdad.

Earlier Wednesday, the lower house of the Russian Parliament decried the murders and criticized the poor security provided by "occupying" countries in Iraq.

Suspect in Golden Dome bombing is captured

BAGHDAD - Iraq has captured an al-Qaida suspect from Tunisia who allegedly bombed a Shiite shrine this year and set off sectarian violence, a top security official said Wednesday.

But the Iraqi mastermind of the Feb. 22 attack on the 1,200-year-old Shiite Golden Dome shrine in Samarra remains at large, national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said.

Yousri Fakher Mohammed Ali, a Tunisian also known as Abu Qudama, was captured after he was seriously wounded in a clash with security forces north of Baghdad a few days ago, Rubaie said.

Rubaie identified the fugitive ringleader as an Iraqi named Haitham Sabah Shaker Mohammed al-Badri, saying the member of a Sunni tribe led a gang that included two other Iraqis, four Saudis and Abu Qudama.

On the night of Feb. 21, according to Rubaie's account, the al-Qaida team slipped into the shrine, tied up the security guards, locked them in a room and spent several hours arranging explosives that would detonate at dawn.

'Fahrenheit 9/11' Marine dies in Iraq bombing

DETROIT - A Marine and one-time recruiter who appeared in Michael Moore's documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 has died in a roadside bombing in Iraq.

Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar, 30, died Monday of wounds suffered while conducting combat operations in Anbar province, the Defense Department said Tuesday.

Plouhar, who was stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., had taken four years off from active duty to serve as a recruiter in Flint after donating a kidney to his uncle. He is seen in the 2004 film approaching prospective recruits in a mall parking lot.

"It's better to get them when they're in ones and twos and work on them that way," he says in the film.

Plouhar willingly appeared in the movie, but his father said he didn't realize it would criticize the war.

Plouhar is survived by a wife and two children, ages 5 and 9. They live in Arizona.

Oil production in Iraq is at highest level since 2003

BAGHDAD - Iraq is producing an average of 2.5-million barrels of oil a day, its highest level since the war began in 2003, an oil ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

Assem Jihad said 1.6-million barrels are being exported daily from the southern port of Basra, while 300,000 are being pumped from the northern city of Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The other 600,000 barrels produced daily are for domestic use, he said.

[Last modified June 29, 2006, 07:10:56]