Bomber

TRIPOLI, Libya — The Libyan intelligence officer convicted in the 1988 bombing of an American airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, died at home here Sunday nearly three years after passions around the case were reawakened when he was freed on compassionate grounds because of what was reported as advanced prostate cancer. Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi, 60, became a symbol of state-sponsored terrorism under the late Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi. Megrahi repeatedly denied a role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people, including 189 Americans, and led to Libya's further isolation as a rogue state.

BEIRUT - Two weeks after a supposed cease-fire was meant to bring an end to violence in Syria, an explosion Friday ripped through the capital, Damascus, killing at least nine people and injuring almost 30. A suicide bomber in the pro-opposition Midan neighborhood detonated an explosives belt near a school and the Zein Abidin mosque as worshipers were leaving Friday prayers, the Interior Ministry said. Those killed included civilians and law enforcement officers, state media said.

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification. The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held - and others squatted beside - the corpse's severed legs.

The Nigerian man who tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear aboard a Detroit-bound jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 has been sentenced to life in prison. Speaking briefly in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Thursday, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 25-year-old son of a wealthy Nigerian banker, called his sentencing "a day of victory" and said he was "proud to kill in the name of God," according to wire service reports. A criminologist who analyzed the transcripts of the FBI interrogation of Abdulmutallab wrote in a report submitted to the judge that the would-be bomber was unrepentant.

Six months ago, in a moving ceremony during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, President Hamid Karzai went on Afghan television to pardon about two dozen young boys, the youngest only 8 years old, who had been caught trying to carry out suicide attacks. On Monday, authorities in Kandahar province reported that two of the children, 10-year-olds, had been rearrested last week, apparently intending again to carry out bombings. Provincial spokesman Zalmay Ayubi said the boys each had a vest full of explosives when they were detained along with three adults suspected of being militants, and that they told intelligence officers they had been recruited for suicide missions.

Anwar Awlaki, the U.S. citizen killed last year in a CIA drone strike in Yemen, was instrumental in the failed plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner in December 2009, according to a Justice Department court document filed Friday. A sentencing memorandum for Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who pleaded guilty in October to attempting to down the jetliner with a bomb sewn into his underwear, makes public for the first time some of the evidence that led President Obama to order a lethal strike against Awlaki, the Al Qaeda-linked cleric who was born in New Mexico.

As the oldest brother in a single-parent home in San Bernardino, Christopher Sullivan always felt he had to look out for his family. During his teenage years, he ran with gangs to help his mother pay the bills. When he joined the Army after high school, he would sometimes send his entire paycheck home. He wanted to make sure his mom and four siblings had new clothes and nice meals. Last December, his unit was attacked by a suicide bomber in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Six men were killed in the explosion, but Sullivan survived.

Noemi Eugenio mentions her son's big smile, how he "likes going to the desert to shoot" guns with his brother and cousin, and rides his motorcycle everywhere. "He's a happy person," she says. Six weeks after her youngest child died in Afghanistan, talking about him in the past tense doesn't come naturally. It was his second wartime deployment, she said; the first was to Kuwait to support troops in Iraq. "It still makes me cry," she said. "I can't even go into his room to go through his stuff yet. " California Army National Guard Sgt. Carlo F. Eugenio, 29, of Rancho Cucamonga was among four U.S. troops and 13 others killed Oct. 29 by a suicide bomber who rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into an armored NATO convoy bus in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Bomb blasts targeting Shiite Muslim gatherings Tuesday in two Afghan cities killed at least 59 people and injured 150, a rare outbreak of sectarian violence in a country racked by 10 years of war with Taliban insurgents. A noontime blast in Kabul, the capital, involved a suicide bomber hidden among a throng of Shiite worshipers outside the Abul Fazal Abbas shrine, said Gen. Mohammed Zahir, head of criminal investigations for the Kabul police. That attack killed at least 55 people and injured 134, the Interior Ministry said.

When his parents were killed in a rocket attack, the only person to show a lonely Somali boy named Abdi any kindness, or say a caring word, was a family friend named Abdufazil. The man bought him meat and camel milk. Then he sent the 13-year-old to a training camp to become a suicide bomber. Abdufazil was a commander of the militant Islamist militia Shabab in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, and he told the boy that Christians had killed his parents. He and other Shabab fighters urged him to take revenge for the attack.