Military Assaults

The list of corporations sued in American courts for their alleged involvement in human rights violations in foreign countries grew longer Thursday, when Occidental Petroleum Corp. was accused of aiding a deadly military assault on a Colombian village. The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by a man whose mother, sister and cousin were killed during the bombing raid five years ago.

Israel's move toward early elections is the latest sign that its threatened attack against Iran's nuclear facilities is unlikely to take place in the coming months. Though no final decision has been made about moving up national elections slated for next year, the Knesset, or parliament, is talking about dissolving this month and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce as soon as next week an election date in September. Some officials predict the chances of an Israeli airstrike against Iran will decrease because a divisive political campaign would paralyze the government and focus attention on domestic issues.

A car bomb blew up in the capital's Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City on Thursday, killing at least four people, as a new survey suggested that the civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1 million. The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful.

Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi carried out attacks on several rebel-held areas and deployed an elite military brigade to help bolster defenses, U.S. officials said, despite sharply stepped-up coalition airstrikes against his regime. Kadafi's military assaults Tuesday suggested that the Libyan strongman is seeking to crush the remnants of the 5-week-old popular rebellion against his regime, underscoring deepening questions about to whether the U.S.-led air campaign is succeeding.

Marine Cpl. James Dixon was wounded twice in Iraq -- by a roadside bomb and a land mine. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, a dislocated hip and hearing loss. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Army Sgt. Lori Meshell shattered a hip and crushed her back and knees while diving for cover during a mortar attack in Iraq. She has undergone a hip replacement and knee reconstruction and needs at least three more surgeries.

A Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan will be awarded the Medal of Honor, the first such award for troops serving in Afghanistan and the first for a SEAL since the war in Vietnam, the White House announced Thursday. Lt. Michael P. Murphy, 29, who had SEAL training here and was assigned to a SEAL team in Hawaii, was killed in June 2005 during a mission in the Hindu Kush mountains to find a key Taliban leader.

The dead wore the same footwear, imitation leather dress shoes with Velcro flaps. Their mangled bodies filled the trenches. Bags of ammunition, with the names of fighters written on them, sat by their sides. A pulpit made of bamboo stood next to a grassy field, a newspaper filled with rambling and enigmatic religious writing strewn nearby.

I finally tried to wash the Marine's bloodstains from my pants. It had been nine days since the battle, and daily layers of dirt and dust masked what I knew lay beneath. From the relative comfort of "Dreamland," a reasonably secure U.S. base just outside Fallouja, I swirled my pants in a square metal pan containing four inches of precious water. With each spin, the water turned a deeper brown. Soon I could see the blood of Sgt. Josue Magana, the stains unmoved by the swirling water, my memories of that morning just as deeply set. april 26. 5 a.m. the marines of echo company had been ordered to take two homes in the Jolan neighborhood at the northwestern edge of Fallouja, the heart of the notorious Sunni Triangle and the root of U.S. occupation resistance.

He was one of Mexico's most notorious drug traffickers, embroiled in fights to the death with rival gangsters and the Mexican military. His crude signature -- proclaiming him the "boss of bosses" -- showed up regularly next to the headless bodies of his foes. So when Arturo Beltran Leyva fell dead Wednesday night during a frenzied gunfight with Mexican naval commandos, authorities declared a major blow struck against one of Mexico's meanest smuggling groups. "This action represents an important achievement for the people and government of Mexico and a heavy blow against one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in Mexico," President Felipe Calderon said Thursday from Copenhagen, where he was attending an international climate conference.

The bodies of Beslan's children lay in freshly dug graves when the most troubling questions of the deadly hostage-taking at Middle School No. 1 started to emerge. On the roof of a five-story apartment building across from the school where 318 hostages died and about 700 others were wounded in September, residents found three large, empty tubes, a little more than 36 inches long, marked with red stripes and numeric codes.

Moammar Kadafi's embattled regime unleashed a military assault in the heart of the Libyan capital in an effort to crush a popular protest like those that have already toppled two North African rulers and now threatens the longest-serving leader in the Arab world. Unlike the strongmen who fell to street demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt, Kadafi all but launched a war against his country's civilian population to maintain control of the oil-rich nation. Libyan state television reported Monday that security forces were storming what it called "dens of terror and sabotage" in the capital, Tripoli.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Peshawar, Pakistan -- Two suicide bombers attacked a refugee camp in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least 41 people and injuring 64 others in what appeared to be retaliation for the military's latest offensive against Taliban fighters. The dead and wounded had been lining up for food at a refugee camp in the volatile tribal region's Kohat district, said North-West Frontier Province Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain. Police said a suicide bomber rushed up to the line and blew himself up. As others rushed to the blast site to help the wounded, a second bomber detonated his explosives.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Tuesday took a swipe at the website that released secret military video of a 2007 helicopter gunship incident in Iraq in which civilians, including two news agency employees, were killed. Gates said the videos released by the group WikiLeaks were out of context and provided an incomplete picture of the battlefield, comparing it to war as seen "through a soda straw." "These people can put out whatever they want and are never held accountable for it," said Gates, speaking to reporters aboard his plane en route to Lima, Peru, for a defense ministers conference this week.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and San Diego -- Security for Afghan villagers remains precarious in the Marja district of Helmand province, where U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers mounted a massive assault in February to oust the Taliban from control, according to the Marine general who led the assault. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said late Sunday that while there are hopeful signs in Marja, with Afghan police patrolling and farmers signing up to grow crops other than opium poppy, the mission's success or failure may not be known for months.

By any standard, it was a disastrous day for an important U.S. ally in Afghanistan. First, three German soldiers died in an unusually fierce battle with insurgents, then German troops accidentally killed six Afghan soldiers apparently coming to their aid. The chaotic chain of events in the northern province of Kunduz, detailed by Afghan and NATO officials Saturday, a day after the fact, could further undermine German public backing for the conflict....

A senior Al Qaeda operative being hunted in the December bombing of a U.S. base used by the CIA in Afghanistan was among those killed in a missile strike in Pakistan's tribal area, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Hussein Yemeni, an Al Qaeda bomb expert and trainer, is believed to have been among more than a dozen people killed in the strike last week in Miram Shah, the largest town in North Waziristan, the officials said. Yemeni is thought to have had a major planning role in the Dec. 30 suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA employees and contractors and a Jordanian intelligence officer, a counter-terrorism official said.

Israeli bombing has knocked out irrigation canals supplying Litani River water to more than 10,000 acres of farmland and 23 villages in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, prompting accusations here that Israel is using its war against Hezbollah to lay claim to Lebanon's prime watersheds.

Muslim leaders on Tuesday called Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger disrespectful and insulting for ignoring their request to meet about the war in Lebanon so he could explain his appearance at a rally supporting Israel that was attended by thousands. Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke at the July 23 event in front of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles building on Wilshire Boulevard. On Aug.

Predicting that the level of U.S. casualties in the ongoing fight to win control of the southern Afghan town of Marja will be "tough" to bear, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said Sunday that the assault was just the beginning of a 12- to 18-month campaign to wipe out safe havens for the Taliban and other Islamic militants. "These types of efforts are hard, and they're hard all the time," Petraeus said. "I don't use words like 'optimist' or 'pessimist,' I use 'realist.' . . . We're in Afghanistan to ensure it cannot once again be a sanctuary for the kinds of attacks that were carried out on 9/11."

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Nawa, Afghanistan -- Backed by fighter jets and attack helicopters, U.S. Marines and Afghan troops closed in on an insurgent-ridden sector of Marja on Sunday, the ninth day of a coalition bid to wrest control of the southern Afghan town from the Taliban. The fighting, concentrated in northwestern Marja, took place amid what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization called "determined resistance" from holdout fighters in various locations in and around the town.