Military Assaults

The U.S. military took the unusual step Thursday of releasing graphic photographs of the blood-spattered bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons as proof to the Iraqi people that the two feared members of the past regime are dead. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters in Washington that the release of the images was justified "because these two are particularly bad characters."

THE BALKANS * Yugoslav soldiers fired on and seized a boatload of Croatian dignitaries near a disputed island, officials said. Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan expressed outrage despite an apology by telephone from Zoran Djindjic, prime minister of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. No one was hurt, and the Croats were released after being interrogated for several hours.

A British soldier was killed and several were wounded when NATO troops attacked a militant base in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, officials said. NATO said its troops were "engaged from several insurgent positions." Aircraft later bombed the militant fighters.

The Clinton administration will try to settle the controversy over the U.S. Army's killing of civilians in the Korean War by offering South Korea a statement of regret rather than an apology, and a scholarship fund rather than compensation to the families of victims, officials said Thursday. U.S.

U.S. commandos crossing into Syria in an unprecedented raid this weekend killed a senior Al Qaeda associate accused of funneling fighters, weapons and cash to the insurgency in Iraq, U.S. officials familiar with the operation said Monday. Abu Ghadiyah, the chief of a Syrian smuggling network who was killed in the controversial operation Sunday, was "one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent, facilitators of foreign fighters going into Iraq for Al Qaeda," a senior U.S. official said.

A United Nations relief official working at a refugee camp in the West Bank was shot to death Friday during a pitched gun battle between Israeli forces and armed Palestinians, the first foreign U.N. aid worker to be killed in two years of fighting. It was unclear whose bullet killed Iain Hook of Britain, a senior manager for the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees.

In the mosques and streets of Iraq, all the talk Friday was of war, but for a change it was someone else's. In a country that days ago seemed to be heading toward civil war, where whole neighborhoods were engulfed in sectarian battles, the fighting between Israel and the Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah dominated talk at Friday prayers, on the streets and in newscasts.

Despite wavering votes among key countries and Russia's hardening opposition, the United States and Britain intend to call for a U.N. Security Council vote next week on their resolution endorsing a war against Iraq, according to U.N. officials. The Bush administration is also considering the possible use of an ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- either to disarm or to step aside, possibly with a deadline -- as one element of a final strategy, U.S. officials said.

ALGERIA * Algeria's security forces bombed a hide-out of the radical Armed Islamic Group and killed 15 of its members, including its new leader, local media reported. Rachid Abou Tourab and 14 associates were reportedly killed Sunday by the army in a forest 28 miles south of the capital, Algiers, according to Le Matin newspaper, which cited sources in Algeria's security service.

The U.S. military mounted an intensive search Saturday for three members of a U.S. patrol missing after a predawn ambush by insurgents in a rebel stronghold southwest of Baghdad dubbed the "triangle of death." Five other patrol members died in the ambush. U.S. and Iraqi troops scoured the date palm orchards, fields of high reeds, and irrigation ditches along the Euphrates River, an agricultural region where two U.S. soldiers were abducted and slain last year.