Military Officials

Israel released contradictory versions Tuesday of the purpose of last week's foiled Palestinian raid from the sea, adding a bizarre postscript to the guerrilla attack and perhaps complicating the diplomatic response of the United States. Authorities released an interview with one of the Palestinian commandos, identified as Mohammed abu Shaash, who said he was under orders to assault the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv and shoot indiscriminately.

WASHINGTON - The Army suspended the commander of its main basic training camp Tuesday for alleged adultery, the latest in a string of military officers accused of sexual misconduct. Brig. Gen. Bryan T. Roberts, a 29-year Army veteran, was suspended from his post at Ft. Jackson, S.C., while the military investigates allegations of "adultery and a physical altercation," officials said. "We don't have any evidence of any sexual assault. The allegations we have indicate a breach of order and discipline," said Col. Christian Kubik, a spokesman for the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Ft. Eustis, Va. Roberts, who is married with three children, previously led units in Iraq and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

baghdad -- The expressway skirting the Amil neighborhood in Baghdad is only a couple of miles from Mahmoud Mekki's home, but it might as well be a hundred. To reach it, Mekki must pass checkpoints guarded by Iraqi police commandos who he says are really Shiite Muslim militiamen trying to drive Sunni Muslims out of Amil. So Mekki, a Sunni, remains holed up in his home, dependent on sympathetic Shiite neighbors to pick up his groceries and run other errands. "I ask you to help us!"

A Marine killed two fellow military staffers at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, then killed himself in what appeared to be an isolated incident, military officials said on Friday. There was no immediate explanation for the motive of the gunman who shot a male and a female in a rampage that began Thursday night at the base, about 40 miles south of Washington. The three dead Marines were permanent personnel assigned to Officers Candidate School at the base. “It's been a long night,” Col. David W. Maxwell, the base commander, told reporters at a televised news conference on Friday.

Car alarms wailed and at least five storefront windows shattered--but the concussive jolts that many along Orange County's coast experienced shortly after noon on Saturday were not another earthquake. "There's absolutely, positively, no earthquake," said Doug Smith, a spokesman for the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "There's been no ground motion. You're free to speculate what it was."

U.S. and Iraqi military officials scrambling to deflect criticism of a wall being erected to separate a volatile Sunni Muslim neighborhood from surrounding Shiite areas insisted Monday that the structure is not a wall at all. It's a barrier. The distinction comes because it is a temporary structure, they said of the 14,000-pound slabs of concrete placed side by side on the edge of Sunni-dominated Adhamiya, in northeastern Baghdad. When completed, it is expected to be 3 miles long.

Two U.S. Navy battle groups, ready to head south toward Libya, were joining forces in the Mediterranean Sea near Italy on Thursday while military commanders here drew up plans for renewed military action in the region, Reagan Administration officials said. The officials insisted that they knew of no decisions on specific plans of action, but one indicated that a decision has been reached to conduct a "surgical" strike against a Libyan target in retaliation for two terrorist attacks last week.

Three soldiers and a civilian were killed when suspected Sinhalese rebels set off a land mine under their jeep in central Sri Lanka, military officials said Sunday.

The Pentagon has alerted U.S. facilities around the world that hundreds of thousands of protective suits meant to shield GIs from gas and germ attack may have holes and other critical defects, according to military officials and documents. The Pentagon learned about the flaws five years ago but did not consider the problems crucial and needed the gear for U.S. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to military officials and documents.

A government-run human rights commission accused soldiers of rape and torture, and recommended that the army be removed from Mexico's nationwide drug war. Military officials declined to comment on the report by the National Human Rights Commission. President Felipe Calderon's office said it was reviewing the report.

Military officials have suspended the use of the 60-millimeter mortar rounds and ammunition similar to what was involved in an explosion that killed seven Marines and injured seven others during an exercise Monday night at the Hawthorne Army Depot in western Nevada, about 140 miles from Reno. “All High Explosive (HE) and Illumination rounds that are the same lots as those that were being fired at Hawthorne have been suspended and may not be used for training or in theater,” the Marines announced in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

SAN DIEGO - Citing the danger to whales and other sea life, the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously Friday to reject the Navy's plan for increased use of sonar and underwater explosives for training off Southern California. The vote will not immediately curtail any training, but will set the stage for additional negotiations between the Navy and the commission about how to safeguard marine mammals while permitting military operations in an area of 120,000-plus nautical square miles.

WASHINGTON - The widening war in Mali has opened divisions between the White House and the Pentagon over the danger posed by a mix of Islamist militant groups, some with murky ties to Al Qaeda, that are creating havoc in West Africa. Although no one is suggesting that the groups pose an imminent threat to the United States, the French military intervention in Mali and a terrorist attack against an international gas complex in neighboring Algeria have prompted sharp Obama administration debate over whether the militants present enough of a risk to U.S. allies or interests to warrant a military response.

SANA, Yemen -- A suicide bomber targeting soldiers rehearsing for a military parade killed as many as 96 people Monday in a sign that Islamic militants are taking their fight to the capital after intense battles in the provinces with U.S.-backed government forces in recent weeks. The blast appeared to mark a shift in tactics by an Al Qaeda-linked group that for months had been concentrating on towns in the south. It indicated that militants, who have been unnerved by increased U.S. military and drone strikes, are expanding north in a campaign to upend the fragile government of President Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

MOSCOW - Russia may consider a preemptive strike on a missile defense system in Europe if the U.S.-led NATO project continues as planned, a top official said Thursday. Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov, in a sign of the tension between Russia and the United States over the missile defense plans, said during an international conference that a strike by his country might be possible. "A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens," Makarov said.

A computer hacking group has revealed email addresses and other personal data from former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, and hundreds of U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and military officials in a high-profile case of cyber-theft. The unauthorized release of account information for 860,000 subscribers to Stratfor, a Texas-based company that provides analysis of national and international affairs, makes it possible to identify some subscribers and, in theory, impersonate them in cyberspace, analysts warned.

A Marine killed two fellow military staffers at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, then killed himself in what appeared to be an isolated incident, military officials said on Friday. There was no immediate explanation for the motive of the gunman who shot a male and a female in a rampage that began Thursday night at the base, about 40 miles south of Washington. The three dead Marines were permanent personnel assigned to Officers Candidate School at the base. “It's been a long night,” Col. David W. Maxwell, the base commander, told reporters at a televised news conference on Friday.

Sri Lankan military officials said Sinhalese militants killed seven soldiers in the south of the Indian Ocean island nation, a day after officials and witnesses reported that 62 people died in violence inspired by the radicals' anti-government campaign. Six soldiers were killed and four others were injured when militants detonated explosives in a village about 85 miles south of Colombo, the capital.

As the last U.S. troops pack up to leave Iraq by the end of next month, Pentagon officials and senior military commanders are warning that Iran will rush to fill a power vacuum created by the American exit unless Washington limits its pullback from the region. That broad assessment has taken on urgency in recent weeks against a backdrop of new intelligence that indicates the government in Tehran also is aggressively courting proxy forces in Yemen and, according to United Nations nuclear inspectors, is fast approaching the capability to build nuclear weapons.

Using such modern tools as ground-penetrating radar and conducting analyses of water and soil core samples, a team of investigators in South Korea is searching for clues to a decades-old mystery: Did American soldiers dispose of the defoliant Agent Orange at a U.S.-run base about 150 miles southeast of Seoul in 1978? For weeks, a U.S.-South Korean survey team has focused on a helipad site at the Camp Carroll base. Recently, tiny amounts of a toxic element found in Agent Orange were discovered in three nearby streams.