Sniper

A defiant John Allen Muhammad, who terrified the Washington area in 2002 as he orchestrated a series of sniper shootings, including 10 murders, was executed by lethal injection Tuesday night. Muhammad, 48, was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m., said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Asked if he wanted to make a last statement, Muhammad "did not acknowledge us," Traylor said outside the Greensville Correctional Center. The execution took place without incident, he said.

Um Eddine shudders as she describes the icy night she and her four children reached the barbed-wire fence that marks the border between her native Syria and Jordan. She pushed her two youngest children through and continued to run, hoping that the ordeal of leaving her troubled homeland, where her husband had been jailed for protesting against President Bashar Assad, was almost over. But she soon noticed that her eldest two children, ages 6 and 7, were no longer behind her. She suppressed a mother's urge to call out for them in the dark, remembering the family had been warned against making noise during their escape, lest they alert government snipers hiding in the hills who would open fire at any cracking branch.

A sniper killed a railroad electrician in a repair yard Tuesday, and authorities temporarily suspended service for thousands of commuters while they searched for the gunman.

American Sniper The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice William Morrow: 381 pp., $26.99

A sniper assassinated a senior Syrian general close to President Bashar Assad, according to reports in a Saudi paper and on websites for a Syrian opposition figure and a member of Syria's ruling party. The sniper, on a yacht, killed Brig. Gen. Mohammed Suleiman at a beach resort in the northern port city of Tartus, said the website of exiled Syrian dissident Abdul-Halim Khaddam. The site said the general handled intelligence files and was a close Assad associate. The other website, run by Ayman Abdul-Nour, said the senior officer was shot Friday night at his beach house.

A sniper fired dozens of shots in a lengthy, fog-shrouded standoff with police today, according to officers who sealed off the area and shut down a two-mile stretch of freeway. No injuries were reported, but eight people were evacuated from the sparsely populated area. Larry Stuefloten, deputy chief of field operations for the San Jose Police Department, said: "We've got him surrounded. We believe we have the area secure. We're attempting to contact him with bullhorns.

A roadside sniper shot out the right rear passenger window of a southbound automobile on the Harbor Freeway near Florence Avenue Friday, but police said there were no injuries and no clues to the identity of the shooter. Officer Dominic Lombardo of the 77th Street police station said the driver was taking his brother and sister-in-law, who were visiting from Japan, on a sightseeing tour when the shots were fired.

The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo on Thursday retracted an assertion that an ethnic Albanian man killed by its soldiers had been a sniper firing at them. The peacekeepers said it had at first appeared beyond doubt that Avni Haradinaj was one of several snipers involved in gun battles Sunday in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica but that subsequent investigations found the picture was less clear.

If the suspect apprehended in Maryland (Oct. 25) is indeed the sniper that killed so many in the Washington area, we are looking at two domestic terrorists who served in the 1991 Gulf War -- including Timothy McVeigh. If one were to add up the number of persons killed in the Oklahoma City bombing and this latest sniper rampage, it is not too much of a leap to see that the death toll to U.S. citizens as a result of the Gulf War rises dramatically. Do we really want to go into another war, one that raises the threat of foreign and domestic terrorism to such an extreme level?

Somewhere inside the mind of a serial sniper * It's very crowded in here. And no wonder, for television's minions have spent this month rummaging through the brain of the Washington, D.C., triggerman whose lethal moves and motivations remain baffling even after Thursday morning's wee-hours arrests in connection with the shootings.

This is the season of celebrity for the Navy SEALs. The takedown of Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan thrust the institutionally secretive SEALs into the modern-media spotlight. Soon the SEALs seemed to become America's favorite warriors: silent, deadly, mysterious. There have been innumerable news stories about SEAL Team Six, which killed Bin Laden. Also, a Newsweek cover story ("Navy SEALs: Obama's Secret Army") and a new movie,"Act of Valor,"featuring real SEALs.

The first shot, apparently fired by a government sniper, scattered children who had gathered near a forlorn pair of rusted amusement park rides. The second round, a loud boom from a Russian-made armored vehicle, sent everyone scrambling. Shopkeepers shuttered their storefronts with metal grates, elderly men abandoned their sidewalk chess match, and bystanders helped a boy who had been hawking apples to hurriedly pack up his pushcart. Shouts and chaos ensued as young men hopped onto the backs of motorcycles or into the beds of pickup trucks, all racing in the direction of the shooting.

It's Friday, and this suburb just seven miles from the capital and dangerously close to the epicenter of the Syrian regime's control is in lockdown. Army trucks carrying extra troops trundle through the nearly deserted streets around the central mosque. The hunched green outlines of soldiers can be made out on the tops of tall buildings, following the movement below with the tracer points on their sniper rifles. Down the street, locals position their defenses: flaming barricades made of the week's trash, rocks and garbage cans.

Residents fleeing the central Syrian city of Hama on Thursday said bodies lay in the streets and a humanitarian crisis was looming as forces loyal to President Bashar Assad pressed forward with an assault on the opposition stronghold. A summary of fragmentary accounts compiled by the Local Coordinating Committee of Syria, an opposition activist network, said at least 30 people were killed in the city Wednesday by sustained bombardment and shooting. It said many of the dead were buried in makeshift graves in parks.

Jason Hill was from a Marine Corps family. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather served in the Marines . Early on, Hill knew he wanted to be a Marine but some youthful misbehavior and a casual attitude toward high school gave the Marines pause about allowing him to enlist. So with urging from his father and guidance from his homeroom teacher at a continuation school in the San Diego suburb of Poway , Hill got serious: bringing up his grades, running every day to get in shape and avoiding behavior that had gotten him in trouble.

Hundreds of Syrians fled to Lebanon and three people were killed by snipers in the western border town of Tall Kalakh on Saturday, activists said, as President Bashar Assad claimed to have begun arranging talks with opposition figures in the face of protests that have shaken his regime. Activists released the names of the three men they said were killed Saturday, but the deaths could not be independently verified. Another person reportedly died after fleeing across the border, activists said.

Re "D.C. sniper set to die Tuesday by injection," Nov. 9 In filing an appeal, Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad's lawyers complained that the case had moved too quickly. Muhammad was arrested on Oct. 24, 2002, and was executed on Nov. 10, 2009. That's seven years and 17 days. By comparison, when Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was murdered in 1933, it took just 14 days from the mayor's death on March 6 for authorities to sentence and execute his killer. I can personally testify that for ordinary citizens, and in comparison to today, street crime in 1933 was near zero.

The doctors rushed through a white outdoor tent where several pale, bloodied men were being operated on. Inside the Hikma hospital, it was a similar scene. One patient, blood dripping from his mouth, was being propped up by two companions. Nearby rooms were packed with seemingly catatonic men, their faces swollen and bruised. Seventeen people had died Sunday in Misurata, the doctors said, many of them victims of rocket attacks from government forces loyal to longtime Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

Law enforcement snipers will watch from rooftops. Motorists will be checked at roadblocks across Athens. And at the courthouse, inside a maximum security prison on the eastern outskirts of the Greek capital, hundreds of plainclothes officers will patrol surrounding streets to shield against militant attacks. Riot police armed with percussion grenades and tear gas will also be on alert as part of the security measures planned for the trial scheduled to begin Monday of 13 suspected members of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, a militant anti-authority movement known as SPF. "We are prepared for everything," said Athanassios Kokkalakis, spokesman for Greece's National Police.