Al-Qaida in Iraq says it attacked Israel
Cairo, Egypt Al-Qaida in Iraq said Thursday that it fired a barrage of rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel this week, in a rare claim by the group of a direct attack against the Jewish state.
The statement, on an Islamic Web forum where al-Qaida in Iraq often posts statements, could not be independently verified.
Israel blamed Tuesday’s rocket attack on a radical Palestinian militia and bombed one of its bases near Beirut. Israeli officials would not immediately comment on the al-Qaida in Iraq statement.
Controversial billboards cause uproar in Austria
Vienna, Austria Depictions of the U.S., French and British heads of state naked and engaged in a sexual act will be removed from hundreds of billboards across Vienna after causing a national uproar, the artists decided Thursday.
Besides two images showing nude models wearing masks of President Bush, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and French President Jacques Chirac, another work also will be yanked, the Austria Press Agency reported.
That picture showed the lower torso of a woman in a suggestive pose and wearing nothing but EU-blue panties emblazoned with the stars symbol of the 25-nation European Union.
The work of “euroPART,” an independent artists group, had embarrassed the government just days before the country assumes the EU’s rotating presidency Sunday.
Turkey won’t file new charges against writer
Ankara, Turkey Turkish prosecutors decided Thursday not to file new charges against the country’s best known novelist for allegedly denigrating Turkey’s armed forces, but the writer still faces charges that he insulted “Turkishness,” said lawyers who sought his trial on both accusations.
Nationalist lawyers had petitioned prosecutors to file criminal charges against Orhan Pamuk for reportedly telling German newspaper Die Welt in October that the military threatened democratization in Turkey.
European officials have criticized the trial Pamuk is facing for comments he made about the massacre of Armenians and recent fighting in Kurdish areas, and called on Turkey to do more to protect free speech.
Prosecutors decided there were no grounds to try Pamuk for insulting the military, said nationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz.
Bomber attacks at Israeli checkpoint
Jerusalem A Palestinian suicide bomber reportedly intent on attacking a crowded Hanukkah gathering detonated his payload of explosives when Israeli troops stopped him at a West Bank checkpoint Thursday. An army lieutenant and two Palestinians were killed along with the bomber.
The powerful explosion at an impromptu roadblock near the town of Tulkarm injured nine other people, six of them soldiers and three of them Palestinian bystanders, Israeli authorities said. One of the wounded soldiers was in grave condition, the military said in a statement.
Israeli and Palestinian officials alike condemned the attack, with Israel calling it proof that the country risks lethal consequences if it eases tight military restrictions on Palestinians’ movement in the West Bank.