Word: airport
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...wasn't long ago that most South Asia tourists gave Sri Lanka a wide berth. As recently as 2001, Tamil Tiger separatists hit the international airport, destroying three Airbuses and killing seven soldiers. But for more than a year now, the land that Marco Polo called "the finest island of its size in all the world" has been at peace, and optimism seems well placed despite the government's sinking of a rebel boat last week. Tourist arrivals at the island, where English is widely spoken, reached 393,000 last year, approaching levels not seen since the civil war broke...
...Marine unit I am with, Kilo Company from Battalion 34, left late Saturday from Basra International Airport which it had helped take earlier that day, and pushed west across the muddy plain and then north. A few Iraqi pickup trucks passed the convoy along the main highway. Men waved white flags or had them attached to their radio antennas. The quick movement of the first two days - think of it as 'Blitzkrieg Lite,' in which parts of Iraq's army were slashed, but towns and cities like Basra were not even bothered with - had given everyone hope of a quick...
...Until last week, when terrorists launched a deadly attack at Davao airport. William Hyde, an American missionary, was outside the crowded terminal sheltering from the rain beneath a protective canopy. According to police, he may have been approached by a young man with a backpack, whom they identify as Montazer Sudang, a 23-year-old with apparent links to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's biggest Islamic separatist group. A large pipe bomb, either in Sudang's backpack or carried by an unidentified female accomplice, exploded with an enormous blast. When the smoke cleared, 21 people were...
...ratcheted up his jihad campaign even before that broadcast, directing the MILF's Special Operations Group (SOG) to launch retaliatory strikes in urban areas of Mindanao. The SOG attacked military targets and power transmission towers, plunging 90% of Mindanao into darkness with one explosion in late February. Cotabato City airport was bombed, too, killing one person and injuring six. Then came the attack in Davao, which the authorities are also attributing to the MILF. They claim Sudang, the suspected suicide bomber, was an MILF member, and Mayor Duterte says Sudang's name appears in MILF documents seized by the army...
...down but not out. There are definitely some sleeper cells out there." As the Davao bombing demonstrated, the terrorists are hardly sleeping. Mayor Duterte, who almost completely eradicated street crime and drug dealing by meting out summary justice to ne'er-do-wells, says the tragedy at the airport has made him an overnight convert to U.S. President George W. Bush's belligerent approach to terrorism. Indeed, Duterte says he would be delighted to have G.I.s come in to take the terrorists on: "I was always against the Americans coming in. Now I'm welcoming them with open arms...