Word: ansar
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...Sunday, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN that a compound established by the Jihadist group Ansar Al Islam and captured by American and Kurdish forces last week was probably the source of the ricin seized from Algerian extremists in London earlier this year. U.S. intelligence had earlier identified the Ansar group as being especially active in attempting to develop ricin and other chemical and biological agents for use as terror weapons...
...about 2:45 p.m. Saturday in the Kurdish city of Gerdigo, in northern Iraq, I heard the thump of a mortar firing. It was coming from the battle line held by Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish fundamentalist Islamic group that's allied with al-Qaeda, with some support from Saddam Hussein. The round landed in front of a forward emplacement held by the Kurdish 61st Uprising Battalion, part of the anti-Saddam Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Moments later, a second round landed even closer. The soldiers scurried into their foxholes, me along with them, before they popped back...
...Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq, war can be a two-, three-or even four-way fight. Two main Kurdish groups, the PUK and the Kurdish Democratic Party, have co-existed uneasily, even though both despise Saddam. After Sept. 11, several Taliban-like groups also emerged. They mostly blended into Ansar, which, with help from Baghdad, has used brutal tactics to try to impose Islamic fundamentalism on the secular Kurds. There are no noncombatants here. One morning, while in a position being bombarded by mortars for six hours, one of the local fighters known as peshmerga told me, "These bombs...
...Paul died, Ansar and its allies were supposed to be on the defensive. The U.S., which believes the group has ties to al-Qaeda, had set out to crush its stronghold in the mountains near Iran. For more than two hours that morning, Ansar had been hit by what a Kurdish combat commander described as "a cocktail of Tomahawk and cruise missiles." As many as 40 missiles rained down over the snowy Shinerwe Mountain from U.S. warships in the Red Sea, killing dozens and destroying an ammunition dump and a string of the terrorists' forward bunkers...
...missiles silenced the Ansar mortar batteries. One impudent mortar that opened up a few hours later was taken out by a U.S. warplane. The peshmerga cheered the missiles and spent the day sunning themselves on the grass. Translated literally, their name means "those who face death." Tragically, I learned this applies to journalists...