The Insider: Daily Terrorism Report

Sept. 8, 2004 -- U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign passed the 1,000 milestone Tuesday, with 800 of the deaths coming as a result of the bloody insurgency after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

And Pakistani security forces arrested a Saudi national suspected of having links to al Qaeda, news wires reported Wednesday.

IRAQ NEWS

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Pass 1,000U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign passed the 1,000 milestone Tuesday, with more than 800 of them during the stubborn insurgency that flared after the Americans brought down Saddam Hussein and President Bush declared major combat over. (AP)

U.S. Jets Pound Fallujah as U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Pass 1,000 U.S. warplanes hammered suspected militant strongholds in Fallujah on Wednesday after a suicide bombing there and a series of attacks in Baghdad pushed the number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign past 1,000. (Boston Globe)

Iraqi Group Demands Ransom For Kidnapped TurkAn Iraqi guerrilla group is demanding a 45,000-dollar ransom for Tahsin Top, a Turkish truck driver it is holding hostage, the driver`s wife told Anatolia news agency on Wednesday. (AFP)

Group Denies French Hostage RansomAn Internet statement purportedly from Iraqi militants holding two French journalists hostage denies demanding a ransom or setting a 48-hour deadline. (Reuters)

U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of IraqAs American military deaths in Iraq operations surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas. (NY Times)

Aid Groups In Iraq Boost Security, Consider Leaving Iraq After Kidnapping Foreign aid workers in Iraq bolted their doors, hired more guards or installed spy cameras outside their Baghdad offices Wednesday as they considered whether to leave the country altogether after the kidnapping of two female Italian relief workers. (AP)

UN: Iraq Unrest May Thwart PollsThe violence in Iraq may threaten elections planned in January 2005 and has already restricted UN international staff in the country to 35, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said. (Al Jazeera)

THE WAR ON TERROR

INVESTIGATIONS

PakistanPakistan Detains Saudi Al Qaeda Suspect-OfficialsPakistani security forces on Tuesday arrested a Saudi national suspected of links with al Qaeda, part of a campaign to hunt down militants in western tribal regions, officials said. (Reuters)

Civilians Die In Pakistan ClashAt least six Pakistani civilians died when troops and militants clashed near the Afghan border, the army says. (BBC)

AfghanistanNATO-led Peacekeepers Seeking Terrorist Posing As CameramanInternational peacekeepers in Afghanistan Wednesday said they had received a tip-off that a "terrorist" posing as a cameraman was trying to enter the capital. (AFP)

Afghans Lionise Masood On Anniversary of His DeathTens of thousands of Afghans paid tribute on Wednesday to Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Masood, slain by al Qaeda two days before the Sept. 11 attacks but still a key political icon three years after his death. (Reuters)

Russian Hostage CrisisRussia Offers Huge Reward In Hunt For Chechen RebelsRussia's Federal Security Service today offered a reward of 300 million roubles ($10.3 million) for information that could help "neutralize" two Chechen rebel leaders, and a military official reasserted Russia's right to strike terrorists the world over. (AP)

IndonesiaWestern Hotels Potential Terror Targets In Indonesia, U.S. Warns Western hotels are potential targets of terrorist attacks in Indonesia ahead of the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001, mayhem, the United States said in an updated travel alert Tuesday. (Channel News Asia)

United StatesRidge: Terrorists Hope To Disrupt ElectionTerrorists still hope to disrupt the U.S. democratic process even though the presidential nominating conventions and other high-profile gatherings this summer went off without incident, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday. (AP)

Senate Gets Legislation on Sept. 11 Panel's ReformsThe Republican and Democratic senators who proposed establishing the independent Sept. 11 commission introduced legislation Tuesday to implement the commission's suggested reforms. (LA Times)

Graham Claims Saudi Government Connection To 9/11The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee charged Tuesday that an al Qaeda support network conducted some of its operations leading up to the 9/11 attacks through Saudi Arabia's embassy in the United States. (Scripps Howard News Service)

JordanJordan Steps Up Security To Avert TerrorJordan has approved a new security plan to protect public institutions and offices from terrorist attacks, using state-of-the-art technology. (Al Arab)

LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS

Panel: Cuba Detainee Wrongly Named EnemyA U.S. military panel has determined that one detainee at the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was incorrectly classified an "enemy combatant" and will be allowed to return to his home country, Navy Secretary Gordon England said Wednesday. (AP)

ANALYSIS & OPINION

Is the World Really Safer, as Bush Claims? "We will build a safer world and a more hopeful America,'' U.S. President George W. Bush stated repeatedly when accepting the presidential nomination at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Every time the phrase came up, he received fervent applause. (Asahi)

A Thousand TroopsSix U.S. soldiers were killed, two Italian aid workers were kidnapped and warplanes bombed a Sunni enclave in Fallouja, a city mostly off-limits to coalition troops. It was just another day in the war Tuesday, except for the numbers. By this morning, Iraq time, the Associated Press count of casualties stated that 1,000 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq, aside from more than 100 other coalition soldiers and thousands of Iraqi noncombatants. And many thousands more have been wounded.(LA Times)

Jihadists Failing to Win Muslim MindsThree years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the hostage-taking in North Ossetia and its horrendous outcome and the capture of two French journalists in Iraq have shed new light on the challenges facing Islamist terrorism.(LA Times)

Rhetoric of Mass Destruction By Howard Kurtz, 9:47 AM September 08, 2004Excuse me, but did Dick Cheney just predict that a Kerry victory would lead to a terrorist attack? Have the media got that right?I spent last... (Washington Post)

Russia Has Just Experienced Its Own 9/11 The massacre of school children by Islamic terrorists in the North Osettian town of Beslan horrified the civilized world. (CS Monitor)

We Can Win —and We Must The instant flap in the media and the Democratic campaign when the president said we might never win the war on terrorism shows just how much 9/11 has changed our political dialogue. Americans wake up every day knowing they are threatened by Islamic radicals willing and eager to die in a holy war against "The Great Satan." Our national commitment to defeating them will brook no equivocation. (U.S. News & World Report)

On Terrorism and Fighting It

The acts of terrorism that are perpetrated by Islamists, here and there, are being severely criticized by Arabs and Muslims. (Dar al Hayat)

Film On Al Qaeda's Germany Cell Casts Light On Thoughts and Lives of Sept. 11 AttackersTo the world at large, and the United States in particular, they will perhaps always be known simply as terrorists, but a docu-drama by British director Antonia Bird has largely succeeded in humanizing the men behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (AFP)

The Insider Daily Terrorism Report (DTR) is a summary of major news articles and broadcasts relating to international terrorism and developments in Iraq. The DTR is edited daily from foreign and U.S. sources by Chris Isham, Hoda Osman, and Brinda Adhikari of the ABCNEWS Investigative Unit. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ABCNEWS.