Gaza City (dpa) - In a predawn raid Wednesday, Israeli army F-16 warplanes, Apache helicopters and naval boats attacked Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's beachside Gaza City headquarters, killing at least five Palestinians and wounding 10, Palestinian witnesses said. Palestinian security sources said that at least five Palestinian officers of the Elite Force 17 guard for Arafat's headquarters were killed when a special Israeli commando unit tried to raid the offices. The witnesses said that Israeli naval boats fired several shells at the building, which also sustained heavy gunfire from Israeli helicopters. The Palestinian Force 17 arrived at the scene and fired back at the Israeli naval boats, which tried to land Israeli troops to enter Arafat's ``Al Muntada'' headquarters. Ambulances arrived at the scene and transported five Palestinians who were killed and at least 10 Force 17 members who were wounded during the attack. While the Israeli army commando unit was trying to raid Arafat's headquarters, F-16 warplanes rocketed the area. A big explosion was heard in the western neighbourhoods of Gaza City. Several explosions and the buzz of bullets were heard in the western neighbourhood of Remal in Gaza City, said the witnesses.

"There is now a network being reconstructed in Europe . . . more secretive, more radicalised and with a greater capacity for violence..."

MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 2/20/2002: It's getting even more difficult to know just what to believe these days. Everything that comes from Washington, be it from government or from the huge government-connected sector of think-tanks and research institutes, is more and more suspect...and rightly so.

Events of recent months have no doubt spawned much more disgust and hatred of the US and Israel in various quarters. But the betting from officialdom is that the extensive American-led worldwide crackdown on all serious opposition groups of whatever kind will have its impact. And the betting from officialdom is as well that few if any groups or individuals will come along that will ever have the resources and training as Al-Qaeda; and that they will be able to keep everyone else under control.

On the other hand, while recent events may have fractured or even destroyed groups whose agenda was to oppose today's forms of American imperialism in the Middle East; more isolated, small, and deeply underground groups may have been seeded far and wide at the same time. Add to this the terribly brutal military occupations that have actually been stepped up in Palestine, in Chechnya, and in Kashmir -- plus what can now be expected in Iraq and then in other countries that may be added to the "axis of evil" countries -- and there will clearly be serious ramifications and counterreactions in the years ahead.

And that's just the point actually. The American and Israeli militarists have succeeded at the moment in getting the world that they have wanted all along. Indeed it is their past actions, not to mention attitudes, that are primarily responsible for bringing such a world about. It's a world of secret agents and high-tech militarism on a daily, escalating scale. It's a world of "freedom against terrorism", "us against them", "good versus evil"; a world where "security" concerns dominant even if far far more of their own people are suffering and dying because of cureable diseases, faulty medical care, and car accidents. The world they have forced upon all is neither the real world nor did it have to be, not by any stretch of course. But it is the world they in their arrogance, simple-mindedness, and brutish ways think they understand. And at the moment -- because of the sole superpower status of the US and it's tremendous techological and military superiority -- it's a world they will further attempt to control and manipulate and dominate until more days of reckoning results in the months nad years ahead.

[Financial Times, London, 19 February 19 2002] Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network is preparing for a new phase of activity, western intelligence officers have told the Financial Times.

Despite the destruction of its presence in Afghanistan, waves of arrests and the targeting of terrorist funds around the world since the September 11 attacks, security services fear that al-Qaeda is still successfully recruiting, and seeking new targets.

"There are a lot of these guys out there, and they will pick themselves off the floor and strike again," a senior intelligence official said on Tuesday.

The official confirmed that reorganisation of al-Qaeda's top leadership was under way, co-ordinated by Abu Zubaydah, a bin Laden deputy known to have escaped from Afghanistan and described by the official as a "very serious player" with an extensive knowledge of al-Qaeda's global network.

European countries and the US remain on high alert about the possibility of new attacks. Security officials are particularly concerned about al-Qaeda "sleepers" who have been in place since before September 11, and who may now be planning actions drawing upon logistical support in the UK and mainland Europe.

In the UK, anti-terrorist police are now operating on the assumption that there is a hard core of up to 100 supporters of bin Laden in the UK, any one of whom could be turned to terrorism in the months ahead.

Frank Spicka, head of counter-terrorism at Interpol, and a former secret service bodyguard to US presidents, said: "There is growing evidence that many individuals were evacuated from Afghanistan before the military offensive. It's safe to assume that many of them have entrenched themselves elsewhere in the world."

Even the most conservative estimate circulating within European security circles is that there could be up to 4,000 terrorists at large. "No one is feeling comfortable that we're on top of it," one French intelligence officer said.

Referring to prisoners held in Afghanistan and at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, one security analyst said: "It's debatable just how much the US-led offensive has contributed to our detailed knowledge of alQaeda as it is today."

Throughout western Europe, concerns are growing that September 11 acted as an inspiration to new, young recruits. "There is now a network being reconstructed in Europe . . . more secretive, more radicalised and with a greater capacity for violence," said Guillaume Dasquie,a French anti-terrorist expert and editor of Intelligence Online.

UNITED NATIONS, February 19, 2002 (Xinhua) -- Iraq told the U.N. Security Council Tuesday that it was the world's "foremost victim of terrorism" as a target of terrorist acts openly financed by the United States.

In a letter to the council's counter-terrorism committee, set up after September 11 attacks on the United States, Baghdad accused Washington of openly spending tens of millions of dollars "on troops of mercenaries to carry out terrorist operations against Iraq." "Iraq is the foremost victim of terrorism," the letter said. The U.S.-sponsored actions constituted "state terrorism" as they were funded under the "Iraq Liberation Act," approved by the U.S. Congress several years ago, it argued.

U.S. President George W. Bush last month accused Baghdad, along with Iran and North Korea, of making up an "axis of evil" bent on backing international terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Bush has been conducting a review of U.S. policy on Iraq, and has vowed to act against it if Baghdad threatened the United States, although administration officials have said there were no current plans to launch a military attack.

Under the Iraq Liberation Act, the Bush administration has agreed to provide about 800,000 U.S. dollars a month in February, March and April to the opposition Iraqi National Council (INC), which hopes to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, reports said.

Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the INC leadership, said three weeks ago that the time had come for U.S. forces to overthrow Saddam as they overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2002/2/655.htm