Siege

WASHINGTON - Religious freedom has sharply deteriorated in Iraq over the past year because of the insurgency and violence targeting people of specific faiths, despite the US military buildup intended to improve security, a State Department report said yesterday. The Annual Report on International Religious Freedom found the violence is not confined to the well-known rivalry between Sunni and Shia Muslims. "The ongoing insurgency significantly harmed the ability of all religious believers to practice their faith," said the report released by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Guatemala has declared a state of siege for a province on the border with Mexico where 200 people armed with machetes and guns briefly took over an army outpost Tuesday night to demand justice for a man killed hours earlier. Interior Secretary Mauricio Lopez Bonilla says he is sending troops and police from Guatemala City to the province of Huehuetenango to "restore order. " A state of siege gives the army emergency powers, including permission to detain suspects without warrants.

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors charged a Chicago resident yesterday with serving as an advance man for Islamic terrorists who carried out the deadly 2008 Mumbai bombing, underscoring what they said was the potential for international terrorists to gain a foothold on American soil. David C. Headley, 49, a US citizen, is accused of conspiring to help the 10 men who mounted an armed siege of India’s financial district over three days in November last year. Using firearms, grenades and improvised explosive devices, the attackers overtook luxury hotels, a Jewish cultural center and a train...

LONDON (AP) — Police say they've arrested the suspect at the center of a three-hour siege which shut down a busy part of central London. The capital's Metropolitan Police say the 49-year-old man is now in police custody and that searches of the building are ongoing. One eyewitness claimed Friday that the man burst into the office of a training company saying he was ready to blow himself up.

Guatemala has declared a state of siege for a province on the border with Mexico where 200 people armed with machetes and guns briefly took over an army outpost Tuesday night to demand justice for a man killed hours earlier. Interior Secretary Mauricio Lopez Bonilla says he is sending troops and police from Guatemala City to the province of Huehuetenango to "restore order. " A state of siege gives the army emergency powers, including permission to detain suspects without warrants.

LONDON (AP) — Police say they've arrested the suspect at the center of a three-hour siege which shut down a busy part of central London. The capital's Metropolitan Police say the 49-year-old man is now in police custody and that searches of the building are ongoing. One eyewitness claimed Friday that the man burst into the office of a training company saying he was ready to blow himself up.

BAGHDAD — The death toll for a grisly hostage situation at a government building north of the capital continued to rise yesterday as grieving families buried the victims and Iraqi officials questioned how it could have happened. Gunmen wearing explosives belts under military uniforms charged into the provincial council building in Tikrit on Tuesday afternoon, shooting hostages execution-style and spraying bullets and tossing grenades through the building during the five-hour siege.

ST. PETERSBURG -- As the survivors of Leningrad emerged from the horrors of the 900-day Nazi blockade -- starving and shellshocked, but alive -- Vera Lyudyno found herself on another journey to a place of death and destruction, this time in a Soviet labor camp. Her crime? Keeping a diary, she says, that reflected not only the city's heroic struggle, but also the inability of the Soviet state to protect its citizens and the cruelty the siege brought out in its victims. "In that diary, I wrote about what I saw: frightful hunger, the number of bombardments, the...

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia -- The Beslan school siege trial ended yesterday much as it began, with grief-crazed mothers venting their anger at the sole known surviving attacker and at a government they say lied about the tragedy. The regional Supreme Court convicted Nur-Pashi Kulayev in the deaths of 331 people -- more than half of them children -- and sentenced him to life in prison. Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty for his role in the 2004 hostage-taking, but Russia abandoned capital punishment when it joined the Council of Europe a decade ago. "Kulayev deserves the...

BESLAN, Russia -- Wailing and pounding their hands on dirt graves, hundreds of people dressed in black marked the end of the traditional 40-day mourning period for the children and adults killed after terrorists seized a school on the first day of classes. Fears are rising that grief may give way to violence against the Ingush, a rival ethnic group whose members were among the raiders who took control of School No. 1. Top federal and regional officials have appealed for calm, but seething anger is replacing sorrow in North Ossetia, the...

By Matt Byrne, Town Correspondent When Dharam Jain's Malden convenience store was robbed twice in four days, once in broad daylight, he was ready to close up shop for good. Jain's two employees quit, and the shopkeeper, 69, was left to run the Malden Mini Market with his wife and nephew. "It was too much stress," said Jain, who has run the store at 539 Main St. for 12 years, and was ready to call it quits. "Business is not that good. I'm trying to survive. " But Thursday Jain will open -- and stay that way for now -- after an overnight blitz of volunteers...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Bosnians walked silently and sobbed on Sarajevo's main street, leaving flowers and gifts on 11,541 red chairs arranged in seemingly endless rows - the number representing the men, women, and children killed in a siege that ended up being the longest of a city in modern history. Sarajevo marked the 20th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian war Friday. Exhibitions, concerts, and performances were held, but the impact of the empty chairs reduced many to tears.

Sen. John McCain says the United States should find ways to help the Syrian people under siege from President Bashar Assad, without putting American "boots on the ground. " McCain tells "CBS This Morning" there are several options available, ranging from medical care and technical assistance to safe havens for refugees of the violence. McCain says Washington "should play a very important role, along with other nations. " He says the Syrian government is killing its own people, and it's an international outrage.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, already under siege from his rivals competing with him in lead-voting Iowa, is now the target of new criticism in the next electoral state, New Hampshire. Jon Huntsman, in a new video being released this morning, accuses the Texas congressman of being too extreme. The video includes clips of Paul promoting a controversial series of newsletters he authored in the 1980s and 1990s – the same newsletters for which Paul now says he was not personally responsible.

After riding out a cold wet night, protesters at Occupy Boston tried to dry out yesterday, while fortifying their tent city for the first roar of winter weather, expected this weekend. They have propped their tents on plywood sheets or on pallets, to keep them out of the mud, and swaddled them in heavy blue tarps. Campers pounded tent stakes yesterday and strung new guy-lines to steady wobbly summer shelters designed for bug protection, not for snow. Sleeping bags, blankets, clothing, and socks that were soaked by Thursday's cold rain were laid out to dry in the sun. ...

SURT, Libya - Families in pickup trucks stacked with mattresses and jugs of water fled Moammar Khadafy's hometown of Surt yesterday ahead of an expected new push by revolutionary forces to seize the city, and the anti-Khadafy forces claimed progress in the battle for a city in the remote southern desert. A commander of the new government's forces said late yesterday that they were in control of most of the Khadafy desert stronghold of Sabha after a day of fighting. The commander, Bashir Ahwaz, said most of the tribesmen loyal to Khadafy fled the city...

Sen. John McCain says the United States should find ways to help the Syrian people under siege from President Bashar Assad, without putting American "boots on the ground. " McCain tells "CBS This Morning" there are several options available, ranging from medical care and technical assistance to safe havens for refugees of the violence. McCain says Washington "should play a very important role, along with other nations. " He says the Syrian government is killing its own people, and it's an international outrage.

KABUL - Raising the death toll sharply, American and Afghan officials said yesterday that the complexity and execution of the siege of the US Embassy and NATO's headquarters in Kabul bore the hallmarks of a militant group based in Pakistan that has become one of the American military's most implacable foes. General John R. Allen, the NATO commander here, said 16 people had been killed in the attack - five Afghan police officers and 11 civilians, including at least six children - double the number reported Tuesday.

A gunman with a cache of weapons and a history of mental illness fatally shot an elderly neighbor at a Brighton apartment complex yesterday, police said. The shooting sparked a frantic evacuation, and the suspect held police in a standoff before surrendering. Boston police responded to reports of a shooting on Ledgemere Road around 10:45 a.m. As officers escorted emergency medics removing the victim from an apartment, they were forced to take cover after several gunshots rang out from the second floor.