NEW YORK, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- U.S. cities are taking aim at celebratory gunfire this New Year's Eve, threatening armed revelers they will party in jail if they discharge weapons.

In Chicago, all of the city's tactical and gang unit police officers will work New Year's Eve as part of Supt. Philip Cline's plan to crack down on people who plan to ring in 2004 by firing guns in the air.

Nearly every New Year's Eve someone is killed or injured in the city by errant gunfire from celebrations, Cline said. Additional patrols Wednesday night will look for people firing guns.

Cline promised to seek felony charges against anyone caught with a gun.

In Philadelphia, where some neighborhoods become virtual shooting galleries, District Attorney Lynne Abraham and Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson called on Philadelphians to leave their guns at home on New Year's Eve.

The two top law enforcement officials were backed at a Center City news conference by Joe Jaskolka, 16, who was hit in the head by a stray bullet fired by a reveler in 1998.

"Why would anyone fire a gun in the air? Why?" asked Jaskolka, who was critically wounded outside his grandmother's South Philadelphia house.

Kurdish militia kill two Iraqi protesters

KIRKUK, Iraq, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Kurdish militiamen in Iraq opened fire on an anti-Kurdish demonstration in Kirkuk Wednesday, killing two and injuring 14 others.

Some 2,000 demonstrators, most of them Arabs and Turkmen, were grouped in front of the government offices to protest the proposal for federalism when the Kurdish militia, or peshmergas, based in the area opened fire on the crowd, Colonel Salem Talib Tahar told al-Jazeera.

The protesters were angry with the push by the city's Kurdish majority to incorporate the oil-rich center into a Kurdish state.

"Kirkuk, Kirkuk is an Iraqi city. No to federalism," they chanted on the city's southern edge, located next to a police academy.

U.S. soldiers moved in to barricade the area and set up checkpoints at major intersections in the city, Radio Free Europe reported.

Last week, thousands of Kurds took to the streets of Kirkuk to lay claim to the major oil center where the old Baath regime settled large numbers of Arabs from the 1970s.

Hamburg, Germany, on terror alert

HAMBURG, Germany, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- German police were searching Wednesday for Islamic militants planning car bomb attacks on a military hospital in Hamburg and a U.S. army airport in Frankfurt.

Deutsche Welle reported German authorities had received information that Islamic terrorists were planning suicide car bomb attacks in early 2004 in Hamburg and Frankfurt.

Hamburg state Interior Minister Dirk Nockemann said their targets included the military hospital in Frankfurt and a U.S. military airport in Frankfurt.

German Interior Minister Otto Schily on Wednesday confirmed that the tip-off had come from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

A month ago, police arrested a suspected Algerian militant in Hamburg as part of a Europe-wide probe into a network believed to be recruiting Islamists for suicide attacks in Iraq.

A spokesman at the Hamburg military hospital said no U.S. soldiers were currently being treated there, but said U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq had undergone treatment at the hospital in the past.

Priest admits to stealing for mistress

ORANGE PARK, Fla., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- A former priest accused of swindling thousands of dollars from a Florida church has pleaded guilty, the Times-Union reported Wednesday.

Moises B. Palaroan, 53, pled guilt Tuesday and agreed to a one-year jail sentence as well as paying back the money he took from St. William Catholic Church in Keystone Heights.

A routine audit this year found more than $400,000 missing. The Diocese of St. Augustine contacted state authorities, who discovered a lump sum had been sent to Palaroan's mistress and children in the Philippines, Assistant State Attorney Steve Siegel said.

The former pastor, who led a double life, agreed to give up his priesthood.

If the case had gone to trial the priest could have faced as much as 30 years in jail. Besides jail time, Palaroan will have 17 years of probation, Siegel said.