Baghdad bomb targets Shiite mosque
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- A Muslim holy day Friday was marred by a series of bombings in Iraq that claimed as many as 30 lives.
An ambulance drove into a wedding party in a town south of Baghdad and blew up late Friday, killing as many as 12 people and injuring many others, Sky News reported.
Earlier in the day, at least 18 people were killed and 40 injured in a car bombing outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, security reports said.
Witnesses said the blast occurred as worshippers were heading to the mosque for Friday prayers in the southern part of the Iraqi capital.
The attack, the second to target a Shiite mosque in Baghdad in a week, cut through the worshippers marking the second day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast, which comes at the end of the annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
CNN reported a U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded early Friday as they raided a bomb-making cell north of Baghdad. A dozen suspects were detained after the raid on eight separate locations, the military said.
The British army said Friday nine British soldiers and several Iraqis were injured in an explosion near a British base outside the southern city of Basra.
The blast, which targeted the logistics and supply base some 20 miles south of Basra, was reportedly claimed by al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Saudi king vows to exterminate terrorism
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Saudi King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz vowed Friday in an address to more than 2 million Muslim pilgrims in Mecca to eradicate terrorism.
"Terrorism is the result of sick minds and erroneous acts deviating from the path of the true Islamic religion and its teachings," Fahd said.
He stressed Saudi Arabia, which has been swept by terrorist acts in the past two years, "will confront this trend in all its aspects and eradicate it from its roots."
He said eradicating terrorism "necessitates international cooperation to confront terrorist groups and bar them from using the territories in which they are based ... to launch terrorist acts in the region."
The king pointed out Saudi Arabia will host an international conference on combating terrorism in the first week of February.
Omagh bomb conviction overturned
DUBLIN, Ireland, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- The only man jailed in the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland had his conviction overturned Friday and will face a retrial.
Colm Murphy, 51, was sentenced to 14 years in jail in 2002 for aiding in the 1998 IRA bomb blast which killed 29 people and a pair of unborn twins.
A three-judge panel in Dublin's Criminal Court of Appeal granted a retrial on grounds that two detectives may have given perjured testimony in his original trial, the BBC reported.
In his original trial before a Special Criminal Court there was a question about alteration of interview notes and police testimony about them, the appeals judges said. They also said the trial court brought in Murphy's past criminal history, depriving him of the presumption of innocence, IrelandOn-line reported.
Murphy was originally convicted of lending two mobile phones to the gang who planted the bomb, knowing they would be used for moving bombs.
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden died in the blast, told the BBC he was in "total shock" at the decision.
Wounded Texas kidnap suspect held in Ariz.
WILLCOX, Ariz., Jan. 21 (UPI) -- The brazen kidnapping of a young Texas woman apparently came to a sad end Friday when the victim's body was found on the other side of the state.
Fox News said that police in Stanton, Texas, had identified the body as that of Megan Leann Holden, a 19-year-old abducted Wednesday night from the Tyler Wal-Mart parking lot where she worked.
At about the same time, police in the Arizona desert town of Willcox announced a suspect had been arrested with Holden's pickup truck.
A surveillance camera captured a shadowy figure forcing Holden into her vehicle.
Suspect Johnnie Williams was arrested after turning up at a hospital with a gunshot wound he apparently suffered in an aborted robbery try at a trailer park in the Willcox area.
Willcox is located along Interstate 10, which runs through Houston and on into Arizona and Southern California.
