MIAMI, July 6 (UPI) -- Tropical Storm Bertha moved westward over the Atlantic Ocean Sunday toward warmer waters that act as fuel, U.S. forecasters in Miami said.

The National Hurricane Center reported Bertha had sustained winds of 50 mph and gusts up to 65 mph, 1,185 miles east of the northern Leeward Islands Sunday morning. Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 85 miles from the center, the report said.

Midday, the storm was moving west-northwest at a quick 21 mph over waters at 78 degrees. By Monday the waters will be 80 degrees and 82 by Tuesday, which indicates strengthening is likely, forecasters said.

One limiting factor to the storm seen on satellite imagery is upper atmosphere wind shear as high as 15 mph.

The last time a tropical storm named Bertha occurred was in July 1996. That storm swept the northeastern Caribbean and made landfall on the North Carolina coast near Wilmington as a category 2 hurricane. The storm caused at least 12 deaths.

Report: Al-qaida in Iraq mostly defeated

MOSUL, Iraq, July 6 (UPI) -- The U.S. military is on the verge of driving al-Qaida out of its last Iraqi stronghold, The Sunday Times of London reports.

Without naming sources, the newspaper said coalition troops are about to score one of the most spectacular victories in the war on terror. The newspaper said al-Qaida has dwindled from 12,000 to 1,200 militants who are making a "last stand" in the northern city of Mosul.

The Times said the group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen Saturday and sporadic bombings.

Unnamed American and Iraqi leaders told The Times it's too soon to completely write off al-Qaida in Iraq, but said they are confident the group no longer controls any urban bases and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside.

Fingerprints tie insurgents to U.S. crimes

WASHINGTON, July 6 (UPI) -- U.S. military officials say fingerprinting terror suspects in Afghanistan and Iraq is yielding links to crimes committed in the United States.

By fingerprinting insurgents, suspected terrorists and ordinary people in the war zones, military officials have been surprised to find some of them had committed crimes in the United States, suggesting more Middle Eastern militants have lived the United States than previously thought, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

"I found the number stunning," Frances Fragos Townsend, a security consultant and former assistant to the president for homeland security, told the newspaper. "It suggested to me that this was going to give us far greater insight into the relationships between individuals fighting against U.S. forces in the theater and potential U.S. cells or support networks here in the United States."

The overseas fingerprinting effort was bolstered by a June 5 presidential directive giving the U.S. attorney general a deadline to plan an expansion of the use of biometrics aimed at terrorists. But it has also drawn criticism from civil libertarians who say U.S. citizens need to know what kind of criteria are being used to determine who is to be fingerprinted.

More arrests possible in student slayings

LONDON, July 6 (UPI) -- Police Sunday said they are not ruling out further arrests in the torture slayings of two French college students in their London apartment.

Authorities have a 21-year-old suspect in custody for the killings of Gabriel Ferez and Laurent Bonomo, both 23, who were tied to chairs, gagged and stabbed hundreds of times. But they're also unsure if he is the same man seen running from the scene of the crime, The Sunday Times of London reported.

Police say the apartment had been burglarized several days before the slayings and theorized there may be some connection between the two incidents. If not, they urged the burglar to come forward.

The Times said Bonomo was stabbed 196 times, including 80 wounds to his back, with possibly half the wounds inflicted after his death, while Ferez suffered 47 wounds and his body had been badly scorched by flames.

The rented apartment had been doused with an unidentified accelerant then firebombed in a possible attempt to erase the evidence, police said.