Hizb ut-Tahrir wants to create a Worldwide Islamic state.
The Uzbek leader President Islam Karimov has blamed Islamic extremists for the revolt and said his troops were forced to shoot demonstrators on Friday as they tried to break through police lines. Witnesses counted more than 200 dead.

Soldiers loyal to Karimov fired on thousands of demonstrators Friday to put down an uprising that began when armed men freed 2,000 inmates from prison, including suspects on trial for alleged Islamic extremism.

Uzbekistan hosts a U.S. air base in the Karshi-Khanabad region, 90 miles from the Afghan border, to support military operations in that country following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. The number of troops there has reached several thousand at times.

Karimov said Saturday that authorities tried to negotiate a peaceful way out but would not yield to the protesters' demand for freedom for all their followers across the Valley. He termed that demand excessive. "To accept their terms would mean that we are setting a precedent that no other country in the world would accept," Karimov told a news conference in the capital, Tasha-Khand (Tashkent).

The focus of the jailbreak was 23 men charged with membership in a group allied with the outlawed radical Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which seeks to create a worldwide Islamic state and has been forced underground throughout most of Central Asia and Russia.

The men are alleged members of Akramia — a group named for their founder, Akram Yuldashev, an Islamic dissident sentenced in 1999 to 17 years in prison for allegedly urging the overthrow of Karimov.

Karimov called the Akramia group a "faction of Hizb ut-Tahrir" that includes known members of the group banned across Central Asia and Russia, and he noted that their goal was to establish an Islamic caliphate.

Predator plane kills senior al Qaida terrorist in Pakistan
A senior al Qaida operative was killed by a missile fired from an unmanned CIA Predator aircraft on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border earlier this week, ABC News reported.

Haitham al-Yemeni, a native of Yemen known for his bomb-making skills, had been tracked in the hope that he would help lead the United States to al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, intelligence officials were quoted as saying.

With the capture in Pakistan earlier this month of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, thought to be al Qaida's number three man, officials feared that al-Yemeni would go into hiding, and so decided to take action, ABC said on Friday.

The CIA refused to confirm or deny the report, ABC said. The CIA has the authority to fire against senior al Qaida figures anywhere in the world, though it is unclear whether the Pakistanis approved of the action in advance, ABC said.

Comments: Al-Libbi was arrested in Pakistan. Al-Yemeni was killed in Pakistan. Bin-laden is hiding in Pakistan... And what more evidence needs to be given to the world to prove the fact that Pakistan is one of the topmost Haven for Islamic Terrorists.

Operation Matador is in full swing
U.S. forces have encircled Euphrates River village, Obeidi. Residents have fled indoors as American helicopters hovered overhead, pressing forward with a major offensive near the Syrian border. Terrorists also staged a series of attacks elsewhere in Iraq, killing at least nine people.

But the sad news is that four more US Marines were killed Wednesday, taking the total number of American troops killed during the weeklong campaign to nine. Marine commanders estimate more than 100 terrorists and foreign fighters have been killed during the Operation Matador.

The push around Obeidi came a day after Marine warplanes launched air strikes against a suspected terrorist safe house in nearby Karabilah. Secondary explosions indicated the presence of weapons and munitions in the building, the military said.

At least 1,620 U.S. military members have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Afghan president urges U.S. action over Koran
Showing his true ( green ) colours, Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the United States on Saturday to prosecute and punish anyone found guilt of desecrating the Koran as anti-U.S. protests flared for a fifth day.

Sixteen Afghans have been killed and more than 100 hurt since Wednesday in the worst anti-U.S. protests across Afghanistan since U.S. forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

Newsweek magazine said in its May 9 edition investigators probing abuses at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay found that interrogators "had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet".

Comment : Koran is source of inspiration for Muslims, to carry out Jihad against Kafirs (Infidels) So the interrogators might have thought that flushing the unholy book down the drain will stop Jihad. But it should be known to them, that there are so many copies of Koran in the World and so many Jihadis to carry out attacks against all non-muslims.

EU warns Iran of being referred to UN Security Council
"Britain, France and Germany are seeking to hold ministerial talks with Iran to prevent the country from restarting its uranium conversion programme. The offer of a ministerial level meeting within the next two weeks was reportedly made in an EU letter warning Iran that if it proceeded with its threat to resume its fuel cycle program they will support the US in seeking UN Security Council action," IRNA reported today.

"We are waiting to hear but we will be happy to talk with Iran to work our way through this," a Foreign Office spokesman in London told IRNA.

In an interview with BBC Radio Four's News At One programme, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that: US cooperation had also been secured "for lifting embargoes and sanctions for example on things like material related to air transport safety and plenty of other things." "We don't want this situation, it's the last thing we want," Straw said with regard to Iran's threat, IRNA reported.

"We want these negotiations to produce a satisfactory conclusion where Iran as its right under the Non Proliferation Treaty is able to run its nuclear energy power programme but is not able to produce material which, given its previous record of non disclosure, has raised very strong suspicions that it could be used for a nuclear weapons," he said.

IRNA reported: Straw admitted that in relation to US claims that Iran was intent on developing nuclear weapons "there is no conclusive evidence that that is what they're up to." On Thursday, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Hans Blix warned that he was "not sure much will be gained from taking to the Security Council, except more escalation and getting into more dangerous situation."

Iran had repeatedly stressed its right to enrich Uranium for peaceful(?) purposes and that if the issue ever reaches the UN Security Council, then Iran was able to tuff the situation out if forced to.

Anti-American Protests Spread in Afghanistan; 8 Killed
Mood:  on fire
(AP News)
KABUL, Afghanistan - Security forces opened fire and protesters stoned government and relief agency buildings as clashes in four Afghan cities left at least eight people dead Friday amid growing anti-American sentiment over the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book at Guantanamo Bay.

It was the the biggest outpouring of anti-American sentiment since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 — a deepening worry for the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai.

A call for mass street protests from a coalition of hard-line religious parties in Pakistan fell flat, but firebrand Muslim clerics lashed out at the United States.

"By insulting the Quran, they have challenged our belief. We are hurt ... If we don't rise against Americans, if we don't give them a strong message today, they will do it again," cleric Hafiz Hussain Ahmad told worshippers at a mosque in the Pakistani capital.

Operation Matador - U.S. Assault Intensifies at Syria Border
Mood:  on fire
(AP News)
American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said Friday, and hundreds of U.S. troops conducted house-to-house searches in remote desert villages for followers of Iraq's most-wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

American forces have met little resistance since the first two days of Operation Matador, which began Saturday, aimed at clearing a region believed to be a haven for foreign fighters slipping into Iraq from Syria, the military said. American intelligence indicates the insurgents are either in hiding or have fled, U.S. Capt. Jeffrey Pool said.

Villagers reached by telephone said gunmen still roamed some areas and they continued to be hit by U.S. shelling.

The U.S. offensive — one of the largest since militants were forces from Fallujah six months ago — came amid a surge of militant attacks that have killed more than 420 people in just over two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced.