As many as 1000 people are still missing according to Islamic

As many as 1,000 people are still missing, according to Islamic burial societies and humanitarian groups. The paper relied on the meticulousness common to all Iraqis and dating from Saddam Hussein’s obsessively bureaucratic era.Although doctors were prevented by the steady influx of casualties from filling out death certificates in quadruplicate, they did their best to make some written record, even if it was only a line or two scrawled on scrap paper.”We were working day and night,” Abbas Timimi, director of Abu Ghraib General Hospital on the city’s western outskirts, told the newspaper. “With so many people so badly hurt, we were under pressure to treat patients instead of filling out forms. But we’d always scribble something.”The US military authorities kept meticulous records on its own dead and wounded, but have offered no estimate of casualties on the Iraqi side.The count is the first of what are expected to be several efforts to assess the human damage of the war. Human Rights Watch has begun a tally of casualties but is so far less than a week into its research.The toll published by the Los Angeles Times is likely to stir further anti-US sentiment in Baghdad where widespread looting and chaos still persists more than a month after the fall of Saddam. There was further disappointment at the weekend when it emerged that the US and Britain had decided to put off plans for an interim Iraqi government. This had been planned for the end of this month and the postponement is likely to bolster the perception that the foreign presence represents a de facto colonial takeover..

Saudi Arabia said yesterday it had arrested four men suspected of helping to carry out last week’s co-ordinated bombings of residential compounds in Riyadh and was seeking at least five more people believed to have organised the attacks on behalf of al-Qa’ida. As many as 19 people are still being sought in connection with that investigation, including Khaled Jehani, a Saudi citizen who Saudi and US officials believe was in charge of the Riyadh operation.After receiving a rare public dressing down from US diplomats and politicians last week for their security failures, the Saudis now seem keen to give every indication of their co- operation in the police investigation of the bombings, which killed 34 people, including nine suspected suicide bombers.At least 60 US investigators, including agents from the FBI and CIA, are in the country to guide the Saudis. In Washington, officials are growing extremely concerned that a resurgent al-Qa’ida may once again have the power to launch devastating attacks on several continents. After last week’s attacks on Riyadh and Casablanca, strongly worded warnings suggest several countries in Asia and Africa may be next.US officials quoted in yesterday’s Washington Post said Jehani was the main Saudi link for al-Qa’ida’s new military commander, an Egyptian called Saif Adel. The officials also suggested that Adel was based in Iran – a potentially explosive claim, since Iran is part of President George Bush’s “axis of evil” and has been discussed as a possible target for future US military action.Along with Mr Adel, the officials said the Iranian presence included Abu Mohammed Masri, al-Qa’ida’s head of training; Saad bin Laden, son of Osama; and Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is believed to have been hiding in Baghdad at some point last year.. A middle-aged woman lolled in her seat on the early morning bus taking her to work in Jerusalem, her head thrown back, her eyes staring in terminal disbelief, her mouth frozen in a scream like the girl in Edvard Munch’s Expressionist painting. They all bore the shrapnel marks of the screws and nails with which the suicides habitually pack their lethal belts.The camera lingered over a wash of blood and body parts.

The frenzied shouts of survivors and rescuers could still be heard in the background The driver’s ticket machine was burned to a cinder. A crocheted Jewish skullcap littered the doorway.It was propaganda It was a horror movie But it was real It happened just before 6 a.m. as the double-length commuter bus from the working-class suburb of Pisgat Ze’ev neared the French Hill junction on the Jerusalem-Ramallah road. Five hours earlier, the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers had finished their first summit on the potholed road to peace.As well as the seven dead, the bomber wounded 20.