ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Two Americans among 5 people killed in grenade attack on church in Islamabad
Associated Press
Two attackers hurled grenades into a Protestant church filled with Sunday worshippers in a diplomatic enclave, killing five people including two Americans and wounding about 45, most of them foreigners.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf condemned the attack as a "ghastly act of terrorism."
President Bush also called it a terrorist attack and pledged to work with the Pakistani government to find those responsible and bring them to justice. In a statement, he condemned the "acts of murder that cannot be tolerated by any person of conscience nor justified by any cause."
It was the second attack against Christians in Pakistan since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, which prompted Pakistan to abandon support for the Afghan Taliban and instead back the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism.
After yesterday's attack, dozens of police and soldiers surrounded the Protestant International Church located in a heavily guarded diplomatic enclave about a half-mile from the U.S. Embassy. Ambulances rushed to the scene and rescuers scrambled to help the injured.
The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad identified the dead Americans as Barbara Green and her daughter Kristen Wormsley, a senior at the American School in Islamabad. Green and her husband, Milton Green, worked at the embassy - she in administration and he in the computer division.
The others killed included one Afghan, one Pakistani and one of unknown nationality, the Pakistani government news agency said.
Ten Americans were among the 45 injured, along with 12 Pakistanis, five Iranians, one Iraqi, one Ethiopian and one German, police said. The government said the injured also included Afghans, Swiss, Britons, Australians and Canadians. Six or seven were in serious condition, District Judge Tariq Mehmood Khan said.
Witnesses said the attackers entered the back of the church during the sermon and began hurling grenades at the congregation of about 70.
Three of the grenades exploded and the attackers eluded security guards at the scene, police said.
WASHINGTON
Too soon to say how many al-Qaida escaped, died during Anaconda assault, Rumsfeld says
Associated Press
The biggest U.S.-led dragnet in Afghanistan is winding down amid the familiar criticism that al-Qaida and Taliban escaped again.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld says it is too early to tally the success of the 15-day-old assault on enemy hideouts in mountainous eastern Afghanistan. Even if some survived the assault and eluded capture, they will be pursued so they cannot find safe haven elsewhere, he says.
"There are clearly a lot of people who are willing to guess at those numbers," Rumsfeld said. "I'm not one of them."
Canadian, American and other coalition troops were searching cave-to-cave for bodies, intelligence, weapons and anything else remaining after a two-week operation of airstrikes and ground combat seized control of the Shah-e-Kot valley where Taliban and al-Qaida had been regrouping.
More such operations could be ahead, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Saturday.
"There are still significant numbers of terrorists. It's a huge country," Wolfowitz said in an interview on CNN's "Novak, Hunt and Shields."
Aside from already known pockets of resistance in the country, the number who slipped away during Operation Anaconda and threaten to regroup and fight again could be 100, even 400, say U.S. officials and Afghan commanders.
Numerous al-Qaida fighters fleeing the battles of the last two weeks are believed to have escaped into Pakistan, one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
An additional 100 fighters escaped in the other direction and were traveling to the north and west inside Afghanistan, a second U.S. official said.
PHOENIX
Investigators probing midair collision between military plane, civilian aircraft
Associated Press
Two investigation teams arrived in southern Arizona on Saturday to probe a midair collision between an Army airplane and a civilian aircraft that killed a military pilot.
Investigators from the Aviation Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., and the National Transportation Safety Board began scouring the wreckage at the crash site in Marana, Ariz., where Chief Warrant Officer Lowell K. Timmons, 45, was killed Friday, said Julia Bobick, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Ky.
The airplane used by the Army's Golden Knights skydiving team crashed in a dry riverbed one mile north of the Marana Airport after colliding with a Cessna carrying five civilians. Four Golden Knights parachutists aboard jumped from the UV20 Porter turboprop plane before the collision.
The pilot of the civilian aircraft, which took off from the Marana Skydiving Center, about 20 miles north of Tucson, landed the plane with a damaged wing, said Officer Tim Brunenkant, a Marana police spokesman. No one on that plane was injured, he said.
The pilot's name was not immediately released.
Timmons, a 16-year Army veteran, was from Orlando, Fla., and was assigned to Fort Bragg, N.C., where the Golden Knights are based. He was married with three children.
It was not yet known why the two planes collided, said Howard Plagens, an air safety investigator for the NTSB. Crews worked Saturday to document the Army aircraft wreckage, which Plagens called "pretty devastated."
The crash occurred while the parachute competition team was conducting routine practice jumps at the Marana Airport. The team trains in Arizona during the winter.
Friday's collision was the second accident around the Marana Airport involving a military aircraft in two years.
In April 2000, a Marine Osprey, a plane that can take off and land like a helicopter and fly like an airplane, crashed there, killing all 19 Marines aboard.
In another air crash involving the parachute team, 11 members of the Golden Knights and three crew members were killed on March 8, 1973, when a C-47 airplane carrying them exploded and crashed at Siler City, N.C.
