OCCUPIED  JERUSALEM (AP) — The two most powerful players in the violent standoff over the capture of an Israeli soldier offered up sharply differing visions Monday on how to resolve it.

Vice-president of CRI, the Military Amir Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris (AKA Shamil Basayev) has officially thanked the Iraqi Mujahideen for elimination of a group of Russian diplomats the spies in Bagdad, the Kavkaz Center has learned. In the telegram for mass media, Basayev specifies:

SANAA (AP) — Nineteen alleged Al Qaeda members accused of plotting to assassinate Westerners and blow up a hotel used by Americans were acquitted by a judge who also exonerated some of fighting US troops in Iraq.

CAIRO (AFP) — Hundreds of journalists demonstrated Sunday outside the Egyptian parliament where a draft bill allowing jail sentences for journalists and preventing them from investigating fraud was being debated.

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Somali Islamic fighters on Sunday declared “absolute” victory over the remaining warlords in the lawless capital Mogadishu after deadly clashes that claimed at least 21 lives, marking the end of the notorious warlords’ rule in the Indian Ocean city.

ISTANBUL  (AP) — About 20,000 pro-Islamic Turks chanted “Down with Israel” to protest Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, a day after the Turkish foreign minister called the offensive in response to the abduction of an Israeli soldier “horrifying”.

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Underneath the blazing sun at Baghdad’s Allawi bus station hundreds of families from across Iraq’s sectarian divide await the arrival of the latest batch of freed prisoners in the hope of finding a long-missing relative.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Masked Shiite gunmen rampaged through a tense neighbourhood of west Baghdad on Sunday, dragging Sunnis from their cars, picking them out on the street and killing at least 41 in a dramatic escalation of sectarian violence.

IRKUTSK (AFP) — Up to 137 people died Sunday when a Russian passenger plane veered off a runway, slammed into a concrete wall and burst into flames while landing in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, officials said.

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Israel pounded Gaza with fresh air strikes Sunday as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed the massive operation will go on — despite so far failing to win the release of a soldier seized two weeks ago.