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Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but suicide operations are commonly associated with al-Qaida in Iraq _ the main target of U.S.-Iraqi military operations to clear the city 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Salim Shakir said he was walking toward his house in the area when he was hit with shrapnel in the stomach and legs.

"We are shocked because we thought that the violent days had ended," the 47-year-old taxi driver said from his hospital bed. "This explosion shows that the insurgents are still active, and much is needed to stop them."

The U.S. military has said the terror network is on the run but retains the ability to conduct its trademark high-profile car bombings and suicide attacks. American and Iraqi troops have faced relatively little resistance since launching the offensive on May 10, but commanders warn that many key insurgent leaders have fled to outlying areas and are planning future attacks.

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government's ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

"This more or less legalizes the NSA program," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.

Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.

Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.

By changing the legal definition of what is considered "electronic surveillance," the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants latching on to those giant switches as long as the target of the government's surveillance is "reasonably believed" to be overseas.

Indian High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal was having lunch with his wife at their two-storey India House, located a little more than 200 feet from the Danish embassy, when the explosion shattered almost all window panes of the building.

No one from the Indian mission was hurt in the blast that took place at about 1 PM after a car drove up and stopped outside the embassy in the upmarket Sector F-6/2, where several foreign missions are located.

The explosion, which also left 24 people injured and damaged 30 vehicles, caused a four-foot deep crater in the road and was felt several kilometres away.

No outfit has taken responsibility for the blast that caused extensive damage to the front of the private building in which the Danish embassy was housed. But security officials said the attack could be linked to blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Mohammed published in Danish newspapers that had earned the ire of Muslim world.

Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah told reporters that such a link would be part of the probe into the attack.

"It was most likely a suicide blast," Islamabad SSP Ahmed Latif said. Other officials said evidence collected from the site included body parts and ball bearings. Over 30 kg of explosives were packed in the car, they said.

A foreigner, a security guard of the Danish embassy and two policemen were among the dead, the interior ministry said.

A building located opposite the embassy, which housed the office of an NGO, was damaged by the powerful explosion. Several trees outside the embassy were smouldering several hours after the blast. "Bomb that was my first reaction," said Shreedevi Nair-Pal, the wife of the High Commissioner showing a part of the car that had fallen in the premises of India House.

Top officials of the Indian High Commission immediately rushed to the scene to supervise repairs and beef up security at India House. The officials told PTI there were no plans to shift the High Commissioner from the residence in the wake of the attack Several Western embassies located in Sector F-6/2 were evacuated and security was tightened across Islamabad. Hours after the attack, Norway announced it was closing its embassy located close to the Danish mission.

The attack, the second in three months that has targeted foreigners in Islamabad, was condemned by President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, ruling Pakistan People's Party Chairman Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif.

A bomb blast at an Italian restaurant frequented by foreigners on March 15 had killed a Turkish woman and wounded 10 foreigners, including four US FBI staff.

Rehman Malik, the advisor to the Prime Minister on Interior Affairs, sought a report on the attack within 24 hours.

Reports suggested that the Danish embassy had been issued several warnings about security threats. Denmark recently downgraded the embassy and moved most foreign staff out of Pakistan.

A Suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed Sri Lanka's highways minister and at least 13 others on Sunday gathered for a marathon race near the capital, the government said.

"Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle is dead from the explosion," Laksman Hulugalla, director general of the media centre for national security, told Reuters.

A former top Sri Lankan marathon runner, K.A Karunarathne, was among those killed while 100 people, some of them participants in the race to mark the upcoming New Year, were wounded.

The attack comes amidst an offensive launched by the Sri Lankan military on the northern strongholds of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in which at least 100 rebel fighters were killed last week, the military said.

The rebels have in the past hit back with bombings in the capital, Colombo, and in the relatively peaceful south of the war-ravaged island when they have come under military pressure in the north and east.

Sunday's attack took place in the town of Weliveriya, 30 km from Colombo, where Fernandopulle had gone to flag off the marathon race. Television footage showed a ball of fire moving towards the minister as he signalled the start of the run. "Its a suicide attack, definitely by the LTTE," said a bomb squad official, speaking on condition of anonymity from the scene.

Two suicide bombers carried out the attack on War College, interior ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said in Islamabad. Security was stepped up across the country, especially at vital military installations, following the attack.

One bomber blew himself up at the gate when the motorcycle was stopped by security personnel, while the other detonated his explosives within the parking lot, triggering several blasts in the CNG tanks of the vehicles parked in the area, city police chief Malik Iqbal said.

Witnesses said they first heard two blasts that occurred almost simultaneously a little after 1 pm. These were followed by two more blasts after a gap of a few minutes.

President Pervez Musharraf, caretaker Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro and Pakistan People's Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, whose party is set to form the next government, condemned the attack.

WO female suicide bombers blew themselves up on Friday in separate attacks on Baghdad pet bazaars, killing at least 73 people and wounding dozens, police said.

The attacks were the deadliest in the Iraqi capital since 30,000 more American troops flooded into the centre of the country last spring.
In the first attack, a woman detonated explosives hidden under her traditional black Islamic robe at about 10.20 am in the central al-Ghazl market.
The weekly bazaar has been bombed several times since the war started but has recently reemerged as a popular shopping venue as Baghdad secu rity improved and a Friday ban on driving was lifted.
Police said at least 46 people were killed and 82 wounded.

Firefighters scooped up debris scattered among pools of blood, clothing and pigeon carcasses.

About 20 minutes later, a second female suicide bomber struck a bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad. That blast killed as many as 27 people and wounded 25, police said.

The attacks shortly before the weekly Islamic call to prayer resounded across the capital were the latest in a series of violent incidents that have been chipping away at Iraqi confidence in the permanence of recent security gains.

Police initially said the bomb was hidden in a box of birds but determined it was a suicide attack after finding the woman's head, an officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorised to release the information.

At least four other suicide bombings have been staged by women since November, all in the volatile Diyala province northeast of the capital.

Many teenage boys were among the casualties in the alGhazl bombing, according to police and hospital officials.

The blast in front of Lahore High Court was the latest in a wave of attacks targeting politicians and security forces ahead of Feb. 18 parliamentary elections. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion wil11ikely fall on militants linked to Taliban and al-Qaida.

It came as Scotland Yard investigators visited Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, where laboratories are testing forensic evidence in the assassination two weeks ago of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi, a garrison city to the north. "There were about 60 to 70 policemen on duty when a man rammed into our ranks and soon there was a huge explosion," said police officer Syed Imtiaz Hussain who suffered wounds to his legs and groin. "I saw the bodies of other policemen burning. It was like hell."

The explosion left wounded people lying in pools of blood crying for help. TV footage showed at least four mangled bodies on the ground close to a destroyed motorbike and a piece of smoking debris. Ambulance workers loaded victims onto stretchers as police sirens wailed in the background.

The blast fired shrapnel as far as 100 meters (yards) away It also shattered windows in the court house and set off volleys of tear gas shells carried by the police, preventing people getting close to the victims in the seconds after the attack, witnesses said.

About 1,000 people were present in the Jama Masjid at Sherpao village in Charsadda district when the attacker detonated his bomb killing 54 people, the police said adding the toll could rise.

They said the bomber managed to enter the mosque with almost five to six kg of explosives even though a metal detector had been installed at the entrance.

"I was attending the Id-ul-Azha prayers with my sons and nephews when the blast took place," said Sherpao, who in April also survived a suicide attack in the same area in the North-West Frontier Province.

Sherpao and his son Sikander escaped without injuries but his another son Mustafa and a nephew were wounded.

Charsadda district police chief Feroz Shah told reporters that at least 54 people had died. Three security personnel were among the dead.

President Pervez Musharraf strongly condemned the attack and said "No Muslim could even think of committing such a heinous crime that takes the lives of a large number of innocent faithful who had gathered for Id prayers".

Musharraf said a handful of extremists were bent on forcing their `distorted thinking' on the majority of moderate and practicing Muslims, and this was `totally unacceptable'.

''More than 35 are killed,'' said Ali Shah Paktiawal, chief of the Kabul police's criminal branch. ''Police officers are among the dead.'' An Interior Ministry official could not confirm the death toll, saying around 30 were dead or wounded.

The Interior Ministry said five of the wounded were foreigners, including two Japanese, a Korean and two Pakistanis. Earlier reports that foreigners had been killed proved false.

If the death toll is confirmed, this would be the deadliest suicide attack to hit the country since the ouster of Taliban from power.

The attack appears to signal an escalation of such strikes.

At least 14 people were killed in four other suicide bombings over the past three days. Responsibility for all five attacks was claimed by Taliban insurgents. The previous deadliest bombing in Kabul, in 2002, killed 26 people.

A police eyewitness at the scene, outside the Kabul police chief's headquarters, said he had seen the bomber leap on to the bus as it was moving slowly away, its door wide open.

''It was a very, very successful suicide attack,'' a Taliban commander, Mullah Hayatullah Khan, told Reuters by satellite phone. ''We have plans for more successful attacks in future.'' The Taliban and their al Qaeda allies have adopted the tactics of Iraq's bloody insurgency to try to dispel the notion that government and foreign security forces are in control of the country.

Eighteen bodies, mostly police officers, and 10 wounded had been taken to nearby Jamhuriat Hospital, a doctor there said.

The bomb exploded during the morning rush hour, at a time when buses are ferrying police officers to their beats. On Friday and Saturday there were four suicide attacks in the south, centre and north of the country, including a blast in Kabul yesterday.

The truck that was loaded with explosives and rammed into a convoy of navy vehicles was obliterated in the attack. ( Photo Courtesy Buddhika Weerasinghe/Reuters)

The government blamed the rebels, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for the attack, a charge the group neither acknowledged nor denied. The vast majority of those killed and wounded were sailors, but a military spokesman said some civilians were caught in the explosion.

“This is a barbaric terrorist act,” said Keheliya Rambukwella, the government’s military spokesman. “It clearly shows that peace is not on the agenda of the L.T.T.E. and they don’t care about international opinion.”

But he said the government still planned to attend peace talks with the rebels, which are being brokered by Norway and are to resume Oct. 28 in Geneva after an eight-month hiatus. The separatists have said they may back out of the talks.

Monday’s attack was yet another sign that the four-year-old cease-fire was no longer being observed, even though neither the government nor the rebels have publicly disavowed it. It was also part of an increase in violence over the last year: more than 2,000 people, half of them civilians, have been killed in fighting since April, according to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.

The explosion occurred on the day that Japan’s special envoy to Sri Lanka, Yasushi Akashi, met with President Mahinda Rajapaksa to shore up support for the peace talks. Norway’s envoy, Jon Hanssen-Bauer, and an American assistant secretary of state, Richard A. Boucher, are to arrive later in the week to try to ensure that the talks go ahead.

Mr. Hanssen-Bauer is to meet with separatist leaders on Thursday to encourage them to attend; the rebels said they would give their final answer then.

The truck bomber on Monday crashed into a convoy of 24 buses carrying unarmed navy personnel going on leave or returning to duty. The convoy was stopped at a transit center outside Habarana. About 340 navy personnel were at the center.

Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe, a military spokesman, said he believed that the attack was an act of revenge against the navy, which he said had succeeded in many recent attempts to stop the rebels from smuggling arms and explosives. On Sunday, the navy sank a suspected Tiger vessel that it said was transporting weapons off the northwestern coast.

Hours after the attack, Kfir fighter jets attacked a northern rebel stronghold, said Air Chief Marshal Donald Perera, head of Sri Lanka’s armed forces.

Tamil rebels say they need their own state because the Sinhalese majority discriminates against Tamils.