Top Zarqawi aide believed captured; 6 soldiers killed

Baghdad, Iraq – June appears likely to become one of the deadliest months for U.S. troops in Iraq as U.S. officials announced Thursday the deaths of five Marines and a sailor in and near the restive city of Ramadi.

The Marines died in a roadside bomb explosion Wednesday; the sailor was killed by small-arms fire that same day.

The deaths brought to 42 the number of fatalities U.S. troops have suffered from hostile fire in the first half of the month, a figure that’s already higher than that for all of June 2003 and June 2004, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a Web site that uses official casualty reports to organize deaths by various criteria.

U.S. officials also announced Thursday that they’ve captured a man they believe is a top lieutenant of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaida in Iraq.

If true, the detention of Mohammed Khalaf Shakar – also known as Abu Talha – could be a significant dent in the al-Zarqawi organization, believed to be behind many of the suicide bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqis.

Aruba

Helicopter search fails to find missing girl

A helicopter searched for the body of an Alabama teenager as investigators sifted through items seized from the island home of a justice official whose son was with the young woman the same night she disappeared, officials said Thursday.

More than two weeks after the 18-year-old Natalee Holloway went missing, searches by authorities, volunteer islanders and tourists have led nowhere, and no one has been charged in the case. Authorities were refusing to say if they thought Holloway was dead.

Police Superintendent Jan van der Straaten declined to give a timeline Thursday on when the investigation could conclude.

Tokyo

Japan cracking down on human trafficking

The Diet passed legislation Thursday to crack down on human trafficking by introducing tougher penalties for the crime and measures to intercept traffickers.

The House of Representatives unanimously passed the bills to revise the penal code and the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law at its plenary session, making them into legislation.

It was part of legislative actions for ratifying two protocols of the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organized Crime – one to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking of persons and another against the smuggling of migrants by land, sea and air.

By enacting the revised laws, the government aims to quell international criticism that Japan is a hotbed for human trafficking.

Moscow

Prosecutor says Chechen ordered slaying of editor

Prosecutors said Thursday they had solved the murder of U.S journalist Paul Klebnikov, linking his high-profile killing to a former Chechen separatist figure who was the subject of a critical book that he wrote.

Some observers remain skeptical about the Chechen connection, saying Klebnikov had delved deep into the still-murky post-Soviet business world as the editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian edition.

Klebnikov, a 41-year-old American of Russian descent, was gunned down in July 2004.

Vasiliy Lushchenko, a spokesman for the prosecutor general’s office, said the murder was ordered by Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, a former deputy prime minister in Chechnya’s separatist government.