Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 6

A6 NATION FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2001 DECATUR, ILLINOIS SUSPECTED HIJACKERS AMERICA RESPONDS (CI IK Al Suqami watching several of the collaborators for several months but lacked sufficient evidence to move in on them. After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, European police moved rapidly to capture as many of the alleged planners as possible. They include about two dozen people arrested or detained in Spain, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium. Several other suspected collaborators remain at large, the officials said. Since the first wave of arrests, authorities have begun to make links between collaborators in different countries.

well before the Sept. 11 hijackings, when authorities captured an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden and he began cooperating, officials said. The alleged bin Laden associate, Djamel Begal, provided overseas authorities with information about possible targets and the names of others who might be involved, officials said. A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. intelligence urged its European counterparts to begin rounding up suspects before Sept.

11. Spanish Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy said authorities had been WASHINGTON (AP) The government's global manhunt has thwarted two terrorist attacks since Sept. 11 and gathered evidence suggesting collaborators were in various stages of planning in several other plots to harm U.S. interests here and abroad, officials said Thursday. Evidence seized in raids in the United States and in Europe included plans or materials for an attack on the U.S.

Embassy in Paris and an attack with explosives on a military site in Brussels, Belgium, the officials said. The officials, who work in law enforcement and intelligence, spoke only on condition of anonymity. They said about two dozen arrests have been made across Europe of people suspected of being involved in the planning of those attacks. The arrests have resulted from a global manhunt led by the FBI and aided by CIA intelligence that has produced dozens of raids and searches in the last two weeks. Information about the overseas attacks first emerged this summer, American Airlines Flight 175 Crashed into the Pentagon.

Alshehri Atta Alomari Zero Ground Alshehri United Airlines Right 93 Crashed in rural Pennsylvania. i i 1 Alghamdi CONTINUING 11 to. 4 II fc Pentagon to award medals U.S. personnel injured, killed on Sept. 11 honored WASHINGTON (AP) All members of the U.S.

armed services killed or wounded in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will be awarded the Purple Heart, and the Defense Department has created the Defense of Freedom Medal to be awarded to all department civilians killed or wounded. In making the announcement Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the tributes were appropriate, given the unprecedented nature of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. "They were acts of war military strikes against the United States of America," Rumsfeld said.

Charles Abell, the assistant secretary of defense for force management policy, told reporters that an estimated 90 Defense Department civilians are eligible for the new medal, which consists of a golden circle framing a bald eagle holding a shield. The reverse of the medal is inscribed with "On Behalf of a Grateful Nation." The ribbon to which the medal is attached is red, white and blue. The red portion has four stripes, representing the number of hijackings. The single blue stripe represents the attack on the Pentagon. Abell said he did not yet have an accurate count of the number of military members eligible for the Purple.Heart.

At least 54 service members were killed at the Pentagon and an undetermined number were seriously injured. Some military members may have been among the casualties in New York, he said. The civilians include those killed or wounded at the Pentagon as well as a small number at the World Trade Center or aboard the hijacked airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania shortly after the Pentagon attack. 1 Jarrah Guiliani revises number of those missing to 5,960 NEW YORK (AP) Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Thursday that the official number of people missing at the World Trade Center had dropped to 5,960 after multiple lists of the victims were double-checked. The number of missing reported to police had been 6,347 for several days.

Giuliani said the revision was made after duplications were found on lists provided by some of the 63 countries that lost people in the trade center attack. The mayor also said 4,620 names have been registered as missing at a city center for victims' relatives. The correct number the one many fear will be the true death toll is likely somewhere between the two, Giuliani said. Authorities so far have confirmed 305 deaths since two hijacked jetliners brought down the twin towers Sept. 11.

At ground zero, heavier equipment has been moved in to remove rubble from the 16-acre site. Crews have begun assembling a 420-foot crane that can handle up to 1,000 tons. Since the attack, 128,050 tons of debris only about 10 percent of what the Army Corps of Engineers estimates is there have been removed and taken to a landfill on Staten Island for analysis. More aggressive removal methods and equipment have not been used because of the search for bodies and survivors. Workers are also combing the wreckage for evidence in the criminal investigation of the attack.

Jim Abadie, the site manager for crane owner Bovis Lend Lease, said the larger pieces of debris hauled out of the wreckage will be trucked to a nearby pier and transported by barge to Staten Island. Abadie said he has been at the site since the beginning. i'y I y. Banihammad 1 4 it is .1 the attack. Democrat Mark Green and Republican Michael Bloomberg agreed to go along with Giuliani's proposal, which would postpone the new mayor's inauguration until April.

RECOVERY 2 7 7 missing or confirmed killed. At City Hall, Giuliani obtained the support of two of the three mayoral candidates for a plan that would allow him to stay in office for three extra months to help the city recover from exit request not say, it appeared the delegation had the Pakistan government's approval because of the special plane and because the visit was reported in advance by the state news agency. The visit was announced as the Taliban's ambassador to Islamabad, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said a Sept. 20 decision by Afghan clerics urging bin Laden to leave Afghanistan voluntarily had been delivered. The moves could signal a willingness by the Taliban to find a solution to the crisis and avoid American air strikes.

bin Laden has hardened, fears have grown over the safety of eight foreign aid workers, including two Americans, accused last month of preaching Christianity in Afghanistan. On Thursday, diplomats were notified that their trial, halted in the wake of the terror strikes, would resume Saturday. Associated Press AROUND THE CLOCK: More than two weeks after the terrorist attacks smoke continues to billow from the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York on Thursday. Crews work constantly to remove the rubble. Al-Shehhi Ill I I J' Al Haznawi Alnami United Airlines Right 175 Crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Alghamdi American Airlines Right 11 Crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Moqed Aihazmi Alghamdi I I i iv. "It was chaos," he said. "Now it's controlled chaos." As wreckage was pulled away and workers picked through the ruins looking for victims, authorities showed the site to small groups of relatives of those Alshehri Taliban gives bin Laden Pakistani clerics to open talks Hanjour y. -i i -OvV ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) After days of saying it couldn't locate Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan's Taliban government said Thursday it had delivered a week-old message to America's prime suspect in the terror attacks on New York and Washington, asking him to leave the country voluntarily.

The nation's top clerics recommended Sept. 20 that bin Laden be asked to leave Afghanistan, where he has sheltered for the past five years. The United States says he has used Afghanistan as his headquarters for a far-flung, loosely linked international terror network known as al-Qaida, or "the base." President Bush has demanded the Taliban surrender bin Laden or share his fate, raising expectations of an American-led military action against Afghanistan, though none has yet materialized. "Osama has now received the (clerics') recommendations" that he depart Afghanistan, the Taliban's ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) Pakistani religious leaders leave today for Afghanistan, the Pakistani news agency reported. The delegation may be part of a new Pakistani initiative to open a dialogue with the ruling Taliban on a possible solution to the crisis over Osama bin Laden.

The Pakistan government news agency said Thursday the delegation would fly aboard a special plane to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, stronghold of the Taliban leadership, and return tonight. Although the dispatch did ambassador in neighboring Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said Thursday. It marked the first time since the Sept. 11 terror attacks that the Taliban, the hardline Islamic movement that rules Afghanistan, indicated they knew bin Laden's location. As the confrontation over '--v -J 1 Almihdhar "nJ Associated Press SHOW OF SUPPORT.

Veiled Muslim women attend a 'solidarity day' rally on Thursday, in Peshawar, Pakistan. Pro-government rallies were held in several cities in Pakistan to support President Pervez Musharraf's agreement to join the U.S. war against terrorism. Alhazmi American Airlines Flight 77 was misidentified. Also, the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 and American Airlines Flight 11 were transposed.

9-29-01.