British authorities announced last month that they had foiled an alleged plot to blow up US-bound airliners using liquid explosives smuggled aboard in drinks' or other containers

Maximum container sizes will be introduced under the new EU rules, allowing people to bring on board small shampoo and perfume bottles. Duty free airport purchases will be carried in sealed bags, Barrot added.

During a meeting last week on emergency measures after the alleged London plot, aviation security experts from the 25 EU member nations agreed on the need for a "common response" to the new threat of liquid explosives.

Pump action shotguns and semi-automatic and automatic weapons were found in raids on properties in Dartford, with an arms smuggling ring that has links in the US believed to have brought them into the country.

Officers from the Metropolitan police's Operation Trident team - set up to target gun crime in London's black communities - carried out the raids.

A Metropolitan police statement said US police were undertaking simultaneous operations in New Jersey.

Around 30 officers executed search warrants at two residential properties and one business address in Dartford at 6am.

The guns were discovered at a semi-detached house that police allege was being used to sell firearms. A sports car parked outside had the registration number E6 GUN.

Sky news reported that the 55-year-old man, who was arrested and taken from the house at 10.25am, had earlier greeted officers at the door.

Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin Davis, of Operation Trident, said "hundreds and hundreds" of weapons were found.

"This is the biggest firearms haul we have ever had," he said. "Guns are mounted on every available wall space in the property, and live ammunition was found lying on the floor."

Mr Davis said it would take officers three days to log the weapons.

"This operation has resulted in hundreds of guns being taken out of circulation, and has potentially prevented a number of serious injuries, or even deaths, occurring on the streets of London," he added.

He said it was "impossible to overestimate the misery and fear these weapons could have brought if they had got into the hands of criminals".

Searches at all three properties were expected to continue throughout the day. The operation - codenamed Mokpo - was launched 18 months ago after a spate of shootings involving rival gangs in north London.

This confirms an article last week citing Iraqi police and residents (see US military 'loses control' of key Iraqi province, Asia Times Online, September 7 ).

In Fallujah, 50 kilometers west of Baghdad, residents are edgy. "They destroyed our city twice and they are threatening us a third time," said Ahmed Dhahy, 52. "They want us to do their job for them and turn in those who target them."

Dhahy, who lost 32 relatives when his father's house was bombed by a US aircraft during the April 2004 attack on Fallujah, said the US military had threatened it would destroy the city if resistance fighters were not handed over to them.

"Last week, the Americans used loudspeakers on the backs of their tanks and Humvees to threaten us," Dhahy said. Residents said the US forces warned of a "large military operation" if fighters were not handed over.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad said he had no reports of such action.

Fallujah was heavily bombed in April 2004 and again in November that year. The attacks destroyed 75% of the city's infrastructure and left more than 5,000 dead, according to local non-governmental groups.

But after the heavy assaults, resistance fighters have continued to launch attacks against US and official Iraqi forces in the city. Fallujah remains under tight security, with the US military using biometric identification, full body searches and bar-coded identification cards for residents to enter and leave their city.

"The Iraqi resistance has not stopped for a single day despite the huge US Army activities," a city police captain said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The wise men of the city explained to US officials that it is impossible to stop the resistance by military operations, but it seems the Americans prefer to do it the hard way."

The police captain said anti-occupation fighters had increased their activities in the face of sectarian violence in which Shi'ite death squads have killed thousands of Sunnis in Baghdad. Many residents of Fallujah have relatives in the capital city.

Lack of reconstruction and the US military's failure to pay due compensation to victims' families have added to the unrest, the captain said. "There used to be resistance attacks against the US and Iraqi forces in Fallujah daily," said the captain. "But now they have increased to several per day. Many soldiers have been killed and their vehicles destroyed. So it is clear that the security measures they have taken in Fallujah have failed."

Several residents said all sorts of killings had been taking place over the past eight months. Religious leaders have been targeted regularly, with no group claiming responsibility. On Sunday, the former chief of traffic police, Brigadier Ahmed Diraa, was shot dead in his car. Residents in Fallujah said Diraa had quit his post a month earlier.

In the face of killings, and now threats of a new attack, residents remain defiant of the occupation forces. The hardships that people have endured seem to have strengthened rather than weakened them.

"There are so many arrests and killings, and collective punishments, such as random shootings, violent inspection raids, repeated curfews and deliberate cutting of water and electricity," said Mohammed al-Darraji, head of a human-rights group in Fallujah called the Iraqi Center for Human Rights Observation.

"What is going on in this city requires international intervention to protect civilians and to punish those who seriously damaged Fallujah society and committed serious crimes against humanity," Darraji said. His group has been monitoring breaches of the Geneva Conventions in the city since the April 2004 siege.

"There is a long list of collective punishments that have turned the city into a frightful detention camp," he said.

Another human-rights campaigner in Fallujah, who asked to be referred to as Khalid, said human-rights activists in Iraq felt betrayed by the United Nations. The UN had played ignorant "by leaving US troops to act alone in the city", said Khalid, who works with Raya Human Rights, a non-governmental organization in the city. "This was after the media exposed the enormity of the violence and human-rights violations during the last three years."

(Inter Press Service)

An Iraqi interior ministry official and Baghdad police sources told Reuters 60 of the bodies had been found over the past day. Fifteen were discovered close to the Shia militia stronghold of Sadr City.

"We've had worse days," the interior ministry official said. "Sometimes, we sent ... even 100 to the morgue."

Elsewhere in the city, violence continued, with Iraqi police suffering heavy losses.

A car bomb killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 62 when it exploded near the main headquarters of Baghdad's traffic police department, police said. At least two of the victims were traffic policemen.

In eastern Baghdad, a parked car bomb went off next to a police patrol. Eight people, including three policemen, were killed, with 17 wounded.

A policeman was killed when two mortar shells landed on the al-Rashad police station, in the south-east of the city, and two more died when two mortar rounds landed near their police station in the eastern neighbourhood of Mashtal.

The US military also announced the deaths of two of its soldiers, one in southern Baghdad and one in Anbar province.

Turkish authorities said blast was caused by a bomb made from powerful explosives and was set off by a cell phone timer, The Associated Press reports.

The explosion in the city of Diyarbakir happened around 9 p.m.(6 p.m. GMT) and an investigation had begun, according to a statement from the provincial governor's office.

A Kurdish news agency reported that the blast took place near an elementary school. Witnesses said the blast threw body parts over a wide area and left pools of blood from the killed and injured.

A hospital made an appeal for blood donations after the injured were brought in to be treated, Reuters reported.

Diyarbakir, a city of more than a half million people on the Tigris River, is Turkey's largest majority-Kurd city.

The region is also home to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 22-year war against Turkey in which more than 37,000 people have died, mainly Kurds. Turkey and the United States consider the PKK a terrorist group.

Kurdish rebels, who seek autonomy from the Turkish government, were blamed for a bombing that killed two people in the southeastern city of Catak on September 3.

The PKK claimed responsibility earlier this month for a series of bombings in Turkish tourist resorts and in Istanbul. Three people were killed in those attacks and dozens wounded.

Also on Tuesday, the Turkish military announced that authorities had defused a remote-controlled bomb planted by Kurdish guerrillas on a busy bridge near the southeastern city of Hatay, and a bomb believed placed by rebels exploded as a freight train carrying coal passed in the eastern province of Bingol, damaging three rail cars, according to the AP.

The United States and Turkey are taking measures to counter Kurdish militants who have training camps in northern Iraq and launch frequent raids into Turkey.

"The bomb was made by hand, placed in a thermos and went off as it was being transported," the local governor's office said.

Seven children were among the dead in Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey's southeast, the state-owned Anatolia news agency reported. Fourteen other people were wounded, the agency reported.

Autonomy-seeking rebels are known to be active in the predominantly Kurdish region, but attacks against civilians in the southeast are relatively unusual.

A Kurdish news agency reported that the blast took place near an elementary school.

The bombing came as the Kurdish rebels have stepped up their attacks.

The United States and Turkey are taking measures to counter Kurdish militants who have training camps in northern
Iraq and launch frequent raids into Turkey.

More than 37,000 people have been killed in fighting since rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.

Both the United States and Turkey consider the group to be a terrorist organization.

Dozens of soldiers and guerrillas have been killed in a surge of violence in southeastern Turkey in recent months, leading to a Turkish government crackdown in the region, the massing of Turkish tanks and artillery along the Iraqi border and threats to attack the main guerrilla bases in northern Iraq.

Another extremist Kurdish militant group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, took responsibility for a rash of bombings last month elsewhere in the country, threatening to escalate the situation.

"I have called and I am calling in front of your microphones for alliance solidarity because some nations are carrying more of the burden than others. And a 26-nation alliance should show the solidarity, so I'm working hard as we speak," he said.

Gen. James Jones, NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, issued a plea last week for more soldiers, helicopters and transport planes to aid the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. More troops would bring a decisive end to the battle against the Taliban and would likely mean fewer casualties, he said.

On Wednesday, NATO members will take part in a "force generation conference" at NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium, to discuss the shortfalls in its Afghanistan mission.

ISAF, under a United Nations mandate, is an international force of some 20,000 troops from 37 countries that is trying to provide stability to Afghanistan. NATO took over the leadership of ISAF in August 2003.

Canada has more than 2,000 troops in Afghanistan, the majority stationed in Kandahar.

Scheffer said he does not expect any decisions about new contributions of troops to be made at the meeting, but he expects movement at two upcoming NATO meetings: one of NATO foreign ministers on Sept. 21, 2006, in New York City and another of NATO defence ministers on Sept. 28 to Sept. 30, 2006, in Portoroz, Slovenia.

"These are political decisions and it is up to the politicians in the capitals to do what they promised to do and my job is to make that happen," he said. The first plea for more troops from NATO's top general came a day before a meeting of chiefs of defence of NATO members in Warsaw, Poland, on Sept. 8 to Sept. 9, 2006.

More troops needed

Mark Laity, spokesperson for NATO in Kabul, told CBC News on Tuesday that NATO countries have acknowledged the need for more troops but have yet to produce those troops.

"I've seen some people say it is a crisis. What you're seeing down in the south is a challenge. But Canadians, Dutch, British - they are performing magnificently. In Operation Medusa, which is Canadian-led, we have had significant progress in the last few days. Operation Medusa is really going quite well," he said.

"If we don't the get the troops, we are going to carry on and finish the job. We have got enough to do an awful lot. If you have more, you do more. This extra pressure means things aren't progressing as fast as we would like them to progress."

The battle against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, known as Operation Medusa, appears to be entering its final phase, according to commanders on the ground. The battle, a dangerous one, has led to the deaths of four Canadians in combat since it began more than a week ago.

Commanders said Canadian troops were continuing to advance on Tuesday as they tried to reclaim territory held by the Taliban in the volatile Panjwaii district in southern Afghanistan. For the third straight day, Canadians troops encountered no resistance as they rolled south.

Ambushes, rocket attacks and skirmishes last week marked the first phase of the battle.

In its first week, four Canadian soldiers and one U.S. soldier were killed and more than a dozen troops wounded. An airplane accident also resulted in the deaths of 14 British troops, and a mistaken bombing killed a Canadian soldier. The bodies of the British troops were flown to their home base on Tuesday.

Commanders said there will still be weeks of mop-up operations in the area even though the battle appears to be ending.

Laity said the Taliban have suffered significant casualties. "The Taliban knows there are enough forces to give them a really hard time," he said. "We are fighting with a purpose."