Abu Omar al-Baghdadi led as many as 300 in an attack on a jail in Mosul on Tuesday. The attack resulted in approximately 140 prisoners escaping. No details are available at this time on the names of the escaped prisoners.

North of Baghdad in the Salah ad-Din province, six US soldiers were killed in a blast on Monday. Three US soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in the Diyala province on Monday.

Additional attacks by terrorists and ‘insurgents’ caused civilian deaths in Hilla, Baghdad, Tikrit, Harmiya, Udhaim, and Latifiya. The Hilla attack, carried out by two terrorists wearing suicide bomb belts, resulted in at least 90 deaths and wounded twice as many.

As African Union forces begin to move into Somalia on a ‘peacekeeping’ mission, mortars fell across the Magadishu airport injuring at least one person at the airport. The first AU troops to arrive are from Uganda and should make up approximately 20 percent of the total force - should other AU states fill the request for a force of 8,000 troops.

Mogadishu has seen a return of Islamic Courts Union members after their expulsion at the beginning of the year. The lack of an alternative security force, following the withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces, and an interim government incapable of exerting itself across the capital has again permitted the al-Qaeda tied organization’s members to return to the city. Mogadishu has seen renewed violence over the last several weeks. Djibouti’s President Ismael Omar Guelleh, whose country hosts the US forces which aided in the Ethiopian effort to defeat the ICU, has said that he believes the Horn of Africa is no safer due to the defeat of the ICU. Guelleh said: “People lack basic needs. There is no medicine, no water or services, nothing. They are easily used for criminal activities. That threat still remains.”

al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (formerly known as the GSPC) has claimed responsibility for the killing of four non-Algerians over the weekend. The group claims that the killings are a “a gift to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya who are being killed and oppressed by the criminal Russian government.” One of the victims was a Russian engineer.

Elsewhere in Algeria, the government has agreed to organize tours with the Iranian government for reporters. The government also reported that no US bases would be permitted on Algerian soil though their cooperation with the War on Terror is “profitable.”

The Algerian and Tunisian governments have agreed to join forces against al-Qaeda and other militant groups working in both countries.