There are two power support groups of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Zaslon in Iraq. This is reported by Gazeta.ru with reference to informed sources in the Russian Foreign Ministry. The groups arrived in Iraq a few days before the start of the war and did not leave Baghdad during the last phase of the Russian evacuation. According to sources, one of the groups took over the protection of the Russian embassy in Baghdad.

Commenting on the preliminary results of the referendum in Chechnya, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the people of Chechnya have made a choice in favor of peace and positive development together with Russia. This is reported by Interfax. "We have closed the last serious problem related to the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation," the Russian president said, speaking at the traditional meeting with members of the government in the Kremlin on Monday.

Photo AFP In Baghdad, at 6 a.m. on Monday, air alarm was again announced, reports CNN. Meanwhile, a few hours ago, several strong explosions occurred in the city center, Reuters reports. According to the correspondent of the agency, these are the most powerful explosions in the capital since the beginning of the war. It is significant that the air defense of Iraq at that moment was silent and there was no air aircraft signal.

"The people of Iraq and the Iraqi army are showing great courage in fighting the enemy," Saddam Hussein said in his live Iraqi television address to the nation. The Iraqi leader called on "all believers, wherever they are, to oppose those who unleashed the war." "Arabs, Muslims all over the world, we ask you to support Iraq in our fight against evil, against the enemy... We will fight evil until victory, which is closer than ever," Hussein said.

A fire broke out at the Partizanskaya mine in the Luhansk region of Ukraine on Monday. According to the press service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Ukraine, rescuers and firefighters managed to evacuate 104 miners to the surface. There are no victims or injured. The fire broke out on the horizon of 240 meters due to the short circuit of the power cable.

On Sunday, about 30 participants in a demonstration near the US embassy against the war in Iraq were arrested in Brussels. For the fourth day in a row, demonstrations of protest against the war in Iraq are taking place here. On Sunday, no more than a hundred people came to the embassy, ​​but they behaved violently, threw stones at the embassy, ​​throwing them, among other things, at law enforcement officers guarding the building, RIA Novosti reports.

Specialists of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, who are in Iran, are waiting for Tehran's permission to visit the buffer zone in order to determine the location of the camps. This was announced on Monday to RIA Novosti by Deputy Head of the Russian Emergencies Ministry Yuri Brazhnikov. He noted that negotiations started on Sunday on providing humanitarian assistance to Iraqi refugees in Iran continue.

A Coalition Air Force plane crashed over Baghdad. As a result, two pilots ejected into the Tigris. After an active search, at least one of them was detained, a Sky-TV correspondent reports. Arab media are talking about two detainees, reports NBCNew. However, this is not confirmed in other sources. Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld said he had no knowledge of the incident, AP reports. According to Iraqi sources, Sky-News reports, the captured pilot is British.

Terry Lloyd, a correspondent for the British television channel ITN, who disappeared in Iraq, has died, Sky-News reports citing representatives of the channel. The journalist was apparently accidentally killed by coalition forces. Two of the journalist's colleagues, cameraman Fred Nerak and translator Hussein Osman, have not yet been found. TV channel ITN received irrefutable evidence of the death of a journalist during the fighting in southern Iraq on Saturday.

On March 23, in the Chechen capital, it was possible to vote for a new draft of the Chechen Constitution without presenting a passport at the polling station. It was enough for those who came to participate in the referendum to report their real or fictitious address and surname with the name and patronymic, and they were given ballots.

On March 24, the Moscow Arbitration Court must decide on the right of the Moscow Independent Broadcasting Corporation (MNVK) to resume broadcasting on the "sixth button", Ekho Moskvy reports. The court will consider the issue of annulment of order # 9 of the Ministry of Press, according to which the broadcasting of the TV-6 channel was stopped in January last year.

In the north of Iraq, in the city of Jom Jamal, military formations of the National Union of Kurdistan captured a correspondent and cameraman of the Qatari television company Al Jazeera. According to Interfax, this was announced by the head of the Moscow bureau of the Qatari television company Akram Khazam. According to him, the incident took place on Monday, at the time of the arrest the journalists were beaten. According to IRNA, the Kurds have already released the journalist.

Hackers - opponents and supporters of the war with Iraq - with the beginning of the bombing began to actively break down American and British websites. By Friday, Finnish firm F-Secure had counted 800 hacks, Reuters reported. computer security The representative of the company, Mikko Hipponen, stressed that his company did not find any signs of organized cyber warfare: all hacks were the work of individual hacker groups.

Fedor Konyukhov, who managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean on the catamaran "Scarlet Sails" in 9 days 23 hours 33 minutes, set a new record. According to ITAR-TASS, the ship finished in the port of St. Charles on the island of Barbados. The start was given on March 14 on the Spanish island of La Gomera, which is part of the Canary Islands. Fedor Konyukhov has two days of rest ahead of him, after which he will go to England on the Scarlet Sails.

The British military, patrolling the suburbs of Basra, found missiles and warheads in Iraqi bunkers, reports Sky-News. Mines, shells and other weapons found in the bunker were labeled as British-made. However, it is not known where they were actually produced.