US Marines came under fire on the outskirts of Tikrit, AP reports. The shelling occurred during the capture of the Tikrit-Yuzhny airport. Data on the victims is not yet available. During the capture of the airport, airstrikes were inflicted on it. Some buildings surrounding the airfield were destroyed. In the south and west of Tikrit, the US military has set up roadblocks and barriers to prevent senior Saddam administration officials from fleeing the city.

The UN Human Rights Commission adopted resolutions condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, Radio Liberty reports. The resolutions also call for the elimination of Jewish settlements. For the resolution, which accuses Israel of egregious violations of human rights, 33 of the 53 member countries of the Commission voted. The US representatives voted against all the resolutions, according to which the proposed resolutions do not mention the danger of Palestinian terrorism.

On a beach in East London, South Africa, children have found hundreds of plastic bags that appear to contain the ashes of dead people, DPA reports. The bags found resemble those used in crematoria. Some even had names and dates on them. Remains of bones were found in some bags. The contents of the bags have now been sent for examination to Cape Town. Authorities have launched an investigation into the incident.

Andrei Nurescu, correspondent for the Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor, was wounded near the border between Iraq and Kuwait, ANSA reports. The journalist arrived in Iraq last week. His car came under machine-gun fire, and a grenade was thrown into the car. Nurescu was wounded in the head and chest, but survived because he prudently put on a bulletproof vest.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office sent a repeated request to the Turkish Ministry of Justice for the detention and extradition of one of the leaders of the Chechen separatists, Movladi Udugov, Interfax reports. This was announced on Wednesday by Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Sergei Fridinsky. He noted that the previous request was sent last summer, but no response was received from the Turkish authorities.

NATO terminates its defensive mission in Turkey, AP reports. As stated in the official statement of the alliance, this decision was made after receiving notification from Turkey that it no longer feels threatened by Iraq. The NATO operation in Turkey lasted 3 months. AWACS aircraft from Germany were sent to this country, and 4 Patriot anti-missile systems were installed there.

No explosive device was found in the building of the Federation Council at 19 Novy Arbat, RIA Novosti reports. The Main Department of Civil Defense and Emergency Situations of the capital reported that all employees of the operational services of the city, who arrived at the scene, were given a “retreat”. All staff returned to their jobs and work as usual.

At about 2:00 am on Wednesday, residents of house number 1 on Botanicheskaya Street discovered the body of a girl in the yard. According to Interfax, the police officers who arrived at the scene found out that the girl, presumably 13-15 years old, fell from the 9th floor, and before that she had been stabbed several times. Having risen to the apartment, the police found a drunken man there. An investigation team is on the scene. The identity of the deceased has not yet been established.

Photo by ar The UN Human Rights Commission rejected the draft resolution on the situation in Chechnya, the Echo of Moscow reports. He was submitted for consideration on the initiative of the European Union. With a sharp criticism of this document, in addition to Russia - Cuba, China, India, Syria and Libya. They drew attention to positive changes in the republic and, in particular, the referendum held on March 23. The delegations of 21 countries voted against this project, and 15.

Moscow proposes to introduce a visa-free regime for citizens of Russia and the EU by 2007. This was reported to RIA Novosti on Tuesday by sources in the Russian delegation that arrived in Greece from Luxembourg, where a meeting of the Russia-EU Cooperation Council was held. According to the Russian side, at the first stage it would be possible to introduce a visa-free regime for citizens of Russia and the EU with diplomatic and service passports, the sources noted.

In Grozny, they found the bodies of three schoolchildren who disappeared last Monday, Interfax was told in the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Chechen Republic. According to reports, eighth-graders Arsen and Timur Makhtiyev, born in 1988 and 1987, respectively, and Alexander Galichenko, who lived in a temporary accommodation center in Michurina, went to school on Monday and did not return home.

According to many American lawyers, computer security will soon become the most relevant area of ​​application of the law, according to CNET News.com. Because cybercrime is often hard to pinpoint, the variety of possible lawsuits is "limited only by the creativity of the lawyers involved," as lawyer Rebecca Grassi Bradley put it at the 2003 RSA Conference . In particular, Bradley gave the following example.

US Central Command said seven Iraqis were killed and several others were wounded during riots in Mosul the day before. According to General Vincent Brooks, the demonstrators were the first to open fire on special forces and US Marines. Brooks stated that the Americans were forced to defend themselves and began firing into the crowd.

Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld intends to visit Iraq, reports CNN. According to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, no date has yet been set for Rumsfeld's trip to Iraq.

An experiment has been carried out that is necessary and sufficient to confirm that SARS is caused by a completely new strain of coronaviruses, AP reports. Earlier, WHO indicated that a completely new type of coronavirus was found in all patients in the blood. However, to confirm that it is he who causes pneumonia, it remains to conduct experiments on animals. At the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, scientists injected a suspicious coronavirus into monkeys.