JERUSALEM: Israel has carried out several successful test launches over the past two days of missiles to stop short- and medium-range rockets, a television reported on Thursday.The missiles managed to locate, track and intercept the rockets in flight, whether fired singly or simultaneously, it reported.Channel Ten said the missiles, which can destroy rockets with a range of up to 70 kilometres (43 miles), will become operational in 2010 when the first batch is delivered to the Israeli air force.The missile system, named Iron Dome, was the target this month of a scathing report by Israel's state comptroller, who accused the defence establishment of wasting time and money on the proposed rocket protection shield.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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