Portal:Current events/2004 September 27

September 27, 2004 (Monday)

Arab-Israeli conflict:
- Jewish settlers in Gaza line a bridge and pelt passing Palestinian cars with rocks, forcing the Israeli army to close the only road from the north into the Gaza Strip. (The Guardian)
- In the Gaza Strip, four Palestinians kidnap Riad Abu Ali, an Israeli citizen working for CNN. Two other CNN employees were beaten and their equipment stolen. (Reuters)^{[permanent dead link]} (Haaretz)
- The Israeli army raids the West Bank city of Jenin, taking over a hospital and several other buildings, making a number of arrests, and reportedly wounding three Palestinians. Several other violent incidents occurred in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (The Australian) (BBC)
- A 'senior' Israeli security source has told several news organizations (Including the BBC, Haaretz and the AP) that it was Israel who killed a senior figure of Hamas, Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil, who died in a car bomb yesterday, September 26 in Damascus. (BBC) (Dispatch) (Haaretz) (Gulf Daily News)
  - Hamas states that an unnamed Arab state may have aided Israel in the assassination of Hamas leader Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil. (Haaretz) (Reuters) Archived 2005-03-13 at the Wayback Machine
Conflict in Iraq:
- Fereidoun Jahani, an Iranian diplomat who was kidnapped in Iraq in early August, is freed; he was held by a militant group that also claims to be holding two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. (BBC) (Reuters) Archived 2005-04-08 at the Wayback Machine
- The U.S. military carries out air strikes on several suspected militant positions in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, killing at least five people and wounding 46, according to a local hospital official. The U.S. military disputes that total. (AP)^{[permanent dead link]} (BBC)
- Two separate car bombs kill at least seven Iraqi national guardsmen in Mosul and Fallujah, while mortars are fired at a police academy in Baghdad, with no reported casualties. (AP: 1^{[permanent dead link]}, 2^{[permanent dead link]})
The Virgin Group announces that it will create the world's first commercial space-flight company, to be called Virgin Galactic, using SpaceShipOne technology licensed from Mojave Aerospace Ventures. Virgin hopes to begin commercial space flight within five years. (BBC)
The Université de Montréal announces that a Quebec researcher has discovered a lost play by Alexandre Dumas, père, titled Les voleurs d'or ("The Gold Thieves"), in the archives of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France). (Herald Sun)