3,000 US troops secretly return to Iraq via Kuwait

Over 3,000 US troops have secretly returned to Iraq via Kuwait for missions pertaining to the recent developments in Syria and northern Iraq, Press TV reports.

According to our correspondent, the US troops have secretly entered Iraq in multiple stages and are mostly stationed at Balad military garrison in Salahuddin province and al-Asad air base in al-Anbar province.

Reports say the troops include US Army officers and almost 17,000 more are set to secretlyreturn to Iraq via the same route.

All US troops left Iraq by the end of 2011, after nine years of occupation, as required by a 2008 bilateral security agreement between the two countries. The troops left Iraq for the neighboring Kuwait.

Washington decided to pull out all its troops from Iraq after Baghdad refused to grant legal immunity to the remaining US soldiers.

Washington claims that the only US military presence left in Iraq now is 157 soldiers responsible for training at the US Embassy, as well as a small contingent of marines protecting the diplomatic mission.

US-led forces attacked Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein on the pretext of possessing weapons of mass destruction. But no WMD was ever discovered in Iraq. At the peak of the US-led military operation in Iraq, there were 170,000 US troops and more than 500 bases in Iraq.

More than one million Iraqis were killed as the result of the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

Vulture spying for Israel’ caught in Sudan

Officials in Sudan say they have captured an electronically-tagged vulture suspected of being dispatched by Israel on a spying mission.

The avian discovery was made in Kereinek, a town in the Darfur region of western Sudan, Israeli media have reported.

Sudanese officials are said to have concluded that the bird was a secret agent after discovering it was fitted with GPS and solar-powered equipment capable of broadcasting images via satellite, according to Haaretz newspaper, which cited an Egyptian website, El Balad.

The vulture also had a tag attached to its leg with "Israel Nature Service" and "Hebrew University, Jerusalem", leading to accusations that it was on an Israeli surveillance mission.

The reports follow allegations by Sudan that Israel carried out the bombing of a munitions depot near the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in October, after jamming the country's radar defences.

Israel has made no comment on the raid, which left two people dead. The arms depot was said to be supplying weapons to the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli officials have acknowledged that the bird, which can fly up to 375 miles a day, had been tagged with Israeli equipment but insisted it was being used to study migration patterns.

Ohad Hazofe, an ecologist with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, told the website, Ynet, that it was one of 100 vultures fitted in October with a GPS system equipped to take distance and altitude readings but not surveillance images.

"That's the only way we knew something had happened to the bird – all of a sudden it stopped flying and started travelling on the ground," he said.

A similar discovery in Saudi Arabia last year prompted local media to report that a bird, later identified as a Griffon, had been "arrested" under suspicion of spying as part of a suspected "Zionist plot".

Saudi officials later dismissed the speculation and criticised journalists for jumping to conclusions after accepting Israeli explanations that the bird was part of a migration study.