A Safer Place

Residents examine a destroyed building after a U.S. airstrike today in Falluja.

Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. Marines and troops, today launched a series of raids on seven mosques in Ramadi, the U.S. military said. The Combined Press Information Center said the mosques were suspected of "harboring known terrorists" and storing illegal weapons. U.S. airstrikes today also targeted a meeting center and a "terrorist safe house" in Falluja.

-- CNN

Also from CNN: Nuclear materials "vanish" in Iraq:

Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons have disappeared from Iraq, the chief of the U.N.'s atomic watchdog agency has warned.

Satellite imagery shows entire buildings that once housed high-precision equipment that could be used to make nuclear bombs have been dismantled, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter to the Security Council.

In the letter, IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said that though some radioactive equipment taken from Iraq after the war began has shown up in other countries, none of the high-quality, dual-use equipment or materials that is missing has been found.

The U.S. government prevented U.N. weapons inspectors from returning to Iraq -- thereby blocking the IAEA from monitoring the high-tech equipment and materials -- after the U.S.-led war was launched in March 2003.