Hundreds of Hamas fighters firing rockets and mortar shells captured the headquarters of the Fatah-allied security forces in northern Gaza on Tuesday, scoring a key victory in the bloody battle for control of the seaside strip.

Since its start six months after the U.S. invasion in 2003, the private contractors of the munitions demolition project have cleared 66 large Iraqi sites of a vast array of weaponry ? from rifle ammunition and hand grenades to sea mines, artillery, tank and mortar rounds, rockets and aerial bombs. It's all a legacy of decades of arms buildup under Saddam Hussein.

President Vladimir Putin underscored the importance of moral values and military might Tuesday, honoring Russians from a frail-looking Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who documented the Soviet Union's brutality, to men who designed its nuclear-armed submarines.