LA students breach school iPads' security

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It took just a week for nearly 300 students who got iPads from their Los Angeles high school to figure out how to alter the security settings so they could surf the Web and access social media sites.

The breach at Roosevelt High and two other LA schools has prompted Los Angeles Unified School District officials to halt a $1 billion program aimed at putting the devices in the hands of every student in the nation's second-largest school system, the Los Angeles Times reported. The district also has banned home use of the iPads until further notice as officials look for ways to make sure students use the devices for school work only.

The actions come as school officials nationwide grapple with security measures for iPads and other devices as they introduce them to tech-savvy students.

"I'm guessing this is just a sample of what will likely occur on other campuses once this hits Twitter, YouTube or other social media sites explaining to our students how to breach or compromise the security of these devices," School District Police Chief Steven Zipperman wrote in a confidential memo to senior staff obtained by the Times. "I want to prevent a 'runaway train' scenario when we may have the ability to put a hold on the rollout."

Roosevelt was among the first schools to distribute iPads as part of the district rollout. Its students initially were allowed to take home the Apple tablets, and they learned they could easily delete their personal profile information, giving them greater access to the iPads' capabilities.

Westchester High and the Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences in Granada Hills also reported the problem, though in smaller numbers.

Roosevelt students began to tinker with the security software on the devices after "they took them home and they can't do anything with them," Alfredo Garcia, a senior at the school, told the Times.

Before long, students were on the Internet, sending tweets, socializing on Facebook and streaming music through Pandora, students told the newspaper.

The district said in a statement Wednesday that steps have been taken "to ensure it has 100 percent control over what is accessible" on the devices.

Potential precautions include permanently barring home use of the tablets and strengthening the security software that limits how the devices are used.

Zipperman suggested in the memo to senior staff that the district might want to delay distribution of the iPads.

When the technology breaches came to light Tuesday, Superintendent John Deasy "ordered a moratorium on allowing tablets to leave campus until the problem has been resolved," the district statement said.

Via Yahoo News!

Feds in NYC: Hackers stole $45M in ATM card breach

NEW YORK (AP) — A worldwide gang of criminals stole a total of $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and then draining cash machines around the globe, federal prosecutors said Thursday — and outmoded U.S. card technology may be partly to blame.

Seven people are under arrest in the U.S. in connection with the case, which prosecutors said involved thousands of thefts from ATMs using bogus magnetic swipe cards carrying information from Middle Eastern banks. The fraudsters moved with astounding speed to loot financial institutions around the world, working in cells including one in New York, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said.

She called it "a massive 21st-century bank heist" carried out by brazen thieves.

One of the suspects was caught on surveillance cameras, his backpack increasingly loaded down with cash, authorities said. Others took photos of themselves with giant wads of bills as they made their way up and down Manhattan.

Here's how it worked:

Hackers got into bank databases, eliminated withdrawal limits on pre-paid debit cards and created access codes. Others loaded that data onto any plastic card with a magnetic stripe — an old hotel key card or an expired credit card worked fine as long as it carried the account data and correct access codes.

A network of operatives then fanned out to rapidly withdraw money in multiple cities, authorities said. The cells would take a cut of the money, then launder it through expensive purchases or ship it wholesale to the global ringleaders. Lynch didn't say where they were located.

It appears no individuals lost money. The thieves plundered funds held by the banks that back up prepaid credit cards, not individual or business accounts, Lynch said.

She called it a "virtual criminal flash mob," and a security analyst said it was the biggest ATM fraud case she had heard of.

There were two separate attacks, one in December that reaped $5 million worldwide and one in February that snared about $40 million in 10 hours with about 36,000 transactions. The scheme involved attacks on two banks, Rakbank in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman, prosecutors said.

The plundered ATMs were in Japan, Russia, Romania, Egypt, Colombia, Britain, Sri Lanka, Canada and several other countries, and law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen nations were involved in the investigation, U.S. prosecutors said.

The accused ringleader in the U.S. cell, Alberto Yusi Lajud-Pena, was reportedly killed in the Dominican Republic late last month, prosecutors said. More investigations continue and other arrests have been made in other countries, but prosecutors did not have details.

An indictment unsealed Thursday accused Lajud-Pena and the other seven New York suspects of withdrawing $2.8 million in cash from hacked accounts in less than a day.

Such ATM fraud schemes are not uncommon, but the $45 million stolen in this one was at least double the amount involved in previously known cases, said Avivah Litan, an analyst who covers security issues for Gartner Inc.

Middle Eastern banks and payment processors are "a bit behind" on security and screening technologies that are supposed to prevent this kind of fraud, but it happens around the world, she said.

"It's a really easy way to turn digits into cash," Litan said.

Some of the fault lies with the ubiquitous magnetic strips on the back of the cards. The rest of the world has largely abandoned cards with magnetic strips in favor of ones with built-in chips that are nearly impossible to copy. But because U.S. banks and merchants have stuck to cards with magnetic strips, they are still accepted around the world.

Lynch would not say who masterminded the attacks globally, who the hackers are or where they were located, citing an ongoing investigation.

The New York suspects were U.S. citizens originally from the Dominican Republic, lived in the New York City suburb orf Yonkers and were mostly in their 20s. Lynch said they all knew one another and were recruited together, as were cells in other countries. They were charged with conspiracy and money laundering. If convicted, they face 10 years in prison.

Arrests began in March.

Lajud-Pena was found dead with a suitcase full of about $100,000 in cash, and the investigation into his death is continuing separately. Dominican officials said they arrested a man in the killing who said it was a botched robbery, and two other suspects were on the lam.

The first federal study of ATM fraud was 30 years ago, when the use of computers in the financial community was growing rapidly. At the time, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found nationwide ATM bank loss from fraud ranged from $70 and $100 million a year.

By 2008, that had risen to about $1 billion a year, said Ken Pickering, who works in security intelligence at CORE Security, a white-hat hacking firm that offers security to businesses.

He said he expects news of the latest ring to inspire other criminals.

"Once you see a large attack like this, that they made off with $45 million, that's going to wake up the cybercrime community," he said.

"Ripping off cash, you don't get that back," he said. "There are suitcases full of cash floating around now, and that's just gone."

___

AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson in New York, AP National Writer Martha Mendoza in San Jose, Calif., and Associated Press writer Ezequiel Abiu Lopez in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, contributed to this report.

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Levee breach near the Missouri-Iowa border prompts evacuations

(CNN) -- A levee breach along the swollen Missouri River prompted the evacuation Sunday of about 600 people in the area between the river and Hamburg, Iowa, officials said.

Residents were told they needed to leave within 24 hours.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported the breach occurred Sunday morning on a levee located in Atchison County, Missouri, near Hamburg.

Crews worked furiously to repair the breach, which Gen. Derek Hill, head of Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management, described as a boil, believed to be less than two inches in diameter.

He said the evacuation order was made as a precaution, in case the boil develops into a full-blown breach.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for southwest Iowa Sunday. If the levee fails, Interstate 29 and parts of Hamburg would likely be flooded, it said.

The cause of the breach was not immediately clear.

Crews were using a helicopter to pick up sandbags and fly them out over the levee, Hill said.

"No guarantees, but we certainly hope it will (work)," he said, noting the technique has been used before.

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The levee breach follows weeks of high flows and record releases from dams in Montana and the Dakotas, according to the Corps. Heavy rains and snow pack runoff could result in near-record flooding along parts of the Missouri River this year.

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Hackers may have used Amazon server for Sony PSN breach (Digital Trends)

Hackers responsible for the massive security breach of Sony’s PlayStation Network that left as much as 100 million users at risk of identity theft used an Amazon-run server to launch the attack, according to “a person with knowledge of the matter,” reports Bloomberg.

Rather than hijack Amazon’s server, the hackers allegedly used an alias to sign up for an account through Amazon’s EC2 service, and waged their cyber attack from there, says the unnamed source. The account is said to have been since shut down but the revelation that Amazon’s cloud network was used for one of the largest data breaches in US history could shed light on the perpetrators’ identities.

Neither Sony nor Amazon have yet been willing to confirm the allegation that an Amazon server was used for the breach.

Security expert E.J. Hilbert, president of Online Intelligence and a former cyber-crime agent for the FBI, tells Bloomberg that the FBI will likely subpoena Amazon as part of its investigation into the PSN hack.

“The subpoena will give law enforcement a history of the transactions,” said Hilbert. “The search warrant will get them more detailed information, including payment information and which credit card was used.”

Now a month after the attack, the PlayStation Network remains down. With the outage beginning to take a tangible financial toll on the gaming industry, Sony released a letter to game publishers this week in an attempt to explain the situation as best it can.

For PSN customers, Sony has offered a year’s worth of free identity protection through the AllClear ID Plus service, which gives users a $1 million insurance policy if their personal data is compromised.

As for the hackers, their identities remain unknown. But so far, evidence points to members of the “hacktivist” group Anonymous, though the group as a whole firmly denies any involvement, and has criticized Sony for its lack of a proper security infrastructure to keep its users’ financial information safe.

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Manitoba floods farms to avoid "catastrophic" breach (Reuters)

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Manitoba opened its dike on the swollen Assiniboine River on Saturday, starting a slow creep of water across rich farmland to avert a potentially catastrophic, unplanned breach in the Canadian province.

Opening the dike will, over days, flood at least 225 square kilometres (55,600 acres) of land that includes 150 homes while taking the pressure off strained dikes.

After the deliberate dike breach, Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger said the gradual, controlled flood was going well and that he knew of no homes in its path that had been damaged.

Water was spreading rapidly across fields, however, swamping land when farmers are usually planting crops of wheat, canola and vegetables.

"This was a necessity because a catastrophic overflow would have taken all the people in this area, and around it they would have had up to five times more damage if the river opened up," Selinger told reporters near the breach site. "...The dikes are very stressed with the amount of water going through, which is why we had to do this opening here."

The controlled flood looked to continue for as long as a week with flows speeding up because the river was still rising, Selinger said.

Warm, clear weather was helping volunteers and about 1,500 soldiers reinforce dikes.

Levels on the Assiniboine, which flows eastward out of Saskatchewan into Manitoba, are the highest on record after a winter of heavy snowfall on saturated land.

Along with fortifying dikes, Manitoba officials hastily expanded this week an engineered channel that diverts water off the Assiniboine into Lake Manitoba to prevent widespread flooding caused by heavy winter snowfall and spring rains.

U.S. authorities fighting a swollen Mississippi River opened a key spillway on Saturday, a move that could flood homes and crops but spare Louisiana's two largest cities.

Across Manitoba, 3,300 people had left their homes as of Friday because of the threat of flooding, including 1,400 in Brandon, the province's second-largest city. About 100 homes are flooded, mostly on Indian reserves.

Residents in the area that will be flooded east of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, shored up flood defenses this week as provincial officials repeatedly delayed the dike breach to give them more time.

It wasn't enough, said Doug Connery, whose family runs a large vegetable farm in the area.

"It all depends now on how fast this (water) is going to move," he said. "There's stuff out there that wasn't protected last night."

Manitoba officials have aimed to pump about one-third more water than design capacity through the Portage Diversion, out of the Assiniboine and into Lake Manitoba. While that has taken some strain off dikes, it has added to flooding in a key cattle-producing region.

Farmers have moved thousands of cattle to higher ground and worry they might not be able to feed them this year.

(Editing by Laura MacInnis and Paul Simao)

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Levee breach set in Midwest

Eleven Mississippi counties are declared federal disaster areasSen. Claire McCaskill calls it "an epic flood"Water from the Mississippi River floods hundreds of square miles of farmlandHeavy rains have caused massive flooding from Minnesota to Louisiana Check out more coverage from CNN affilate KPLR-TV in St. Louis. If you're in an affected area, share your story with CNN's iReport.

(CNN) -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was moving ahead Thursday with a controversial plan to breach a levee on the Mississippi River to help stop catastrophic floods in communities in several states.

The group intends to open the final crevasse in the Birds Point-New Madrid levee, continuing a plan to blast holes in it in an effort to ease unprecedented flood pressure.

The Corps started the plan on Monday. Some who live where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers meet said it has helped.

The Ohio River level at Cairo, Illinois, has dropped nearly 2 feet since Monday afternoon. Officials said they believe the levels would be up to 3 feet higher now if the levee had not been detonated.

Still, the town of Cairo was under a mandatory evacuation order and six other communities were under voluntary evacuation notices, said Patti Thompson, spokeswoman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

The decision to breach the Birds Point-New Madrid levee was controversial. Missouri officials took the Corps to court over the plan, questioning the agency's authority to intentionally breach the levee. The state argued the floodwater would deposit silt on about 130,000 acres, and it would take years, along with millions of dollars, to fix the damage.

Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh, commander of the Corps' Mississippi River Valley Division, made the decision to order the breach. He warned that without punching a hole in the levee, massive flooding would threaten to inundate communities throughout the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case on Sunday, clearing the way for Walsh to blow up part of the levee.

Despite the plan, many areas were inundated as the Mississippi River spilled out across huge swaths of farmland, creating massive flooding from Minnesota to Louisiana.

The water was coursing across an area of farmland that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon described as "literally the most productive part of our continent."

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said the Corps' decision was a tough one for them to make.

"Clearly, this is an epic flood," she told CNN, adding that the flooding of the farmland is "an economic devastation to that part of my state."

The sight makes you "sick to your stomach," said farmer Bryan Feezor as he surveyed his submerged fields.

"Farming is all I ever have done ... and it's under water," he told CNN affiliate KPLR.

The flooding has been triggered by heavy rains and meteorologists say it's not expected to fully relent until early June.

More than 20 miles of westbound Interstate 40 in eastern Arkansas was closed due to flooding, state police reported early Thursday.

The closure was between the towns of Hazen and Brinkley, according to Lt. Jackie Clark, who said he expects the eastbound lanes to close later in the day.

On Thursday, 11 Mississippi counties along the Mississippi River were declared federal disaster areas in anticipation of major flooding, Gov. Haley Barbour said.

"This will be a monumental flood, and I ask residents to take this risk seriously and make evacuation plans," Barbour said.

The state's department of transportation prepared a list of possible road closures, but as of Thursday afternoon, only one road was closed, Mississippi State Route 465 in Warren and Issaquena counties between U.S. Highway 61 and Eagle Lake, the agency said.

"There is no exact science to this, so it's imperative that state and federal agencies work closely to lead us through this crisis," Central District Transportation Commissioner Dick Hall said in a prepared statement.

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Record flooding still in forecast after levee breach

Farmer says the sight of his submerged farm makes you "sick to your stomach"Operations seems to be working so far, official saysLevees are breached at Birds Point and New Madrid, MissouriRecord or near-record flooding is still forecast in at least eight statesRead more about this story from CNN affiliate KPLR. Are you in the area? Share your photos and videos with CNN, but be safe.

(CNN) -- The intentional breach of a levee on the Mississippi River is helping to ease unprecedented flood pressure on other areas, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.

The Ohio River level had dropped about 1.7 feet at Cairo, Illinois, since Monday afternoon, before the blast, but that is expected to level off Wednesday.

The breach, created when engineers detonated explosives late Monday night at Birds Point, Missouri, is sending 396,000 cubic feet of water per second onto 200 square miles of fertile Missouri farmland.

The water is coursing across a floodway that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon described as "literally the most productive part of our continent."

Two states grapple with rising floodwaters

Farmer Bryan Feezor said the sight makes you "sick to your stomach" as he surveyed his submerged fields.

"Farming is all I ever have done ... and it's under water," he told CNN affiliate KPLR. "I really don't know (what I'm going to do)."

A second levee blast was conducted Tuesday afternoon at New Madrid, Missouri, and a third is planned Wednesday near Hickman, Kentucky. The second and third blasts, downstream of Birds Point, will allow floodwater to return to the Mississippi River.

While the plan appeared to be working -- the level of the Ohio River fell where it joins the Mississippi -- record crests and relentless pressure from millions of gallons of water still threatened communities throughout the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys.

Vicksburg, Mississippi, could see water levels rise 4 feet by Sunday. Authorities told residents of Caruthersville, Missouri, that sandbags may not be enough to control the water.

Corina Jolley, of Sikeston, Missouri, said she grew up in Dorena, Missouri, which she said was being inundated by the breach on the Mississippi River.

A tombstone rests above the remains of her father and uncle, but "I'm sure we'll never see it again," said Jolley, who said residents of the rich farmland will be out of luck, as opposed to those in Cairo, for whom the risk has been lessened by the breaches.

"Whoever thought it would be this bad?" she said.

The situation was especially perilous for a 93-year-old woman who was caught in the swollen waters of the Black River near Poplar Bluff, Missouri, where two members of the Missouri National Guard rescued her from a partially submerged car.

"We weren't there to be heroes," said Sgt. Tim Bridges. "We were just doing our jobs." Bridges, along with Spc. Junior Bombard, waded through the rushing, muddy waters to ferry the woman to safety.

This "is the reason why I signed up for the Guard," said Spc. Junior Bombard.

The town of Cairo remained under a mandatory evacuation despite the intentional breach, while six other communities were under voluntary evacuation notices, said Patti Thompson, spokeswoman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

"We're definitely not out of the woods yet," she said. "The levees are all very saturated right now and they're going to continue to have a lot of pressure on them for several days."

Even with the levee breach, the National Weather Service continues to predict record or near-record flooding in parts of southern Illinois, southwest Indiana, western Kentucky and Tennessee, southeastern Missouri, northeastern Arkansas, and parts of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh, commander of the Corps' Mississippi River Valley Division, made the decision to order the breach. He warned that without punching a hole in the levee, massive flooding would threaten to inundate communities throughout the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys.

"There's a tremendous amount of pressure on the system," he told reporters Tuesday evening. "The project operated as designed."

It was a controversial decision. Missouri officials took the Corps to court over the plan, questioning the agency's authority to intentionally breach the levee. The state argued the floodwater would deposit silt on the estimated 130,000 acres, and years, along with millions of dollars, would be required to fix the damage.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case on Sunday, clearing the way for Walsh to blow the levee.

Some Missouri residents were angered by the decision, saying it would destroy their communities and provide questionable benefit. But others felt the decision was for the best.

"Yeah, we lost ... acres of farm land here in Missouri," said Sikeston, Missouri, resident Patricia Mobely, who recently fled the drought and firestorms of Texas for what she thought would be a more peaceful life in the Midwest. "But how much more would we have lost if we hadn't done it?"

"The sacrifice that these people are making is for the greater good," Jim Pogue with the Army Corps of Engineers told KPLR. "Their sacrifices are going to benefit hundreds of thousands of people all through this region. It's not just Cairo. It's people all through this part of the country."

Walsh called the decision to inundate the farmland and about 100 homes "heart-wrenching."

"I've been involved with flooding for 10 years and it takes a long time to recover from something like this," he said.

CNN's Phil Gast contributed to this report.

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Sony sorry for PlayStation data breach

PlayStation 3 owners haven't been able to use their systems to play online or download games since April 20.The PlayStation Network allows users to play games with friends worldwideIt also allows users to download movies and games over the InternetIt went offline on April 20 after a hacker stole personal information from its 77 million users

(CNN) -- Sony announced Sunday that parts of the PlayStation Network will be back online this week and gamers will receive compensation for not being able to log on.

The PlayStation Network -- which allows users to play games with friends around the world and download movies and games over the Internet -- went offline on April 20 after officials learned days before a hacker stole personal information from its 77 million users.

Sony officials did not disclose the breach until April 22.

Sony executives apologized for the breach at a news conference in Tokyo on Sunday, saying they are conducting a thorough and ongoing investigation into the matter.

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"This criminal act against our network had a significant impact not only on our consumers, but our entire industry. These illegal attacks obviously highlight the widespread problem with cyber security," said Kazuo Hirai, executive deputy president of Sony Corp.

"We take the security of our consumers' information very seriously and are committed to helping our consumers protect their personal data."

Officials said they will restore online gameplay for both the PlayStation 3 and PSP later this week, in addition to PlayStation Home, friends list and chat functionality.

Once the PlayStation Network is restored online, users will have to change their account passwords before being able to log into the service. The update will require users to change their passwords on the PS3 on which the account was activated, or through e-mail validation.

To thank customers for their patience and loyalty, Sony announced it would offer PlayStation Network users 30 days free membership in the PlayStation Plus service, which provides access to exclusive games and beta trials for games.

Current subscribers to the PlayStation Plus service will receive an additional 30 days for free.

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Libyan forces breach border with Tunisia

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Libyan forces in more than a dozen military vehicles and armed with anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers crossed into Tunisia on Friday as fighting with rebels raged along the western frontier, witnesses said. Tunisia's government was furious after clashes broke out on its territory and demanded Libya halt all incursions.

In this image from television, Libyan rebels celebrate the capture of the Dhuheiba border crossing between Libya and Tunisia.

In another sign that Moammar Gadhafi's regime was redoubling efforts to beat back resistance in its stronghold of western Libya, NATO warships intercepted several boats laying anti-shipping mines outside the harbor of the rebel-held city of Misrata. The port is the only lifeline for the city of 300,000, which has been under siege by Gadhafi's forces for two months.

Libyan forces also fired rockets and shells at Misrata from the outskirts of town, killing at least eight people.

The fighting on the Libyan-Tunisian border, the attempted mining of the waters near Misrata and the renewed shelling signaled a new push by Gadhafi's forces to retake the two areas of fiercest rebel resistance in the west. It's unlikely Gadhafi would be able to cling to power without consolidating control over western Libya.

The rebels have largely controlled the eastern part of the country since an uprising against Gadhafi, Libya's ruler of 42 years, erupted in mid-February. They have said they will not contemplate a cease-fire before he is pushed out.

The Dhuheiba border crossing between Libya and Tunisia has been a flashpoint in recent days. The crossing has been changing hands repeatedly between regime forces and rebels, who retook it Friday.

The crossing is key supply line for Libya's Nafusa mountain area, near Tunisia, from where members of Libya's ethnic Berber minority have been fighting Gadhafi's forces.

On Friday, there were different accounts of what exactly happened in the Tunisian border town of Dhuheiba, about three miles (five kilometers) from the border. Witnesses said more than a dozen Libyan military vehicles, carrying troops armed with anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers, drove into town, setting off clashes. Three Tunisians were hurt.

Ismail al-Wafi, a Dhuheiba resident, said the Libyan forces fired indiscriminately. He said Dhuheiba residents clashed with the Libyans and Tunisian troops eventually captured some and took their weapons.

Another witness said Libyan troops clashed with Libyan rebels in Dhuheiba before they were defeated by Tunisian troops. Some of the Libyans were captured and the others chased out, said the witness, who only gave his first name, Akram, for fear of reprisals. "Gadhafi forces are no longer in Dhuheiba. They were defeated," he said.

The Tunisian news agency TAP said Tunisian forces fired in the air, but did not clash with Libyan troops.

Dhuheiba resident Mohamed Hedia said angry Dhuheiba civilians and the families of Libyan rebels who had been staying there set upon the Gadhafi troops, creating a "chaotic situation." Tunisian forces fired warning shots, Hedia said.

It was unclear why the Libyans entered Dhuheiba in the first place.

One witness said they were fleeing from rebels who had recaptured the border crossing earlier Friday. An Associated Press Television News crew saw two bodies of Libyan troops near the crossing Friday. The crew was told rebels were chasing two dozen Libyan military vehicles on the Libyan side in hopes of securing a supply corridor to the mountain area.

The Nafusa mountain range is home to Berbers who have complained of systematic discrimination by the Libyan government. Thousands of Libyans from the mountain communities have fled to Dhuheiba and other Tunisian border towns in recent weeks, as rebels and government forces battled for control of the border crossing.

On Thursday, Libyan troops briefly recaptured the crossing from the rebels, and some of the fighting spilled over into Tunisia, witnesses said. Mongi Slim, a representative of the Tunisian Red Crescent in the area, said at least two people were killed and 20 wounded Thursday, all Libyan troops.

Late Thursday, the Tunisian Foreign Ministry issued an angry statement.

"Given the gravity of what has happened ? the Tunisian authorities have informed the Libyans of their extreme indignation and demand measures to put an immediate stop to these violations," the statement said.

On the Misrata front, the mining of the waters "shows his (Gadhafi's) complete disregard for international law and his willingness to attack humanitarian deliver efforts," said British Brig. Rob Weighill, director of NATO operations in Libya.

Though rebels have managed to expel regime forces from the city itself, the enclave is isolated and remains dependent for much of its food and other supplies on the sea link with the rebel capital of Benghazi.

It appeared to be the first time sea mines have been used in the Libyan conflict. Weighill said NATO crews were disposing of the mines.

In Misrata, loud booms resonated through the city as regime loyalists fired shells and mortars.

Gadhafi forces fired with tanks and anti-aircraft guns on a group of 50 rebel fighters in the village of Zawiyat al-Mahjoub, on the outskirts of the city, said rebel fighter Abdullah Shiguman, 31.

Medics scrambled to evacuate six bodies and 10 wounded people to the hospital. Some of the wounded had lost limbs and huge chunks of flesh. One was a medic who had been shot in the back. Two of the dead were carried in bundled in blankets holding nothing more than body parts. Earlier, two people had been killed in the shelling.

Rebel field commander Salahidin Badi said Gadhafi's force had been firing mortars and rockets into the city all morning and that rebels had fired back with mortars. Badi said a shoe factory had caught fire during the battle.

"There are lots of materials and fuel there, so if anything blows up there, it will catch fire," he said.

Meanwhile, a NATO spokeswoman said rebel chief of staff Abdel-Fatah Younes met Thursday with senior NATO officials in Brussels. Carmen Romero said there had been "an exchange of views on Libya," but declined to elaborate.

Younes, a former Libyan interior minister who defected to the opposition, called on the international community to supply heavy weapons to the rebels.

It has been a month since NATO assumed control of the U.S.-led military operation in Libya, with the mandate to protect civilians from attack. Since then, alliance warplanes have conducted a total of 4,242 sorties and 1,766 strike sorties. In addition, a total of 19 NATO ships are patrolling the central Mediterranean.

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