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CAIRO (AP) — Three journalists, including a cameraman for British broadcaster Sky News and a Dubai-based newspaper reporter, were killed and several were injured in the violence that erupted in Egypt on Wednesday.

Media watchdogs urged Egypt to investigate all attacks on journalists and to hold those responsible to account, condemning the casualties that occurred after riot police backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers and helicopters swept away two encampments of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi.

Scores of people were killed in the violence nationwide.

Sky news said Mick Deane, 61, was shot and wounded while covering the violent breakup of protest camps in the capital, Cairo. It said he was treated for his injuries but died soon after. The rest of the Sky crew was unhurt.

The Gulf News, a state-backed newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, reported on its website that journalist Habiba Ahmed Abd Elaziz, 26, was shot dead near the Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo as security forces moved in on a sit-in by Morsi supporters.

The newspaper said she had been on annual leave and was not on assignment at the protest for the XPRESS, a sister publication that she worked for.

Egyptian journalist Ahmed Abdel Gawad, who wrote for the state-run newspaper Al Akhbar, was killed while covering the crackdown at Rabaah al-Adawiya. The Egyptian Press Syndicate, a journalist union, confirmed Gawad's death, though it had no other information about how he was killed.

Sky said Deane had worked for the broadcaster for 15 years in the United States and the Middle East. He was married with two sons.

The broadcaster's news chief, John Ryley, said Deane was "the very best of cameramen, a brilliant journalist and an inspiring mentor to many at Sky," while British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was "saddened to hear of the death."

The Gulf News said it spoke to the UAE journalist's younger sister Arwa Ramadan, who confirmed her death.

"My mom spoke to her close to (early morning prayers), but when she called again at 12 noon, there was no response," the sister said. "She called again, and somebody picked up the phone and told her Habiba was dead. My dad, who is in Egypt right now, confirmed it later."

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A makeshift hut burns down as Egyptian security forces clear a sit-in camp set up by supporters of o …

The Gulf News quoted deputy editor Mazhar Farooqui as saying the publication was in shock.

"It's hard to believe she's gone," Farooqui said. "She was passionate about her work and had a promising career ahead."

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was investigating several attacks on journalists and urged Egyptian authorities to "show restraint and allow the media to do their job."

"We call on Egyptian authorities to issue clear orders to security forces to respect the right of journalists to work freely and safely while covering events in Cairo and the rest of the country," said Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the media watchdog.

The International Press Institute said it had received reports that journalists were being targeted by both sides in the clashes.

"Journalists are neutral parties in conflicts and should not be the target of violence, regardless of who is perpetrating it," IPI Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie said. "The Egyptian government must also be held accountable by the international community for any deaths or attacks that deliberately targeted media workers."

Reuters news agency confirmed that photographer Asmaa Waguih had been shot in the foot and is receiving treatment for her bullet wound.

An Associated Press photographer working near the Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque during the melee was hit in the back of the neck by two birdshot pellets, said Manoocher Deghati, the AP's Middle East photo editor. The photographer received medical care and later returned to work, Deghati added.

Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera said its cameraman Mohammed al-Zaki were shot in the arm and that two of its correspondents were arrested during the day.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said it had learned of several other injured Egyptian journalists, including Tarek Abbas — a reporter for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Watan who was sustained gunshot wounds to his leg and eye — and photographer Ahmad Najjar who was shot in the arm and had his camera seized.

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Jill Lawless reported from London. AP correspondents, Danica Kirka and Cassandra Vinograd in London, Jon Gambrell in Cairo and Dalton Bennett in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Al-Qaida fighters have been using secretive chat rooms and encrypted Internet message boards for planning and coordinating attacks — including the threatened if vague plot that U.S. officials say closed 19 diplomatic posts across Africa and the Middle East for more than a week.

It's highly unlikely that al-Qaida's top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, or his chief lieutenant in Yemen, Nasser al-Wahishi, were personally part of the Internet chatter or, given the intense manhunt for both by U.S. spy agencies, that they ever go online or pick up the phone to discuss terror plots, experts say.

But the unspecified call to arms by the al-Qaida leaders, using a multi-layered subterfuge to pass messages from couriers to tech-savvy underlings to attackers, provoked a quick reaction by the U.S. to protect Americans in far-flung corners of the world where the terror network is evolving into regional hubs.

For years, extremists have used online forums to share information and drum up support, and over the past decade they have developed systems that blend encryption programs with anonymity software to hide their tracks. Jihadist technology may now be so sophisticated and secretive, experts say, that many communications avoid detection by National Security Agency programs that were specifically designed to uncover terror plots.

A U.S. intelligence official said the unspecified threat was discussed in an online forum joined by so many jihadist groups that it included a representative from Boko Haram, the Nigerian insurgency that has loose and informal ties to al-Qaida. Two other intelligence officials characterized the threat as more of an alert to get ready to launch potential attacks than a discussion of specific targets.

One of the officials said the threat began with a message from al-Wahishi, head of the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, to al-Zawahri, who replaced Osama bin Laden as the core al-Qaida leader. The message essentially sought out al-Zawahri's blessing to launch attacks. Al-Zawahri, in turn, sent out a response that was shared on the secretive online jihadi forum.

All three intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the threat.

Rita Katz, director of the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group that monitors jihadist websites, said it's all but certain that neither al-Zawahri nor al-Wahishi would communicate directly online or on the phone.

Al-Zawahri's location is unknown, but he was last believed to be in Pakistan, and al-Wahishi is said to be in Yemen. Given the nearly 2,000 miles between the two men, Katz said it's most likely they separately composed encrypted messages, saved them on thumb drives, and handed them off to couriers who disseminated them on secure websites.

Bin Laden, who was killed in May 2011, issued his messages in much the same way.

"These guys are not living in a bubble," said Katz, who has been watching al-Qaida and other jihadi communications for years. "They live in a reality that is facing the American intelligence interception with the best, most advanced technology that can be created. So they always try to find ways to get away from these interceptions to be able to deliver messages."

She added: "I am sure they are delivering messages, through the message boards or by sending emails that are encrypted. But there is no way in my mind that Zawahri or Wahishi have access to the Internet, and I think Wahishi, at this stage of his life, is even afraid of going outside."

Tracking and eliminating al-Qaida operatives in Yemen hasn't been easy for the U.S. It took years for the CIA finally to kill the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike after an intense manhunt. By staying off the grid, al-Wahishi and other senior al-Qaida leaders in Yemen such as Qassim al-Rimi and top bomb-maker Ibrahim Al-Asiri have managed to remain alive. So frustrated was the CIA at one point, the spy agency considered killing the couriers passing messages in an attempt to disrupt the terrorist group's plans, said a former senior U.S. official.

The idea was dropped because the couriers were not involved in lethal operations.

Exactly how U.S. spy systems picked up the latest threat is classified, and Shawn Turner, spokesman for U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper, refused to confirm or deny Katz's analysis on how it might have happened. Intelligence officials have suggested that the plot was detected, in part at least, through NSA surveillance programs that have been under harsh worldwide criticism for privacy intrusions in the name of national security.

It's not clear, however, that even the powerful U.S. spy systems would be able to crack jihadists' encrypted messages without help from the inside.

Earlier this year, an al-Qaida-linked extremist propaganda organization known as the Global Islamic Media Front released an encrypted instant-messaging system known as "Asrar al-Dardashah," or "Secrets of the Chat." It was a texting version of the organization's end-to-end encryption program that followers had been using for years. End-to-end encryption means messages are put into code so that only senders and receivers can access the content with secure "keys."

After the NSA programs were revealed in June, jihadi websites began urging followers to also use software that would hide their Internet protocol addresses and, essentially, prevent them from being tracked online. That aimed to add another layer of security to the online traffic.

An Aug. 5 discussion about the U.S. embassy closings on a jihadi forum that is directly linked to al-Qaida underscored the need for "complete secrecy" in plotting attacks even while jeering the American response to the message between al-Zawahri and al-Wahishi.

In a post on the Shumukh al-Islam online forum, a writer who identified himself as Sayyed al-Mawqif noted American news reports that said the terror threat possibly was intercepted though phone calls or surveillance of jihadist chat rooms or message boards. Shumukh al-Islam is not an encrypted site, but it requires a password to access and does not frequently accept new visitors.

"Even if there will not be a jihadi operation, it is sufficient that the mujahideen brothers succeeded in putting fear in the hearts of the disbelievers and the human devils," al-Mawqif wrote, according to a SITE translation of the transcript. "We hope to hear more about psychological wars like this one if there are no actual jihadi operations on the ground."

Encryption technology was once regulated by the U.S. for national security purposes, but it has been available to the public and used globally since the 1990s, including by human rights and free speech advocates.

"You can encrypt things in such a way that you can assume that even the NSA can't undo them — there's no back door," said Dan Auerbach, a technology expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is challenging NSA eavesdropping in federal lawsuits.

"We think it is very important to have tools for privacy," Auerbach said. But "when you develop a strong privacy-enhancing tool, it will help everyone -- and this may include people considered by many to be 'bad guys.'"

Other technology experts believe the government could access encrypted messages — with the help of Internet providers.

Depending on what software is used, Internet providers theoretically could be compelled to send the coded messages and their decryption keys to the government instead of to the intended recipient. Unknown vulnerabilities in software may also make it possible for hackers to break into computers and obtain messages.

It's also possible that U.S. intelligence officials used a decidedly low-tech method to intercept the message between al-Zawahri and al-Wahishi — by planting a spy in the online forum. That has happened in the past, according to intelligence experts, most recently in a case now in federal court in Miami in which prosecutors say an undercover FBI agent snared two alleged terrorist recruiters in an online chat room by posing as a financial middleman.

Either way, and given al-Qaida's global sprawl and attempts to fly under the radar, it's certain that encrypted chat rooms and online sites are a mainstay for jihadi messages.

"This creates a bit of a cat-and-mouse game between terrorist groups that can buy commercial technology and intelligence agencies that are trying to find ways to continue to monitor," said Seth Jones, a former adviser to U.S. special operations forces and counterterrorism expert at Rand Corp., a Washington-based think tank that receives U.S. funding. "Some of the technology you can buy is pretty good, and it evolves, and it is a game that is constantly evolving."

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Associated Press Writer Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report. On Twitter: Lara Jakes: https://twitter.com/larajakesAP and Adam Goldman: https://twitter.com/adamgoldmanap

By Ian Simpson

FORT MEADE, Maryland (Reuters) - U.S. soldier Bradley Manning on Wednesday told a military court "I'm sorry" for giving war logs and diplomatic secrets to the WikiLeaks website three years ago, the biggest breach of classified data in the nation's history.

"I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry that they hurt the United States," the 25-year-old U.S. Army Private First Class told the sentencing phase of his court-martial. "I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions ... The last few years have been a learning experience."

Manning spoke quietly and non-defiantly in his first extensive public comments since February.

Manning faces up to 90 years in prison for providing more than 700,000 documents, battle videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, hurling the pro-transparency website and its founder, Julian Assange, into the world spotlight.

Defense lawyers seeking a milder sentence rested their case on Wednesday after Manning's statement. With about a dozen witnesses including Army superiors, mental health professionals and Manning's own sister, they sought to show Judge Colonel Denise Lind that commanders ignored signs of mental stress.

Occupy Sacramento Protests Bradley Manning Verdict …Play video."

An Army psychologist testified at the hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, that Manning, who is gay, felt isolated because he was wrestling with his gender identity. Another mental health specialist testified that Manning had hoped to end war.

"I should have worked more aggressively inside the system ... Unfortunately, I can't go back and change things," Manning, wearing his dress uniform and glasses, his hair in a crew cut, said from the witness stand.

He did not appear to be reading from notes and looked at the judge and around the room as he spoke.

"I understand I must pay a price for my decisions," Manning continued in his first lengthy public statement since February. "I want to be a better person, to go to college, to get a degree and to have a meaningful relationship with my sister and her family."

Manning was convicted of 20 charges, including espionage and theft, on July 30. He was found not guilty of the most serious count, aiding the enemy, which carried a life sentence.

A military spokesman said the judge would most likely sentence Manning next week at the earliest.

Wikileaks' Assange: Manning conviction a "dangerou …Play video."

Prosecutors, who have argued that Manning was an arrogant soldier who aided al Qaeda militants and harmed the United States with the release of the documents, will have an opportunity to rebut the defense case on Friday.

'HYPER-MASCULINE ENVIRONMENT'

Captain Michael Worsley, who treated Manning from December 2009 to May 2010 during his deployment in Iraq, testified that the stress Manning had felt from his job as a low-level intelligence analyst was compounded by being in a "hyper masculine environment" of a combat zone.

"Being in the military and having a gender identity issue does not exactly go hand in hand," Worsley said. "You put him in that kind of environment, this hyper masculine environment ... with no coping skills, the pressure would have been incredible."

That pressure reached a peak when Manning punched another soldier, Worsley said. He said he had met infrequently with Manning and had no input from his superiors until the punching incident.

Navy Reserve Captain David Moulton, a forensic psychiatrist, said he had diagnosed Manning as having gender dysphoria, or wanting to be the opposite sex, as well as narcissism and obsessive-compulsive behavior. Those problems were compounded by the unraveling of a romantic relationship, the stress of serving in a Baghdad combat base and post-adolescent idealism, he said.

Bradley Manning Not Guilty on 'Aiding America's En …Play video."

"Manning was under the impression that the information he was giving was going to change the way the world saw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and future wars, actually," said Moulton, who interviewed Manning for about 21 hours and spent more than 100 hours on the case.

'NO WAR WAS WORTH IT'

The psychiatrist said Manning thought it "would lead to a greater good. Society as a whole would come to the conclusion that the war wasn't worth it, that no war was worth it."

Manning's sister, Casey Major, 36, of Oklahoma City, testified about how her parents' alcoholism and infighting compelled her to play a lead role in raising her brother.

She recounted their early days together in Crescent, Oklahoma, reviewed family photos, and said, "I just hope he can be who he wants to be. I just hope he can be happy."

Troubles at home prompted a teenaged Manning to move to Potomac, Maryland, to live with his aunt, said Debra van Alstyne, the aunt who took him in. She recalled that Manning had joined the Army in the hope of going to college on the GI bill, after having difficulty balancing classes and a job at Starbucks.

The material Manning released that shocked many around the world was a 2007 gunsight video of a U.S. Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Baghdad. A dozen people were killed, including two Reuters news staff. WikiLeaks dubbed the footage "Collateral Murder."

Manning, described by his superiors as an Internet expert, faces the prospect of decades of monotonous prison life - with no online access - once he is sentenced.

(Additional reporting by Tom Ramstack; Editing by Scott Malone, Grant McCool and Andrew Hay)

Crash investigation focuses on tail section of jet

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Investigators have taken a large box-like object from the tail section of a UPS jet that crashed at Birmingham's airport, killing two pilots.

Thursday's search focused on the tail section of the aircraft, where the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are typically located.

The National Transportation Board hasn't said whether it has located the devices.

Late Thursday morning, a reporter observed an investigator carrying the box-like object from the tail section. Investigators gathered around it for a moment, then put it on an ATV and left without commenting.

The two devices could hold key evidence about what happened as the jet was attempting to land in Birmingham early Wednesday. The plane slammed into a hillside just short of the runway.