Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page A1

1 Young Eagles learn from veterans Pennsylvania Ballet celebrates IN SPORTS cn wo arc nf rnra cmrru icdccv i uiiur: UI V- I I I V.V WW III I bl II1M COURIER-POST C0URIERP0ST0NLINE.COM Sunday, October 6, 2013 Breast cancer patients go from strangers to friends during treatment Chemo buddies Strikes target African plotters U.S. units enter Somalia, Libya -jr- WIBf 'Sb (H BBk( liBr Mary Ann Todd of Marlton (left) and Donna Forman of Cherry Hill, both breast cancer survivors, hug In a chemo suite at Cooper University Hospital's Cancer Center in Voorhees. The women connected during chemo treatments, chris lach allcourier-post By Sally Friedman For the Courier-Post By Kimberly Dozier, Abdi Guled and Jason Straziuso Associated Press MOGADISHU, Somalia In a stealthy seaside assault in Somalia and in a raid in Libya's capital Saturday, U.S. military forces struck out against Islamic extremists who have carried out terrorist attacks in East Africa, snatching a man allegedly involved in the bombings of U.S. embassies 15 years ago but missing a man linked to last month's attack on a Nairobi shopping mall.

A U.S. Navy SEAL team slipped ashore near a southern Somalia town before the al-Qaida-linked militants rose for dawn prayers, U.S. and Somali officials told The Associated Press. The raid on a house in the town of Barawe targeted a specific al-Qaida suspect related to the mall attack, but the operation did not get its target, one current and one former U.S. military official told AP.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the raid publicly. Within hours of the Somalia attack, relatives of a Libyan al-Qaida leader wanted for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania said he was kidnapped outside his house Saturday in Tripoli, Libya. A U.S. official said it was American forces who captured Na-zih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Anas al-Libi, who has been wanted by the U.S.

for more than a decade. The U.S. official said there have been no U.S. casualties in the Libya operation. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

Saturday's raid in Somalia occurred 20 years after the famous "Black Hawk Down" battle in Mogadishu in which a mission to capture Somali warlords went awry after Somali militiamen shot down two U.S. helicopters. EighteenU.S. forces were killed in the battle, and it marked the beginning of the end of See RAIDS, Page 2A you realize that you're not alone and you're not lost." DONNA FORMAN on her experiences at Cooper University Hospital's Cancer Center in Voorhees WHY WE'RE PINK Some of your Sunday Courier-Post pages are shaded pink in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the Komen Race for the Cure in Jackson today. INSIDE Monitoring, money and mapping lead to steep decline in breast cancer's annual mortality rate.

Forum, Page 4B It wasn't a sound you'd expect to hear in the chemo room at Cooper University Hospital's Cancer Center in Voorhees: laughter. It came from several women, all diagnosed with breast cancer, who had found one another during breast cancer treatment. In the process, they found comfort and solace. A diagnosis of breast cancer can be devastating. For many women, it leads to a sense of bewilderment, anxiety and fear.

For several South Jersey women, a difficult period in their lives will always call to mind connections some permanent made during chemo. Buddy system "It's a really amazing bond that's hard to explain but easy to feel," says Mary Ann Todd, the majority owner of an electronics company. The 63-year-old's breast cancer diagnosis came eight years ago this month. "I went for a routine mammogram and my cancer was found early but at the very time, my husband was battling terminal non-Hodg-kin's lymphoma. "The day I got out of the hospital after a mastectomy, he went in." Six weeks later, Todd's husband died.

"It was an awful time, and at first, I tended to withdraw," she recalls. "My family lived in another state, so I was mainly supported by See CHEMO, Page 8A Camden cemeteries offer no respite from blight "These people are dead resting. They don 'I' deserve deser one of those areas. That violence and the fear it breeds create a peculiar paradox for those visiting the graves of loved ones, spaces long ago planned for serene mourning in a city since desecrated by neglect and crime. Agostino "Gus" Barbetta knows.

A few years ago, as he tended to his parents' graves in New Camden Cemetery, his wife came face to face with a gunman trying to hijack the car. The man fled when she screamed. "If I'm caught away from my vehicle, I'm screwed," said the retired See CEMETERIES, Page 8A By Angelo Fichera Courier-Post A tattered American flag flaps in the wind at Camden's Evergreen Cemetery, a graveyard dotted with downed tree limbs and fractured tombstones. Not far from an abandoned storage building, a lifeless tree is wrapped by autumn-tinted vines. The Camden cemetery like its city-operated neighbor, New Camden Cemetery is bordered by the Liberty Park, Centerville and Whitman Park neighborhoods.

Nearly half the city's 15 homicides reported since July have taken place in -v- VJ 7 vrs fir Sg mts' DEBORA DEBORAH DAVIS PORTER, whose mother is buried at Evergreen Cemetery A visitor described the conditions ai New Camden Cemetery in Camden as john ziomekcourier-post INDEX Business 19A Forum Classified 21A Movies Crossword 21SJL Obituaries 4B 14SJL 12B Vol. 139 No. 196 4 090 1 III Hill 013021 Slight chance of showers High 82 Low 67 Page 18B $1.50 Retail For home delivery pricing, see Page 2A.