SYDNEY, Australia — Australia said Thursday it would send a ship to pick up two anti-whaling activists who jumped on a Japanese harpoon vessel from a rubber boat in Antarctic waters, offering a solution to a tense, two-day standoff on the high seas.

The protesters from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society scored a victory with their stunt, bringing Japan's whale hunt to a standstill while officials scrambled to resolve the faceoff.

The Australian customs ship Oceanic Viking will pick up the two activists, an Australian and a Briton, and return them to their anti-whaling vessel as soon as the details can be arranged, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said.

The two sides in the dispute have traded accusations of piracy and terrorism since the activists' boarded the harpoon ship Yushin Maru 2 on Tuesday. Smith urged both sides to end their acrimony to allow a safe transfer of the pair.

BAGHDAD — A female suicide bomber struck black-clad worshippers preparing for Shiite Islam's holiest day, killing at least nine Wednesday in an attack that highlighted insurgents' widening array of tactics against a U.S.-led offensive in key areas on Baghdad's doorstep.A witness said people shouted slogans against al-Qaida in Iraq as they carried the dead and wounded from the blast scene near a marketplace in Diyala province — a region of farmland and palm groves northeast of Baghdad that holds strategic havens for extremists.Diyala remains one of Iraq's most violent regions and is a main battleground for U.S. and Iraqi troops trying to overwhelm al-Qaida strongholds in the capital and elsewhere around the country.Many extremists fled for safer ground before the new offensive began last week, reducing the expected threats from roadside bombs and ambush attacks. But insurgents left behind a more unconventional — but still deadly — landscape of booby traps and tripwire explosives.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — In an embarrassing battlefield defeat for Pakistan's army, Islamic extremists attacked and seized a small fort near the Afghan border, leaving at least 22 soldiers dead or missing.The insurgents later abandoned the fort and melted away into the hills, said military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.The militants did not gain significant ground, but they did further erode confidence in the U.S.-allied government's ability to control the frontier area where the Taliban and al-Qaida flourish.Attacks on security forces are rising in the volatile tribal region, and Pakistan is reeling from a series of suicide attacks that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and hundreds more, chipping away at President Pervez Musharraf's prestige.The insurgents who seized the post were said to be followers of Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamic hard-liner who is sole leader of an umbrella group of Taliban sympathizers with links to al-Qaida.