Five Iraqi police were injured in separate attacks yesterday in northern Iraq as Shiite pilgrims continued to bury people killed in simultaneous bombings of holy shrines in Baghdad and Kerbala.
A US Army spokesman said that a rocket struck the green zone where the headquarters of the US-led occupation authority is located after five large explosions rumbled through the center of the capital late Wednesday. No one was injured and no damage was reported.
In Ramadi, 110km west of the capital, Baghdad, nearly 1,000 people rallied to condemn the near simultaneous attacks against Shiite shrines Tuesday and called for national unity.
Near the northern city of Mosul, the Sheik Fatihi police station was attacked with a homemade bomb and insurgents who shot at it from a car as they drove by, said Mahir Salam, an official at the Al-Jumhuri Hospital where the injured police, including an officer, were taken.
US and Iraqi officials disagreed over how many people died in Tuesday's bombings in Baghdad and Kerbala -- the deadliest here since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi Governing Council said that 271 people were killed. US officials put the toll at 117.
In a sign of the bitterness over the lack of security, several thousand Shiites chanted anti-US slogans in one funeral procession.
"No, no, Americans! No, no Israel! No, no, terrorists!" they shouted, carrying three coffins through Karbala's streets. Some took a sheet painted to look like an American flag and set it ablaze.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
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