A suicide bomber killed five Iraqis and an American soldier at an entrance to the US Baghdad headquarters yesterday and officials said it looked like the work of an Islamic group linked to al-Qaeda.
The car bomb, which sent one victim's leg flying 200m, wounded 23 Iraqis, including three policemen, and two US soldiers at an entry checkpoint to the so-called Green Zone, a US military spokesman said.
Violence is blighting Iraq as Washington strives to win the friendship of its people before returning them their sovereignty on June 30. Trying to head off another threat to Iraqi goodwill, US President George W. Bush stepped in personally to assure them abuse by US soldiers of Iraqi prisoners would end.
A senior official of the US-led administration said the bomb attack bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda-linked militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, blamed for a series of car bombs in Iraq.
"We may not have any verbal or physical evidence at this point, but it is certainly the calling card of a terrorist organization," the official said.
The bomb contained artillery shells, he said, a method the administration says the Jordanian-born militant has used in previous attacks, including on another entrance to the Zone.
It was the first major bomb blast in Baghdad since March 17, when a suicide car bombing devastated a hotel, killing seven.
A second bomb in Baghdad yesterday, a small roadside device typically used against US forces, wounded an Iraqi passerby but there were no casualties among foreign civilians whose convoy of three vehicles seemed to be the target.
Hours earlier, Bush appeared on two Arabic satellite television stations to tell an outraged Middle East that soldiers guilty of abusing Iraqi prisoners would be punished.
"In a democracy everything is not perfect. Mistakes are made. But in a democracy as well, those mistakes will be investigated and people will be brought to justice," he told the US-funded Alhurra channel.
"Our citizens in America are appalled by what they saw, just like people in the Middle East are appalled," he told private, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya. Bush called the abuse "abhorrent."
He did not explicitly apologize for the scandal, which erupted after pictures of prisoners being sexually humiliated appeared last week, leaving the public apologies to top aides.
A week after pictures were published of grinning US soldiers abusing naked Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq's largest prison and notorious under Saddam for torture, the army revealed that 25 prisoners had died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They included two Iraqis murdered by Americans, one death described as justifiable homicide, and 12 deaths by natural or undetermined causes. Ten were still being investigated.
The CIA said it was investigating the deaths of three prisoners interrogated by its personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan but did not say if these were among the 25 reported by the army.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
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