Iraqi police said yesterday that they had found no trace of the Islamic militants US commanders say were targeted in an air strike on the town of Fallujah. Only ordinary civilians, 26 of whom were killed.
"We have not found any trace of an armed group there," Captain Mohammed Abdul Karim said after Saturday's strike on the Jbail neighborhood of this hotspot.
"The raid targeted a poor neighborhood in southern Fallujah and hit the house of a man named Jassem Mohammed Fayyad, killing several members of his family and his neighbors," Abdul Karim said.
"Among the dead were three children, between eight and 12 years old," he said, adding that the total death toll was 26, including eight people who had been buried almost immediately and 18 whose bodies had been brought to hospital.
The US military acknowledged on Saturday that it knew of 19 people killed in the raid.
But Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt insisted it was a "precision" strike on a "known" safehouse used by supporters of suspected al-Qaeda leader Abu Mussab Zarqawi.
"Coalition forces conducted a strike on a known Zarqawi network safehouse in southwest Fallujah," Kimmitt told a briefing.
"This operation employed precision weapons to target and destroy the safehouse," he said.
It was the first major US operation in Fallujah since commanders halted a month-long ground offensive in the insurgent bastion in April, amid some of the heaviest fighting since last year's US-led invasion of Iraq.
Under a truce brokered by local dignitaries, a new force of Iraqi army veterans took over security in the town, but coalition officials last week expressed dissatisfaction with the progress made by the Fallujah Brigade and refused to rule out a new incursion by US Marines.
A Chinese aircraft carrier group entered Japan’s economic waters over the weekend, before exiting to conduct drills involving fighter jets, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said yesterday. The Liaoning aircraft carrier, two missile destroyers and one fast combat supply ship sailed about 300km southwest of Japan’s easternmost island of Minamitori on Saturday, a ministry statement said. It was the first time a Chinese aircraft carrier had entered that part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a ministry spokesman said. “We think the Chinese military is trying to improve its operational capability and ability to conduct operations in distant areas,” the spokesman said. China’s growing
Nine retired generals from Taiwan, Japan and the US have been invited to participate in a tabletop exercise hosted by the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science Foundation tomorrow and Wednesday that simulates a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2030, the foundation said yesterday. The five retired Taiwanese generals would include retired admiral Lee Hsi-min (李喜明), joined by retired US Navy admiral Michael Mullen and former chief of staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces general Shigeru Iwasaki, it said. The simulation aims to offer strategic insights into regional security and peace in the Taiwan Strait, it added. Foundation chair Huang Huang-hsiung
PUBLIC WARNING: The two students had been tricked into going to Hong Kong for a ‘high-paying’ job, which sent them to a scam center in Cambodia Police warned the public not to trust job advertisements touting high pay abroad following the return of two college students over the weekend who had been trafficked and forced to work at a cyberscam center in Cambodia. The two victims, surnamed Lee (李), 18, and Lin (林), 19, were interviewed by police after landing in Taiwan on Saturday. Taichung’s Chingshui Police Precinct said in a statement yesterday that the two students are good friends, and Lin had suspended her studies after seeing the ad promising good pay to work in Hong Kong. Lee’s grandfather on Thursday reported to police that Lee had sent
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
RSS