A roadside bomb killed three US Marines and wounded two others yesterday in the first fatal attack on US forces since the US trans-ferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government, US officials said.
In one of his first acts since taking power, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said former president Saddam Hussein would be transferred to Iraqi legal custody and face charges before an Iraqi court this week -- but will remain in a US-run jail for the moment because his government did not have a suitable prison.
The attack on the Marines occurred at 10am in eastern Baghdad, the US command said in a statement.
Despite Monday's end of the formal occupation, about 160,000 soldiers -- mostly US forces -- remain in Iraq as a multinational force to help the new Iraqi government restore order.
Reporters yesterday asked Allawi whether his Cabinet had finalized plans for emergency rule, as had been proposed publicly by a number of officials since the interim administration was announced on June 1.
"We will tell you about those procedures later -- maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow," he said. "We will tell you about those procedures that were adopted by the Cabinet."
Allawi promised an open proceeding when Saddam faces war-crimes charges, including genocide. Eleven other "high-value detainees" are also expected to face justice, he told reporters during his first news conference since the US-led coalition handed over sovereignty.
"I know I speak for my fellow countrymen when I say I look forward to the day former regime leaders face justice," he said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi militants shot dead a US soldier they had held hostage for three months, saying the killing was because of US policy in the Middle East nation, alJazeera television reported yesterday.
The Arabic-language station reported that the slain soldier was Specialist Keith Maupin, but the US military said it could not confirm whether a man shown being shot in a murky videotape was indeed Maupin, who was taken hostage after an April 9 attack outside Baghdad. The report did not say when Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, was killed.
Early yesterday, gunmen attacked a police station in Mahmudiyah, 32km south of Baghdad, killing one officer and one civilian, policeman Satar al-Ghareri said.
Some eyewitnesses said the gunmen recited Koranic verses before peppering the police station with bullets and grenades.
In a separate attack, assailants opened fire yesterday on a US patrol in the Azimiya neighborhood, a Sunni Muslim stronghold in northern Baghdad. One Iraqi civilian was killed.
Also yesterday, a roadside bomb exploded as a senior Kurdish police official was heading to work, killing one of his guards and wounding him and two others, police said.
US President George W. Bush raised no objection to Allawi taking hardline measures to deal with militants such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"He may take tough security measures to deal with Zarqawi, but he may have to," Bush said. "Zarqawi is the guy who beheads people on TV. He's the person that orders suiciders to kill women and children."
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying