A respected Australian journalist yesterday claimed that Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi shot seven Iraqi insurgents with a pistol at a Baghdad police station in the week preceding the handover of power from the US last month.
Paul McGeough, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, said two unnamed witnesses to the execution-style killings told him Allawi shot seven insurgents, six of whom died.
Allawi's office has denied the claims, saying the interim leader had not visited the prison and does not carry a gun.
"The prime minister is said to have responded that they deserved worse than death, that each was responsible for killing more than 50 Iraqis each and at that point he is said to have pulled a gun and proceeded to aim at and shoot all seven," McGeough told Australia's ABC TV. "Six of them died. The seventh, according to one witness, was wounded in the chest, according to the other witness was wounded in the neck, and presumed to be dead."
About a dozen Iraqi policemen and four American bodyguards to Allawi witnessed the killings, McGeough said.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines at 7:38am today, prompting the US Tsunami Warning System to issue an alert for neighboring countries, including Taiwan. The system issued a purple alert indicating a "tsunami threat." The potential threat zone includes Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Yap and Palau. Philippine authorities were assessing the damage from the quake, with the office of civil defense seeking to verifying initial reports that 15 people had been killed and 129 injured in the region, mostly from falling debris. Arlene Hollero, disaster chief of Maasim town in the Philippines' Sarangani Province,
‘GRAY ZONE’ PRESSURE: Beijing’s activities are intended to create the deceitful impression that China has jurisdiction over the area around Taiwan, the CGA said Taiwan’s rights over its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone must not be violated by any country, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that it will not accept any unprovoked actions. The council issued the remarks in response to the China Coast Guard conducting maritime enforcement drills near eastern Taiwan and claiming to fully exercise China’s maritime administrative law enforcement authority. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) has been closely monitoring the situation and is taking concrete steps to defend the nation’s sovereignty and secure its waters, the council said. China has no sovereign rights over the waters off eastern
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The National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology yesterday showcased its locally developed variants of the Vision 60 robotic patrol dog, which it plans to deploy on the nation’s outlying territories in the South China Sea. The variants were produced under the Joint Lab project — created by the institute and domestic companies — and assembled with domestically produced motors, lenses and artificial intelligence (AI) systems alongside licensed tech from the US, Missile and Rocket Systems Research Division deputy director Jen Kuo-kang (任國光) told the media event at a military base in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area. Taiwan has built up its strengths
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