A US airstrike yesterday on a Fallujah neighborhood previously targeted by US forces destroyed a house and killed 14 people, hospital and local officials said.
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's office said he had given the go-ahead for the attack. US officials declined to provide details of the strike.
The strike was the sixth on the city since June 19. In previous strikes, the US said it was targeting safehouses used by the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant blamed for masterminding car bombings and other attacks in Iraq.
"The multinational force asked Prime Minister Allawi for permission to launch strikes on some specific places where some terrorists were hiding," an official in Allawi's office said yesterday on condition of anonymity. "Allawi gave his permission."
Explosions from the strike yesterday morning rocked the city. Dozens of people ran to the scene and dug through the wreck-age looking for survivors. One witness, who declined to give his name, said the house belonged to a "very poor family." Angry crowds gathered around the hit house, chanting "God is great."
The attack killed 14 people and injured three, according to Saad al-Amili, a Health Ministry official.
In their continuing effort to quash the insurgency, US forces said yesterday they had detained a senior commander of Saddam's elite Republican Guard, who was suspected of planning and financing attacks against Iraqis, Iraqi security forces and coalition troops.
Iraqi national guardsmen and coalition forces captured Sufyan Maher Hassan in a raid in Tikrit on Friday. He was being held at a local multinational force detention facility, said Major Neal O'Brien of the 1st Infantry Division.
Meanwhile, two car bombs targeting police exploded in the city of Tikrit yesterday morning, killing two police officers and wounding five others, Iraqi authorities said.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
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