A car bomb exploded yesterday near the Ministry of Education in a busy commercial area in northern Baghdad, killing at least eight people, according to the Interior Ministry and hospital officials.
The blast in the mainly Sunni Adhamiya district badly damaged the Education Ministry building and destroyed 31 cars. The body of an elderly man lay on the ground on fire after the explosion, which scattered body parts across the street.
The bomb exploded in a side-street near a ministry building wall at about 9:30am, gouging a big crater in the tarmac. Water from burst pipes flooded the street.
Interior Ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the blast was caused by a car bomb.
Hospital officials said a woman was among the dead and a child was among the wounded.
Among the casualties was Abbas Kadhim, 32, who was hit in the stomach by fragments of concrete as he sat in his car.
He wept after being treated at the nearby Noman hospital.
"I'm not crying because I'm wounded, but because of my brother. I was with him and I don't know what happened to him," he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Insurgents also captured a US soldier in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, an Iraqi police spokesman said yesterday.
Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Ahmed told reporters the soldier had been seized on Monday night by gunmen in two Opel cars. He said US troops were out in force in the streets of the Sunni Muslim city yesterday.
A US military spokesman said he had no information on the incident. Ahmed said the Americans had alerted Iraqi security forces and asked them to look out for the missing soldier.
In other developments, saboteurs also mounted the biggest attacks yet on Iraq's oil infrastructure, blowing up three pipelines in the north on Monday night and halting exports via Turkey, oil officials said.
A roadside bomb exploded near a convoy of Iraqi National Guard vehicles near Abu Ghraib, in Baghdad's western outskirts, wounding two guardsmen, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
The US military said an air strike on Monday night had destroyed an arms cache in a southeastern part of Falluja. Hospital officials said five people were wounded in the raid.
US Marines are poised for a new offensive against Falluja and its sister city of Ramadi, where hospital staff said 10 people were killed and nine wounded in clashes on Monday.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2