Some 2,000 people will return to Fallujah today and find a ghost town of rubble after six weeks of fighting between the US military and insurgents.
The first wave of displaced persons to make their way home after fleeing the city of 300,000 people on the advent of the US assault on the insurgent stronghold will enter an apocalyptic backdrop of flattened city blocks and bullet-scarred homes.
The flow of residents, who stayed with relatives, squatted in schools and shivered in camps during the devastation of the last two months, marks a stab by the Iraqi government to restore normality in troubled al-Anbar province.
"Tomorrow 2,000 heads of families will enter Fallujah, all of them from al-Andalus neighborhood, to check out their houses to decide on their own whether they want to return," National Security Adviser Qassem Daoud told reporters Wednesday.
People will inspect their homes in southwest Fallujah and decide whether they want to stay in the city, which is still the scene of fighting between US forces and insurgents, Daoud said.
"The clashes from time to time are going on, but that doesn't mean there is a huge amount of resistance. It is just people coming in from neighboring areas to carry out some attacks," he said.
Daoud highlighted the amount of damage in Fallujah. "There are some destroyed houses and some wreckage, with mines and explosives inside and even on the streets," Daoud said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday that three of the city's water purification plants had been destroyed and the fourth was badly damaged.
The Iraqi government announced Monday that returning families would receive immediate assistance of 150,000 dinars (US$100) and be eligible for compensation of up to US$10,000 for property damage.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS