Militants abducted three senior Iraqi officials, beheaded a man who worked for the US military and killed at least four others, officials said yesterday, a day after a US general warned that insurgents may be planning "horrific" attacks ahead of the Jan. 30 elections.
Meanwhile, Shiite and Sunni religious leaders voiced sharply divergent views on whether the vote should be held at all.
Air Force Brigadier General Erv Lessel, deputy chief of staff for strategic communications in Iraq, said on Friday the US has no intelligence indicating specific plots. But he said American leaders expected a rise in attacks.
"I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections," Lessel said.
"If you look over the last six months, they have steadily escalated the barbaric nature of the attacks they have been committing. A year ago, you didn't see these kinds of horrific things," he said.
In Washington, US President George W. Bush said the elections will be "an incredibly hopeful experience" despite rising violence and doubts that the vote will bring stability and democracy.
"I know it's hard but it's hard for a reason," Bush said. He acknowledged security problems in four of Iraq's 18 provinces.
The comments came amid an escalating insurgency believed to be led by minority Sunnis who dominated the country during Saddam Hussein's regime. In the election -- the first democratic vote in Iraq since the country was formed in 1932 -- the Sunnis are certain to lose their dominance to the Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
Reflecting Shiites' demands to hold the vote as scheduled and Sunnis' calls for a boycott or postponement, two senior religious leaders expressed sharply differing views during Friday prayers.
"We want all the Iraqis to participate, we also insist on holding the elections as scheduled and to put these elections behind us as a way to end the conflict in Iraq," Saadr Aldeen al-Qubbanji, a leader of a prominent Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said in the southern city of Najaf.
"We all want elections, but we are seeking fair and free elections," Sheik Mahmoud Al-Somaidie of the Sunnis' Association of Muslim Scholars said in Baghdad.
"Those of us who are calling for postponement are seeking that for the benefit of the country. Elections have to be an Iraqi demand, not the demand of the foreign countries," he said.
The US insists on holding the vote as planned, and strongly opposes a postponement.
This week has seen a string of assassinations, suicide car bombings and other assaults that killed nearly 100 people, mostly Iraqi security troops, who are seen by the militants as collaborators with the American occupiers.
Authorities in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit said yesterday that gunmen abducted a deputy governor of a central Iraqi province and two other senior officials as they traveled to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most prominent Shiite leader, in the holy city of Najaf to discuss national elections.
The delegation was stopped and the officials kidnapped about 60km south of Baghdad on Friday.
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
STRAIT OF HORMUZ: In the case of a prolonged blockade by Iran, Taiwan would look to sources of LNG outside the Middle East, including Australia and the US Taiwan would not have to ration power due to a shortage of natural gas, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, after reports that the Strait of Hormuz was closed amid the conflict in the Middle East. The government has secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for this month and contingency measures are in place if the conflict extends into next month, Kung told lawmakers. Saying that 25 percent of Taiwan’s natural gas supplies are from Qatar, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) asked about the situation in light of the conflict. There would be “no problems” with
PLANE HIT: The Israeli military said it shot down an Iranian Air Force fighter over Tehran, while an Iranian warship sank off Sri Lanka, with no cause known The US and Israel yesterday hit Iran’s capital and other cities in multiple airstrikes on the fifth day of the war with Iran. Israel targeted the Iranian leadership and security forces, while the Islamic Republic responded with missile barrages and drone attacks on Israel, and across the region. Tehran residents woke to dawn blasts and Iranian state television showed the ruins of building in the center of the capital. The Shiite seminary city of Qom and multiple other cities were also targeted. With fighter jets roaring overhead, those still in Tehran looked anxiously to the skies. One man, who ran a clothing shop,
RSS