US Marines broke down doors and raided houses yesterday on the second day of an offensive aimed at cracking down on insurgent activity in several troubled cities west of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, militants announced they were releasing a pair of kidnapped Indonesian journalists missing since last week in a new video delivered anonymously to Associated Press Television News. It was not possible to verify the video's authenticity or determine when it was made. The hostages whereabouts were not known.
Shiites and their clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance met yesterday in Baghdad to renew discussions over who their prime ministerial candidate would be. But instead of narrowing the choices down, the field for potential candidates has grown to four, maybe even five, insiders said.
The two main candidates so far had been the former Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the interim vice president.
Six explosions boomed through the capital before midday. The cause of the blasts was not immediately known. Footage showed US troops treating a US soldier apparently injured in one of the blasts, which overturned a Humvee in the southern Doura neighborhood.
In Ramadi, US Marines fanned out across the city, setting up checkpoints, searching cars and sealing off sections of the city to prevent people from entering or leaving as they carried out raids.
Iraqi Major Abdul Karim al-Faraji said troops detained a prominent Sunni Muslim sheik, Mohammed Nasir Ali al-Ijbie, who heads the al-Bufaraj tribe, along with 12 of his relatives.
As the Shiite majority prepared to take control of the country's first freely elected government, tribal chiefs representing Sunni Arabs in six provinces issued a list of demands -- including participation in the government and drafting a new constitution -- after previously refusing to acknowledge the vote's legitimacy.
"We made a big mistake when we didn't vote," said Sheik Hathal Younis Yahiya, 49, a representative from northern Nineveh. "Our votes were very important."
He said threats from insurgents -- not sectarian differences -- kept most Sunnis from voting.
Sunnis make up 20 percent of Iraq's population of 26 million; Shiites make up 60 percent.
Just west of the capital, US Marines and Iraqi security forces launched a joint operation Sunday to crack down on insurgents and terrorists in several troubled cities, the military said, three months after a weeklong battle to drive out insurgents who controlled the volatile city of Fallujah.
The Marines succeeded in gaining control of the city in Anbar province, but the insurgency has continued.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
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US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
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