Car bombs have killed more than 110 people, 25 of them children, in a surge of violence in Iraq ahead of an Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution.
One of the four car bombs ripped through a crowded market in the southern town of Hilla, killing at least 12 people and wounding 47 yesterday, officials said.
The vehicle was parked when it detonated at about 9:30am in the city 95km south of Baghdad.
As Iraqi police and soldiers sealed off the Al-Sharia vegetable market, emergency workers lifted wounded victims and dead bodies into ambulances from streets covered with pools of blood and shattered vegetable stands.
In the mainly Shiite town of Balad, north of Baghdad, the death toll from three huge car bombs on Thursday rose to 98 yesterday, hospital director Kassim Aboud said.
At least 119 others were injured.
Apparently aimed at killing a large number of Shiite civilians, the string of bombings started just before sunset on Thursday when the first blast ripped through an open-air market crowded with people buying vegetables. The next bomb exploded at a bank just meters away, followed by a third on a nearby street of clothing shops.
Most of the fatalities were civilians, though the wounded included the police chief and four officers, said the director of Balad hospital.
Furious Balad residents blamed the attacks on "foreign fighters," long accused by the US military of infiltrating Iraq from Syria to carry out attacks across the country.
"What have those Jordanians and Palestinians and Saudis got to do with us? Shame on them!" said Abu Waleed, a hotel owner who said seven people staying in his hotel died in the blasts.
Five US soldiers were also killed in a bombing near Ramadi, the US Army said on Thursday.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS