Campaigning came to a stop around Iraq yesterday to give the country's 15 million voters an opportunity to reflect before deciding who will govern their country for the next four years.
Streets in Baghdad were eerily quiet one day before today's election, with police strictly enforcing a traffic ban. Only the noise from an occasional police siren, sporadic gunshots or US helicopters could be heard. Borders and airports have also been closed and the nighttime curfew has been extended.
Two police officers were killed and four others were injured by a roadside bomb that exploded next to an Interior Ministry patrol in northern Mosul, the city's al-Jumhouri hospital said.
Iraq's election commission said that it had registered 6,655 candidates running on 996 lists and had certified 307 political groups -- either in the form of single candidates or parties -- and 19 coalitions.
Baghdad is Iraq's biggest electoral district with 2,161 candidates running for 59 of the 275 seats in Iraq's parliament, according to the commission's executive director, Adel Ali al-Lami. There are 33,000 polling stations around Iraq.
The Interior Ministry denied reports that a tanker truck filled with thousands of blank ballots had been confiscated in a town near the Iranian border
On the last day of campaigning, a roadside bomb killed four US soldiers and gunmen assassinated a candidate for parliament in this week's election. A Shiite politician escaped injury in a bombing south of Baghdad. The US deaths in northwest Baghdad brought to at least 2,149 the number of US service members to have died since the start of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The US ambassador, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that the total number of abused prisoners found so far in jails run by the Shiite-led Interior Ministry came to about 120. The statement by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad reinforced Sunni Arab claims of mistreatment by security forces -- a major issue among Sunnis in the election campaign.
Despite the violence, more than 1,000 Sunni clerics issued a religious decree instructing their followers to vote today, boosting US hopes the election will encourage more members of the disaffected minority to abandon the insurgency.
Three of Iraq's leading politicians agreed on Tuesday that a speedy withdrawal by foreign troops before Iraqi forces are ready would cause chaos.
But the three -- former prime minister Ayad Allawi, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and Sunni Arab politician Tariq al-Hashimi -- disagreed on the description of US and other foreign troops. Barzani described them as "forces of liberation," while al-Hashimi said they were occupiers.
The three leaders appeared in a debate on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
Such debates are rare in the Arab world, where candidates mainly rely on rallies attended by hand-picked followers.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The number of pet cats in Taiwan surpassed that of pet dogs for the first time last year, reaching 1,742,033, a 32.8 percent increase from 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday, citing a survey. By contrast, the number of pet dogs declined slightly by 1.2 percent over the same period to 1,462,528, the ministry said. Despite the shift, households with dogs still slightly outnumber those with cats by 1.2 percent. However, while the number of households with multiple dogs has remained relatively stable, households keeping more than two cats have increased, contributing to the overall rise in the feline population. The trend
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
RSS