Gunmen killed 47 civilians near Baghdad and militia fighting broke out south of the capital yesterday in a wave of violence triggered by the bombing of a Shiite shrine and reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques. All leave for Iraqi soldiers and police was canceled and personnel ordered to report to their units.
Sunni Arabs also suspended their participation in talks on a new government.
Sixteen other people, eight of them civilians, died in a bombing yesterday in the center of Baqubah, while three journalists working for al-Arabiya television were found dead in Samarra.
As the country veered ominously toward sectarian war, the government extended the curfew in Baghdad and Salaheddin Province for two days in the wake of Wednesday's attack on the Askariya shrine in Samarra.
Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr accused the Iraqi government and US forces of failing to protect the Samarra shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, and ordered his militia to defend Shiite holy sites across Iraq.
"If the government had real sovereignty, then nothing like this would have happened," al-Sadr said a statement. "Brothers in the Mahdi Army must protect all Shiite shrines and mosques, especially in Samarra."
The destruction of the gleaming dome of the 1,200-year-old shrine sent crowds of angry Shiites into the streets. Thousands of demonstrators carrying Shiite flags and banners marched through parts of Baghdad, Karbala, Kut, Tal Afar and Najaf in protest against the shrine attack.
The hardline Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars said 168 Sunni mosques were attacked, 10 imams killed and 15 abducted. The figures could not be independently confirmed.
Association spokesman Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi blamed the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and other Shiite religious leaders for calling demonstrations against the shrine attack.
"They are all fully aware that the Iraqi borders are open, and the streets are penetrated with those who want to create strife among Iraqis," al-Kubaisi said at a news briefing.
Forty-seven bodies were found in a ditch in Diyala, a province northeast of Baghdad. Officials said the victims appeared to have been stopped by gunmen, forced out of their cars and shot near Nahrawan, about 20km south of Baqubah. Most were aged between 20 and 50 and appeared to include both Sunnis and Shiites, police said.
The bullet-riddled bodies of a prominent al-Arabiya TV female correspondent and two other Iraqi journalists, who had been covering Wednesday's explosion in Samarra, were found on the outskirts of the mostly Sunni Arab city 95km north of Baghdad.
Fighting broke out yesterday afternoon in Mahmoudiya south of Baghdad between militiamen from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and Sunni gunmen. Two civilians were killed and five militiamen were injured, police Captain Rashid al-Samaraie said.
The eight Iraqi soldiers and eight civilians were killed when a soup vendor's cart packed with explosives detonated as a patrol passed in the center of Baqubah, 55km northeast of Baghdad, police Major Falah al-Mohammedawi said.
At least 20 people were injured in the blast.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, summoned political leaders to a meeting yesterday. But the biggest Sunni faction in the new parliament, the Iraqi Accordance Front, refused to attend, citing the attacks on Sunni mosques.
"We want a clear condemnation from the government which didn't do enough yesterday to curb those angry mobs," said Salman al-Jumaili, a member of the Front. "There was even a kind of cooperation with the government security forces in some places in attacking the Sunni mosques."
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,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘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