A bomb killed five people at a bus station south of Baghdad yesterday, breaking a relative calm after Iraqi and US leaders appealed for an end to days of sectarian bloodshed that have pitched Iraq toward civil war.
A bomb in the washroom of a Shiite mosque in the second city of Basra caused minor injuries, police said; it went off shortly after a rally in another part of the city by visiting young Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a fiery militia leader.
The Hilla bomb destroyed a minibus as it drove out of a bus garage. Hilla is a mainly Shiite town surrounded by Sunni villages, and the attack came two days short of the anniversary of the bloodiest single al-Qaeda bombing, which killed 125 people there a year ago.
Another bomb killed two US soldiers overnight in Baghdad.
Hours earlier, following a round of calls to Iraqi leaders by US President George W. Bush, Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made a midnight televised appeal, flanked by Sunni and Kurdish politicians, to Iraqis not to turn on each other after Wednesday's suspected al-Qaeda bomb at a Shiite shrine.
A three-hour meeting produced a commitment from the main political groups to form a unity coalition, although Sunni leader Tareq al-Hashemi said he was not yet ready to end a boycott of the US-sponsored coalition talks.
Four days of tit-for-tat attacks have left over 200 dead and many mosques damaged, despite a daytime curfew on Baghdad that went into its third day yesterday; the defense minister warned of the risk of a civil war that "will never end."
A traffic ban intended to help stifle the violence remained in force in the capital. But in addition to the attack on the US soldiers, a mortar round landed near a Shiite mosque in the east of the city, though without causing injury.
Near Madaen, another flashpoint for Sunni-Shiite violence just to the southeast, a policeman was killed and two were wounded when their patrol was hit by roadside bombs. In Hilla, police said it was not clear if the bomb was inside the minibus or exploded in the road as it passed, just as it was leaving the bus station.
Jaafari, under US pressure to forge a national unity government after an election in December, the first that the once-dominant Sunni minority had taken part in, said he was hopeful that Iraqis would step back from sectarian strife.
"The Iraqi people have one enemy; it is terrorism and only terrorism. There are no Sunnis against Shiites," he said.
Meanwhile, the British embassy in Tehran was attacked with gasoline bombs and rocks yesterday as hundreds of Iranian militiamen protested over the bombing of the shrine on Wednesday.
Some 700 protestors, mainly from the student wing of the official Basij militia, jostled with riot police.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
US-CHINA SUMMIT: MOFA welcomed US reassurance of no change in its Taiwan policy; Trump said he did not comment when Xi talked of opposing independence US President Donald Trump yesterday said he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Trump’s comments on Taiwan came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing US-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan. “I will make a determination,” Trump said, adding: “I’ll be making decisions. But, you know, I think the last thing we need right
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS