Gunmen and bombers killed 30 people in Baghdad yesterday, including 15 Shiite religious workers after a powerful Iraqi Shiite leader urged US President George W. Bush to strike harder at Sunni rebels.
Gunmen set off a car bomb to stop a minibus carrying Shiite government employees in Baghdad, then shot and killed 15 of them, the government said, while two car bombs killed 16 people and wounded 25 in a separate attack near a gasoline station in a religiously mixed area in southern Baghdad.
"It's clear that this crime is aimed at stoking sectarian strife among Iraqis. The terrorists are trying to portray these crimes as a sectarian conflict," said Salah Abdul Razzaq, a spokesman for the Shiite Endowment, a government foundation that oversees Shiite religious sites and mosques.
Razzaq said eight people were also wounded in the attack, which came a day after Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric and head of the biggest party in Iraq's government, SCIRI, met Bush in Washington.
Hakim, former leader of his party's armed militia wing, denied accusations by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's once dominant Sunni minority that majority Shiites were stoking sectarian violence. He put the onus on Washington to take tougher action against insurgents.
"The strikes they are getting from the multinational forces are not hard enough to put an end to their acts," he said.
"Eliminating the danger of civil war in Iraq could only be achieved through directing decisive strikes against Baathist terrorists [and Islamist groups] in Iraq," he said in a speech after meeting Bush.
Bush said he and Hakim had discussed a need for Iraqi leaders to "reject the extremists that are trying to stop the advance of this young democracy."
A roadside bomb also exploded near an Iraqi army convoy in Yarmouk, a primarily Sunni area of west Baghdad, at 10am yesterday, killing two soldiers and wounding four, said an army captain who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Later today, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group -- headed by former secretary of state James Baker and former representative Lee Hamilton -- is to offer Bush more proposals on stabilizing Iraq and reducing the US presence. The group is expected to recommend gradually changing the mission of US troops in Iraq from combat to training and supporting Iraqi units.
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
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
RSS