The US military, which just days ago completed its latest troop buildup in Iraq, has launched a large offensive operation in several al-Qaeda strongholds around Baghdad, the top US commander said yesterday.
General David Petraeus said the operation will put forces into key areas surrounding Baghdad that, according to intelligence, al-Qaeda is using to base some of its car bomb operations.
Petraeus, who met with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a morning breakfast, also said that while he doesn't have all the troops he might want, he knows he's got all he's going to get.
PHOTO: EPA
``There's never been a military commander in history who wouldn't like to have more of something or other -- that characterizes all of us here,'' he told reporters traveling with Gates. "The fact is frankly that we have all that our country is going to provide us in terms of combat forces. That is really it right now."
He said the buildup of nearly 30,000 additional troops that has just been completed allowed him to launch the latest assault.
The move, he said, is allowing him to send operations for the first time into "a number of areas around Baghdad, in particular to go into areas that were sanctuaries in the past of al-Qaeda."
Gates arrived on Friday night for an unannounced visit to Iraq -- his fourth since he took over last December. He was meeting with military and political leaders to assess progress and continued to urge the Iraqi government to move more quickly toward reconciliation and to stabilize the country.
Gates was scheduled to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki later yesterday for talks in which he was expected to push for more concrete steps towards national reconcilation.
"Frankly, we're disappointed with the progress so far, and hope that this most recent bombing by al-Qaeda won't further disrupt or delay the process," he said on Friday, referring to an attack on the Shiite al-Askari shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the remains of 13 members of an Iraqi taekwondo team kidnapped last year have been found in western Iraq, police and hospital officials said yesterday.
The team had been driving to a training camp in neighboring Jordan in May last year when their convoy was stopped and all 15 athletes abducted along a road between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar Province.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique