Families in a village near the Iraqi border buried loved ones yesterday who they said were killed when the US military launched a rare attack in Syrian territory.
The Syrian government said four US military helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction shortly before sundown on Sunday in Sukkariyeh about 8km inside the Syrian border.
The government statement said eight people were killed, including a man and his four children and a woman. However, local officials said seven men were killed and two other people were injured, including a woman.
A journalist at the funerals in the village’s cemetery saw the bodies of seven men — none of them minors. The discrepancy could not immediately be explained.
A US military official in Washington confirmed on Sunday that special forces had conducted a raid in Syria that targeted the network of al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq.
Syria called the raid a “serious aggression,” and its Foreign Ministry summoned the charges d’affaires of the US and Iraq in protest.
Meanwhile, a suspected US missile strike killed up to 20 people in northwest Pakistan yesterday, officials said, the latest salvo in an intensifying assault on militant hide-outs near the Afghan border.
The reported missile strike occurred in South Waziristan, part of a belt of tribally governed territory considered a possible hiding place for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.
Two intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media on the record, said the targeted house in Mandata Raghzai village belonged to a lieutenant of local Taliban chief Maulvi Nazir.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
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