Insurgents fired several mortar rounds at a US supply base north of Baghdad, and American forces arrested at least 12 Iraqi suspects in a counterattack, the US military said yesterday. There were no reported casualties.
The mortar attack occurred late Monday night at a base near Balad, 90km north of the capital, said Nicole Thompson, a spokesperson for the US military in Baghdad.
She said US forces subsequently caught 12 of the suspected attackers.
Meanwhile, witnesses said a US military vehicle was attacked early yesterday morning in Baghdad, near the bridge of Jadriya.
US military personnel surrounded the area, and a photographer saw the charred spot of earth where the attack occurred. The US military said it had no immediate information about the incident.
The violence came after a deadly 24-hour period that saw three US troops killed in Baghdad.
Despite the worsening guerrilla warfare, the US-led administration called two new city councils to order -- one in the southern Shiite city of Najaf and the other in the chaotic capital.
The administration also announced an initial economic agenda, including establishment of an independent Iraqi central bank and plans to rid the country of bank notes.
The councils -- which join other municipal governments with limited powers emerging around Iraq -- are expected to act as a proving ground for national leaders, as the US tries to lay the ground for an eventual transition to democracy.
A British soldier was wounded in a sniper attack in Basra, southern Iraq, while on patrol Sunday night, the Ministry of Defense said Monday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing