US soldiers and Iraqi police were on high alert on Thursday for more attacks to mark the start of 2004 after a car bomb ripped through a Baghdad restaurant, killing five New Year revellers.
The bomb devastated the upscale Nabil restaurant around two and a half hours before midnight, scattering debris and wrecked cars across the street outside and wounding more than 20 people including three foreign journalists with the Los Angeles Times.
US commanders had feared guerrillas would launch attacks over the New Year period to send a message that they would press on with their campaign to drive out occupying troops despite the capture of fugitive dictator Saddam Hussein in December.
PHOTO: EPA
Christmas Day was marked by a series of rocket and mortar attacks in Baghdad.
"We always take a posture of extra vigilance on key dates in the calendar," Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the US 1st Armored Division responsible for security in Baghdad, told reporters on Wednesday.
"We have gathered intelligence on what could happen over the next 72 hours ... and you can be sure the 1st AD will be ready to do what it gets paid to do."
He added: "We have only one New Year's resolution and that is to remain resolute in our efforts to provide safety and security to the Iraqi people."
Restaurant workers said more than 40 diners were inside when the bomb was detonated.
US troops and Iraqi ambulances, police and firemen rushed to the scene.
"This is a criminal attack and a terrorist act by people who have no morals or ethics," said Iraqi police chief Ahmed Qadim Ibrahim. "It was a car bomb filled with TNT explosives."
Washington blames Saddam loyalists and foreign Muslim militants for attacks on occupying troops, international organizations and Iraqis working with them.
At least 327 US soldiers have been killed in action since the war began in March, 212 of them in guerrilla attacks since major combat was declared over on May 1.
The streets of Baghdad were mostly deserted when 2004 began at midnight -- most people scurried home after the restaurant bomb blast reverberated through the city centre, rattling windows of buildings more than a kilometer away.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, ethnic tension simmered after Arabs and Turkmens were involved in a violent confrontation with Kurds on Wednesday that left five dead.
They were killed in shooting that erupted after several thousand Arab and Turkmen protesters marched on the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan to protest about a Kurdish proposal to make the ethnically mixed oil-rich city the capital of an autonomous region in northern Iraq controlled by Kurds.
Both sides blamed each other for the shooting.
During Saddam's rule many Kurds and Turkmens were forced out of Kirkuk to as Saddam attmpted to "Arabize" the site of Iraq's richest oil reserves.
But Kurds, who have controlled an autonomous region in northern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, have extended their influence since the fall of Saddam, angering Turkmens and Arabs and alarming Turkey, which has long battled a Kurdish separatist insurgency within its own borders.
Turkey sees itself as the protector of the Turkmen minority in Iraq and is deeply opposed to any strengthening of Kurdish power and influence in northern Iraq.
A Foreign Ministry statement said Ankara was "deeply saddened" by the killings, and blamed the Kurds.
"Certain groups should not be given the chance to damage the desired atmosphere of peace and national reconciliation with their statements and actions based on ethnic nationalism," it said.
"No one should ignore the fact that all the cities and regions of Iraq belong to all Iraqis," the statement said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the