Gunmen killed two Iraqi women working as translators for the British army, a day after the slaying of two US coalition officials and their translator by attackers disguised as police in southern Iraq, officials said Thursday.
The two women, sisters, were driving home in a taxi in Basra late Wednesday when gunmen stopped the vehicle and opened fire on them, a coalition official in the southern city said.
The motive for the attack was not immediately known. Guerillas have targeted Iraqis working with the US-led occupation. Also, Basra, which is patrolled by the British military, has seen a number of killings blamed on Shiite militias enforcing Islamic law.
Meanwhile, Paul Bremer, the top US administrator in Iraq, has requested that the FBI investigate the slayings of the Americans late Tuesday on a road outside the town of Hillah, 60 km south of Baghdad, said Dan Senor, spokesman for the US-led coalition.
The two Americans were the first US civilians working for the occupation authority to be killed in Iraq. It was not yet known whether the gunmen were specifically targeting coalition officials.
``We're starting to form views on that,'' Senor said Wednesday.
It was also unclear if the Americans were traveling with security -- coalition guidelines discourage staffers from movements after dark. The roads around Hillah have seen a number of attacks on vehicles, some fatal, including the Feb. 14 killing of a US civilian.
An officer with the Polish military, which patrols south-central Iraq, said the gunmen were disguised as policemen and stopped the Americans' car at a checkpoint. The attackers shot dead the passengers and took the vehicle, Colonel Robert Strzelecki said.
Polish troops later intercepted the car, arrested five Iraqis in it and found the bodies inside, said Strzelecki, speaking from the Camp Babylon headquarters of the Polish-led multinational force in Iraq.
Senor said some reported details of the attack were incorrect, but would not elaborate. He did not identify the dead, pending notification of their families.
The Americans, employees of the Department of Defense, were the first US civilians from the Coalition Provisional Authority to be killed in Iraq, Senor said.
An Army colonel working for the coalition was killed Oct. 26, when insurgents fired a barrage of rockets at Baghdad's Al-Rasheed hotel while Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was visiting. Fifteen people were wounded, and Wolfowitz escaped unharmed.
Civilian contractors have also been killed in past attacks. Since the war began, 553 US service members have died in Iraq, 379 of them from hostile action. Since May 1, when US President George W. Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq over, 264 US troops have been killed by the insurgency thought to be led by forces loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, or foreign fighters.
Also Wednesday, gunmen killed two police officers and critically wounded a third while the police were having lunch in a restaurant in the northern town of Qaim, near the Syrian border, police said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS