Shops and schools were open in the Fallujah yesterday and there was no sound of any fighting one day after frenzied crowds dragged the burned and mutilated bodies of four US civilians through the streets and strung two of them up from a bridge after rebels had ambushed their vehicles.
A handful of Iraqi police manned their standard roadside checkpoints and there was no sign of US troops.
Some of the bodies of the four Americans were loaded onto the back of a donkey-pulled wooden cart Wednesday evening and paraded through Fallujah's streets as crowds clapped and whistled. It was not clear where the bodies were early yesterday.
PHOTO: EPA
Five US soldiers were also killed on Wednesday when a bomb exploded under their armored vehicle north of Fallujah, about 55km west of Baghdad, making it the bloodiest day for Americans in Iraq since Jan. 8.
Chanting "Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans," residents celebrated after the assault on two four-wheel-drive civilian vehicles left both cars in flames.
Residents in Fallujah said insurgents attacked the contractors with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. After the attack, a jubilant crowd of civilians, none of whom appeared to be armed, gathered to celebrate, dragging the bodies through the street and hanging two of them from the bridge. Many of those in the crowd were excited young boys who shouted slogans in front of TV cameras.
AP Television News pictures showed one man beating a charred corpse with a metal pole. Others tied a yellow rope to a body, hooked it to a car and dragged it down the main street of town. Two blackened and mangled corpses were hung from the green iron bridge spanning the Euphrates River.
"The people of Fallujah hung some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed said. Some corpses were dismembered, he said.
US officials blamed terrorists and remnants of Saddam Hussein's former regime for the "horrific attacks" on the US contractors.
"It is offensive, it is despicable the way these individuals have been treated," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said on Wednesday.
Referring to the planned June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis, McClellan said "the best way to honor those that lost their lives" is to continue with efforts to bring democracy to Iraq.
US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the contractors, all men, "were trying to make a difference and to help others."
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS