The last Spanish soldiers yesterday pulled out of their former base in the town of Diwaniyah, southern Iraq, and were expected to cross the border into neighboring Kuwait within hours, Spanish national radio station RNE reported.
Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who came to power in a surprise election upset in March, is fulfilling a campaign pledge to pull his country's forces from Iraq.
The bulk of the Spanish contingent, originally of 1,430 troops, left the war-torn country on April 28.
Only a small number of troops handling the withdrawal remained in the country.
Spanish soldiers finished withdrawing from their main base in the southern Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf on April 27.
Spanish forces transferred operations at Diwaniyah to US forces last Sunday.
Satisfied
Zapatero said last week he was glad that he decided to withdraw his country's troops from Iraq.
He said this was especially true now given the upsurge in violence by insurgents and the scandal involving abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of coalition soldiers.
Speaking to parliament, Zapatero said the pullout "is a decision with which I am increasingly satisfied for having made it when I did."
The new government's first announcement after coming to power was that it would pull out Spanish soldiers serving in Iraq unless the UN took political and military control of the troubled country on June 30.
This is the scheduled date for the US-led coalition to transfer power to an Iraqi-led administration.
Having concluded that such a UN role was not in the offing, Zapatero announced on April 18 that he had decided to pull out the Spanish contingent "as soon as possible."
Spain's decision dented the US-led coalition, with Honduras and the Dominican Republic following Madrid's lead and also moving to pull out their troops.
Washington has so far not found any country willing to contribute new troops to replace the departing Spanish and Latin American soldiers.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS