The mutilated body of an Iraqi scientist and an unidentified corpse were found yesterday in Samarra, where clashes the previous day between insurgents and US troops left five Iraqis dead and eight injured, police and hospital sources said.
In further unrest in the north of the country, one police officer was killed and four were wounded when their patrol was targeted by rocket-propelled grenade fire.
"Two bodies were found at 330am," said police Major Sadun al-Delemi at the city's hospital.
PHOTO: EPA
Bassem al-Mudares, a drug company worker who had a chemistry doctorate, was found near a mosque.
"It looked as though he had been tortured as his body was mutilated," Delemi said.
The toll from Tuesday's fighting rose to five dead and eight wounded, he said.
US soldiers manning an observation post said they were attacked with mortar rounds and small-arms fire from a house and a mosque.
"Two tanks protecting the observation post returned fire on the house and destroyed it," the US military said in a statement late Tuesday. "Aerial observation was called in to help ground troops locate anti-Iraqi forces," the US statement said.
Troops later came under fire from various locations, including two other houses. The army added that it called in "close air support" and that the battle was continuing.
Powerful explosions rocked Samarra's northern edge as mosques started urging residents over loudspeakers to donate blood.
The city has been the scene of sporadic deadly clashes since a powerful suicide car bomb attack on July 8 on the city's Iraqi National Guard headquarters killed five US soldiers and four Iraqi guardsmen.
Iraq's security services were under attack in the oil city of Kirkuk, 225km north of Baghdad.
Unknown attackers opened fire on a police patrol, killing one officer and injuring four, three of them seriously, said Lieutenant Hussein Allawi, chief of the al-Aruba police station.
"One of the police station's patrols was attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade when it was crossing Grenada bridge," he said, adding that the wounded had been rushed to a hospital.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema