Insurgents killed seven Iraqi security personnel in a car bombing and other attacks, and the US military announced the deaths of six Americans, including four killed by guerrillas.
The American dead included two soldiers killed by a roadside bomb on Tuesday and two Marines who died after being wounded in fighting the day before. Two others died in non-combat-related incidents. The US deaths brought the number of US service members who have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq to at least 919.
PHOTO: EPA
Also Tuesday, saboteurs set off a bomb at a key northern oil pipeline, sparking a fire and sending huge plumes of thick black smoke into the sky. The explosion had no immediate effect on exports, which had been halted for weeks from the north.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi blamed the continuing violence on "evil powers ... trying to stop Iraq's march toward safety."
"We expect that as Iraq's [security] capabilities increase, the crushing of these [armed] operations will increase,'' he said Tuesday.
In the city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, forces loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr were holding 18 police hostage as leverage to force authorities to release their comrades, a police official said Tuesday on condition of anonymity.
The abductions reflected increasing friction that has threatened a fragile truce that ended two months of fighting that began in April between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and US troops. Marines and al-Sadr's militiamen engaged in a battle in Najaf on Monday that killed a woman.
Al-Sadr aides have accused police of targeting members of his Mahdi Army.
Najaf Governor Adnan al-Zurufi confirmed that a number of policemen were kidnapped; Ahmed al-Shaibany, an al-Sadr spokesman, denied any police were locked up in al-Sadr's office or any of his quarters.
The deadliest insurgent attack on Tuesday came in a car bombing north of the city of Baqoubah, when a truck raced toward an Iraqi checkpoint guarding Kharnabad Bridge, officials said.
The truck attempted to merge into a US military convoy heading toward the bridge, but a soldier driving one of the vehicles forced it off the road before it detonated, said Major Neal O'Brien, a US Army spokesman. No US troops were injured, he said.
The blast killed four members of the Iraqi National Guard and wounded five others, said Major-General Waleed Khaled Abdulsalam, Baqouba's police chief.
"A US convoy drove past us and just afterward there was an explosion,'" Corporal Motaz Abood, whose back, arms and face were covered in burns, said from his hospital bed.
In other violence, a roadside bomb attack early Tuesday killed Colonel Mouyad Mohammed Bashar, chief of al-Mamoun police station in Baghdad, along with another officer, officials said. A third officer was wounded in the blast.
Gunmen in the northern city of Mosul opened fire on a police station, killing one officer and injuring two others before fleeing, police chief Izzat Ibrahim said.
The pipeline attack came when saboteurs exploded a bomb on Tuesday alongside a pipeline that sends oil to Iraq's Beiji refinery as well as to Turkish port of Ceyhan, the main export line from Iraq's northern oil fields. The Ceyhan pipeline already has been idle for weeks due to constant attacks.
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