An armed group claimed in a video yesterday to have obtained a large amount of explosives missing from a munitions depot facility in Iraq and threatened to use them against foreign troops.
A group calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade, said it had coordinated with officers and soldiers of "the American intelligence" to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility."
PHOTO: AP
The claim couldn't be independently verified. The speaker was surrounded by masked, armed men standing in front of a black banner with the group's name on it.
"We promise God and the Iraqi people that we will use it against the occupation forces and those who cooperate with them in the event of these forces threatening any Iraqi city," the man added.
Nearly 350 tonnes of conventional explosives have disappeared from the al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Meanwhile, a car bomb exploded yesterday in southern Baghdad, killing one US soldier and at least one Iraqi civilian, the US military said.
The attack against a 1st Cavalry Division patrol occurred at about 7:30am in the Rashid district of the capital, the military said. Two other soldiers received minor injuries.
At least one and possibly two Iraqi civilians were also killed in the blast, a statement said.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed an Iraqi news reader on her way home from work at al-Sharqiya television in Baghdad, her employers said yesterday.
Liqaa Abdul-Razzaq, a popular presenter who had worked for Iraqi state television before last year's war, was shot dead on Wednesday evening.
US aircraft also bombed a suspected rebel safehouse yesterday in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, killing two, the US military and witnesses said.
The overnight strike in the northern part of the city targeted a "meeting site" used by suspected allies of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the US military said in a statement. Al-Zarqawi and his terror group are believed to be operating from Fallujah.
Residents said two brothers died in the airstrike and a third sibling suffered injuries. The victim's family denied the men were insurgents and relatives buried the dead men hours after the strike.
"My brothers were no fighters ... I was preparing to marry them off after the Fallujah crisis ends, now I am burying them with my own hands instead," family member Mahmoud Nasser said.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he would make a decision about how the US government would refer to the body of water commonly known as the Persian Gulf when he visits Arab states next week. Trump told reporters at the White House that he expects his hosts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will ask him about the US officially calling the waterway the Arabian Gulf or Gulf of Arabia. “They’re going to ask me about that when I get there, and I’ll have to make a decision,” Trump said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s
RSS