A suicide car bomber rammed into a Shiite mosque in Baghdad during dawn prayers yesterday, killing 14 people and stoking fears that sectarian divisions over when to hold elections could unleash further bloodshed.
Witnesses said there were two blasts -- an initial explosion during prayers and a second blast as rescuers tried to drag out the dead and wounded at the mosque in Aad-hamiya, a mainly Sunni neighborhood and guerrilla stronghold in northern Baghdad. It was not immediately clear if the casualties were police or civilians. At least 19 people were wounded, an interior ministry source said.
In another dawn attack in the southwest of Baghdad, gunmen fired mortars at a police station in the Seydiya district before bursting into the compound and hunting down policemen inside, survivors of the attack said. Eleven policemen were killed and six were wounded.
The insurgents also freed around 50 prisoners from the jail in the station and set two police pickup trucks ablaze. Clouds of thick, dark smoke poured into the air.
"I saw armed men firing towards the police station while taking cover behind rubbish bins and the police ran away," said local inhabitant Ahmed Hashem..
Another resident, Ali Hussein, said gunfire lasted about an hour and that he had seen gunmen firing on the police station from the rooftops of neighboring buildings.
A heavy police presence had sealed off the area several hours after the attack, preventing journalists from entering the police station, whose walls were riddled with bullet holes. Hundreds of spent bullet cartridges lay scattered on the ground and two police cars were left burnt-out.
In an Internet statement, the group led by Jordanian al- Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the attack: "The lions of al-Qaeda in Iraq attacked the headquarters of the apostates who sold their religion, honor and land ... and attacked the Seydiya police station, killing everyone inside except for two who fled."
An interior ministry spokesman said the mosque attack was "part of a strategy of increasing terrorist attacks in order to prevent general elections being held".
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS