Pitched battles between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in strife-torn Mosul left at least 26 dead, including one US soldier, as two Lebanese businessmen were kidnapped in Baghdad overnight.
The fresh violence came after 30 people were killed when a Baghdad house rigged with explosives blew up during a police raid.
PHOTO: AFP
Despite the volatile security situation, US President George W. Bush insisted Iraq's landmark national elections must go ahead, while a hardline Islamist militant group reiterated its intention to cause bloodshed on polling day, Jan. 30.
In the northern city of Mosul, insurgents detonated car bombs against a US patrol and a combat outpost and about 50 fighters launched an assault on the outpost, firing small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, the military said.
US forces called in air strikes and at least 25 insurgents were killed, said Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings.
A military statement yesterday said a US soldier died of wounds suffered in one of the car bombings.
Masked gunmen were seen running down Mosul's deserted streets, firing off guns and rocket-propelled grenades, as a column of smoke shot up into the sky.
Violence has paralyzed the city of 1.5 million, where US forces are expected to increase their numbers ahead of the elections for an Iraqi national parliament.
As the clock ticked down to the election, doubts loom over whether US and Iraqi forces can pacify cities like Mosul, a bastion of the Sunni Muslim minority whose alienation from the US-backed political order is fueling the lethal insurgency.
The Iraqi government said it had captured a militant in Mosul linked to al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a US$25 million price on his head.
The government identified the fighter as Abu Marwan, 33, a senior commander with Mosul-based Abu Talha groups, which the government said was linked to the Jordanian-born Zarqawi.
The deaths raised to almost 100 the number of people killed in Iraq in 48 hours as insurgents carried out a series of brazen attacks on Tuesday on police stations and checkpoints in the Sunni Muslim heartland north of Baghdad.
Apparently lured into a trap, police raided a home in Baghdad's squalid western Ghazaliya district late on Tuesday, and were still inside when a massive blast leveled the house, an official said.
Thirty people died, six of them police, the ministry said. Another 25 were wounded, including four policemen, and four police were listed as missing.
The attack resembled those in Fallujah during last month's US-led offensive on the city, where rebels rigged homes to blow up on ground troops.
Two Lebanese businessmen were kidnapped by masked gunmen from their home in Baghdad's upscale Mansur neighborhood, the scene of previous abductions, police said yesterday.
About 30 Lebanese working for private companies in Iraq have been kidnapped and later freed. However, in September, one was killed by his captors and three others killed during an attempted kidnap.
In other unrest, an Iraqi businessman, a female engineer working for the US military and a Turkish truck driver were killed in separate attacks to the north of Baghdad, police said.
And Iraqi authorities said they had arrested 59 people, including an Egyptian, suspected of involvement in violence after raids by the Iraqi National Guard in Baghdad and its regions.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS