A suicide car bomb exploded in the Iraqi capital yesterday, killing one child and wounding at least four people, officials said. The bomber also died in the blast.
The explosion occurred near Bab al-Muadhim, a compound of several medical hospitals in northeastern Baghdad, police Colonel Muhanad Sadoun said.
The bomber was trying to hit a traffic police patrol in the area, but crashed into a tree by accident, Sadoun said. One child was killed and four people were wounded, including one policeman.
Meanwhile in Washington on Monday, US congressional investigators said that Iraqi security forces remain crippled by poor discipline, questionable loyalties and a rate of absenteeism possibly reaching tens of thousands,
But a senior US military official downplayed the importance of the findings by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), saying that high numbers of Iraqi police officers absent without leave was "a cultural thing."
US plans call for training and equipping 271,000 members of the Iraqi military and police by the middle of next year, enabling them to take over many of the combat duties performed today by US-led coalition forces.
Rear Admiral William Sullivan, deputy director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a House subcommittee the Pentagon was more than halfway to this goal, with about 142,000 Iraqis listed as trained and equipped for battle.
However, the GAO report presented at the hearing expressed serious doubts about the quality of Iraqi recruits and charged that "US government data do not provide reliable information on the status of Iraqi military and police forces."
Citing unnamed US defense officials, congressional investigators said Iraqi soldiers absent from their units without leave number "probably in the tens of thousands."
As for the national police, the Iraqi Interior Ministry simply does not know how many officers it has at any given moment because local police stations do not provide accurate reporting, the report stated.
Sullivan tried to convince the lawmakers that leaving one's unit without permission was part of time-honored Iraqi tradition.
"This has been a cultural thing with the Iraqis throughout time," he said. "Under the Saddam regime, when they went home ... maybe they stayed home and helped bring in a crop and didn't report back for duty when they were supposed to."
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not