Militants carried out a string of deadly attacks, including four car bombings that alone killed 19 people and the assassination of a senior Iraqi military official. Shiite and Kurdish officials were trying to undermine the insurgency by stepping up talks with Sunnis and others to bring them on board for a new government.
On Saturday, the US military said a Marine was killed in action in a restive central province.
The interim government's deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, said Friday that negotiators are intensifying efforts to bring in the country's Sunni Arabs, believed to form the core of Iraq's rebellion. That has caused delays, leading to public frustration with the nascent political process.
PHOTO: AFP
"It is not acceptable that two months on from the elections, that Iraq does not have a transitional government yet," Saleh said. "We are under pressure, and we have to respond to public sentiment and have a government established as soon as possible."
He said the next National Assembly meeting would likely be Monday to elect a speaker, although it hadn't been decided yet if the president -- expected to be Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani -- would be announced.
Later, Jawad al-Maliki, a negotiator from the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, said Shiite and Kurdish officials agreed to hold the second National Assembly session on Tuesday.
Insurgents trying to undermine the formation of a new government, meanwhile, seemed to intensify their attacks, carrying out four suicide car bombings across Iraq that killed 17 Iraqi security officials and two civilians. Militants have stepped up attacks against Iraqi police and soldiers who are key to an eventual US withdrawal.
Twin suicide car bombings Friday in Iskandriyah, targeted an Iraqi army convoy and police barracks and killed four policemen, two civilians and an Iraqi soldier, police said.
Another suicide car bombing Friday targeted an Iraqi convoy south of Baghdad and left one Iraqi soldier dead and four others injured.
Late Thursday at a checkpoint in the central city of Ramadi, a white sedan was blown up, killing 11 Iraqi soldiers and injuring 14 people -- including two US Army soldiers, nine Iraqi security forces, and three civilians -- the US military said. The Islamic Army in Iraq posted a statement on the Ansar Web site claiming responsibility.
Another car bomb exploded Friday in the city's center. It targeted a US-Iraqi convoy, but only killed the two attackers in the car.
In Baghdad on Friday, unknown gunmen killed Colonel Salman Muhammad Hassan and injured two of his sons as they left a relative's funeral in Baghdad, security officials said. Police also said Friday they found two decapitated bodies clad in Iraqi army uniforms a day earlier on a road north of Baghdad.
The US military announced Saturday that US Marine was killed in action during a "security and stability" operation in a restive central Iraq province.
As of Friday, at least 1,524 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
On a road near Kirkuk, attackers ambushed a Defense Ministry officer, identified only as Colonel Sarajeddin, and kidnapped him, Iraqi army Major General Anwar Mohammed Amin said.
Thursday in the capital, five female translators who worked for the US military were gunned down by insurgents as they returned home from work, police Captain Ahmed Aboud said.
Near Abu Ghraib, firefighters worked to extinguish an oil-pipeline blaze ignited by insurgents' bombs. The conduit connects Iraq's northern oil fields with a Baghdad-area refinery.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
LAW CONSTRAINTS: The US has been pressing allies to send warships to open the Strait, but Tokyo’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution Japan could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz if a ceasefire is reached in the war on Iran, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi said yesterday. “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up,” Motegi said. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider.” Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Tokyo to use its Self-Defense Forces overseas if an attack,
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
RSS