Insurgents killed three members of Iraq's security forces on Saturday, firing from speeding vehicles on army soldiers and policemen in a northern city, officials said.
Gunmen killed a policeman and two soldiers as they headed to work in a pair of separate drive-by shootings in the city of Kirkuk, police Brigadier Sarhat Qadir said.
Further to the north, in Mosul, a car bomb damaged one vehicle in a US military convoy, but there were no reports of casualties, said Sergeant John Franzen. Mosul is 360km northwest of Baghdad.
On Friday, an important Sunni cleric urged Iraq's new president to buck US pressure and free thousands of suspected rebels, a sign the religious group most often associated with the Iraqi insurgency might be willing to work with the new government.
But there was no letup in violence Friday, as militants set off four bombs that killed at least two civilians and wounded 14 in Baghdad, capping a bloody week of attacks and clashes.
Also Friday, Ukraine began withdrawing some of its 1,462 soldiers from Iraq amid plans to have them all out by year's end, the US military said. It said the Ukrainian force would be down to 900 soldiers by May 12.
If President "Jalal Talabani wants to begin a new page, he must first release those in jail. Secondly, there must be a full pardon," Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai, a cleric in the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, said during Friday prayers.
He also urged Talabani to refuse to "obey and kneel to pressure from" US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The US has opposed freeing prisoners or pardoning insurgents. It remains unclear how much say Talabani will have in his largely ceremonial post. Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari is putting together a Cabinet and it isn't known if the new government backs a pardon.
Al-Samarrai's comments came three days after Rumsfeld made a surprise visit to Iraq and urged the emerging government to avoid politicizing the Iraqi military.
After he was sworn in as president this month, Talabani appealed to Iraq's homegrown militants to work with the newly-elected leadership and suggested they could be pardoned, although he said the Iraqi government would continue to fight foreign insurgents.
"We must find political and peaceful solutions with those duped Iraqis who have been involved in terrorism and pardon them, and invite them to join the democratic process," Talabani said after his inauguration. "But we must firmly counter and isolate the criminal terrorism that's imported from abroad."
Most of the 10,500 detainees are held by the US military, and some lawmakers have said the new president is just expressing his personal opinion. Still, Talabani and other members of the new government are reaching out to Iraq's Sunni minority, which was the dominant group under Saddam Hussein and is believed to be the backbone of the insurgency.
Al-Samarrai's comment was the latest sign that his organization, which has been alleged to have links to insurgents, is responding to the new government. Two weeks ago, he instructed his followers to begin joining Iraqi security forces.
There have been growing calls to deal with the detained Iraqis. Outgoing interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi this week sent a message to the US military commander in Iraq, General George Casey, asking him to review the prisoners' cases.
In a political development, the office of Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said he doesn't want leading Shiite lawmakers to take posts in the Cabinet so they can focus on the National Assembly's main task of writing a constitution.
Al-Sistani has largely stayed out of politics, but Friday's comment was a sign he may take a greater role.
A suicide car bomb exploded near Baghdad's airport, killing one person and injuring five, police said. It targeted a local police commander who escaped unharmed.
Another car bomb exploded near a US convoy in the city's western Mansour district, damaging a Humvee and injuring six people, including a US soldier. A Web statement from Al-Qaida in Iraq said it staged the blast.
A bomb also exploded in an eastern Baghdad neighborhood where US troops were on patrol, killing one civilian and wounding three, police said. A fourth blast in the city didn't appear to cause any injuries, Captain Talib Thamir said.
Hours after a video was aired early Friday on al-Jazeera satellite television showing a Pakistani Embassy official kidnapped in Baghdad, Pakistan's government urged the man's captors to release him. Officials confirmed the tape showed Malik Mohammed Javed, who disappeared a week ago after leaving to attend prayers at a mosque near his Baghdad home.
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,
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