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.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was