A car bomb exploded outside a police academy yesterday, and when police set up a checkpoint to close the area, a second car bomb went off, authorities said. At least six Iraqis were killed and 25 wounded, a hospital official said.
The carefully coordinated attack by insurgents in Tikrit, former president Saddam Hussein's hometown, occurred as new recruits at the academy were about to travel to Amman, Jordan, for a training program, said police Lieutenant Shalan Allawi.
At Tikrit General Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Ayash said four policemen and two civilians were killed by the bombs, and 23 policemen and two civilians wounded. Tikrit is 130km north of Baghdad.
South of the capital, three insurgents were killed yesterday as the roadside bomb they were trying to plant in the town of Mahawil exploded, police said in the nearby city of Hillah.
The explosions were the latest in a series of stepped up attacks by insurgents, as a US-financed program trains Iraqi military and police recruits in the hope they can improve security in Iraq and one day replace the US-led coalition forces.
On Saturday, at least 16 people were killed, including a US soldier, as the insurgents struck across the country with a series of bomb attacks.
US forces captured six Iraqi men suspected in the downing of a civilian helicopter and the shooting death of the lone survivor. The suspects in the helicopter downing were caught Saturday after US soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were tipped off by an Iraqi civilian who told the Americans that he knew where insurgents had stashed a blue KIA pickup truck that was used in the attack and led them to the site, the military said in a statement.
Soldiers searched two nearby houses shortly after midnight Saturday, arresting three men and seizing bomb-making material in the first home. Three suspects were grabbed from the second residence and all were being questioned, the military said.
US forces did not identify the captives or say where they were taken into custody.
The Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter, flying from Baghdad to Tikrit, was shot down about 19km north of the capital on Thursday. The dead included six US bodyguards for US diplomats, three Bulgarian crew members and two security guards from Fiji.
Two groups claimed responsibility for the attack and released video to support their claims.
The aircraft was owned by Heli Air of Bulgaria and chartered by Toronto-based SkyLink Aviation Inc. The six Americans were employed by Blackwater Security Consulting -- a subsidiary of security contractor Blackwater USA of Moyock, North Carolina. Four of its employees were slain and mutilated by insurgents in Fallujah a year ago.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS