At least 64 people were killed in a bloody wave of bomb blasts in Iraq yesterday as US troops battled insurgents in the lawless western hinterland in a massive assault against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network.
At least four explosions in just an hour left trails of carnage in the northern towns of Tikrit and Hawijah and in the capital Baghdad, the deadliest attacks in a mounting wave of violence accompanying the formation of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's government earlier this month.
A first car bomb struck a busy market area in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing 31, mostly civilians, and wounding 66, police said.
Mangled metal scraps, sandals and destroyed market stalls littered the blood-stained ground, a reporter said. Strips of flesh splattered shop fronts near the site of the explosion.
"This is not jihad [holy war]. There was no US patrol, no Iraqi police at the time of the blast. This car bomb tore civilians to shreds," said Zeid Hamad, whose mobile telephone shop lies a few meters away from the blast site.
"Most of these people were waiting here to be hired as day laborers. They are looking for jobs, just trying to feed their families," he said.
A curfew was briefly slapped on Tikrit following the blast, and mosques blared out messages calling on residents of the small Sunni town 180km north of Baghdad to donate blood for the wounded.
In another attack, a suicide bomber wearing a belt of explosives blew himself up outside an army recruitment center in the town of Hawijah, northeast of Tikrit, killing 30 people and wounding 31, police and hospital sources said.
Many of the dead could not immediately be identified, but were believed to be young men from outlying villages who had come to join the new Iraqi army, local hospital doctor Abdallah Yussef said.
Forty-six people, mostly police recruits, were killed in a similar attack in the northern Kurdish city of Arbil on May 4.
Insurgents also detonated three car bombs in Baghdad. One targeting a police station in the restive southern district of Dura killed three people, an interior ministry official said.
Nine were wounded when a car bomb later exploded at a busy road intersection in the capital's upmarket Mansur district, the official said. Another car bomb went off in a western neighborhood of the capital but there were no immediate casualty figures.
Car bombs have been the weapon of choice for insurgents who have stepped up their attacks in recent weeks, killing nearly 400 people since the start of the month.
The past few days have also been among the deadliest in months for US troops, with 15 dead between Saturday and Monday.
Security sources said rebels kidnapped Nawaf Raja Farhan al-Mahalawi, the governor of the restive western Sunni province of Al-Anbar, where US forces are engaged in a large-scale operation to flush out insurgents.
Officials said rebels with ties to Zarqawi's network were using the governor as a bargaining chip as US forces pressed on with "Operation Matador," one of the largest post-Saddam military operations in Iraq.
The US military said its troops were encountering unsually tough resistance.
"There are reports that these people are in uniforms, in some cases are wearing protected vests, and there's some suspicion that their training exceeds that of what we have seen with other engagements further east," US Lieutenant General James Conway said in Washington.
Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who has a US$25 million prize on his head, was sighted in the area.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in