Two suicide attackers detonated car bombs in northern Iraq yesterday, killing at least five Iraqis and wounding 40, hospital and police officials said, as raging violence claimed more than 20 lives during the past 24 hours across Iraq.
The bombs exploded at an entrance to an Iraqi military base in Sinjar, about 120km northwest of Mosul, said a police official.
The bodies of least five Iraqis killed in the attack were brought to Sinjar Hospital, said a hospital official, and 40 people were wounded.
PHOTO: AP
More than 20 people have been killed across Iraq during the past 24 hours, all victims of a raging, increasingly sectarian insurgency that US-backed authorities are struggling to put down.
Yesterday, Japan's Foreign Ministry said in Tokyo that it is trying to verify if a dead Asian man pictured in Internet photos is a Japanese hostage in Iraq. Late Friday, the Japanese news agency reported a Web site claim by Sunni militant group Ansar al-Sunnah Army that Akihiko Saito had died and said the group had posted pictures of the bloodied victim. Saito, a security consultant, has been missing in Iraq since his convoy was ambushed early in May. He worked for Hart Security Ltd, a British security firm.
Ten Iraqis were killed and their bodies dumped in the volatile western border city of Qaim after returning from a pilgrimage to a holy site in neighboring Syria, police said yesterday. Relatives of five of the victims told police the group had been visiting the Sayda Zeinab Shiite Muslim shrine in Damascus and returned via the Waleed border crossing.
At a funeral yesterday for four of the victims in the predominantly Shiite Muslim city of Diwaniyah, 170km south of Baghdad, many of the 150 mourners chanted "revenge, revenge" as they followed four coffins draped in Iraq's red, white and black flags.
Violence continued throughout cities south of Baghdad in a region dubbed the Triangle of Death, where scores of bodies have been found in an apparent tit-for-tat wave of sectarian violence.
Two civilians were killed and three injured when clashes erupted late Friday between militants and Iraqi soldiers in Mahmoudiya, about 30km south of Baghdad.
Gunmen killed another five people Friday during a car exhibition in the nearby city of Latifiyah.
Ali said police have also found the bullet-riddled bodies of five Iraqis in a car on a road in the volatile Anbar province, before they were returned to their home city of Hillah, 95km south of Baghdad.
A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol instead killed three civilians Friday in Tikrit, north of Baghdad. Six policemen were among 18 people wounded.
North of Baghdad in Kirkuk, Sheik Sabhan Khalaf al-Jibouri, a moderate Sunni Muslim tribal leader with close ties to Iraqi Kurds, was killed Friday in a hail of machine-gun fire.
In the capital, gunmen killed a western Baghdad tribal leader Samir Abdel Laith and real estate agent Sheik Samir Abdul-Razziq in separate drive-by shootings Friday in the western Jihad neighborhood.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her