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.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
RSS