Four American and four Italian military personnel were killed in separate aircraft crashes, military officials said yesterday, as Iraq's prime minister condemned the arrest of a top Sunni political leader by US troops.
Monday's 12-hour detention of Iraqi Islamic Party leader Mohsen Abdul-Hamid did little to help American efforts to entice Iraq's once-dominant Sunni community back into the political fold. Many Sunnis feel slighted by the rise to power of the country's Shiite majority, which claimed political control following Saddam Hussein's ouster two years ago.
Iraq's raging insurgency, which has killed more than 760 people since the new Shiite-led government was announced April 28, is believed to be strongly backed by radical Sunni extremists.
The arrests came after the launch of Operation Lightning, a large-scale anti-insurgent campaign that entered its third day yesterday.
"We have so far achieved good results and rounded up a large number of saboteurs, some are Iraqis and some are non-Iraqis," Iraqi President al-Jaafari said without elaborating.
The operation, which will see more than 40,000 Iraqi security forces deployed to the capital's streets, aims at ridding Baghdad of militants and, in particular, suicide car bombers, the deadliest and regular weapon of choice for insurgents.
But despite government efforts to curb the violence, insurgents launched attacks inside Baghdad and north of the capital.
Gunmen shot dead Jerges Mohammed Sultan, an Iraqi journalist working for Iraqi state TV channel Al-Iraqiya, as he left his house in the northern city of Mosul, said Baha-aldin al-Bakri from al-Jumhouri hospital.
Insurgents have in the past targeted both the station, which has been mortared, and its journalists. One of its anchorwomen, Raiedah Mohammed Wageh Wazan, was kidnapped and killed in late February.
A suicide car bomber killed two Iraqi soldiers in an early morning attack on an army checkpoint near Buhriz, about 60km north of Baghdad, said Diyala provincial police spokesman Ali Fadhil.
Five gunmen fired from a speeding car on a police patrol in eastern Baghdad's Dora district, wounding four policemen, said police Captain Firas Qaiti.
On Monday, at least 27 policemen were killed and 118 wounded after two terrorists carrying explosives blew themselves up among a crowd of 500 commandos protesting a government move to disband their special forces unit in Hillah, about 95km south of Baghdad.
In an apparent claim of responsibility, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq said in an alleged Internet statement saying one of its members attacked "a group of special Iraqi forces." The same group had claimed responsibility for a Feb. 28 attack against police recruits in Hillah that killed 125 people.
Militants, particularly extremists entering from neighboring states, regard Iraqi security forces as prime targets in their campaign against the US military, which hinges its eventual exit from Iraq on the ability of local soldiers and police to handle the insurgency.
The Iraqi single-engine Comp Air 7SL aircraft crashed near the village of Jalula, about 130km northeast of Baghdad, said US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Fred Wellman.
The aircraft, one of seven used by the Iraqi Air Force used for surveillance and personnel transport, had departed a Kirkuk air base bound for Jalula when it crashed, the military said in a statement. It was not immediately clear what caused the crash, which killed four US Air Force members and an Iraqi pilot, Wellman said.
The Italian AB-412 military helicopter crashed overnight killing its two Italian pilots and two soldiers, all attached to the army.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS