Iraqi authorities pressed yesterday with Operation Lightning in Baghdad after presenting an initial tally of the dragnet's success, following a surge of violence in the north of the country.
Iraqi authorities arrested 20 "terrorists" in Baghdad yesterday as part of an ongoing military operation, a spokesman for the interior ministry said.
The arrests brought to 720 the number of suspected insurgents detained since Operation Lighting was launched last Sunday, the spokesman, Colonel Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.
The national television channel al-Iraqiya reported that another 136 arrests occurred in Hillah, south of Baghdad.
Quanties of weapons were also seized.
At least 28 people have been killed in the five-day operation.
However, 10 Iraqis were killed in an overnight suicide bombing in a remote village north of Baghdad, officials said yesterday, taking the number of people killed during a bloody day of violence in the north to almost 50.
Thursday's carnage claimed the lives of at least 49 people, including more than 30 in four suicide bombings across the north and a Shiite cleric in the southern city of Basra.
Police and relatives said yesterday that Ali Abdul-Hussein, the imam of a Shiite mosque in Basra, was shot outside his house on Thursday night by two gunmen who then escaped in a car.
At least 825 people, including U.S. forces, have been killed since the new Shiite-led government was announced April 28.
Dozens of Shiite and Sunni clerics have been assassinated in recent months, and some religious groups say the killings are an attempt to provoke sectarian civil war in Iraq.
Baghdad residents reported some additional mobile checkpoints by interior ministry commandos and combined patrols of Iraqi and US special forces have searched suspected insurgent areas while Apache attack helicopters flew sorties over several parts of the city.
But while the aircraft occasionally dropped flares to protect against ground attacks, there was little evidence of major US participation in the offensive, and in many areas of the city, life carried on as usual.
Up to 40,000 army troops and police personnel were to take part in the sweep, but Baghdad streets were filled more often with a motley collection of dusty foreign-built cars than with armored Humvees or heavily-armed personnel carriers.
"There is no limit to its duration. It will track terrorists, and eliminate their hideouts and car bomb workshops to halt the attacks and murders," an interior ministry official said.
Arrests were reported elsewhere in the country as well.
In the southern city of Nasiriyah, police reportedly arrested Anwar Abdel Karim al-Saadun, the brother of a former regional Baath party chief along with three other suspects.
His brother, Abdel Baqi Abdel Karim, is on the US list of 55 most-wanted former regime figures and is still on the run.
Police also captured two former Baath party members accused of killing 43 Shiites during the 1991 revolt against former president Saddam Hussein, the police chief in the southern city of Karbala said.
In a another development, two Iraqi civilians were killed when their vehicle was in collision with a US armored personnel carrier near Khalis in Diyala Province, bordering Baghdad, the US military said yesterday.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
India and Canada yesterday reached a string of agreements, including on critical mineral cooperation and a “landmark” uranium supply deal for nuclear power, the countries’ leaders said in New Delhi. The pacts, which also covered technology and promoting the use of renewable energy, were announced after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a fresh start in the relationship between their nations. “Our ties have seen a new energy, mutual trust and positivity,” Modi said. Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi
RSS