US Marine jets yesterday rendered unusable two bridges across the Euphrates River near the Syrian border to prevent insurgents from using them to move foreign fighters and munitions toward Baghdad and other major cities, the US command said.
The attacks occurred after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iraq had become an even greater terrorist center than Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Attacks attributed to al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq have stepped up in the Baghdad area and western Iraq.
A Marine statement said F/A-18 jets dropped bombs shortly after midnight on two light bridges near Karabilah about 300km west of Baghdad.
"The purpose of the strike was to prevent al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists from using the structures for vehicular traffic to conduct attacks," the US statement said. "The munitions used in the strike were designed to crater the bridges, rendering them inoperable but not destroying them."
Karabilah is one of a cluster of towns near the Syrian border, a major infiltration route for foreign fighters heading for Baghdad and other major cities. Iraqi officials say al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has taken over parts of the area after local residents fled fighting between tribes supporting and opposing the insurgents.
In an interview on Monday with the BBC, Annan said many young Muslims feel angry and that situation has been exacerbated by what is happening in Iraq.
"They feel victimized in their own society; they feel victimized in the West. And they feel there's profiling against them," he said. "And the Iraqi situation has not helped matters."
Annan added: "One used to be worried about Afghanistan being the center of terrorist activities. My sense is that Iraq has become a major problem and in fact is worse than Afghanistan."
In statements posted on Islamic Web sites, al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for two attacks on Monday -- a roadside bombing that killed two British soldiers west of Basra and a daring daylight assault against the Interior Ministry in Baghdad in which two policemen died.
Also on Monday, US Marines said that al-Qaeda in Iraq launched multiple attacks the day before against US and Iraqi targets in Hit, 135km west of Baghdad.
Twelve people -- including 11 civilians, an Iraqi soldier and three suicide bombers -- died in the Hit attacks.
Elsewhere, Iraqi officials said that al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters had taken control of large areas of a strategic city on the Syrian border after weeks of fighting between an Iraqi tribe that supports the insurgents and one that opposes them.
The officials said that much of Qaim, 320km west of Baghdad, had been abandoned after weeks of tribal fighting.
US Marines operate around Qaim but have privately complained they don't have enough US or Iraqi forces to secure the area properly.
The attacks in the Hit area began on Sunday morning when two suicide car bombs exploded at security barricades on the northwest side of town, a Marine statement said.
Shortly afterward, a vehicle car bomb exploded on the Hit bridge across the Euphrates River, rendering it impassable, the Marines said.
The Marine statement said three insurgents and one Iraqi soldier died in the Sunday attacks. The government in Baghdad said eight civilians also died.
An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft has acquired imagery data covering all of Mars, including visuals of its south pole, after circling the planet more than 1,300 times since early last year, state media reported yesterday. The Tianwen-1 successfully reached the Red Planet in February last year on the country’s inaugural mission there. A robotic rover has since been deployed on the surface as an orbiter surveyed the planet from space. Among the images taken from space were China’s first photographs of the Martian south pole, where almost all of the planet’s water resources are locked. In 2018, an orbiting probe operated by the European
TRADE TALK: Xiao Qian said that Australia had fired the ‘first shot’ in deteriorating trade relations with China, but improvements were possible if Canberra takes action China’s new ambassador to Australia chided protesters who heckled him yesterday during a speech about the future of relations between the two countries. Xiao Qian (肖千), who has only been in the role since January, had just begun his speech at the University of Technology Sydney when the first protesters interjected, calling for freedom for Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. The ambassador was repeatedly interrupted by sign-wielding protesters, some criticizing China’s treatment of the Uighur people as well as the university for inviting Xiao to speak. “People who are coming again and again to interrupt the process, that’s not expression of freedom of
QUARANTINE SHORTENED: A new protocol detailing risk levels and local policy responses would be ‘more scientific and accurate,’ a health agency spokesman said China’s revised COVID-19 guidelines, which cut a quarantine requirement in half for inbound travelers, also create a standardized policy for mass testing and lockdowns when cases of the disease flare, showing that the country still has a zero-tolerance approach to the virus. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) solidified the position during a trip to Wuhan, where the pathogen first emerged in 2019, saying that China is capable of achieving a “final victory” over the virus. The “zero COVID-19” policy is the most effective and economic approach for the country, Xi said during the trip on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported. The first
A former South Korean Navy SEAL turned YouTuber who risked jail time to leave Seoul and fight for Ukraine said it would have been a “crime” not to use his skills to help. Ken Rhee, a former special warfare officer, signed up at the Ukrainian embassy in Seoul the moment Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked for global volunteers and was fighting on the front lines near Kyiv by early March. To get there, he had to break South Korean law — Seoul banned its citizens from traveling to Ukraine, and Rhee, who was injured in a fall while leading a special operations
RSS