US and Iraqi troops sweep into the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar early yesterday, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down walls with armored vehicles in a second bid to clean the city of militant fighters.
South of Baghdad, police made yet another gruesome discovery, uncovering the bodies of 18 men who had been handcuffed and shot to death.
"Two days ago gunmen in police uniforms broke into their houses in a Shiite neighborhood of Iskandariya," said police Captain Adel Kitab said.
Iskandariya is 50km south of Baghdad.
Dozens of bodies, apparently killed in summary executions in growing tit-for-tat vengeance killings by Shiite and Sunni "death squads" have been reported in recent weeks.
In the Tal Afar offensive, expected for weeks, coalition forces initially faced several hundred lightly armed insurgents in the largely deserted city, 420km northwest of Baghdad and about 100km east of the Syrian border.
There was heavy gunfire in the Sarai district -- the oldest part of the city and the major insurgent headquarters.
"I can see why the terrorists chose this place for a fight, it's like a big funnel of death," Sergeant William Haslett of Rocklin, California, said of the twisting streets and alleys in the old city.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced the 2am start of the all-out offensive in a statement issued yesterday.
Twelve hours later al-Jaafari told a news conference the insurgents had been trying to "to isolate Tal Afar from the political process as we are preparing for the referendum on the draft constitution .... So our duty is to protect the country and the people and spare no effort in helping all Iraqi people regardless to their backgrounds."
Tal Afar residents were largely Turkmen with ethnic and cultural ties to Turkey to the north. They are mostly Sunni Muslims but had been governed since the ouster of former president Saddam Hussein by a US-backed Shiite Muslim city government and police force.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said 48 insurgents were captured so far, along with mortar launchers and communications gear. He said Iraqi forces had suffered two wounded and no deaths.
Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi said he expected the offense to last three days, and bitterly complained that Iraq's Arab neighbors had not done enough to stop the flow of foreign fighters.
"I'm regret to say that instead of sending medicines to us, our Arab brothers are sending terrorists," al-Dulaimi told the news conference. In the past two days, he said 141 "terrorists" had been killed and 197 wounded. Five government soldiers died and three injured in the operation.
He said a total of 11 Iraqi Army battalions and three battalions of paramilitary police were engaged in the operation, along with three battalions of US forces.
"We say to our people in [insurgent strongholds of] Qaim, Rawa, Samarra and Ramadi -- we are coming and terrorists and criminals will not be able to hide there," al-Dulaimi said, in an indirect promise the Iraqi forces would broaden the offensive against the insurgents north and west of Baghdad, right to the Syrian border.
US forces cleared Tal Afar of militants last year but quickly withdrew, leaving behind a force of only 500 that was unable to block the militants' return.
In a bid to soften resistance, the US military had carried out repeated air and artillery strikes against the city, where most of the population of 200,000 was reported to have fled to the surrounding countryside.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS