British troops conducted raids overnight in Basra and detained a dozen people suspected of links to a spate of deadly attacks against British forces, a British military spokesman said.
The raids came hours after British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement of supplying technology and explosives to Shiite Muslim militant groups operating in Iraq, although he said he had no proof.
Military spokesman Major Steven Melbourne said: "We had an operation last night in Basra and 12 people were arrested. The investigation is ongoing and we cannot give any details about the people who were detained."
"There have been a lot of attacks against multi-national forces in recent week and there were certain individuals that we needed to question and about whom we had good intelligence," he said.
Military commanders suspect that militant groups with links to Iraq's rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have been aided by Shiite Iran in carrying out the attacks. Sources with Sadr's office in Basra said those detained overnight included several lieutenants in Basra's interior affairs department, which is part of the Interior Ministry.
"They are mostly Sadr people," one of the sources said.
He said some of the suspects were seized from the police building that British forces attacked late last month to free two undercover soldiers who had been detained by Iraqi police. The military spokesman said that the arrests had been conducted peacefully, with no shots fired, and that more details would be made available shortly.
offensive kills 29
A US offensive aimed at uprooting al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgents in western Iraq before next week's constitutional referendum killed 29 militants, including 20 who died when warplanes bombed an abandoned hotel they had commandeered, the military said.
The fighting occurred on Thursday during one of two offensives being conducted by thousands of US troops and hundreds of Iraqi soldiers in several Euphrates River towns that insurgents were virtually controlling after the withdrawal of most Iraqi police and soldiers.
Elsewhere, residents in Baghdad and other cities were receiving copies of Iraq's draft constitution, though some refused to take it and some shopkeepers balked at passing it out, fearing reprisals by militants determined to wreck the crucial Oct. 15 referendum.
"Some people are excited to take it. Others are refusing to touch it," Mohammed Ali, a shopkeeper in western Baghdad who handed out about 150, said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not