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.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS