A suicide car bomber killed two Iraqis and wounded five yesterday in an attack on a police patrol in an area of Baghdad where insurgents had kidnapped and murdered a defense lawyer in former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's trial last week, police said.
The bomb exploded at 6:30am in the northeastern neighborhood of Shaab, killing two policemen and wounding three policemen and two civilians, police said.
In Kirkuk, 290km north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded at 8:30am near a car carrying Ibrahim Zangana, a senior member of Iraq's Kurdish Democratic Party, seriously wounding him, killing one of his bodyguards and injuring another one.
On Sunday, more than 33 Iraqis died in a swell of violence in Iraq, including 12 laborers, five of them brothers, who were gunned down by insurgents at a construction site outside the city of Hillah, south of Baghdad, police said.
The toll among US service members in the Iraq war also was approaching 2,000 dead. But the US military said it has hampered insurgents' ability to unleash highly deadly suicide bombings with a series of offensives in western towns that disrupted militant operations.
Last Thursday, 10 gunmen wearing police and military uniforms kidnapped Sunni Arab Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi, one of the defense lawyers in the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven former officials from his Sunni-dominated regime.
Al-Janabi, the lawyer for Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former head of Saddam's Revolutionary Court, was taken from his office in the Shaab area, and hours later his tortured and bullet-ridden body was found on a sidewalk by the Fardous Mosque in the nearby Ur neighborhood. The 12 remaining Saddam trial defense lawyers have since rejected an offer from the Interior Ministry for better security, demanding protection from US officials instead.
Also on Sunday, investigative judges took testimony from the first witness in the Saddam mass murder trial regarding the 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail. The judges went to a military hospital to take the deposition from Wadah Ismail al-Sheik, a cancer patient who was director of the investigation department at Saddam's feared Mukhabarat intelligence agency at the time of the Dujail massacre. Al-Sheik is too sick to appear in court, and officials did not want to wait until the trial resumes Nov. 28 to get his testimony.
The US military on Sunday confirmed that four US contract workers were killed and two wounded in Iraq last month when their convoy got lost. The attack occurred on Sept. 20 when the convoy, which included US military guards riding in Humvees, made a wrong turn into the mostly Sunni Arab town of Duluiyah, north of Baghdad. Insurgents opened fire with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Three of the dead worked for Houston-based Halliburton Co's KBR subsidiary, the biggest US military contractor in Iraq. It was not clear who the fourth slain American worked for.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
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