Two men in an oil tanker truck, an Iraqi soldier, a shop keeper and a government employee became the latest victims of attacks by insurgents yesterday, one day after militants killed more than two dozen people with a car bomb in a Shiite farming village.
The surge in violence occurred as Iraqi political blocs unveiled their lists of candidates for Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, which the US and its coalition partners hope will help restore enough stability that they can begin sending home their forces next year.
In yesterday's worst attack, a roadside bomb destroyed one of several oil tanker trucks driving on a main road in south Baghdad, sending a fire ball up over the area and killing the two men inside, said police Captain Ibrahim Abdul-Ridha. Four civilian passers-by were wounded.
Shootings
Drive-by shootings in Baghdad also killed an Iraqi soldier who was standing in front of his home, seriously wounded a shopkeeper in the Dora district, and hit a vehicle carrying Cabinet adviser Ghalib Abdul Mahdi to work, wounding him and killing his driver, police said.
A new report by the US Pentagon estimated that that 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded by insurgents since Jan. 1 last year. In the most recent period, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 16, an estimated 64 Iraqis became casualties each day, the report indicated.
A recent Associated Press count found that at least 3,870 Iraqis have died in the last six months. A US military spokesman said last week that as many as 30,000 Iraqis may have died during the war, which began with the US invasion in March 2003.
The AP count found that two-thirds of those killed were civilians and one-third were security personnel.
At least 2,015 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count, including three army soldiers who were killed on Saturday by a land mine and a roadside bomb in two separate attacks.
26 dead in truck blast
On Saturday, a bomb hidden in a truck loaded with dates exploded in the center of the Shiite farming village of Huweder, about 72km northeast of Baghdad, killing 26 people and injuring at least 34.
The bomb exploded as villagers were heading to the mosque for prayers or outdoors in the cool evening breeze to break the daylong fast they observe during the holy month of Ramadan.
"It felt as if the earth was shaking underneath our feet," said Hussein Mouwaffaq, whose brother Qahtan was killed in the blast. "The street was strewn with dates. Many people were killed and injured."
Police Lieutenant Ahmed Abdul Wahab, who gave the casualty figure, said the number of deaths could increase because several survivors were critically wounded. The village is in a religiously mixed area plagued by suicide attacks, roadside bombs and armed assaults on police checkpoints.
Shiite civilians are frequent targets of Sunni extremists, including Iraq's most feared terror group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, which considers members of the majority religious community to be heretics and collaborators with US-led forces. Iraq's security services are staffed mainly by Shiites and Kurds.
At the hospital in nearby Baqouba, seriously wounded victims lay on stretchers on a blood-smeared floor as doctors and nurses in bloodstained white coats scurried about, trying to cope.
On one bed a child lay motionless with a bandage covering his knee, as a man sobbed next to him. A badly burned man writhed in agony on a stretcher as blood ran down his burned skin.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS