UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Baghdad yesterday for a meeting with Iraqi leaders while a car bomb exploded outside a public market in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, killing four and injuring 19.
In New Baghdad, two men, a woman and her eight-year-old daughter were killed in the blast, which also set off a large fire in the market, police Colonel Hassan Chaloub said.
Government spokesman Laith Kubba said Annan met with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
A UN statement said Annan would meet with al-Jaafari, Deputy Prime Minister Rowsh Shaways, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, political and community leaders as well as UN staff.
On Friday, al-Jaafari demanded that Syria do more to keep foreign fighters from crossing into western Iraq, where US troops are battling al-Qaeda-led forces after a meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza. On Thursday he met with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
Both Rice and Straw said they wanted to encourage participation in parliamentary elections scheduled for Dec. 15. In addition to meeting with Iraq's Shiite leadership, they also met with political leaders from the Sunni minority.
The leaders of Iraq's predominantly Sunni insurgency have called for a boycott of the election. But a Sunni Muslim politician who claims to have contacts with insurgent groups said on Saturday some of its members will be running next month's elections and gave their demands and conditions to start peace talks with US forces.
Ayham al-Samarie refused to say how many insurgents groups were planning to have candidates. He did not give further details and insurgent groups in the past have denied he represents them.
"The resistance should have an active role to help Iraq get out of its crisis," al-Samarie, a former electricity minister, told reporters.
Minutes before al-Samarie spoke, a statement was distributed in his house that allegedly included the resistance's conditions to start peace talks. The conditions included an immediate end to all military operations, release of all detainees, the withdrawal of foreign troops from cities and setting a time table for the full withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq.
In Baghdad late Friday, gunmen fired on the compound of the Embassy of Oman, killing two people and wounding two others -- the second fatal shooting involving employees of Arab embassies in Baghdad this week. One of the dead was a policeman and the other was an embassy employee.
On Wednesday, a driver for the Sudanese Embassy was shot to death in the same part of the capital, and last month two employees of the Moroccan Embassy were abducted on a highway in western Iraq.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for abducting the Moroccans, as well as for the July kidnap-slaying of three Arab diplomats -- two Algerians and one Egyptian -- in Baghdad.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS