US forces left a cordoned area around a house in the northern city of Mosul yesterday where eight suspected al-Qaeda members died in a gunfight last weekend, and the White House said it was "highly unlikely" that the terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.
North of the capital, Diyala provincial police said a car bomb targeting US Humvees killed five civilians and wounded 12 bystanders in the town of Kanan. At least 145 Iraqi civilians have died in a series of attacks over the last four days, including two bombings at Shiite mosques and another at a funeral in religiously mixed Diyala Province.
Attacks
PHOTO: AP
In Baghdad, three people, including one police officer, were killed by gunmen, police said.
Over the weekend a US soldier near the capital and a Marine in the western town of Karmah were killed in separate insurgent attacks, the military said. In the southern city of Basra, a British soldier was killed and four others wounded by a roadside bomb.
During the intense gunbattle with suspected al-Qaeda members on Saturday, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were also wounded, the US military said.
On Saturday, police Brigadier General Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaeda operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house.
However, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said Sunday that reports of al-Zarqawi's death were "highly unlikely and not credible." Eyewitnesses in Mosul said the US military, which had cordoned off the area around the two-story house, left the area early yesterday.
"We have no indication that Zarqawi was killed in this fight and we continue operations to search for him," said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesman.
The elusive al-Zarqawi has narrowly escaped capture in the past. US forces said they nearly caught him in a February 2005 raid that recovered his computer.
The US military also said on Sunday that 24 people -- including another Marine and 15 civilians -- were killed the day before in an ambush on a joint US-Iraqi patrol in Haditha, west of Baghdad in the volatile Euphrates River valley.
The three American deaths brought to at least 2,094 the number of US service members who have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.
Reconciliation
Meanwhile, in Cairo, Egypt, Iraq's president said on Sunday he was ready for talks with anti-government opposition figures and members of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, and he called on the Sunni-led insurgency to lay down its arms and join the political process.
But President Jalal Talabani, attending an Arab League-sponsored reconciliation conference, insisted that the Iraqi government would not meet with Baath Party members who are participating in the Sunni-led insurgency.
In Baghdad, hundreds of Sunnis on Sunday demanded an end to the torture of detainees and called for the international community to pressure Iraqi and US authorities to ensure that such abuse does not occur. Iraq's Shiite-led government has promised an investigation.
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
Cozy knits, sparkly bobbles and Santa hats were all the canine rage on Sunday, as hundreds of sausage dogs and their owners converged on central London for an annual parade and get-together. The dachshunds’ gathering in London’s Hyde Park came after a previous “Sausage Walk” planned for Halloween had to be postponed, because it had become so popular organizers needed to apply for an events licence. “It was going to be too much fun so they canceled it,” laughed Nicky Bailey, the owner of three sausage dogs: Una and her two 19-week-old puppies Ember and Finnegan, wearing matching red coats and silver
RSS