At least 38 Iraqis have been killed in attacks over the past 24 hours, security officials said yesterday, as politicians pressed four-month-old coalition talks amid mounting sectarian unrest.
Three Iraqis, including a police major from the northern oil center of Kirkuk, were killed in drive-by shootings yesterday.
In the main southern city of Basra, two Iraqis were killed and four British soldiers wounded when suicide bomber blew up a vehicle as a four-vehicle convoy passed, British officials said.
PHOTO: AP
Police said 11 employees of a construction company were also kidnapped in the city and murdered on Thursday.
Six policemen were also killed and more than 20 went missing when a large group of policemen transporting police vehicles was ambushed by gunmen near Baghdad on Thursday, a security official said.
Late on Thursday, a car bomb attack killed 15 people in a Baghdad Shiite neighborhood -- the fourth such bombing against either shrines or residential areas of the majority community in the past eight days.
The attacks, believed to be the work of Sunni hardliners loyal to the al-Qaeda network, come at a time when Iraq is gripped by a power vacuum.
Shiite leaders were to meet President Jalal Talabani later yesterday to decide the fate of embattled Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, who has refused to step aside despite determined opposition from Kurds and Sunni Arabs.
Internal solution
Shiite leaders, who said this week they were aiming to find a solution through internal talks, have repeatedly failed to resolve the impasse, which has blocked the formation of a national unity government four months after elections and aggravated the political crisis.
"This afternoon at 4pm, the seven heads of Shiite parties within the alliance will meet the president to discuss the issue of prime minister," said Bassem Sharif, spokesman of the Fadhila party, one of the factions in the Shiite alliance.
Sharif said the meeting would also address the selection of Iraq's president and two vice presidents and the speakership of parliament.
"The meeting has been arranged to expedite political negotiations before parliament opens on Monday," Sharif said.
Parliament's acting speaker Adnan Pachachi announced earlier this week that the assembly would convene on Monday, while Sunnis demanded that the next president be an Arab. Talabani is a Kurd.
As the political stalemate continued, a brother of a top Sunni Arab politician became the latest victim of Iraq's sectarian violence.
Tareq al-Hashemi's brother and a companion were killed on Thursday in a drive-by shooting in central Baghdad, police and sources from Hashemi's Islamic Party said.
Hashemi's party is the leading member of the National Concord Front, the main Sunni bloc, which holds 44 seats in parliament.
Families fleeing
With the spike in sectarian violence, an estimated 10,000 families have fled their homes for fear of their lives, with the Iraqi capital alone witnessing displacement of about 4,000 families.
"We estimate that 10,000 families have been displaced and this number will increase," an Iraqi official said on Thursday on condition of anonymity.
The number represents a major jump from the 4,000 estimated by the government to have been displaced at the end of March.
In a bid to control the raging violence, US and Iraqi forces have nearly doubled their patrols in Baghdad over the past two months.
From an average of 12,000 patrols in February, US and Iraqi forces have raised their patrols on the capital to 20,000 "a jump of 45 percent," US military spokesman Major General Rick Lynch said on Thursday.
In further unrest, the US military announced the death of a marine on Wednesday which brought US losses since the invasion to 2,366, according to a count based on Pentagon figures.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
RSS