Six people were killed during a raid before dawn yesterday as US troops hunted down an al-Qaeda suspect at a safehouse south of Baghdad, the US military said. In the capital, a bomb hidden in a shopping bag on a minibus killed at least three passengers.
US forces stormed the house in Youssifiyah, 20km south of Baghdad, about 2:15am. Those inside started shooting, and the troops fired back, a US statement said.
Soldiers killed two men who were wearing suicide bomb vests, and a third detonated his explosives himself, the statement said.
A woman also died, and three women and a child were wounded, in the crossfire, the US said. Five US troops were injured, but none seriously, the statement added.
Five suspected insurgents, including the target of the raid, were detained and weapons were seized, the statement said.
The alleged al-Qaeda suspect was not identified but the military said he worked with foreign fighters to plan bombings.
The minibus bombing occurred near a mosque in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Kamaliyah in eastern Baghdad. At least six others were wounded in the morning blast, police said.
Meanwhile, Iraq's Sunni Arab and Kurdish leaders warned yesterday that the long-running political deadlock over Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari was unlikely to end before parliament convenes this week.
Iraqi leaders have failed to agree on the Shiite nomination of Jaafari to remain premier, four months after a landmark election for the country's first permanent post-Saddam Hussein government.
Leaders of Sunni and Kurdish parliamentary blocs said negotiations over Jaafari's candidacy were unlikely to find a solution before the assembly meets today for only the second time since the Dec. 15 election.
"It will be difficult," said Zhafer al-Ani, spokesman of the Sunni-led National Concord Front, which has 44 seats in the 275-member parliament.
"We are not optimistic about a decision today before the parliament opens tomorrow as negotiations are very difficult," he said.
Prominent Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said leaders of all political parties were due to meet yesterday and were even likely to consider whether to attend parliament or not today.
"I do not think they will be able to reach an agreement, especially on all the candidates for key parliamentary posts," Othman said.
Shiite leaders had originally said they would finalize their candidates for the various government posts before today.
The Sunnis and Kurds are opposed to Jaafari staying on as premier, accusing him of failing to curb sectarian violence that has engulfed Iraq for the last few months, leaving hundreds of people dead.
Sunnis fear that the Shiites -- in a tit-for-tat political move -- may oppose their candidates for other key posts.
Ani said the Front had finalized candidates for three posts. Top Sunni leader Adnan al-Dulaimi was nominated as vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi as parliament speaker and Khalaf al-Alyan as deputy prime minister.
"We will consult today with other groups on these candidates and I hope they [the Shiite alliance] will not have reservations on our names due to our objections to Jaafari," Ani said.
"They should consider national interests and rise above their own party interests," he said.
Othman said Kurdish groups had not yet finalized candidates for the posts of deputy parliamentary speaker and deputy prime minister but insisted that "Jalal Talabani will be the candidate for the president."
In the last few days the Shiites have been stressing the importance of discussing candidates for all key posts as part of an overall package, not just the premiership.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
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
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
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
RSS