A roadside bomb killed one police officer in Baghdad while a mortar round killed a man at the Interior Ministry yesterday as Iraq's prime minister held meetings aimed at finding new defense and interior ministers.
The roadside bomb in southern Baghdad killed one police officer and wounded four. In the Interior Ministry killing, police said a car loaded with mortar rounds and explosives suddenly exploded, scattering shells over a large area.
One landed in the Interior Ministry and killed one man, while another landed on a soccer field and injured three city workers, police Captain Mohammed Abdul-Ghani said. The car, which was empty, was thought to have been used by insurgents.
PHOTO: AP
Police found the bodies of three blindfolded and handcuffed men who had been tortured and shot in the head. The bodies were found in central and southern Baghdad, police Captain Jamil Hussein said.
A CBS reporter was listed in critical but stable condition one day after a car bomb attack killed her two man crew, a US soldier and an Iraqi contractor. She was flown to a US military hospital in Germany.
CBS cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, and soundman James Brolan, 42, both Britons, died while network correspondent Kimberly Dozier, 39, was critically wounded. US officials said she was first taken to the US military hospital in Balad, 80km north of Baghdad.
Dozens of journalists have been injured, killed or kidnapped in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
The death of the US soldier came as the US marked Memorial Day. It brought to 2,467 the number of US military members who have died since the war started in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Iraq's parliament debated the deteriorating security situation in the capital and some of its outlying provinces, but failed to set up a commission to deal with the problem because of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's inability to appoint ministers of defense and interior.
Al-Maliki was expected to hold a series of meetings with political leader yesterday to find a way out of the impasse. More than a week after al-Maliki's unity government took office, Iraq's ethnic, sectarian and secular parties are struggling to agree on who should run the crucial interior and defense ministries, which control the various Iraqi security forces.
The Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry, which controls the police forces, has been promised to that community. Sunni Arabs are to get the defense ministry, overseeing the army.
Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday urged so-called middle powers to become a “poisonous shrimp” to carve out strategic economic leverage in a more turbulent global environment. Sunak drew from a metaphor by former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀): A big fish will eat a smaller fish, and the smaller fish will eat the shrimp. Lee made the point a year after the Asian nation’s independence in 1966 that the city-state needed to build up its defense mechanisms — like a shrimp that stings — so it would be left alone by predators. “He was thinking about what Singapore’s
POLL POSITION: Democrats criticized the timing of the raid, saying that the US justice department historically avoids public investigations within 60 days of an election Federal agents on Monday searched the home of Democratic US Representative Ilhan Omar, a startling escalation in a criminal investigation that brings renewed focus to the frequent target of White House derision in the final weeks of her re-election bid. The search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home so close to next month’s midterm contests that would determine control of the US House and the Senate was swiftly condemned by top Democrats in Congress, who raised questions about the timing given longstanding US Department of Justice (DOJ) protocol to avoid overt investigative steps involving political candidates in the direct run-up to an
A Rhode Island pumpkin grower appears to have broken the world record for the heaviest pumpkin, with his giant squash topping the record by nearly 136kg. Ron Wallace of Greene, Rhode Island, weighed his pumpkin on Saturday at a contest in New England and is waiting for the Guinness World Records to confirm he smashed the record, set about a week earlier by a grower in England. Wallace said he has been in contact with Guinness officials who say his record is on track to be verified. “It’s truly massive, it was a pleasure to grow,” Wallace said on Monday. Guinness World Records lists
BUILDUP: The report comes as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi boosts defense spending in the face of China’s military expansion and the North Korean threat French defence contractor Thales will establish a maintenance and operational support base in Japan in what is seen as the first such move by a foreign firm in the country, a report said yesterday. Thales chairman and CEO Patrice Caine told the Nikkei business daily that the base “will mark a milestone toward Thales’ long-term engagement in Japan.” It is believed to be the first time a foreign defense company has established a dedicated base in Japan for the maintenance and operation of Japanese defense equipment, the Nikkei said. It added that Thales might also expand its Japan-based business to
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