Early morning bombings including a blast that killed six when it struck a minivan of workers in southern Baghdad continued yesterday as US and Iraqi officials promised to crackdown on violence and sectarian attacks.
Police Captain Jamil Hussein said the blast occurred around 8am in Baghdad's violent southern neighborhood of Dora, where bombings and shootings have become commonplace.
A roadside bomb detonated next to a police patrol east of Kirkuk, but missed and struck a civilian car. One person was killed in the explosion police said.
PHOTO: AFP PHOTO
The deaths come as Iraqi and US officials plan a security crackdown after al-Qaeda vowed to carry out "major attacks" after a coalition air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Officials hope his death will slow sectarian violence that kills dozens daily.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new security team has moved ahead with a plan to restore security in Baghdad, which has suffered most from suicide attackers, roadside bombs and sectarian death squads. The government will announce the plan in days.
Iraqi officials on Sunday freedd some 200 detainees from Abu Ghraib. Al-Maliki has promised to release 2,000 detainees from US-run prisons by the end of this month -- a total that would be the largest since the US led invasion in 2003.
Sunnis frequently complain of random detentions and maltreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government and the releases are seen as a key step toward dampening the Sunni-led insurgency.
The discussions on security come after al-Qaeda in Iraq insisted in a Web statement last weekend that it was still powerful after the death of Zarqawi. The statement said the group's leadership "renews its allegiance" to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
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