More blasts rocked Baghdad yesterday, spreading yet more carnage during what was already Iraq's worst week for bombings since the US invasion, and as US casualties continued to mount.
For the fourth time this year a bomb exploded in bustling Tehran Square in downtown Baghdad, wounding at least 20 day laborers waiting at a spot popular for seeking work, security officials said.
In the north of the city, a bomb exploded in a mixed Sunni and Shiite district, killing two civilians, according to a security source. And in Samawa, south of the capital, gunmen murdered two women and a girl in an apparent sectarian attack, police said.
The latest attacks came after a US military spokesman told reporters that attacks by car bombs and roadside booby traps are running at an all-time high.
Iraqi and US forces have responded to the violence wracking Baghdad with Operation Together Forward, a joint security plan which has brough 15,000 US troops and more than 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police onto the streets.
By Monday, they had "cleared approximately 95,000 buildings, 80 mosques and 60 muhallas [small districts], detained more than 125 terrorist suspects, seized more than 1,700 weapons, registered more than 750 weapons and found 35 weapons caches."
However, house-to-house searches have been cut back during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The loyalty of Iraqi security forces has also been in question, with some Shiite-dominated units accused of collaborating with the militias and death squads fighting a sectarian dirty war which leaves 100 people dead every day.
Iraq on Wednesday demobilized an entire 800-strong police brigade and quarantined them in a US military base where they will receive what a US spokesman said was "anti-militia, anti-sectarian, national unity training."
"There was clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely, when in fact they were supposed to be impeding their movement," Major General William Caldwell told reporters.
Meanwhile, a video claiming to show two US soldiers being shot by an insurgent sniper in Iraq was posted on the Internet yesterday by an al-Qaeda-linked group.
The footage shown on the video was blurred and edited. While the subtitle said "Hunting two American soldiers in Anbar," the pictures showed only one soldier falling to the ground as if he had been shot, and his body is quickly edited out of the street scene.
The video's authenticity could not be confirmed, but it was posted by the Mujahedeen Shura Council -- an umbrella organization of insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq -- on an Islamic Web site known to be a clearing house for al-Qaeda material.
The video shows three soldiers walking along a pavement near a mosque. Shots are heard and a soldier in the background disappears behind a white truck, having possibly been hit. Then a soldier in front of the vehicle falls down, apparently shot. But before other soldiers can reach him, his body is edited out of the footage and the tape is replayed in slow motion. No date is given.
In other news, two US Marines pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to murdering a 52-year old Iraqi civilian, at a pre-court martial hearing in Camp Pendleton, California.
The charges relate to the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad on April 26 in Hamdania.
Prosecutors allege that a gang of eight US servicemen kidnapped the 52-year-old from his home, shot him dead and planted a rifle near his body.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not