A suicide car bomber targeted Iraq’s Labor and Social Affairs minister during rush hour yesterday in Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding 14, officials said.
The blast occurred near Tahrir Square, a park in Baghdad that has recently been revitalized with playground equipment and benches amid a sharp decline in violence over the past year.
It underscored the continued dangers facing Iraqis despite a sharp decline in violence over the past year as suspected insurgents defy stepped-up security measures. Militants have also frequently targeted Iraqi government officials.
The attacker rammed the car into the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry convoy as it passed through the central Bab al-Sharji area, a ministry spokesman said.
The Shiite minister, Mahmoud Mohammed al-Radhi, escaped the attack unharmed but three of his guards were killed, the spokesman Abdullah al-Lami told the al-Arabiya TV station.
At least four other people were killed in addition to the guards and 14 people were wounded, said police and hospital officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
“It is the latest in a series of criminal acts that are targeting development process in Iraq,” al-Lami said.
AP Television News video showed a burned SUV and the charred hulk of the apparent car bomb surrounded by Iraqi security forces. The windows of a nearby camera store were shattered, with torn pictures left among the glass.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice predicted on Wednesday that Washington and Baghdad would settle their differences and sign a security pact before the end of the year.
“I believe that both sides will get this worked out because both sides have a great interest in getting this done,” Rice told reporters during a flight from the US to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Rice said “there is still some time” to iron out differences with the Iraqis that are holding up a Status of Forces Agreement, which aims to govern the long-term presence of US troops in Iraq beyond this year.
“The [UN] Security Council resolution expires at the end of the year, but I don’t think we want to get to that point. I think we want to get this done more quickly than that,” Rice said.
The deal was originally supposed to have been sealed by the end of July.
It calls for pulling out US combat forces by the end of 2011 — more than eight years after the invasion — and includes US concessions on jurisdiction over its troops accused of “serious crimes” while off duty or off base.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Washington had now agreed to listen to requested changes to the controversial deal.
But the top US diplomat who said there were still “issues of jurisdiction” stopped short of committing the US to considering the proposed changes.
“It’s a good agreement and we have done everything we can to make certain that ... our troops are protected and Iraqi sovereignty is respected,” Rice said when asked if it was the last US offer.
The White House said the agreement, which had been the subject of months of tough negotiations, was more or less done, and that any amendments would merely be fine-tuning.
Iraq warned earlier that it would not be bullied into signing the pact, despite US leaders warning of potentially dire consequences if it failed to approve the deal.
Rice did not directly answer the charges of bullying.
“What I would say is that Iraq has a strong interest in making sure that ... US forces can remain in Iraq long enough to secure the gains that have been made and long enough for Iraqi security forces to be able to take on their rightful place defending Iraq,” Rice said.
“But I don’t think anybody believes that they are capable of doing that alone right now,” Rice said.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing