Three car bombs killed at least four people yesterday in disputed territory in northern Iraq where analysts fear tensions could trigger a full-blown conflict.
The unresolved row over the swathe of land, which Iraqi Kurdistan wants to incorporate into it’s three-province autonomous region over Baghdad’s objections, is cited by diplomats as among the biggest threats to Iraq’s stability.
In the town of Riyadh, three policemen were killed and 14 people were wounded when a suicide attacker set off a minibus rigged with explosives outside the town’s police headquarters, police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader said.
Another person was killed and 27 were wounded by two car bombs targeting Shiite Turkmen areas of Tuz Khurmatu, an ethnically diverse town in the disputed territory, which stretches from Iraq’s eastern border with Iran to its western frontier with Syria.
The row is one of several between the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region.
A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque in northern Baghdad killing at least 12 people, police and medics said, in the deadliest of a series of attacks that claimed more than 30 lives across Iraq on Saturday.
Scattered attacks throughout the day killed at least 22 others, about half of them in or near the northern city of Mosul, where a suicide bomber killed four people at a police checkpoint.
In the western province of Anbar, militants detonated two car bombs near a checkpoint and attacked it with rocket-propelled grenades, killing five policemen.
Two people were killed when gunmen hurled a hand grenade at a gathering of laborers in Tikrit, 150km north of Baghdad, and a roadside bomb in the center of the capital killed two more.
More than 1,000 people were killed in Iraq last month alone, making it the deadliest month since the sectarian bloodletting of 2006 to 2007.
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