Spanish and Iraqi soldiers fought gunmen who opened fire on their garrison during a protest yesterday by supporters of a staunchly anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric in the holy city of Najaf. At least 14 Iraqis, including two soldiers, died and 130 people were injured, hospitals said.
Yesterday afternoon, gunfire was heard in central Baghdad during a protest by supporters of the cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. It was not immediately known whether there were injuries.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Two US Marines died in violence in Anbar province, an enormous stretch of land reaching to the Jordanian and Syrian borders west of Baghdad that includes Fallujah, a city where four American civilians were slain on Wednesday. North of the capital, a bomb killed three members of the Iraqi security forces.
In Najaf, shooting broke out after thousands of supporters of an anti-American Muslim cleric gathered outside the garrison of the Spanish troops.
An official at Najaf General Hospital, Alaa Murtada, said seven bodies were brought to the hospital. He said the hospital treated at least 90 people.
Witnesses saw four bodies at al-Zahraa Hospital and a nurse there, Saad Abdel-Hussein, said at least 30 people were injured, some seriously.
Three bodies and 10 injured people were brought to Sadr Educational Hospital in Najaf, said doctor Ra'ad al-Hadrawi.
The slain Iraqi soldiers were inside the Spanish base, according to witnesses.
A spokesman for the Spanish headquarters in nearby Diwaniyah, Commander Carlos Herradon, said attackers opened fire at around noon on the Spanish base in Najaf, and Spanish soldiers fired back. Assailants later regrouped in three clusters outside the base, and gunfire continued into the afternoon, he said.
Herradon said that he had no figures on the number of dead and injured.
The crowd was protesting the reported detention of an aide to al-Sadr, a Shiite Muslim cleric who opposes the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Some 5,000 people marched to the garrison of the Spanish military contingent in Najaf after hearing that Mustafa al-Yacoubi, a senior al-Sadr aide, had been detained.
Spanish troops in the area have said they had no information on al-Yacoubi's reported detention, and said they did not take part in any such operation.
In central Baghdad's Firdaus Square, hundreds of al-Sadr supporters rallied to protest against al-Yaqoubi's reported arrest.
Al-Sadr's office in Baghdad issued a statement later yesterday, calling off street protests and saying the cleric would stage a sit-in at a mosque in the city of Kufa, which is near Najaf, where he has for months been delivering weekly sermons.
About 5,000 members of al-Sadr's self-styled militia, the al-Mahdi Army, paraded in Sadr City, a mainly Shiite district in eastern Baghdad, on Saturday.
Al-Sadr's weekly newspaper was shut by US officials on March 28, prompting an angry response from his supporters.
Two US Marines, both assigned to the 1st Marine Division, were killed as a result of separate "enemy action" in Anbar province on Saturday, the military said in a statement. One died the same day; the other died yesterday. The statement provided no other details.
A bomb exploded yesterday near a checkpoint in Samarra, about 100km north of Baghdad, that was manned by Iraqi Civil Defense Corps personnel, killing three and wounding one, workers at Samarra General Hospital said.
In the city of Baqouba, 50km northeast of Baghdad, a bomb exploded yesterday in the al-Rasool al-Adham Shiite mosque, damaging part of the building, but causing no casualties, said the mosque's caretaker Haider Yassin.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
RSS