Rebels fired a rocket at a government building in northern Iraq, killing two civilians and wounding 14 others, an official said. The attack brought to 21 the number of people killed in two days of explosions and shootings across the country. \nThe rocket launcher was hidden inside a wooden cart that was wheeled up to a bomb-blast wall surrounding the three-story main government building in the northern city of Mosul, police Sergeant Jassim Mohammed said on Saturday. \nThe rocket struck the top of the wall before falling into the building's courtyard and exploding, he said. \nThe assailants fled the area after the attack. \nThe dead and wounded were taken to Mosul General Hospital, Dr. Ragheed Ghanim said. \nIn the country's south on Saturday, a gunman shot and killed the Iraqi driver of a civilian truck carrying supplies to Japan's military, Japan's Kyodo News agency said. The attack was an apparent robbery attempt, it said. \nJapan's Defense Agency said a civilian truck hired to transport supplies to Japanese troops in Samawah was attacked, but had no other details. Tokyo has dispatched about 1,000 naval, air, and ground forces to help with Iraq's reconstruction. \nIn central Baghdad on Saturday, a bomb exploded on a street as a convoy of sport utility vehicles passed, wounding five Iraqis, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Peter Jones said. It was not clear who was in the cars. US troops sealed off the area after the blast. \nFighting Friday in the city of Fallujah, about 55km west of Baghdad, left one US Marine dead and seven wounded, a US spokesman in Baghdad said. The Marines and guerrillas fought for hours in the alleys of the city, which has resisted American efforts to pacify it since the ouster of Saddam Hussein a year ago. \nThe 1st Marine Expeditionary Force issued a statement saying it was "conducting offensive operations ... to foster a secure and stable environment for the people." It went on to say that "some have chosen to fight. Having elected their fate, they are being engaged and destroyed." \nA freelance cameraman for the US network ABC television, Burhan Mohammed Mazhour, 34, was shot in the head and killed while filming the clashes. It was unclear who killed him. \nFour other Iraqis were killed and six wounded in the fighting, said a doctor at Fallujah hospital, Diyaa al-Jumailee. Witnesses said the dead included a shop owner, a customer and two bystanders. \nThis week, US Marines took over authority in Fallujah and surrounding areas from the US Army. The city on the banks of the Euphrates River is in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where support for Saddam was strong and rebel attacks on American forces are frequent. \nEarlier Friday, four members of the US-trained Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, or ICDC, also were killed while raiding a hideout near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit with US soldiers, the American military said. Three suspected rebels also died and 21 were captured in the raid. \nIn the town of Shwan, near the northern city of Kirkuk, four people en route to a wedding died when the vehicles they were riding in struck an anti-tank mine. The explosion injured 12 other people, police said. \nGunmen shot and killed an Iraqi police officer late Friday while he was walking home in Kirkuk, Fhadila Rashid, an official at the city's morgue, said on Saturday.
Sitting in a lotus position, four men weave glittering beads through gold thread on an organza sheet, carefully constructing a wedding dress that would soon wow crowds at Paris Fashion Week. For once, the French couturier behind the design, Julien Fournie, is determined to put these craftsmen in the spotlight. His new collection, which showed in Paris on Tuesday, was entirely made with fabrics from Mumbai. He said that a sort of “design imperialism” means that French fashion houses often play down that their fabrics are made outside France. “The houses which don’t admit it are perhaps afraid of losing their clientele,” Fournie
Over a few hours under gray skies, dozens of combat planes and helicopters roar on and off the flight deck of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, in a demonstration of US military power in some of the world’s most hotly contested waters. MH-60 Seahawk helicopters and F/A-18 Hornet jets bearing pilot call signs such as “Fozzie Bear,” “Pig Sweat” and “Bongoo” emit deafening screams as they land in the drizzle on the Nimitz, which is leading a carrier strike group that entered the South China Sea two weeks ago. US Rear Admiral Christopher Sweeney, who is commanding the group, said the tour
A court in Thailand sentenced a 27-year-old political activist to 28 years in prison on Thursday for posting messages on Facebook that it said defamed the country’s monarchy, while two young women charged with the same offense continued a hunger strike after being hospitalized. The court in the northern province of Chiang Rai found that Mongkhon Thirakot contravened the lese majeste law in 14 of 27 posts for which he was arrested in August last year. The law covers the king, queen and heirs, and any regent. The lese majeste law carries a prison term of three to 15 years per incident for
INSTABILITY: The country has seen a 33 percent increase in land that cultivates poppies since the military took over the government in 2021, a UN report said The production of opium in Myanmar has flourished since the military’s seizure of power, with the cultivation of poppies up by one-third in the past year, as eradication efforts have dropped and the faltering economy has led more people toward the drug trade, a UN report released yesterday showed. Last year, the first full growing season since the military wrested control of the country from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, saw a 33 percent increase in Myanmar’s cultivation area to 40,100 hectares, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime report said. “Economic, security and governance disruptions
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