At least seven people were killed in a mortar attack near a Baghdad market yesterday as President Jalal Talabani announced he would soon summon parliament to its first session since December elections.
Another 19 people were wounded in the attack which destroyed a minibus at a bus stop opposite a market in the southern Zafaraniya neighborhood.
Elsewhere in the capital, three people were wounded, including two police commandos, when a roadside bomb exploded near a patrol in the southern district of Dura. Two more people were hurt when another bomb hit a trailer truck in south Baghdad.
A recent upsurge in insurgent attacks, along with a bloody outbreak of sectarian violence which has left several hundred dead, has further complicated efforts to form a broad-based government, more than two months after general elections.
"The government of national unity must be formed to bring the country together," the head of US Central Command, General John Abizaid, said yesterday after talks with Talabani.
The Iraqi president announced that the three-man presidency would summon MPs today to an inaugural session sometime late next week to set the ball rolling in forming a new government.
Abizaid pledged that Iraqi and coalition forces would work together to ensure that insurgents linked to al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did not destabilize the country.
US forces have accused Zarqawi of seeking to foment a sectarian civil war between the newly empowered Shiite majority and the ousted Sunni Arab elite.
Over the past 10 days Iraq has been hit by the deadliest outbreak of communal violence since the 2003 invasion, sparked by the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Fearing the violence could spiral into full-scale civil war, the government has multiplied patrols and checkpoints, lengthening the night-time curfew and banning driving in the capital on Fridays, the Muslim day of rest.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has called on prayer leaders to control their flocks and not heighten tensions with inflammatory rhetoric in their sermons.
Efforts to set up a new governing coalition have been complicated by a campaign by Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians to force the dominant Shiite-based United Islamic Alliance to ditch Jaafari as prime minister.
US forces consider it essential to involve the Sunnis in a broad-based coalition to draw the sting from the insurgency raging in Sunni areas and pave the way for the withdrawal of coalition troops.
Meanwhile, a Shiite lawmaker was seriously wounded yesterday when gunmen fired on his car near Iraq's second city of Basra, police said. One of his aides was killed and two bodyguards injured in the attack, police Captain Mushtaq Kadhim said. Gunmen in two speeding cars chased down Qasim Attiyah al-Jbouri's two-vehicle convoy on a road just north of Basra and opened fire, he said.
Tropical Storm Koto killed three people and left another missing as it approached Vietnam, authorities said yesterday, as strong winds and high seas buffeted vessels off the country’s flood-hit central coast. Heavy rains have lashed Vietnam’s middle belt in recent weeks, flooding historic sites and popular holiday destinations, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Authorities ordered boats to shore and diverted dozens of flights as Koto whipped up huge waves and dangerous winds, state media reported. Two vessels sank in the rough seas, a fishing boat in Khanh Hoa province and a smaller raft in Lam Dong, according to the
The pledge by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to “work, work, work, work and work” for her country has been named the catchphrase of the year, recognizing the effort Japan’s first female leader had to make to reach the top. Takaichi uttered the phrase in October when she was elected as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Many were initially as worried about her work ethic as supportive of her enthusiasm. In a country notorious for long working hours, especially for working women who are also burdened with homemaking and caregiving, overwork is a sensitive topic. The recognition triggered a
Sri Lanka made an appeal for international assistance yesterday as the death toll from heavy rains and floods triggered by Cyclone Ditwah rose to 123, with another 130 reported missing. The extreme weather system has destroyed nearly 15,000 homes, sending almost 44,000 people to state-run temporary shelters, the Sri Lankan Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said. DMC Director-General Sampath Kotuwegoda said relief operations had been strengthened with the deployment of thousands of troops from the country’s army, navy and air force. “We have 123 confirmed dead and another 130 missing,” Kotuwegoda told reporters in Colombo. Cyclone Ditwah was moving away from the island yesterday and
‘HEART IS ACHING’: Lee appeared to baffle many when he said he had never heard of six South Koreans being held in North Korea, drawing criticism from the families South Korean President Lee Jae-myung yesterday said he was weighing a possible apology to North Korea over suspicions that his ousted conservative predecessor intentionally sought to raise military tensions between the war-divided rivals in the buildup to his brief martial law declaration in December last year. Speaking to reporters on the first anniversary of imprisoned former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s ill-fated power grab, Lee — a liberal who won a snap presidential election following Yoon’s removal from office in April — stressed his desire to repair ties with Pyongyang. A special prosecutor last month indicted Yoon and two of his top
RSS