US and Iraqi military forces clashed with armed gangs during a search operation yesterday in the southern Iraqi town of Diwaniyah, leaving 20 dead and a US main battle tank destroyed.
Clashes raged on overnight and sporadic gunfire continued into yesterday morning, when a curfew was imposed throughout the city.
"There was an attack last night in Diwaniyah in which three rocket propelled grenade teams attacked ... soldiers who were conducting combat operations," US-led coalition headquarters said in a statement.
PHOTO: AFP
Seven civilians were wounded in the clashes, one of them critically, local medics said. The US military reported no coalition casualties.
An Iraqi defense department official said the clashes erupted after a joint US-Iraqi force raided the home of Kifah al-Greiti, a local commander for the Mahdi Army of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
But military sources in Diwaniyah denied they had attempted to arrest the militia chief, insisting that a routine Iraqi army patrol had been ambushed, provoking a fierce gun and rocket-propelled grenade duel.
In August, Diwaniyah was the scene of fierce clashes between the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi army that resulted in at least 60 dead.
There were occasional flare ups last month.
"Our reports currently indicate that a CF [coalition forces] tank was destroyed during clashes last night with insurgents," said a coalition spokesperson. "The tank destroyed was a M1A2 second generation Abrams."
US armored vehicles such as the Abrams are almost immune to the typical roadside booby-traps employed by Iraq's militias and insurgent groups.
But commanders have warned that more sophisticated devices are being smuggled from Iran.
According to US officials, within the region this technology is exclusively Iranian and only found in the possession of Shiite militias.
Coalition forces in Baghdad have recently been conducting exploratory forays into district near the Shiite militia bastion of Sadr City in Baghdad but have yet to receive Iraqi government approval for a full-scale entry.
In other Baghdad violence, a senior officer in the Iraqi police internal affairs department was shot dead in Baghdad yesterday, just five days after an entire police brigade was accused of colluding with sectarian death squads.
Security officials identified the victim as Colonel Tamer Salman, assistant to the director of police internal affairs, an increasingly important unit at a time when the government is under pressure to purge disloyal officers.
Iraq's fledgling police force has been accused of taking sides in the country's increasingly brutal sectarian war, with Shiite-dominated units said to allow militia fighters to attack Baghdad's Sunni minority.
Other attacks around Baghdad yesterday included a mortar attack in Waziriyah in central Baghdad on a police patrol which killed one policeman and wounded another, as well as a bystander.
South of the capital, in the restive Babil province, police discovered a corpse lying by the side of the road but when they attempted to move it, gunmen opened fire on them, wounding a policeman.
The central Iraqi province of Salaheddin witnessed the death of four civilians near former leader Saddam Hussein's home village when their car struck roadside bomb.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS