Rockets slammed into an Iraqi housing complex near the Baghdad international airport and a nearby US military base, killing at least five people and wounding 16, including two US soldiers, officials said.
US troops acting on strong evidence arrested six Iraqi suspects on Monday in the vicinity of the apparent launching sites, a military official said.
The brazen attack followed a weekend in which US and Iraqi officials touted the security gains of a year-old operation in Baghdad that included an additional 30,000 US troops. Rocket and mortar attacks were once a daily occurrence, but have tapered off with a general decline in violence in the capital.
Twelve 107mm rockets fell in and around the airport and the nearby Camp Victory, the main US military base on the western outskirts of Baghdad, the US military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the official release of the information.
He said Camp Victory was hit and two soldiers suffered light injuries, but that most of the casualties were in a housing complex for airport employees, about 800m from the airport.
Camp Victory, on the outskirts of Baghdad, is the site of the main US military headquarters.
Five Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded including five children, one baby, one adult and a teenager who were taken to a nearby US medical facility, the military official said.
The US military did not respond with fire but sent a team in the direction of the launching sites, arresting six people, the official said. One unexploded rocket also was recovered, the military said.
Residents in the housing complex said it includes 250 to 300 trailers primarily occupied by airport employees.
They said two trailers were destroyed in the attack.
"One of these two families lost four of its sons, three of them were buried under the debris," said one resident, adding that those killed were between 10 and 20 years old.
Iraqi police earlier reported that six to 13 rockets also struck the US-protected Green Zone on Monday afternoon, but the US military official denied that report.
In other violence, a roadside bombing in the northwestern city of Mosul killed three civilians and wounded four others, police said. The US military has described Mosul as the last major urban stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Iraqi officials spent the weekend celebrating the successes of a crackdown that began a year ago and saw the eventual buildup of some 30,000 extra US troops.
But the US military has been more cautious, warning that Shiite and Sunni extremists remain a serious threat.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS