A suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt on Saturday among US-allied Sunni paramilitaries collecting their salaries at an army base, killing nine and wounding about 30, Iraqi officials said.
The attack in the town of Jbala, about 50km south of Baghdad, follows a bloody week of bombings that killed more than 50 people in the capital. Five US soldiers died on Friday in a bombing in Mosul ?the deadliest attack against US troops in more than a year.
Those attacks have raised concern about the capability of Iraqi forces to control security after US soldiers withdraw from Baghdad and other Iraqi cities by June 30.
About 250 members of Sunni paramilitaries known as 耍wakening Councils were mingling around the Jbala base at about 11am when the bomber struck.
One of the wounded, Riad Hassan al-Janabi, said Iraqi soldiers refused to allow them to wait inside the compound behind protective blast walls. Instead, guards allowed only a few small groups inside at a time, leaving most of them unprotected.
? couldn? see anything as dust covered the area,?said al-Janabi, who was hurled to the ground by the blast and wounded by shrapnel. ?here were only voices of people around us and the smell of gunpowder.?br />
Police spokesman Major Muthana Khalid and Nahidh Mohammed al-Maamouri of the nearby Iskandariyah General Hospital gave the casualty figures.
Awakening Council members are mostly Sunnis who joined forces with the US to drive 苔l-舢aeda and other insurgent groups from their communities.
US officials credit the councils with helping curb violence, which has fallen dramatically since the US troop surge of 2007.
They have been frequently targeted by Sunni insurgents.
Last October, the Iraqi government agreed to assume responsibility for paying the paramilitaries from the US.
However, salaries were delayed for months because of bureaucratic red tape and Iraqi authorities only resumed payments this week.
The Shiite-led government has never fully trusted the councils 苑ecause their ranks include former insurgents. The pay delay served to heighten mistrust among the paramilitaries, who fear the government wants to disband them.
Tensions between the government and the councils boiled over last month when a local group in central Baghdad launched a two-day uprising after the arrest of their leader.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, said the arrest followed a six-month investigation that tied the commander to criminal activity and was not part of a crackdown on the Awakening movement.
A Shiite lawmaker said he was confident that Iraqi police and soldiers can maintain security despite recent attacks and that the country ?ill not face a grave security deterioration.?br />
?et we must admit that there have been isolated security breaches and gaps and that the terrorists are making use of this fact,?said Abbas al-Bayati, chairman of the parliament security committee. ?e believe that some real work needs to be done to fill the gaps in security.?br />
The US-Iraq security agreement that took effect this year requires the US to pull combat troops out of Baghdad and other cities by June 30.
US President Barack Obama plans to withdraw combat troops from the country by September next year and bring home the last of the force by the end of 2011.
During an interview this week with the Times of London, the top US commander in Iraq, General Raymond Odierno, said US forces may have to remain in Mosul and Baqubah, where Sunni insurgents still operate, after the June 30 deadline but the final decision is up to the Iraqis.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS