Insurgents killed six members of a government-allied Sunni militia in an ambush northeast of Baghdad yesterday, police said, offering no respite to a nation still reeling from a spate of attacks on police and soldiers a day earlier that left at least 56 dead.
Police spokesman Major Ghalib al-Karkhi said the government-allied fighters, known as Sahwa or Awakening Councils, were driving near the town of Muqdadiyah at about 1:30am when their car hit a roadside bomb.
The explosion killed four of the guards immediately, al-Karkhi said. Gunmen then attacked the two survivors, killing them, he said.
Muqdadiyah is about 90km north of Baghdad.
The Sahwa are a government-backed Sunni militia that joined forces with US troops against al-Qaida in 2006 and helped turn the tide of the war. Since then, the Sahwa fighters have become frequent targets of insurgent attacks.
The early morning ambush comes on the heels of a string of attacks a day earlier that struck at least 13 Iraqi cities.
Fifty-six people were killed — including at least 31 policemen and soldiers — in a series of bombings and shootings across the country.
The attacks made this the deadliest month for Iraqi security forces in two years. They came after Washington declared the number of US troops had fallen to fewer than 50,000, their lowest level since the war began in 2003.
At least 265 security personnel — Iraqi military, police, police recruits and bodyguards — have been killed from June through this month, compared with 180 killed in the previous five months, according to an Associated Press count.
On Wednesday, as in earlier attacks, insurgents took aim at security forces where they are supposed to be the safest, turning police stations into rubble and bringing down concrete walls erected to protect them.
Iraq’s foreign minister said insurgents are attempting to sow as much chaos as possible, as lawmakers struggle to form a new government and the US withdraws troops.
“Here you have a government paralysis, you have a political vacuum ... you have the US troop withdrawal and, in such environment, these terrorist networks flourish,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said.
This month, nearly five Iraqi security personnel on average have been killed every day so far.
These numbers are considered a minimum. The actual number is likely higher, as many killings go unreported or uncounted.
That rise in deaths coincided with the drawdown of US troops.
US officials said on Tuesday that the number of troops fell below 50,000 — a step toward a full withdrawal by the end of next year.
A senior Iraqi intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the media, raised the possibility that some of the attackers had inside help.
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
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
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