Canadian special forces exchanged gunfire with Islamic State fighters in Iraq in recent days, in the first confirmed ground battle between Western troops and the extremists, a senior Canadian military officer said on Monday.
The Canadians came under mortar and machine gun fire while training Iraqi troops near front lines and shot back, killing the assailants in what Canadian Special Operations Forces commander Brigadier General Michael Rouleau described as self-defense.
Rouleau said the melee had taken place in the previous seven days and was “the first time we’ve taken fire and returned fire” in Iraq, where the extremists have overrun large areas.
“My troops had completed a planning session with senior Iraqi leaders several kilometers behind the front lines,” Rouleau told a regular news conference on the conflict. “When they moved forward to confirm the planning at the front lines in order to visualize what they had discussed over a map, they came under immediate and effective mortar and machine gun fire.”
The general said the Canadians used sniper fire to “neutralize both threats” and there were no Canadian injuries.
AIRSTRIKES
Canada sent about 600 air crew and other military personnel — as well as six fighter jets and other military aircraft — to the region in November last year to participate in US-led airstrikes.
The Canadian deployment is due to end in April, unless the nation’s parliament votes to extend the mission.
There are also 69 Canadian special forces members training and advising Iraqi troops on the ground, but theoretically not in combat.
Canadian Joint Operations Command Lieutenant General Jonathan Vance said the Islamic State “has been stopped [in Iraq] and they are unable to mount broad offensive operations that would somehow change the situation dramatically.”
However, he added “a large-scale reversal of ISIL’s [the Islamic State’s] position in Iraq has yet to come.”
Using aerial maps, he pointed out “relatively modest areas where the tide has turned and Iraqi forces are in control of the area.”
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
RSS