Guerrillas killed three US soldiers and two Iraqi civil defense officials in a huge bomb attack north of Baghdad yesterday as Washington insisted it would hand over political power in Iraq in mid-2004 as scheduled.
The deaths take the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the invasion last year to 499.
The mounting death toll is a problem for US President George W. Bush as he seeks re-election in November this year.
Bush held talks with US governor of Iraq Paul Bremer on Friday after which Bremer said Washington was willing to adjust plans for handing over power to appease Iraq's top Shiite cleric, but was unlikely to meet his key demand for elections this year.
He also stressed that the June 30 deadline for transferring power to an Iraqi government would not be extended.
Bremer will meet with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan tomorrow and is expected to press him to send a UN team to Iraq to convince Shiites that direct elections are not feasible or suggest a workable compromise.
In the latest attack, a huge roadside bomb near the town of Taji, 30km north of Baghdad, set a Bradley armored vehicle on fire and killed five inside, said Lieutenant Colonel William Macdonald of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division.
Apart from the three US and two Iraqi deaths, two US soldiers were injured, he said. Troops also arrested three Iraqi men in a sweep of the area shortly afterwards when a truck they were traveling in was found to contain bomb-making material.
Meanwhile, Japanese troops arrived in Kuwait yesterday ahead of a humanitarian mission in Iraq in the country's most controversial military deployment since World War II.
The troops move into Iraq next week and any casualty could rock Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government.
"We are making history today. It is the first time that we have Japanese troops going into a combat zone since World War II," US forces spokesman Captain Randall Baucom said.
In Washington, Bremer expressed "doubts" about Shiite demands for elections before the transfer of power, but said: "These are questions that, obviously, need to be looked at."
He said Washington may alter the way a transitional Iraqi assembly is selected and make other "clarifications," but gave few details.
Bremer's comments were unlikely to impress Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of the most revered men in Iraq, who has demanded that the transitional assembly be elected, instead of being chosen by regional caucuses.
Aides have said he could issue a fatwa, or edict, banning his followers from cooperating with the US authority in Iraq if his demands were not met.
Bremer insisted before his planned meeting with Annan that the mid-2004 handover could not be changed.
"We have doubts -- as does the secretary-general -- that elections can in fact be called in the time frame of the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30," he said.
Annan withdrew all international staff from Iraq in October last year after attacks on relief workers and the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19 that killed 22 people.
Annan wants the UN role in Iraq clarified, clearly wanting to avoid rubber-stamping US policy.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS