Marines battled a large force of Iraqi insurgents near the Syrian border yesterday in fighting that killed five Marines. At least 10 Iraqis, including the city police chief, were also killed, according to a hospital official.
Meanwhile, US forces waited outside Najaf yesterday with no sign of a breakthrough in efforts to avert a bloody confrontation with rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in an Iraqi city holy to the world's Shiite Muslims.
Fallujah, Iraq's other main flashpoint and a bastion for Sunni Muslim insurgents, was enjoying a second day of calm.
But five civilians were killed as they tried to escape overnight shelling by US forces in the nearby town of Karma, witnesses said.
The US military said an American soldier had been killed and two wounded when their patrol hit an anti-tank mine near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Friday.
On the Syrian border yesterday, fighting at the town of Husaybah appeared to be a new spillover of the intensified insurgent violence in the western towns of Fallujah and Ramadi.
It began when insurgents ambushed Marines in the city on Saturday, sparking a 14-hour-battle with hundreds of gunmen. Fighting continued yesterday in three neighborhoods of the city, which was sealed off by US forces.
Five Marines were killed in the initial ambush and nine more were wounded throughout the fighting, an embedded journalist from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Ten Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded -- a mixture of insurgent fighters and civilian bystanders, said Hamid al-Alousi, a doctor at the hospital in the nearby city of Qaim, 300km west of Baghdad.
Some were shot by Marine snipers as they left their homes to use their outdoor toilets behind their houses, the doctor told the Arab television station Al-Arabiyah.
Husaybah police director Imad al-Mahlawi was one of those killed by American snipers, according to a man who identified himself as al-Mahlawi's cousin, Adel Ezzeddin, Al-Arabiya reported.
Since March 31, at least 94 US soldiers have died in action in Iraq -- more than were killed during the three weeks last year between the invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam.
Tension remained high in Najaf, where 2,500 US troops are poised nearby with orders to kill or capture Sadr.
A spokesman for the fiery cleric said on Saturday that negotiations were at a dead end. A US spokesman denied any direct talks had taken place, although he said Iraq's US-led administration was keen to avoid bloodshed in Najaf.
Caught in the face-off between US troops and Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, Najaf residents complained their lives and livelihoods were at risk with shops closed and streets around the city's shrines crowded with gunmen instead of pilgrims.
Sadr's supporters say Iraq's top Shiite clerics back the uprising they staged this month against the US-led occupiers.
"We know that any assault from the Americans on the holy city of Najaf will be the zero hour for the revolution all over Iraq," said Sadr's spokesman, Qays al-Khazali. "The religious authority has a clear stand in providing us with moral support."
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS