A roadside bomb killed a local police chief and another officer in Baghdad yesterday, hospital and police officials said, in the latest insurgent attack on Iraq's battered police forces.
In other violence, two US soldiers were killed and two others wounded by a roadside bomb late Monday in Iraq's capital, while a US Marine died in action yesterday west of Baghdad, the military said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Television news footage from western Baghdad's al-Washash district showed a destroyed white Iraqi police pickup truck, its doors smashed and blood splattered across the driver's seat.
Police, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified one of the dead Iraqi officers as Colonel Mouyad Mohammed Bashar, who was chief of al-Mamoun police station.
A third officer was wounded in the blast, said Zayed Mohammed, a doctor at al-Yarmouk hospital. At the hospital, a bloodied policeman lay on a bed, bandages wrapped around his stomach and leg.
In the northern city of Mosul, attackers opened fire on a police station, killing one officer and injuring two others before fleeing, police chief Izzat Ibrahim said.
Police in Iraq have repeatedly been targeted by insurgents pressing a campaign to destabilize the interim government. The guerrillas see police as collaborators with US coalition forces.
From April last year until May, 710 Iraqi police were killed out of a total force of 130,000 officers, authorities said. A truck bomb last Wednesday targeted a police recruiting center in Baqouba, 60km northeast of Baghdad, where hundreds of job applicants were gathered. It killed 70 people.
Early yesterday, militants shot at the offices of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party in Hawija, about 241km north of Baghdad. The overnight attack caused slight damage to the building, but no casualties, police said.
In the holy city of Najaf, US forces on Monday fought with gunmen protecting radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's house in clashes that killed one woman and wounded three people. The US military had no immediate comment.
At least six US military vehicles entered the Zahra area in Najaf near al-Sadr's house, which is protected by his militia, the Mahdi Army, witnesses said.
Barrages of gunfire and mortar rounds set cars on fire before Iraqi police intervened and the US forces withdrew, witnesses said.
"One woman was killed and we have three injured," said Ajwak Kadhim, director at Al-Hakim Hospital in Najaf, 160km south of Baghdad.
Ali al-Yassiry, a Baghdad spokesman for al-Sadr, said US troops briefly surrounded al-Sadr's house in Najaf but then withdrew from the city. He said the fighting ended and the Mahdi Army was patrolling the area.
Also See Stories:
Scared Christians prepare to flee a destabilized Iraq
Turkish drivers suspend deliveries to US military
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