American troops have arrested a senior commander of the US-trained Iraqi National Guard for alleged ties to insurgents even as Egyptian diplomats yesterday pressed an influential Sunni cleric to help win the release of hostages seized in Iraq.
In Baghdad, a rocket slammed into a busy neighborhood, killing at least one person and wounding eight, hospital officials and witnesses said. Hours after the attack, another loud blast shook the area near the Green Zone, site of the US Embassy and the interim Iraqi government.
Smoke rose above the zone and alert sirens sounded. It was not clear if anything had been hit.
Lieutenant General Talib al-Lahibi, who previously served as an infantry officer in Saddam Hussein's army, was detained in the province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, said Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan, a spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq.
Boylan said yesterday that authorities were trying to clear up confusion over what exact position al-Lahibi held within the Iraqi National Guard, or ING, the centerpiece of US efforts to build a strong Iraqi security force capable of taking over from American troops and restoring stability to the country.
Boylan declined to provide details on the general's suspected ties to militants waging a 17-month insurgency to topple the interim Iraqi authorities and oust coalition forces from the country.
Attempting to secure the release of six Egyptian telecommunications workers abducted last week, Egyptian diplomat Farouq Mabrouk met with Harith al-Dhari, a Sunni cleric who heads the Association of Muslim Clerics, an organization that has helped win the freedom of foreign captives.
Mabrouk refused to speak to reporters after the 30-minute meeting at Baghdad's Um al-Qura Mosque.
Gunmen abducted two of the Egyptians on Thursday in a bold raid on their firm's Baghdad office -- the latest in a string of kidnappings targeting engineers working on Iraq's infrastructure in a bid to undermine the US-allied interim government. Eight other company employees, four Egyptians and four Iraqis, were seized outside of Baghdad on Wednesday.
Four of the Egyptians worked for telecommunications giant Orascom Telecom, the parent company of the local firm, Iraqna. Two other Egyptians were employed by Motorola, an Orascom subcontractor.
More than 140 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq -- some by anti-US insurgents and others by criminals seeking ransoms. At least 26 of them have been killed, including two American civil engineers beheaded last week by the Tawhid and Jihad group headed by Jordanian terrorist Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.
Two senior officials of the Muslim Council of Britain were in Baghdad to try to win the freedom of Kenneth Bigley, a British civil engineer kidnapped on Sept. 16 along with the two executed Americans, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley.
"We will do everything to contact them [the captors] while we are here," Daud Abdullah, assistant secretary-general of the British council, said after talks at the British Embassy on Saturday.
He conceded, however, that his delegation had not arranged any meetings with Iraqi religious or political leaders and did not know whether they would be able to reach the kidnappers.
"The message is simple, it's a humanitarian one ... he [Bigley] was a noncombatant; Islam does not endorse the capture of noncombatants, let alone the killing of them," Abdullah said.
A posting on an Islamic Internet site on Saturday claimed al-Zarqawi's followers had killed Bigley, but the Foreign Office in London said the claim was not credible.
As the British delegation arrived, US warplanes, tanks and artillery repeatedly hit at al-Zarqawi's terror network in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah west of Baghdad.
The strikes targeted two buildings where militants were allegedly meeting and a cluster of rebel-built fortifications used to mount attacks on nearby Marine positions, the US military said. Doctors said a total of 16 people were killed and 37 wounded in Saturday's attacks.
The buildings were wrecked as explosions lit the night sky before dawn on Saturday, witnesses said.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
UPDATED FORECAST: The warning covered areas of Pingtung County and Hengchun Peninsula, while a sea warning covering the southern Taiwan Strait was amended The Central Weather Administration (CWA) at 5:30pm yesterday issued a land warning for Typhoon Usagi as the storm approached Taiwan from the south after passing over the Philippines. As of 5pm, Usagi was 420km south-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost tip, with an average radius of 150km, the CWA said. The land warning covered areas of Pingtung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春), and came with an amended sea warning, updating a warning issued yesterday morning to cover the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. No local governments had announced any class or office closures as of press time last night. The typhoon
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