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.
‘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
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
RSS