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.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
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
CHIP EXCEPTION: An official said that an exception for Taiwanese semiconductors would have a limited effect, as most are packaged in third nations before being sold The Executive Yuan yesterday decried US President Donald Trump’s 32 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods announced hours earlier as “unfair,” saying it would lodge a representation with Washington. The Cabinet in a statement described the pledged US tariffs, expected to take effect on Wednesday next week, as “deeply unreasonable” and “highly regrettable.” Cabinet spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said that the government would “lodge a solemn representation” with the US Trade Representative and continue negotiating with Washington to “ensure the interests of our nation and industries.” Trump at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday announced a 10 percent baseline tariff on most goods
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