The US military said yesterday American and Iraqi troops have started operations to secure parts of northern Mosul from insurgents.
US troops and Iraqi security forces began moving in to secure police stations in the western part of the city, closing off the city's five bridges, said Captain Angela Bowman, with Task Force Olympia. Mosul is the third largest city in Iraq.
"We are in the process of securing all of the police stations and returning the police to these stations to implace a strong police presence," she said. "Some of those stations are in neigborhoods on the western side of the city where there has been insurgent activity and presence. We are now moving through the neighborhood."
About 1,200 US soldiers were taking part in the offensive to recapture about a dozen police stations abandoned by Iraqi police forces after an uprising that sprang up following the US-led attack on Fallujah, she confirmed.
Residents reported US warplanes and helicopters hovering over the city, as loud explosions and gunfire were heard near the American base on the northern edge of Mosul.
Eyewitnesses said three police stations already under the control of insurgents were blown up this morning before the militants left.
The Zuhour police station, and a substation in northeastern Mosul were destroyed, along with the Qahira police station in the northern part of the city. No casualties were seen as the stations were controlled by the gunmen.
Also yesterday, insurgents attacked the offices of a key Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in a bloody gunbattle that left three attackers dead and two Kurdish guards and one attacker wounded, said party official Saadi Ahmed.
The attackers' car was carrying weapons and exploded in the confrontation, he added.
In a separate incident, unknown assailants attacked a truck carrying Kurdish peshmerga militia driving in the northern Masarif neighborhood of Mosul, injuring some of them, eyewitnesses said.
The peshmerga were called in last week to protect Kurdish political offices that have come under attack by militants in the past week.
A mass insurgent uprising began in Mosul last week in apparent support of militants in the rebel bastion of Fallujah, just days after the start of the US offensive there.
Masked and armed bands of men stormed more than a half dozen police stations, bridges and political offices in the city, clashing with US troops and Iraqi forces.
ACCOUNTABILITY: The incident, which occured at a Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store in Taichung, was allegedly caused by a gas explosion on the 12th floor Shin Kong Group (新光集團) president Richard Wu (吳昕陽) yesterday said the company would take responsibility for an apparent gas explosion that resulted in four deaths and 26 injuries at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Zhonggang Store in Taichung yesterday. The Taichung Fire Bureau at 11:33am yesterday received a report saying that people were injured after an explosion at the department store on Section 3 of Taiwan Boulevard in Taichung’s Situn District (西屯). It sent 56 ambulances and 136 paramedics to the site, with the people injured sent to Cheng Ching Hospital’s Chung Kang Branch, Wuri Lin Shin Hospital, Taichung Veterans General Hospital or Chung
‘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
There is no need for one country to control the semiconductor industry, which is complex and needs a division of labor, Taiwan’s top technology official said yesterday after US President Donald Trump criticized the nation’s chip dominance. Trump repeated claims on Thursday that Taiwan had taken the industry and he wanted it back in the US, saying he aimed to restore US chip manufacturing. National Science and Technology Council Minister Wu Cheng-wen (吳誠文) did not name Trump in a Facebook post, but referred to President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments on Friday that Taiwan would be a reliable partner in the
RSS