Three suicide bomb attacks killed more than two dozen people yesterday, many of them from the Iraqi security forces, in the northern city of Mosul as insurgents kept up pressure on the US-backed government.
Within hours a suicide car bomber wrecked a police headquarters, an attack on an Iraqi army base killed up to 16 people and four police were killed when a bomber walked into Mosul's General Hospital and blew himself up.
The third attack, on a police post in the hospital, caused damage to the emergency ward where casualties had been brought from the previous incidents. Six policemen and nine civilians were wounded, police told a reporter at the scene.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault on the hospital but the earlier two bombings were claimed by al-Qaeda's Iraq wing, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The car bomber drove at a district police headquarters at Bab al-Toob in the city center, striking a rear wall to bring down a section of the old, two-story building and devastate surrounding market stalls as people started the working day.
Five police and a civilian were killed and 14 people were wounded, hospital staff said.
A US military spokesman said up to 16 people were killed and seven wounded in a suicide attack on an army post at Kasak, between Mosul and the violent city of Tal Afar, to the west, where residents reported fighting on Saturday.
Medical staff in Mosul said they had received five dead and 13 wounded from the Kasak base, many of them building workers.
Iraqi military officials said two suicide bombers appeared to have attacked the base but details were sketchy.
US troops have been fighting in Tal Afar for weeks. They say foreign fighters come in there from nearby Syria.
A US soldier was killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad on Sunday, the military said.
On Saturday, 20 or so insurgents stormed a police post in the western city of Ramadi, killing eight officers, in the latest of a number of massed infantry-style attacks.
More than 100 rebels, employing tactics familiar to regular troops, besieged a Baghdad police station for hours last week.
Responding to a report in a British newspaper, quoting unnamed Iraqi sources, that US officials this month met purported insurgents, US and Iraqi officials repeated that there are continual consultations with tribal leaders, clerics and others who profess to represent the insurgency.
Meanwhile, Australian Douglas Wood, freed after being held by Iraqi insurgents for 47 days, told yesterday how he managed to keep his spirits up after two fellow hostages were slain within earshot.
Wood told of two Iraqi hostages being executed -- one at his feet -- during his incarceration in a house in Baghdad.
"Over a period of about five days three Iraqis turned up, the first of which was the only one that got out alive," he told the Ten network. "He came out with me and the other two were shot while I was there."
Also see story:
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