An Iraqi woman translator working for the US military was shot dead and her brother wounded in an attack in the northern city of Mosul on yesterday, witnesses and police said.
They said the woman had been on her way to work at the main US military base in Mosul when her car came under small arms fire in the city's northern suburb of al-Muthanna.
The shooting occurred a day after gunmen attacked five US civilians driving through the city. Three of the Americans were killed in the attack and another died in hospital yesterday morning, the US military said. The fifth was in hospital.
The victims were missionaries with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, based in Virginia, according to a report on the board's Web site.
Witnesses said the victims had been driving through the city, 390km north of Baghdad, in a civilian vehicle without a military escort on Monday when attackers raked their car with AK-47 assault rifles. Helicopters ferried the wounded to a US army hospital, and police sealed off the area.
Last Tuesday, two US civilians seconded from the Department of Defense and their Iraqi translator were shot dead in an ambush on a road south of Baghdad.
They were the first American employees of the US-led civilian administration to be killed in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9 last year.
An FBI team is looking into the killings of the Americans, named as Fern Holland, 33, a lawyer, and Robert Zangas, 44, a press officer.
The US military said six people had been detained in connection with the incident and that four were believed to be members of the Iraqi police force.
Optimism
But despite the ongoing violence, most Iraqis have high hopes for the future and say their lives are going well, even as they harbor mixed feelings about the US-led invasion of their country, according to a nationwide poll.
Iraqis are divided over whether the invasion by US and British troops a year ago humiliated their country or liberated it, according to the poll conducted by ABC News and several other media organizations released Monday.
They have considerable worries about joblessness, security and basic services like electricity, according to the poll.
"The positive attitudes and the high expectations and optimism are quite striking, with majorities telling us their lives are going well," ABC polling director Gary Langer said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS