Pitched battles between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in strife-torn Mosul left at least 26 dead, including one US soldier, as two Lebanese businessmen were kidnapped in Baghdad overnight.
The fresh violence came after 30 people were killed when a Baghdad house rigged with explosives blew up during a police raid.
PHOTO: AFP
Despite the volatile security situation, US President George W. Bush insisted Iraq's landmark national elections must go ahead, while a hardline Islamist militant group reiterated its intention to cause bloodshed on polling day, Jan. 30.
In the northern city of Mosul, insurgents detonated car bombs against a US patrol and a combat outpost and about 50 fighters launched an assault on the outpost, firing small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, the military said.
US forces called in air strikes and at least 25 insurgents were killed, said Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings.
A military statement yesterday said a US soldier died of wounds suffered in one of the car bombings.
Masked gunmen were seen running down Mosul's deserted streets, firing off guns and rocket-propelled grenades, as a column of smoke shot up into the sky.
Violence has paralyzed the city of 1.5 million, where US forces are expected to increase their numbers ahead of the elections for an Iraqi national parliament.
As the clock ticked down to the election, doubts loom over whether US and Iraqi forces can pacify cities like Mosul, a bastion of the Sunni Muslim minority whose alienation from the US-backed political order is fueling the lethal insurgency.
The Iraqi government said it had captured a militant in Mosul linked to al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a US$25 million price on his head.
The government identified the fighter as Abu Marwan, 33, a senior commander with Mosul-based Abu Talha groups, which the government said was linked to the Jordanian-born Zarqawi.
The deaths raised to almost 100 the number of people killed in Iraq in 48 hours as insurgents carried out a series of brazen attacks on Tuesday on police stations and checkpoints in the Sunni Muslim heartland north of Baghdad.
Apparently lured into a trap, police raided a home in Baghdad's squalid western Ghazaliya district late on Tuesday, and were still inside when a massive blast leveled the house, an official said.
Thirty people died, six of them police, the ministry said. Another 25 were wounded, including four policemen, and four police were listed as missing.
The attack resembled those in Fallujah during last month's US-led offensive on the city, where rebels rigged homes to blow up on ground troops.
Two Lebanese businessmen were kidnapped by masked gunmen from their home in Baghdad's upscale Mansur neighborhood, the scene of previous abductions, police said yesterday.
About 30 Lebanese working for private companies in Iraq have been kidnapped and later freed. However, in September, one was killed by his captors and three others killed during an attempted kidnap.
In other unrest, an Iraqi businessman, a female engineer working for the US military and a Turkish truck driver were killed in separate attacks to the north of Baghdad, police said.
And Iraqi authorities said they had arrested 59 people, including an Egyptian, suspected of involvement in violence after raids by the Iraqi National Guard in Baghdad and its regions.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS