A suicide bomber blew up a car yesterday south of Kirkuk, killing two Iraqi Army soldiers and three bystanders, while parliament negotiators facing an impasse in forming Iraq's new government tried to come up with a Sunni Arab candidate to serve as speaker of the newly elected National Assembly.
The explosion in Tuz Khormato, 90km south of Kirkuk, injured at least 16 people, including eight soldiers, said Sarhad Qader, a police official. The blast occurred near an Iraqi Army checkpoint set up to guard a Shiite shrine where pilgrims had gathered to celebrate a major religious festival.
Yesterday's religious holiday marks the end of a 40-day mourning period for one of Shiites' most important saints, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussein, who was killed in a seventh century battle.
Officials have been on the alert for attacks targeting Shiite Muslims during the festival, which draws people to shrines across Iraq. The biggest gathering is in Karbala, where hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims visited two holy shrines yesterday and marched and beat their chests with their fists in a sign of mourning.
On Wednesday, gunmen fired on pilgrims in southern Iraq, killing one person. Two days earlier, two separate attacks on pilgrims left four dead, including two police officers guarding the faithful.
Also yesterday, a roadside bomb injured six policemen on patrol and one bystander in the southern city of Basra, police official Lieutenant Colonel Karim al-Zubaidi said.
And the US military announced that a US soldier had died from injuries he sustained during a clash in northern Mosul. The soldier was among several people injured Wednesday during a routine check of vehicles, Lieutenant Colonel Andre Lance said.
Several US soldiers tried to approach a taxi, and gunmen inside opened fire, Lance said. The soldiers returned fire, killing the assailants, and the taxi exploded, likely because it was carrying explosives, Lance said.
The soldiers then came under fire again and several were injured, including the soldier who later died of his wounds, Lance said. He added that two civilians were killed, but Iraqi police said six civilians died in the incident.
The name of the soldier was being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
As of Wednesday, at least 1,529 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Gunmen also briefly attacked a police station in Samarra, north of Baghdad, with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire, police officer Qasim Muhamed said.
In the capital, lawmakers were working to agree on a Sunni Arab lawmaker to serve as speaker of the National Assembly, part of a plan to incorporate Sunnis into the new government.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
RSS