Militants unleashed attacks in a northeastern Iraq city that left four people wounded, officials said yesterday, as the country hosted US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Gunmen opened fire late on Monday on a police patrol in the city of Kirkuk, injuring two security service members, police Brigadier Sarhat Kadier said.
Attackers also placed a bomb in the undercarriage of a doctor's car, but the device exploded as the physician entered a Kirkuk store to buy bread, sparing him but wounding two nearby civilians, Kadir said. It wasn't known why attackers targeted the doctor.
Kirkuk is 290km north of Baghdad -- where Rumsfeld arrived before dawn yesterday for his second visit in three months.
The visit by Rumsfeld, who helped design the US-led March 2003 invasion and troubled occupation since, reflected a desire to push the political and military momentum that he believes has been growing since the Jan. 30 elections for a national assembly.
Rumsfeld was expected to meet later yesterday with interim President Jalal Talabani, a former Kurdish rebel leader, and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite Muslim.
En route from Washington, Rumsfeld told reporters he would press the new Iraqi leadership to avoid delays on either the political or security front at a time when US troops are still being killed or wounded and billions of US taxpayer dollars are being invested in rebuilding the country.
"It's important that the new government be attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence," Rumsfeld said.
Some in the administration of US President George W. Bush are concerned that factional maneuvering during the formation of the transitional government could undermine the counterinsurgency effort that is a key to eventually pulling US troops out of Iraq.
"Anything that would delay that or disrupt that as a result of turbulence or incompetence or corruption in government would be unfortunate," Rumsfeld said.
Late Monday, the US embassy in Iraq announced the kidnapping of a US citizen.
A spokesman said the US contractor, who was working on a reconstruction project, had been abducted around noon Monday. The spokesman didn't release the contractor's identity or other details, but said the abductee's family had been informed.
In a small victory against a spate of kidnappings targeting Iraqis and foreigners, a Defense Ministry official said on Monday that Iraqi security forces arrested a man who claimed responsibility for last year's kidnapping of two French journalists.
The hostages, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, were released last December after four months in captivity.
Iraqi soldiers captured Amer Hussein Sheikhan in the Mahmoudiya area on April 4, the official said, without further details.
‘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