In another attack targeting Iraqi security forces, a suicide car bomb destroyed a police minibus at a checkpoint in former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's hometown yesterday, killing at least eight policemen, officials said.
The attack was part of a surge of violence that has killed at least 255 people -- many of them Iraqi soldiers and police -- since Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his new government on April 28, with seven Cabinet positions still undecided.
Iraq's new Cabinet held its first meeting on Thursday. Al-Jaafari aide Laith Kuba said the seven vacant portfolios, including the key oil and defense ministries, would be filled by today and parliament would be asked to vote on them tomorrow.
In Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, a silver Opel packed with explosives -- and with a taxi sign on its roof -- destroyed the minibus at 8:30am yesterday, said US army 1st Sergeant Brian Thomas and Iraqi National Guard Major Salman Abdul Wahid.
At least eight policemen were killed, said police Lieutenant Colonel Saad Abdul Hamid and police Major Hakim al-Azawi.
They said that seven people were wounded: a policeman, two National Guardsmen and four civilians.
Initial reports by police had mistakenly said the attack involved explosives hidden inside the minibus and set off by remote control in Tikrit, which is 130km north of Baghdad.
In Thursday's deadliest attack, an insurgent used a suicide bomber belt to walk up to an army recruitment center in Baghdad which, like many others, have been turned into small fortresses of concrete blast walls and razor wire to prevent car bombings.
At al-Yarmouk Hospital, the morgue was overflowing with mangled bodies after the blast. One man lay screaming on his bed -- both his legs had been blown off. Pools of blood covered the floor.
At least 13 people were killed and 20 wounded in the blast, Lieutenant Salam Wahab said at the recruitment center.
At least nine policemen were killed in two attacks in western Baghdad on Thursday.
The bodies of at least 12 people who had been shot and killed were also found buried at a garbage dump in Baghdad yesterday, Iraqi officials said.
Some of the victims were blindfolded and had been shot in the head execution style, said Bassim al-Maslokhi, a soldier who was guarding the area during the recovery at the site on the outskirts of northeastern Baghdad.
There were conflicting accounts of the number of bodies found. Al-Maslokhi said 14 bodies were found. However, Kadhim al-Itabi, a local police chief, put the number at 12. Al-Itabi confirmed they had been shot.
Master Sergeant Greg Kaufman, a US military spokesman, confirmed an incident in the area, but would not provide details, referring queries to Iraqi authorities.
Police were called to the scene by impoverished residents who found some of the bodies while searching through the dump for scrap metal and other items to sell, al-Maslokhi said.
Police had found the victims, thought to be Iraqis, buried in shallow graves at the dump, al-Maslokhi said.
He added that they seemed to have been killed recently.
He said police were still digging at the site to see if more bodies could be found.
Insurgents often target Iraqi security forces, which are being recruited and trained by the US-led coalition as part of its exit strategy in Iraq. An estimated 1,800 Iraqi soldiers and police officers were killed between June last year and April 27 this year, the latest date for which statistics were available, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
RSS