US forces left a cordoned area around a house in the northern city of Mosul yesterday where eight suspected al-Qaeda members died in a gunfight last weekend, and the White House said it was "highly unlikely" that the terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.
North of the capital, Diyala provincial police said a car bomb targeting US Humvees killed five civilians and wounded 12 bystanders in the town of Kanan. At least 145 Iraqi civilians have died in a series of attacks over the last four days, including two bombings at Shiite mosques and another at a funeral in religiously mixed Diyala Province.
Attacks
PHOTO: AP
In Baghdad, three people, including one police officer, were killed by gunmen, police said.
Over the weekend a US soldier near the capital and a Marine in the western town of Karmah were killed in separate insurgent attacks, the military said. In the southern city of Basra, a British soldier was killed and four others wounded by a roadside bomb.
During the intense gunbattle with suspected al-Qaeda members on Saturday, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were also wounded, the US military said.
On Saturday, police Brigadier General Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaeda operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house.
However, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said Sunday that reports of al-Zarqawi's death were "highly unlikely and not credible." Eyewitnesses in Mosul said the US military, which had cordoned off the area around the two-story house, left the area early yesterday.
"We have no indication that Zarqawi was killed in this fight and we continue operations to search for him," said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesman.
The elusive al-Zarqawi has narrowly escaped capture in the past. US forces said they nearly caught him in a February 2005 raid that recovered his computer.
The US military also said on Sunday that 24 people -- including another Marine and 15 civilians -- were killed the day before in an ambush on a joint US-Iraqi patrol in Haditha, west of Baghdad in the volatile Euphrates River valley.
The three American deaths brought to at least 2,094 the number of US service members who have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.
Reconciliation
Meanwhile, in Cairo, Egypt, Iraq's president said on Sunday he was ready for talks with anti-government opposition figures and members of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, and he called on the Sunni-led insurgency to lay down its arms and join the political process.
But President Jalal Talabani, attending an Arab League-sponsored reconciliation conference, insisted that the Iraqi government would not meet with Baath Party members who are participating in the Sunni-led insurgency.
In Baghdad, hundreds of Sunnis on Sunday demanded an end to the torture of detainees and called for the international community to pressure Iraqi and US authorities to ensure that such abuse does not occur. Iraq's Shiite-led government has promised an investigation.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS