Iran angrily blamed the US on Friday after at least three of its diplomats were wounded in a Baghdad shooting, saying the US was encouraging attacks on Iranians in Iraq.
The shooting — which may have been by Iraqi soldiers during an argument at a checkpoint — comes amid unprecedented strains between Iran and the Iraqi government, which has long been close to Tehran.
In recent weeks, Iranian officials have complained that Iraq’s Shiite-dominated leadership is bowing too much to Washington. The tensions have been fueled in part by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s crackdowns in the past two months against Shiite militiamen that the US accuses Iran of backing, a claim Tehran denies.
The shooting occurred on Thursday as the Iranians’ convoy approached a bridge leading to a revered Shiite shrine in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah.
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official said Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint on the bridge exchanged fire with the convoy’s guards in an argument that broke out when most of the Iranians failed to produce identification cards.
Iranian Embassy spokesman Manoucher Taslimi said he did not know who the gunmen were. Taslimi said two Iranian diplomats, another Iranian and an Iraqi administrative employee were wounded and were now in stable condition.
The ministry official said five people were wounded.
Lieutenant David Russell, a US. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the Iraqi army had found four wounded Iranians in a vehicle with an Iraqi driver. The discrepancy in numbers could not immediately be reconciled.
In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini blasted the US, saying its harsh rhetoric against Iran fuels attacks on Iranians. US statements “encourage inhuman behavior by occupiers and terrorist groups active in Iraq,” he said.
“Responsibility for providing security to diplomats as well as diplomatic and international bodies in Iraq rests with the occupiers. The suspicious behavior of US forces in security issues has brought increasing insecurity in Iraq,” he said in a statement.
Hosseini said Iran will pursue the case with Iraqi government officials.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS