A member of an extremist cell believed to be behind a suicide attack that killed more than 20 people including three US Marines has been arrested, the US military said on Friday.
US spokesmen said it was unclear if the suspect, who was not identified, was directly involved in planning the attack on Thursday in the town of Karmah, Anbar Province, about 48km west of Baghdad.
A suicide bomber reportedly dressed in a police uniform detonated an explosive belt during a meeting of tribal sheiks opposed to al-Qaeda in Iraq. In addition to the Marines, two Iraqi interpreters, the local mayor and several key tribal figures were killed.
DELAYS
The attack occurred two days before US officials planned to formally hand over security responsibility for Anbar to the Iraqis, marking a major milestone in the transformation of a province that had been the most violent in Iraq.
US authorities said on Friday they were postponing a handover ceremony because of weather forecasts calling for high winds and sandstorms, which would ground aircraft and make it impossible for dignitaries to attend.
Lieutenant Colonel Chris Hughes, spokesman for US forces in Anbar, said the US had been planning to delay the ceremony based on weather forecasts before Thursday’s attack.
Anbar, which extends from the western outskirts of Baghdad to the borders of Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, will be the 10th of Iraq’s 18 provinces to return to Iraqi security control. The other nine provinces are dominated by Shiites or Kurds.
DEPLOYMENTS
Meanwhile, the US Department of Defense said it was preparing to order about 30,000 troops to Iraq early next year in a move that would allow it to maintain 15 combat brigades in the country through next year.
The deployments would replace troops currently there. But the decisions could change depending on whether General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, should decide in the fall to further reduce troop levels in Iraq.
Several officials familiar with the deployments spoke on condition of anonymity because the orders have not yet been made public.
The officials said three active-duty Army brigade combat teams, one Army National Guard brigade and two Marine regimental combat teams, are being notified that they are being sent to Iraq early next year.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS