A series of five bomb attacks -- including two suicide car bombings -- in Kirkuk yesterday left more than 20 people dead and nearly 80 wounded, police said.
Meanwhile, a series of near simultaneous mortar and bomb attacks in Fallujah killed four people and wounded 10 in the center of the city and led to a vehicle curfew throughout the city.
A suicide truck bomb exploded in the morning in the center of the northern city of Kirkuk, 290km north of Baghdad, killing 18 and wounding 55, said police Brigadier Sarhat Qadir. A few hours later, a suicide car bomb rammed into a joint US-Iraqi army patrol in the south of the city, killing at least three bystanders and wounding eight others, he said.
PHOTO: AP
Two roadside bombs later targeted police patrols in separate parts of the city. One killed two civilians and wounded four, while the second wounded three civilians, Qadir said.
Shortly afterward, a parked car bomb exploded near the house of a Waasif al-Obeidi, a Sunni sheik, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding eight people -- two guards and six bystanders, Qadir said.
Al-Obeidi, the deputy head of the al-Obeidi tribe, was not in his house at the time.
In the truck suicide bombing, a gunman in the truck opened fire on civilians before the vehicle exploded near the city's criminal court and the headquarters of two main Kurdish political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Qadir said.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is run by Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, while the president of Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, runs the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb detonated in the center of Fallujah, 65km west of Baghdad, followed a few minutes later by a car bomb attack and a blast from an explosives-rigged motorcycle in separate areas of the city. All three attacks targeted police patrols, police Lieutenant Mohammed Ismail said.
The attacks killed a total of four people, including two policemen, and wounded 10 others, including four policemen, he said. He would not provide details of which attack the casualties resulted from.
Shortly afterward, a mortar round hit the area of a US and Iraqi police base in the center of the city, and clashes erupted between gunmen and police nearby. Another mortar fell on an Iraqi army base in western Fallujah but did not cause any casualties, Ismail said.
Meanwhile, the bullet-riddled bodies of four unidentified men were found in separate neighborhoods in east Baghdad yesterday. All were blindfolded and had their hands and legs tied, the police said.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS