BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber in a minibus struck a military base in the Iraqi town of Taji on Monday, killing at least 19 people in the latest attack by insurgents trying to undermine the government.
It was the third major attack in the last five days and underscored the fragile state of Iraqi security as Washington pulls its remaining 14,500 troops out by the year-end, nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
The attacker detonated a minibus packed with explosives at the entrance to the base, which houses a jail holding al-Qaida, Mehdi Army militia and other prisoners, officials and security sources said. Taji is 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad.
"Today was the day for the prisoners to meet their families ... at the entrance, there was a minibus driven by a suicide bomber," said a duty officer at the jail. "It entered from the first checkpoint and before the police finished their search this guy drove quickly inside the base and blew it up.
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KOCHI: Italian merchant ship Enrica Lexie, which was involved in the shooting down of two fishermen off Kerala coast on Wednesday, has been escorted to the Kochi port on Friday, by the Coast Guard and Navy. KOCHI: The firing by crew of the Italian merchant vessel that left two Indian fishermen dead was an "error of judgement", the Coast Guard said on Friday. The vessel, Enrica Lexie, had not reported the incident. It was the coastal police at Neendakara in Kollam district which reported the incident to the Coast Guard and search operations were launched, Inspector General S P S Basra, Regional Commander of Coast Guard Region (West), told reporters here. The vessel was in the Indian Exclusive Zone when the incident occurred on Wednesday, he said. "It was an error of judgement on the part of the vessel", he said, adding, firing on unarmed fishermen was not correct. "They (Italian vessel) had taken some time to accept the case. FIR has been registered and police was investigating the case," he said when asked about the reported delay in taking action against the erring vessel. On the explanation by the Italian vessel that they had opened fire suspecting the fishermen to be pirates, he said, "Any incident of piracy has to be immediately reported to the Coast Guard. BAGHDAD: The US Navy says four commercial ships anchored near the southern oil hub of Basra have been robbed in a rare attack off the Iraqi coast. Lt. John Fage, a spokesman for the Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, said Sunday that two men armed with AK-47 rifles boarded the American ship Sagamore a week ago. He says the assailants took computers, cell phones and money from crew members before fleeing the vessel after about 40 minutes on board. He says three other ships were attacked in a two-hour period starting about 2am on August 8. Fage identified those ships as the Antigua-flagged Armenia, the North Korean Crystal Wave and the Syrian Sana Star. The attack reflects concerns about an increase in crime in Iraq even as political violence ebbs. |
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