A number of large explosions shook the outskirts of Baghdad shortly before dusk today, according to the latest reports.
Reuters correspondent Khaled Yacoub Oweis said he could hear jets flying over the city, and that about five large blasts were then heard in the distance. Iraqi soldiers have been lighting oil-filled trenches around Baghdad following the daylight raids, further reports said.
As Iraqi officials claimed 207 injured and three killed in last night’s heavy bombardment of the city, further explosions were heard in the Iraq capital and black smoke could be seen over the city. This time reports say that there was no air raid warning ahead of the strikes.
Journalist killed in northern Iraq
One journalist has been killed and nine other people injured in a car explosion in northern Iraq.
Kurdish officials are saying that an Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam group, which has been linked with al-Qaeda, is responsible.
The car bomb exploded outside the village of Khurmal close to the border of Iran.
Four US soldiers killed in cenral Iraq
Four US servicemen have been killed in central Iraq following a rocket-propelled grenade attack.
The reports from Reuters news agency quote Sky TV’s Colin Brazier, saying that the soldiers were ambushed while driving Humvee jeeps at the head of a column.
”Rocket-propelled grenades were fired, one at each Humvee, [they] killed both sets of occupants,” said Brazier, who was travelling with the soldiers.
”There was a position we were heading to for refuelling at about the same time — it was clearly a coordinated attack … that came under mortar fire,” he added.
”The RPG position has been cleared already … In fact, there was the extraordinary sight of local people actually pointing out some of those positions that were being fired from,” he said.
General Franks talks of war objectives
US General Tommy Franks announced in a 2pm news conference that the main objective of military action in Iraq was to end the regime of Saddam Hussein and then to identify and eliminate weapons of mass destruction.
Outlining the seven objectives of US action he went onto say that the third and fourth objectives were to capture and drive out terrorists and to collect weapons related to terrorist networks.
He added that the action was also aimed at ending sanctions and delivering human support. Objectives seven and eight were to secure Iraq’s oilfields and then to help the Iraqi people create conditions for transition to self-government.
”We gave Saddam Hussein the choice to give up weapons of mass destruction or lose power,” he said. ”He chose unwisely and now he will lose both.”
Coalition forces have found weapons, ammunition and explosives in Iraq, added US military spokesman Vince Brooks this afternoon, going on to describe the explosives as ”not meant as defenders”.
He said that following the destruction of outposts US and British troops had begun looking for weapons of mass destruction.
Using video footage he showed the destruction of the outposts on the border of Iraq by coalition forces and the destruction of a patrol boat from the air.
He said only nine out of Iraq’s 500 oil wells had been sabotaged by Iraqi forces.
Anti-war protests held around the world
An anti-war protest in central London today is expected to attract tens of thousands of people from across the country. People have already begun to gather for the march which will converge on Hyde Park later today.
Organisers are hoping for more than half a million protesters to join the demonstration. Elsewhere in the world, there were protests in Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan, with several thousand people taking to the streets. There were further small demonstrations in New Zealand, South Korea and India.
In Seoul around 3,000 South Koreans demonstrated in resonse to the government’s decision to send 700 non-combatant soldiers to help the allied forces in Iraq.
The Pope made his first public statement since the war began, saying that ”when war threatens the fate of humanity it is even more urgent for us to proclaim with a firm and decisive voice that only peace is the way of building a more just and caring society”.
Speaking on religious tv station Telepace he said: ”Violence and weapons can never resolve the problems of man”. – Guardian Unlimited