NEWS

The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 15, 2005 - 5A

-IRAQ
Continued from page 1A
Sunni people of Tal Afar began yes-
terday," said the al-Qaida statement
posted on a militant Web site. Its
authenticity could not be confirmed.
It was unclear why the statement
referred to "yesterday."
The audiotape was posted later
yesterday. The speaker, introduced
as al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, said his
militant forces would attack any
Iraqi they believe has cooperated
with the Tal Afar offensive.
"If proven that any of (Iraq's)
national guards, police or army are
agents of the Crusaders, they will
be killed and
his house will "If proven ti
demolished or
burned - after of (Iraq's) n
evacuating all
women and chil- guards, poi
dren - as a pun-
ishment," the army are a

will not welcome them," he said.
"This is an horrific act of terror that
hurts innocent civilians and needs to
be condemned clearly and unequivo-
cally," State Department ,spokesman
Adam Ereli said. He also called it
"another case of people with no more
agenda other than to kill, main and
destroy."
Speaking before al-Qaida's claim of
responsibility, a senior American mil-
itary official forecast the claim, telling
The Associated Press he believed the
rash of bombings was in retaliation for
Tal Afar.
The officer, who spoke on condition
of anonymity because of the sensitiv-
ity of the situation, said the Tal Afar

hat any
rational
ice or
gents of
ers, they
°d ... "
mari al-Zarqawi
i al-Qaida leader

speaker said.
But most of the
victims Wednes-
day were civil-
ians.
At Baghdad's
Kazimiyah Hos-
pital, dozens
of wounded men

the Crusad
will be kille
- Ay
Iraqi

sweep had dam-
aged the insurgency,
which he said was
made up of about
20 percent foreign
fighters.
"Al-Qaida in Iraq
lost basically a base
area and transit point
coming across the
Syrian border. That
will severely inhibit
their operations at
least in the short
term," the officer
said.


lay on stretchers

and gurneys, their bandages and
clothes soaked in blood. One older
man in a traditional Arab gown and
checkered head scarf sat in a plastic
chair, his blood-soaked underwear
exposed and a trail of dried blood
snaking down his legs.
As the hours ticked by, at least 11
other car or roadside bombs shat-
tered what had been a few days
of relative calm in Baghdad. Two
mortar attacks were reported and
a multitude of gunbattles broke out
between U.S. and Iraqi forces and
insurgent attackers.
In addition Wednesday, attackers
killed 17 men - including Iraqi driv-
ers and construction workers for the
U.S. military - in a Sunni village
north of Baghdad before dawn. That
raised the death toll in and around the
capital Wednesday to 177. A senior
Health Ministry official said 570 peo-
ple were wounded in all.
At least six attacks targeted U.S.
forces, Iraqi authorities said. The U.S.
military said there were four direct
attacks on Americans, with 10 sol-
diers wounded. No U.S. deaths were
reported.
Al-Jaafari, in the United States for
the annual U.N. General Assembly
meeting, expressed "his personal sor-
row for the victims of the attacks," his
office said.
In Dearborn, Mich., a Detroit sub-
urb with a large Iraqi population, al-
Jaafari vowed to fight back. "Those
criminals will not run away from our
justice system. Our cities, our villages

U.S. commanders have said the
Tal Afar operation netted more than
400 suspected militants. Officials
said Monday the insurgent death toll
in three days of fighting in Tal Afar
totaled 200.
Wednesday's blasts coincided with
Iraqi lawmakers announcing the coun-
try's draft constitution was in its final
form and would be sent to the United
Nations for printing and distribution
ahead of the referendum. Sunni Arabs,
who form up the core of the insurgen-
cy, have vowed to defeat the charter.
The carnage was believed to have
produced the second-worst one-day
death toll since the U.S.-led invasion
in March 2003. On March 2, 2004,
coordinated blasts from suicide bomb-
ers, mortars and planted explosives hit
Shiite shrines in Karbala and Bagh-
dad, killing at least 181 and wounding
573.
The bomb that hit as laborers gath-
ered in Kazimiyah was the single
deadliest in the country since Feb. 28,
when a suicide car bomber targeted
Shiite police and National Guard
recruits, killing 125 people in Hillah,
60 miles south of Baghdad.
The attack was the second trag-
edy in the Kazimiyah district in two
weeks. On Aug. 31, about 950 people
were killed during a bridge stampede
as tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims
headed to a nearby shrine.
Wednesday's slayings of 17 men
came overnight after gunmen wearing
military uniforms surrounded Taji,
a Sunni village 10 miles north of
Baghdad, police said.

Most middle-aged Chinese
die from heart disease, cancer


(AP) - Heart disease, cancer and
stroke are now the top killers of middle-
aged people in China, fueled by high
blood pressure and smoking, which
have developed alongside the commu-
nist country's economy, according to one
of the largest surveys of its kind.
The research into the major causes of
death in adults found that over the past 45
years, China has undergone a huge health
transition. Infectious disease has been
replaced by the same chronic killers that
plague the West.
The findings from the study of nearly
170,000 Chinese men and women over
age 40 showed that about two-thirds of
the 20,033 people who died during that
time were killed by heart disease, cancer
or stroke. The conclusions were based on
medical data collected in 1991 with fol-
lowup evaluations in 1999 and 2000.
Of those deaths involving people in
their 40s to mid-60s - prime working
years - Chinese mortality rates from
each of the three categories topped deaths
among the same age group in the United
States, according to the study.
"We are very surprised by this finding,"

said lead co-author Jiang He of Tulane
University's Department of Epidemi-
ology in New Orleans. "This study
indicates that chronic disease is not
only (the) leading cause of death in
wealthy countries, but also (in) devel-
oping countries, such as China."
The results, published in Thursday's
New England Journal of Medicine, back
up what Robert Beaglehole, the World
Health Organization's director of chronic
diseases, has known for a long time.
"I think it's probably exactly what it was
like in the United States a couple decades
ago," he said of China's health situation.
" ...When it was apparent that young
people in the prime of their lives were
dropping down dead from heart attacks (in
the U.S.), it drew attention to the problem
which had sort of a human impact as well
as an economic impact."
Beaglehole said the health transition
occurred gradually as China became
more prosperous: More people migrated
from farms into cities, physical activ-
ity decreased, eating habits changed and
smoking increased.
The findings also revealed more deaths

occurred from the top three chronic
diseases in China's rural areas than
in cities, indicating the problem
is widespread. Beaglehole urged
China to learn from the struggles of
wealthier countries and to develop a
strategy to combat chronic diseases,
while still addressing high-profile
infectious diseases like AIDS and
bird flu.
"You can't just do one or the
other. You now have to start focus-
ing on both and start getting the
right balance," he said by telephone
from Geneva. "I think it's true that-
many countries have neglected the
chronic disease side of the balance
for too long."
The study found that Chinese men
are slightly more at risk than women,
with 68.7 percent of male participants
dying from the top three killers com-
pared to 62.6 percent of females.
High blood pressure was the top
preventable contributing factor to the
deaths, followed by cigarette smok-
ing, physical inactivity and being
underweight.

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