A man wielding an axe wounds 3 people at the Assyrian Christian new year parade in Iraq

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A man wielding an axe wounds 3 people at the Assyrian Christian new year parade in Iraq

2025-04-02 12:52 Last Updated At：13:00

DOHUK, Iraq (AP) — The annual parade by Assyrian Christians in the Iraqi city of Dohuk to mark their new year was marred Tuesday when an axe-wielding man attacked the procession and wounded three people, witnesses and local officials said.

The parade, held every year on April 1, drew thousands of Assyrians from Iraq and across the diaspora, who marched through Dohuk in northern Iraq waving Assyrian flags and wearing colorful traditional clothes.

Witnesses said the attacker, who has not been officially identified, ran toward the crowd shouting Islamic slogans.

He struck three people with the axe before being stopped by participants and security forces. Videos circulated online showed him pinned to the ground, repeatedly shouting, “Islamic State, the Islamic State remains.”

A 17-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman suffered skull fractures. A member of the local security forces, who was operating a surveillance drone, was also wounded. All three were hospitalized, local security officials said.

At the hospital where her 17-year-old son Fardi was being treated after suffering a skull injury, Athraa Abdullah told The Associated Press that her son had come with his friends in buses. He was sending photos from the celebrations shortly before his friends called to say he had been attacked, she said.

Abdullah, whose family was displaced when Islamic State militants swept into their area in 2014, said, “We were already attacked and displaced by ISIS, and today we faced a terrorist attack at a place we came to for shelter.”

Janet Aprem Odisho, whose 75-year-old mother Yoniyah Khoshaba was wounded, said she and her mother were shopping near the parade when the attack happened.

“He was running at us with an axe,” she said. “All I remember is that he hit my mother, and I ran away when she fell. He had already attacked a young man who was bleeding in the street, then he tried to attack more people.”

Her family, originally from Baghdad, was also displaced by past violence and now lives in Ain Baqre village near the town of Alqosh.

Assyrians faced a wave of hate speech and offensive comments on social media following the attack.

Ninab Yousif Toma, a political bureau member of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), condemned the regional government in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region and asked Iraqi federal authorities to address extremist indoctrination.

“We request both governments to review the religious and education curriculums that plant hate in people’s heads and encourage ethnic and religious extremism,” he said. “This was obviously an inhumane terrorist attack.”

However, he said that the Assyrian community had celebrated their new year, known as Akitu, in Duhok since the 1990s without incidents of violence and acknowledged the support of local Kurdish Muslim residents.

“The Kurds in Duhok serve us water and candy even when they are fasting for Ramadan. This was likely an individual, unplanned attack, and it will not scare our people,” he said, adding that the community was waiting for the results of the official investigation and planned to file an official lawsuit.

“The Middle East is governed by religion, and as minorities, we suffer double because we are both ethnically and religiously different from the majority,” he said. “But we have a cause, and we marched today to show that we have existed here for thousands of years. This attack will not stop our people.”

Despite the attack, Assyrians continued the celebrations of the holiday, which symbolizes renewal and rebirth in Assyrian culture as well as resilience and continuous existence as an indigenous group.

At one point, as the injured teenager was rushed to the hospital, some participants wrapped his head in an Assyrian flag, which was later lifted again in the parade — stained with blood but held high as a symbol of resilience.

US electric vehicle industry is collateral damage in Trump's escalating trade war

2025-04-04 18:51 Last Updated At：19:01

DETROIT (AP) — President Donald Trump's tariff blitz has sent shock waves throughout every aspect of the global economy, including the auto sector, where multi-billion-dollar plans to electrify in the United States are especially at risk.

Here's what consumers should know about the impact of tariffs on electric vehicles.

EVs accounted for about 8% of new car sales in the U.S. in 2024, according to Motorintelligence.com.

Some of those sales can be attributed to expanded tax credits for EV purchases, a Biden-era policy that spurred car buyer interest.

Tesla held a majority of U.S. EV market share in 2024, at 48%. But that share has declined in recent years, as brands including Ford (7.5%), Chevrolet (5.2%) and Hyundai (4.7%) began to offer a wider variety of electric models at better price points, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Electric vehicles remain more expensive than their gasoline-powered equivalents. New gas vehicles sold for $48,039 on average last month, Kelly Blue Book data says, while EVs sold for $55,273 on average.

Tariffs add on to the costs of an EV transition that was already volatile and uncertain, said Vanessa Miller, a litigation partner focused on automotive manufacturing at law firm Foley & Lardner.

Biden’s tax credits essentially required automakers to get more and more of their EV content from the U.S. or trade allies over the coming years in order for their vehicles to qualify. Automakers have worked to build an EV supply chain across the country and significant investment has gone toward these efforts.

EVs assembled here include Tesla models, the Ford F-150 Lightning and more. Tesla actually might be least vulnerable given how much of its vehicles come from the U.S.

Though the industry is growing, tariffs mean costs for automakers and their buyers will stay high and might go higher, as well as hike up the prices of the many parts of EVs still coming from China and elsewhere. From the critical minerals used in battery production to the vehicles themselves, China laps the U.S. industry.

Automakers were already pulling back on ambitious electrification plans amid shrinking federal support and are strapped for cash on what is the less lucrative side of their businesses.

Higher prices might push car buyers to the used car market, but they aren't likely to find much respite there.

If consumers don't buy as many vehicles, automakers will have to prioritize their investments and manufacturing. That means the cars that buyers want and that are most profitable. Automakers still lose thousands of dollars on each EV they make and sell, but they make money from big, popular gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs.

These manufacturers “have put a certain amount of investment into EVs, and it would probably be even more wasteful to completely walk away from them than it is to find the new level at which it makes sense to maintain production of them," said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at auto research site iSeeCars.com. That level “will assuredly be lower than what it was,” he added.

Making fewer EVs won’t help bring their cost down further anytime soon.

Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, said in a statement the EV and battery sector is working to ensure that the American auto industry grows and that his group will work with the administration on productive trade policy.

“Tariffs on our longstanding trade partners, many of whom have committed billions in direct investment into U.S. factories, introduces uncertainty and risk into an industry that is creating jobs and bringing new economic opportunities to communities across the country,” Gore said.

Trump has already taken a hatchet to federal EV policy. He campaigned on a vow to end what he called former President Joe Biden’s “EV mandate.”

Biden’s EV policies did not require automakers to sell EVs or consumers to buy them, but they did incentivize manufacturers to increase their electric offerings in the coming years. Trump put an end to Biden’s target for 50% of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2035 in his first days in office.

Also under Biden, Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rules on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy were to get increasingly tougher, but could be met by automakers selling a growing number of EVs alongside more fuel-efficient gasoline-powered vehicles. Trump's administrators are already reevaluating emissions standards.

He's also likely to seek to repeal the tax credits.

Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

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