Baghdad – The U.S. military on
Sunday announced the deaths of seven more troops in Iraq, including
four killed by a roadside bomb while patrolling western Baghdad –
the latest American casualties in a monthlong security crackdown in
the capital.
Though violence has receded slightly in the capital, a car bomb
killed seven Iraqis in a predominantly Shiite district on Sunday,
police said. The attack targeted people cooking food at open-air
grills in the street, to offer as charity on a Shiite Muslim
holiday. Police said 26 people were wounded.
A U.S. official, meanwhile, blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for chlorine
bomb attacks that struck villagers in Anbar province earlier this
week but said tight Iraqi security measures prevented a higher
number of casualties.
Three suicide bombers driving trucks rigged with tanks of toxic
chlorine gas struck targets in the insurgent stronghold including
the office of a Sunni tribal leader opposed to al-Qaida. The attacks
killed at least two people and sickened 350 Iraqi civilians and six
U.S. troops, the U.S. military said Saturday.
U.S. military spokesman Adm. Mark Fox said at least one of the
attackers detonated his explosives after he was unable to get past
an Iraqi police checkpoint in Amiriyah, just south of Fallujah,
killing only himself. Fox conceded that many Iraqis were exposed to
the chemical fumes but insisted that steps Iraqi security forces
were increasingly effective “Insurgent attempts to create
high-profile carnage are being stopped at checkpoints across the
country,” he said at a news conference in Baghdad.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh appealed to Iraqis to
help stop the violence.
“Opportunity is still available to all honest Iraqis to rescue this
country from the criminals,” he said at a joint news conference with
Fox. “The chlorine attack was a kind of punishment against the
people who stood against terrorist organizations.” There is a
growing power struggle between insurgents and the growing number of
Sunnis who oppose them in Anbar, the center of the Sunni insurgency,
which stretches from Baghdad to the borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia
and Jordan. The Anbar assaults came three days after Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, traveled there, hoping to reach out to
Sunni clan chiefs and to undermine tribal support for the
insurgency.
After the explosion that killed four U.S. soldiers on Saturday, the
unit came under fire and another soldier was wounded. During this
months crackdown in the capital, the battalion had found eight
weapons caches and two roadside bombs and helped rescue a kidnap
victim, the military said.
An explosion in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad killed another
soldier Saturday and injured five. A sixth soldier died Saturday in
a non-combat related incident, the military said. A U.S. Marine also
was killed Saturday in fighting in Anbar, according to a separate
statement.
Saturday’s deaths brought to at least 3,217 members of the U.S.
military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003,
according to an Associated Press count.
A Web video surfaced Sunday showing an alleged insurgent crawling
under a U.S. military vehicle in Iraq and purportedly planting
explosives in full daylight. Seconds later, the video cuts to an
explosion ripping the vehicle apart.
The footage was stamped with the emblem of the Islamic State of
Iraq, an al-Qaida-linked militant group that disavows Iraqs elected
government and seeks to establish Muslim law.
The video was posted on an Islamic Web site that frequently airs
insurgent messages, but its contents and authenticity could not be
independently verified.
The footage shows a man in beige pants and a dark sweatshirt,
crawling through mud puddles underneath a Bradley fighting vehicle
and hauling an object about two feet long. Then the video switches
to a wider view of the vehicle exploding in a ball of flames and
smoke.
A caption says the incident happened in western Anbar province, an
insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.
In violence Sunday, gunmen opened fire on a minibus carrying
civilians northeast of Baghdad, killing seven men and wounding four
others, police said. The attack occurred in Hibhib, just east of
Baqouba, in the area where al-Qaida in Iraqi leader Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike on June 7.
A roadside bomb also hit an Iraqi police convoy in eastern Baghdad,
killing two policemen and wounding five, authorities said.
Later, police said a mortar round landed near a house in central
Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding another.
In Shorja market, Baghdads most popular central shopping district,
a man tossed a grenade into a group of workers, police said. One
worker was killed and another was wounded. The suspect escaped
through an alley, they said.
The Shorja market, which has been attacked several times, was
turned into a pedestrian zone after a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown
began in Baghdad on Feb. 14.
An abandoned hotel exploded Sunday in an industrial area of
Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. Police said insurgents had
planted bombs in the three-story building and then detonated it at
dawn. Half of the building was destroyed.
Iraqi troops had taken over part of the buildings roof as a base,
police said. There were no reports of casualties.
In Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, fierce fighting erupted
between U.S. troops and elements of the Shiite Mahdi Army, police
said. There were no reports of casualties, and the U.S. military had
no immediate comment.
Eleven bodies were found – six in Baqouba, in Diwaniyah and four in
Mosul – many with signs of torture and all apparently victims of
sectarian killings.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said American troops captured 12
suspected militants Sunday in raids across Iraq, all accused of
plotting attacks on U.S. troops.
Fox, the U.S. military spokesman, also said Iraqi forces acting on
a tip found a huge weapons cache Friday on the outskirts of the
northern city of Mosul, including 1,800 pounds of bulk explosives.
He said the military was seeing “glimmers of good signs” in the
security sweep that began in mid-February to quell sectarian
violence in Baghdad.
