Baghdad, Iraq – A suspected al-Qaeda suicide bomber rammed a speeding gasoline truck into an Iraqi army checkpoint outside the capital Saturday, killing at least 14 soldiers as militants hammered the country’s shaky security forces.
The terrorism campaign against Iraqi troops and police appears designed to blunt U.S. progress in creating a stable local force so the Americans can go home. U.S. military officers began noticing the new pattern of attacks last month.
In Iraq’s first confirmation of Turkey’s cross-border shelling of Kurdish regions in the north of the country, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry summoned the second-ranking Turkish diplomat to protest and demand an end to the attacks.
The shelling served to “undermine confidence between the two nations and negatively affect their friendship,” according to the Foreign Ministry’s website.
Turkey has massed troops along the Iraq border, and there has been scattered shelling of suspected separatist enclaves in Iraq’s Kurdish-controlled regions. There were unconfirmed and conflicting reports that Turkish soldiers had crossed the border in “hot pursuit” late last week.
Turkish politicians and members of the powerful military are debating whether to launch a major incursion against separatist Kurds who cross into southeastern Turkey from bases in Iraq. A Turkish push into Iraq is fraught with the danger of igniting a wider conflict that could draw in Iraqi Kurds and the United States.
In southern Iraq, an apparent rocket attack at the U.S.-run Camp Bucca military prison killed at least six detainees and wounded 50, the military said. No American casualties were reported.
The U.S. oversees more than 20,000 inmates at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and Camp Cropper, near Baghdad’s airport.
The suspected al-Qaeda bomber launched his attack near the gate of an army unit’s headquarters near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the capital, police spokesman Capt. Muthanna Khalid said. Twenty-nine people were wounded.
Amir al-Saadi, a 40-year-old vendor who works nearby, said: “The explosion was huge and caused the building to collapse.”
A total of 73 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on Saturday, 24 of them bodies dumped in Baghdad.
