BAGHDAD — Five explosions targeting local police shook the capital within the span of an hour Wednesday morning, two days after Iraq’s leaders requested that at least 5,000 U.S. military trainers remain into 2012 to advise the country’s fledgling security forces.
The bombs, set off across the city, killed at least 22 people and injured more than 70, many of them police officers. It was the bloodiest day in Baghdad since Aug. 28, when a suicide bomber killed 28 people at the city’s largest Sunni mosque.
Car bombs rocked two police stations between 8 and 8:30 a.m. after two suicide bombers drove separate cars to the entrances of stations in Hurriyah, in northwest Baghdad, and Karrada, in the western part of downtown. Fourteen people were killed in Karrada and four in Hurriyah, according to the Interior Ministry. Sirens blared and Iraqi army helicopters circled as smoke plumed from the blast site in Karrada, The Associated Press reported.
Local police, whose capability and readiness have been questioned by U.S. and Iraqi officials, are constant targets for insurgents aiming to destabilize Iraq as the American military rapidly withdraws its forces.
In a meeting with Iraqi journalists Monday, President Jalal Talabani said Iraq’s political blocs have agreed that 5,000 or more U.S. military trainers are required to assist the country’s local and national security forces. Iraq will not, however, grant immunity from prosecution to military trainers who stay past the Dec. 31 expiration of the countries’ security agreements.
Both the U.S. military and the U.S. Embassy declined Wednesday to comment on the number, although it is within the upper range of figures discussed in the past.
Earlier Wednesday, a sticky bomb detonated on the car of Brig. Gen. Ali Abboud as he was driving in the northern neighborhood of Selaikh, seriously injuring him. A bomb in a parked car exploded in the Ilam neighborhood in southern Baghdad as a police patrol passed a gathering of day laborers. Three civilians were killed.
At 8:45 a.m., another bomb in a parked car under Khattib Bridge in Hurriyah killed one person and injured 12. It was believed to have targeted a police brigadier general. At 9 a.m., security forces identified and disposed of an explosive charge near the main entrance to the Ministry of Interior in eastern Baghdad, after an officer on the nearby Muhammed al-Qasim Bridge noticed a man dropping off a suspicious plastic bag.
Car bombs, assassinations and collateral civilian deaths continue to be a daily occurrence in Iraq as U.S. troop numbers shrink from 41,500 service members and the State Department races to transform the mission into a diplomatic one using an estimated 16,000 civilians.
