Newsmax:
43 Dead in Attacks Targeting Iraqi Security Forces
Wednesday, 25 Aug 2010
Bombers and gunmen launched an apparently coordinated string of attacks against Iraqi government forces on Wednesday, killing at least 43 people a day after the number of U.S. troops fell below 50,000 for the first time since the start of the war.
The violence highlighted persistent fears about the ability of Iraqi troops to protect their own country as the American military starts to leave.
There were no claims of responsibility for the spate of attacks. But their scale and reach, from one end of the country to the other, underscored insurgent efforts to prove their might against security forces and political leaders who are charged with the day-to-day running and stability of Iraq.
The deadliest attack came in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber blew up a car inside a security barrier between a police station and the provincial government's headquarters. Police and hospital officials said 16 people were killed, all but one of them policemen. An estimated 90 people were wounded.
An eerily similar attack came hours earlier in a north Baghdad neighborhood, where a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb in a parking lot behind a police station.
Fifteen people were killed in that attack, including six policemen. Police and hospital officials said another 58 were wounded in the explosion that left a crater three yards wide and trapped people beneath the rubble of felled houses nearby.
"We woke up to the sound of this powerful explosion that shook the area," said resident Abu Ahmed, 35. "I searched for victims in the destroyed houses and evacuated seven dead children and some women."
Four others, including an Iraqi soldier and a police officer, were killed in small bursts of violence in Baghdad.
A senior Iraqi intelligence official raised the possibility that some of the attackers had inside help. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the Baghdad suicide bombing carried the hallmarks of al-Qaida, but said unnamed political factions helped coordinate some of the other attacks. He refused to elaborate.
Since Iraq's March 7 elections failed to produce a clear winner, U.S. officials have feared that competing political factions could spur widespread violence. Iraqi leaders so far have tried to end the political impasse peacefully.
But U.S. and Iraqi officials alike acknowledge growing frustration throughout the nation, nearly six months after the vote, and say that politically motivated violence could undo security gains made during the past few years.
"What is going on in the country?" said Abu Mohammed, an eyewitness to a car bombing near Baghdad's Adan Square that killed two passers-by. "Where is the protection, where are the security troops?"
Still, some security forces proved to be on guard. Police in the northern city of Mosul said Iraqi soldiers shot and killed a suicide bomber Wednesday afternoon as he sought to blow up his car outside an army base.
From the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk to the holy Shiite shrine town of Karbala, scattered bombings killed and wounded scores more. They included:
- A local council building in Muqdadiyah, north of the capital, was hit with a car bomb. Three people were killed and 18 wounded, said Diyala police spokesman Maj. Ghalib al-Karkhi.
- In the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, police said a soldier was killed and 10 people wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-packed car into an Iraqi army convoy.
- Car bombs in Kirkuk, Iskandariyah, and Dujail killed three and wounded 11. A roadside bomb in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, killed a policeman on patrol and wounded another.
- A car bomb near police station in Karbala wounded 28 people but no fatalities were immediately reported. Two people in the southern port city of Basra were also injured by a car bomb.
- Isis Begins Attack On Bagdad - Lobbing Mortar Shells Into Green Zone
From Ace: In a bad sign for the future of security in Baghdad, ISIS forces are apparently close enough to the center of the Iraqi capital that they are firing mortars which are landing inside the heavily fortified Green Zone. Officials in Baghdad...
-
RTTNews: Christian Woman Who Survived Iraq Church Massacre Killed In Militant Attack (RTTNews) - A survivor of the Christian church massacre in Iraq two months ago was killed in the continuing spree of violence targeting the community in the country....
-
Fox News: 60 Killed in Bomb Attack on Iraqi Army Recruits BAGHDAD -- A homicide bomber blew himself up Tuesday among hundreds of army recruits who had gathered near a military headquarters in an attack officials said killed 60 and wounded 125, one of...
-
Newsmax: Son Kills Father Who Translated for US in Iraq Friday, 18 Jun 2010 08:50 PM An al-Qaida-linked insurgent shot and killed his own father as he slept in his bed Friday for refusing to quit his job as an Iraqi interpreter for the U.S. military,...
- Coordinated Blasts In Baghdad Kill At Least 112
Fox: Coordinated Blasts in Baghdad Kill at Least 112 BAGHDAD — A series of coordinated attacks struck Baghdad Tuesday, including three car bombs that blew up near government sites. At least 112 were killed and 197 wounded in the worst wave of violence...