Iraq bomber kills 20 as Sunni militants clash
Pastor Dale Morgan
Friday June 1, 5:54 AM Reuters
*Iraq bomber kills 20 as Sunni militants clash*
By Fadhil al-Badrani
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed up to 20 men queuing
at a police recruitment centre west of Baghdad on Thursday, police said,
and al Qaeda militants battled a rival Sunni Arab faction in the south
of the capital.
Police and hospital officials said 20 people had been killed and at
least 20 more wounded in the Falluja bombing, but the U.S. military said
only one policeman had been killed.
The deaths of three more U.S. soldiers were announced on the last day of
May, already the deadliest month for U.S. forces in more than two years.
A total of 3,473 have died since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, 122 of
them in May.
U.S. President George W. Bush has committed nearly 30,000 additional
troops for a major security crackdown aimed at averting all-out
sectarian war, but he is coming under growing domestic pressure to bring
the soldiers home.
Bush told Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Washington he was committed
to helping the Iraqi government meet important objectives.
"We call them benchmarks, political laws necessary to show the Iraqi
citizens that there is a unified government willing to work for the
interest of all people," Bush told reporters.
Bush said the laws included oil-revenue sharing legislation and a
de-Baathification law and efforts to organise provincial elections.
In Baghdad, the Iraqi government said it was working closely with
British authorities to secure the release of five Britons kidnapped from
a government building on Tuesday in a raid blamed on the Mehdi Army
militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno, the deputy U.S. commander in Iraq,
said U.S. troops continued to search for the Britons, a computer expert
and his four bodyguards.
On Wednesday, soldiers hunting for the hostages used armoured vehicles
to smash their way into homes in Sadr City, a Mehdi Army stronghold.
EXPLOSIVES VEST
The Falluja suicide bomber, wearing a vest packed with explosives,
walked up to a queue of about 150 young recruits as they waited outside
a police station and blew himself up, police spokesman Hamid Abid said.
An Iraqi al Qaeda-led group, the Islamic State in Iraq, said one of its
fighters carried out the bombing. It said on a Web site used by
insurgents that he used a car bomb.
Bilal Mohammed, a doctor at Falluja hospital, said 20 had been killed
and 20 wounded.
Recruitment centres for Iraqi security forces are common targets for
such attacks, which are mostly blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.
Falluja, 50 km (35 miles) west of Baghdad, is in restive Anbar province,
a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency.
Some Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar have been encouraging young men to join
the Iraqi security forces as part of a new strategy to combat al Qaeda
in the area. Al Qaeda in return has responded by attacking those it
accuses of cooperating with authorities.
In Ramadi, capital of Anbar, a suicide truck bomber killed five and
wounded 15 in an attack on a mobile telephone communications centre.
Anbar remains one of the main battlegrounds for U.S. forces, who have
also poured thousands of extra soldiers into Baghdad in an attempt to
quell violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs once
dominant under Saddam Hussein.
Al Qaeda is waging a campaign of bombings against Sunni Arab tribes who
have formed an alliance against them in Anbar. The Sunni insurgent group
the Islamic Army in Iraq also opposes al Qaeda's indiscriminate killings.
On Thursday militants from the two groups turned the streets of Amiriya
in southwestern Baghdad into a battleground, residents said. Frightened
residents gave varying death tolls. Many fled on foot and merchants
shuttered their shops.
(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin, Aseel Kami and Mussab Al-Khairalla
in Baghdad)