Violence across Iraq claims 59 lives
Pastor Dale Morgan
Monday May 7, 12:01 AM
*Violence across Iraq claims 59 lives*
Insurgent car bombers killed at least 37 people in Baghdad on Sunday,
shattering a short-lived lull in sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital
as 59 people died in a spate of attacks.
One blast alone killed 33 people and wounded 63 as shrapnel scythed
through a commercial street in the southwest neighbourhood on Bayaa, a
mainly Shiite area lying on one of the city's many dangerous sectarian
faultlines.
At the same time, further north in the Sunni city of Samarra, militants
assaulted a police station with a suicide van bomb and automatic fire,
killing 12 officers and triggering a bloody street battle with US forces.
Both attacks bore the hallmarks of Sunni insurgent factions, in
particular Al-Qaeda's Iraqi branch, which has reacted to a US-Iraq
security crackdown by unleashing a spate of deadly suicide bombings.
"The security situation is complex and challenging, our efforts may get
harder before life gets easier for the Iraqis," warned US military
spokesman Major General William Caldwell at a Baghdad news conference.
A 10-week-old security plan in Baghdad has substantially reduced murders
by sectarian death squads, US military spokesmen said, but has been
unable to stem the wave of deadly car bombs.
"The initial indications are the levels of murders and executions ... in
the city have gone down quite a bit," Caldwell said. "We are still
challenged, however, by the car bombs."
Nowhere was this more clear than in the shattered Bayaa commercial
street, where a row of shops had been devastated and the blast crater
was awash with blood and sewage.
"There is no checkpoint here to protect us," complained baker Abu Ali,
whose shop was demolished when the car bomb exploded outside in a
crowded area near a bus stop. "The government hasn't imposed its
security plan here."
A second car bomb exploded near another bus stop a short distance from
the public works ministry in west Baghdad, killing at least four people,
security sources said.
In Samarra, it was a larger van bomb that rammed the gates of a police
station and exploded, killing local police chief Colonel Jalil
al-Dulaimi and at least 11 of his men.
US soldiers at a nearby base responded to the attack, killing at least
two insurgents, and two American soldiers sustained minor wounds in an
ensuing firefight, an AFP correspondent in the camp reported.
Around a dozen seriously wounded Iraqi policemen were evacuated by
helicopter to a US hospital.
The Samarra attack was the third in four days against police bases
housing Sunni officers recruited by the government to fight the
Sunni-led insurgency after several Iraqi tribes switched their
allegiance to Baghdad.
Al-Qaeda has responded with deadly fury to the betrayal of its cause,
but both US commanders and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite-led
government believe it represents a turning point in the war.
In the capital, US and Iraqi special forces raided a building in the
Shiite radical militia bastion of Sadr City and called in air strikes.
American commanders said the raid was against an Iranian-backed Shiite
cell involved in assembling armour-piercing explosives of a kind that
has proved deadly against US troops. They said between eight and 10
gunmen were killed.
Although they did not find the Shiite militia commander they were
looking for, US forces did find 150 mortar rounds and an interrogation
room in one building, prompting them to destroy it.
"They found a room that clearly had bloodstains in it, handcuffs, a
facial mask ... all the signs exhibited the conditions we've seen before
in other rooms that have been used to kill people and conduct torture,"
said Caldwell.
Northeast of the capital, in the confessionally divided province of
Diyala, seven people were killed by insurgents, including a family of
four driving south on the main highway.
Two policemen were also killed in separate attacks around Baghdad.
In the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, south of the capital, witnesses
reported seeing a member of the former ruling Baath party gunned down.
The mortuary confirmed receiving the bullet-riddled body.
The US military also reported three more of its troops had been killed
in insurgent attacks, with two marines dead in Anbar province on
Saturday and one soldier killed in west Baghdad on Friday.
The latest losses -- including a "non-combat related death" -- took to
3,366 the death toll of US service personnel in Iraq since the March
2003 invasion, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.