Powerful car bomb in central Baghdad kills 20
Pastor Dale Morgan
Powerful car bomb in central Baghdad kills 20*
AFP - Friday, July 27
BAGHDAD (AFP) - - A powerful car bomb rocked central Baghdad on
Thursday, killing at least 20 bystanders, wounding more than 60 and
destroying a row of shops in a busy commercial district.
Meanwhile, the US military announced the deaths of six more of its
troops, including four who were killed in a single day of fighting in
restive Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, scene of a month-old
offensive.
An AFP journalist said he saw dozens of casualties being carried away
from the site of the Baghdad blast, which partially demolished one
building and left several vehicles in flames.
Medics at nearby Ibn Nafees hospital said they had received 15 corpses
and were treating 64 casualties, including many women and children
caught outside in the popular shopping area on the eve of Friday's day
of prayers.
The bomb exploded in a loop of the Tigris river just south of the
fortified area which houses the US embassy and Iraqi government offices,
sending up a column of dense smoke and rattling windows two kilometres
(a mile) away.
Car bombings are an almost daily danger in Baghdad. Attacks like
Thursday's -- which closely followed a similar blast that killed six in
the northern city of Kirkuk -- are usually blamed on Sunni insurgents.
More than four years since the US-led invasion of March 2003, Iraq is in
the grip of a series of overlapping conflicts pitting the embattled
security forces and their US allies against a range of rebel and militia
groups.
One of the main fronts over the past month has been in Diyala, where
10,000 US and Iraqi troops have pressed a monthlong assault on Al-Qaeda
strongholds, and where three marines and a sailor were killed on Tuesday.
Another soldier was shot dead in south Baghdad on Wednesday, and a sixth
died of non-battle related causes on Tuesday, the military said.
The latest fatalities took the US military's losses in Iraq since the
March 2003 invasion to 3,640, according to an AFP count based on
Pentagon figures.
Earlier on Thursday the number-two US commander in Iraq told reporters
that US casualties seemed to be declining since May, calling it an
"initial positive sign" that a five-month-old security plan was showing
results.
"We topped out in May in casualties and we kind of predicted that
because we went into areas that we had not been in for a long time and
they were safe havens established by the extremists," said Lieutenant
General Raymond Odierno. "Going into these areas we knew it would be
tough in the beginning. We've now taken control of these areas," he added.
But even as US casualties gradually decrease, insurgents continue to
launch daily attacks on Iraqi security forces, killing at least 10 in
separate incidents on Thursday.
Five policemen were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their
vehicle as they they patrolled the deadly roads south of Baghdad,
according to security and medical officials.
Another five security force members were killed while conducting a joint
raid against an alleged Al-Qaeda stronghold west of executed dictator
Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq.
Two policemen and three Iraqi soldiers were killed in the raid,
including an army major, according to an Iraqi army officer in Tikrit
who asked not to be identified. Another officer was wounded.
A car bomb explosion in western Baghdad wounded another five Iraqi
soldiers, and five civilians were injured in a mortar attack in the east
of the city, according to a security official.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi commander in charge of the capital's five-month-old
security plan aimed at flushing out militants with an influx of
thousands of US and Iraqi troop reinforcements said the plan needed time
to succeed.
"The operations that we are carrying out with multinational forces in
fighting the terrorist rebels in Iraq are not like our traditional
operations," Lieutenant General Abbud Kanbar said at a Baghdad news
conference.
They are "internal security operations, they are complicated and require
time and patience," he added.