2 Car Bombs at Baghdad Bridges Kill 18
Pastor Dale Morgan
May 11, 1:49 PM EDT
*2 Car Bombs at Baghdad Bridges Kill 18*
By RAVI NESSMAN
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD (AP) -- Two suicide car bombers struck checkpoints at Baghdad
bridges within minutes of each other Friday, killing at least 18 people
despite increased American efforts to target the insurgent networks
planning deadly vehicle attacks.
The U.S. military announced earlier Friday that it had conducted a
series of raids against car bombing networks across the country, killing
four suspected insurgents and detaining nine.
U.S.-led forces have focused on disrupting car bomb making factories
after several high-profile attacks that have killed hundreds in Baghdad
and surrounding areas in recent weeks.
Officials say al-Qaida-linked Sunni insurgents were trying to provoke
retaliatory violence from mainly Shiite militias that had agreed to lay
low to avoid confrontations with Americans during a 12-week-old security
crackdown.
The twin attacks began about 6 p.m. when the driver of a sedan waiting
in a line of cars outside a police checkpoint near the old Diyala Bridge
blew up his vehicle, partially collapsing the span, police said.
About two minutes later, the driver of a large fuel truck barreled
toward a second checkpoint at the nearby new Diyala Bridge and blew up
his vehicle, police said. The bridge was also damaged, and firefighters
worked to extinguish burning cars that had been driving across during
the attack.
Khalid Ahmed, a local resident who was waiting to cross the bridge
during the first attack, was wounded in his shoulder and hand.
"I was four cars behind the car bomb that exploded and caught fire. I
fainted and I opened my eyes in the hospital," he said.
The bombings at the bridges, which cross the Diyala River, a Tigris
tributary, killed 18 people, including 10 civilians and eight Iraqi
security forces, and wounded 24, police said.
Baghdad's bridges repeatedly have been targeted by bombers. The most
serious attack occurred April 12 when a suicide truck bomb collapsed the
steel-girder Sarafiyah bridge, plunging cars into the water and killing
11 people. Two days later, a suicide car bomb killed 10 people at the
Jadriyah bridge.
The blasts Friday occurred despite a series of measures aimed at
reducing violence in the capital.
U.S. and security forces have increased the checkpoints in the capital
and banned large trucks from crossing without strict searches. They also
have long imposed a four-hour weekly driving ban during Friday prayers
in Baghdad, but that ban ended on schedule three hours before the attacks.
The U.S. commander in northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon,
meanwhile, said he did not have enough troops for the mission in Diyala,
a province northeast of Baghdad that has seen a rise in violence blamed
largely on militants who fled the Baghdad security operation.
Mixon also said Iraqi government officials are not moving fast enough to
provide the "most powerful weapon" against insurgents - a government
that works and supplies services for the people.
Mixon has already received extra troops and has increased attacks on
militants, but he has asked Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2
commander in Iraq, for more.
"I laid out a plan for General Odierno on the numbers of forces that I
would need," Mixon told Pentagon reporters by video conference from
Iraq. "We have made progress ... we have taken terrain back from the
enemy. General Odierno intends to give me additional forces as they
become available."
Facing growing opposition to the war among Americans, Iraqi President
Jalal Talabani also said U.S. and British troops would need to stay in
Iraq for one or two more years to help stem surging violence.
"I think that in one or two years we will be able to recruit our forces,
to prepare our forces and say goodbye to our friends," Talabani said in
a speech to students at Cambridge University.
In one raid early Friday, troops acting on intelligence obtained in
previous operations approached a building near Taji, an air base 12
miles north of Baghdad, suspected of housing a car bombing cell
responsible for attacks on Iraqi civilians and U.S.-led forces, the
military said.
The troops came under fire from four armed men, whom they killed in a
gunbattle, the military said. One of those killed was suspected of being
a leader of the cell with ties to al-Qaida in Iraq's top leaders, the
military said.
U.S. forces have staged several raids in the area in recent weeks aimed
at the terror network's leadership, including one in which they killed
al-Qaida propagandist Muharib Abdul-Latif al-Jubouri earlier this month.
Forces also carried out raids in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul
on Thursday and Friday, detaining a total of nine people suspected of
producing bombs and smuggling foreign fighters into the country to carry
out attacks against U.S. troops, the military said.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed in separate bombing attacks, the military
announced Friday.
One soldier from the Multinational Division-North was killed Thursday in
an explosion in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, the military
said. The second soldier was killed in eastern Baghdad when a bomb
exploded near his patrol, the military said.
The deaths raised to at least 3,385, the members of the U.S. military
who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an
Associated Press count.