A string of bombings ripped through the Iraqi capital Sunday, killing at
least 26 people and injuring more than 60. Six Shiite shrines were damaged in a
series of blasts around the Baqouba area northeast of the capital.
Iraqi workers look at the remains of a car
bomb following an attack in Baghdad, Sunday, May 14, 2006. A string of
deadly attacks ripped through the Iraqi capital Sunday, killing at least
12 people and injuring more than 60, police said.
[AP] |
Two British soldiers were killed and a
third was injured by a roadside bomb Saturday night as they patrolled in an
armored vehicle near the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Britain's Ministry of
Defense said. Their deaths brought to 111 the number of British service
personnel who have died in action since 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In the deadliest attack Sunday, two suicide car bombings killed 14 Iraqis and
injured at least six near the main checkpoint leading to Baghdad's international
airport, the U.S. military and Iraqi police said.
The cars exploded in a parking long near the Camp Victory coalition base, but
the U.S. military said it was not an attack on the compound. "Instead, it
targeted Iraqis congregated in a parking lot," the military said.
Five roadside bombs killed 12 people in Baghdad.
One exploded in an open market for vegetables and household products in
eastern Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 15. Another missed a targeted
police patrol but hit a civilian bus, killing five people, including a woman and
two children, and wounding a policeman.
A police patrol hit a roadside bomb in Baghdad's northern district of
Azamiyah, killing three policeman and wounding 13 other people. Two other blasts
wounded two policemen and 11 bystanders.
In the city of Mosul, another suicide bomber rammed a U.S. military convoy,
killing two Iraqi bystanders and wounding nine, said police Brig. Abdul-Hamod
al-Jibori. U.S. forces closed off that area, there were no immediate reports of
U.S. casualties.
Saturday's shrine attacks could have significant repercussions, particularly
in the Baqouba area, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shiite region that has been a flashpoint
of sectarian violence. It was the second time this year that sites sacred to
Iraq's Shiite majority have been targeted.
"These are terrorist attacks meant to divide Iraq's Shiites and Sunni Arabs,
but if God is willing, they will not succeed," said Mohammed Hussein, 45, a
businessman in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The bombs heavily damaged two of the small shrines but caused no injuries.
They began early Saturday morning with at least one bomb exploding inside the
Tameem shrine, said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. Five other
shrines were bombed throughout the day east of Baqouba, the capital of Diyala
province 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
On Feb. 22, bombs heavily damaged the Golden Dome in Samarra, which holds the
tomb of Imam Jabir's grandfather. That attack triggered a wave of reprisal
attacks against Sunnis, dramatically escalating sectarian tension and pushing
the country to the brink of civil war.
"Such acts anger God and hurt the feeling of all honest Iraqis," Shiite
cleric Adnan al-Rubaie said in a telephone interview from Baqouba. "The goal is
clear — to ignite a civil strife. God's curse on everybody who tries to create
sedition in this country."
