BAGHDAD, Iraq - Separate bombings near an army base and a police building
killed at least 28 people and wounded at least 56, Iraqi police said Wednesday.
A bomb in a parked car detonated Tuesday night near an Iraqi army base in
Sharqat, about 45 miles from the northern city of Mosul, police said. A suicide
bomber detonated his explosives as a crowd gathered at the scene. At least 21
people were killed and 50 wounded, police said.
U.S. soldiers secure
the site of a car bomb explosion, in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Sept.19, 2006.
A car bomb exploded near a gas station in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing two
civilians and wounding another 25, and police recovered the blindfolded
bodies of three people from eastern parts of the city.
[AP] |
A suicide truck bomb slammed into a police headquarters building in Baghdad
Wednesday morning, destroying the building and killing seven policemen, police
said.
Another six people, including a civilian, were wounded in the attack in the
southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.
Meanwhile, lawmakers angered by relentless violence in Iraq demanded Tuesday
that the defense and interior ministers explain what they are doing to put an
end to the death squads that have killed hundreds of Iraqis.
Violence around Iraq killed at least 16 Iraqis on Tuesday, including 10
people killed in a rocket attack on a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. An
American soldier died in a suicide car bombing in northern Iraq.
Nearly 200 bodies of Iraqis who had been tortured and shot have turned up
around Baghdad in the past week, including three found Tuesday in an eastern
section of the capital. Most are found bound and blindfolded, apparent victims
of sectarian violence.
Both Sunni and Shiite lawmakers called Tuesday for the defense and interior
ministers to explain how they plan to stop the killings.
"I demand the defense and interior ministers be summoned to let us know their
plans to stop these criminal acts: kidnappings, killings and assassinations
against our people," said Hassan Bejar, a lawmaker with the Iraqi Accordance
Front, the largest Sunni bloc in government.
Shiite lawmaker Haider al-Safar said: "We are just sitting here and seeing
these dead bodies being thrown every day in the streets."
"We need to see real achievements from the defense and interior ministries to
stop the daily kidnapping and bloodletting," he said.
Abdul-Karim al-Enizi, another Shiite, proposed special security teams to
investigate the killings. There was no immediate response from the ministries.
The U.S. military command, meanwhile, said a soldier was killed Tuesday by a
suicide car bomber in northern Iraq. It said another soldier died of non-battle
related injuries Monday and two U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday afternoon.
The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East said that because of the
increased violence, the U.S. military will likely maintain or possibly even
increase the current force levels of more than 140,000 troops in Iraq through
next spring.
Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, said military leaders
would consider adding troops or extending the Iraq deployments of other units if
needed.
"If it's necessary to do that because the military situation on the ground
requires that, we'll do it," he said. "If we have to call in more forces because
it's our military judgment that we need more forces, we'll do it."
The rocket attack in Baghdad's southern Dora district killed 10 people and
wounded 19, police said.
In a separate attack, a mortar round hit a house in the Shiite neighborhood
of Abu Sayfeen in central Baghdad, killing one person outside the building and
wounding three boys, aged between 11 and 15, and their father inside the house,
said police 1st Lt. Ahmed Mohammed of the Risafa police station.
About 20 minutes later, another mortar struck near a police checkpoint in
Zayouna Street in central Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding five other
people, said police Capt. Mohammed Abdul Ghani.
Earlier, a car bomb exploded near a gas station in Baghdad, killing two
civilians and wounding 25.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed Faris Egab, the mayor of Udhaym town, about 40 miles
north of the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba, as he drove to work, the
province's police said.
Gunmen also struck in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, firing on a
police patrol near the city prison, killing one policeman and wounding three,
the police said.
