16 killed in bombings in Baghdad, Karbala

[J-Factor]

16 killed in bombings in Baghdad, Karbala
Scores hurt in explosions targeting Iraqi police, army; U.S. Marine dies

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two car bombs rocked northern Baghdad within a span of half an hour Sunday while another struck a Shiite holy city to the south in attacks that killed at least 16 and wounded dozens, officials said.

Sunday’s worst attack in Baghdad — a suicide car bombing — occurred at 9:20 a.m., targeting an Iraqi army patrol as it left a base in the northern neighborhood of Azamiyah near Ibn al-Haitham College. Ten people died and 15 were wounded, most Iraqi soldiers, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.

Elsewhere, a U.S. Marine assigned to 1st Marine Logistics Group died Sunday from wounds suffered during fighting in Anbar Province, an area of western Iraq dominated by Sunni Arab-led insurgents, the military said.

At least 2,419 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.

The explosion in Azamiyah came about 30 minutes after a car bomb elsewhere in the capital missed a police patrol but killed a civilian when it exploded near the offices of the state-run al-Sabah newspaper, police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said.

Habib Mohammed Hadi al-Sadr, director of the state-run Iraqi Media Net, said the victim was a newspaper print shop worker. He said 25 other people were wounded.

“Once again, the despicable, criminal terrorists targeted the press and media represented by al-Sabah newspaper,” he said on Iraqi television. “I say to these terrorists that, for the sake of the free word, we will remain undaunted in expressing our thoughts.”

A suicide car bomb also struck near the provincial government building in Karbala, 60 miles south of Baghdad and home to one of the two holiest Shiite shrines. It killed five people and wounded 19, said governor’s aide Hassanein al-Zubeidi and police spokesman Rahman Mishawi.

The attack occurred about 9:30 a.m., as workers were returning to their offices after the Islamic weekend, al-Zubeidi said. The bomber got within 300 yards of the heavily fortified government building and set off the explosives in an area of heavy traffic. Eight cars were burned.

An earlier estimate placed the death toll at 17 but was revised downward without explanation.

Saturday violence in Basra, Tikrit
The Sunday attacks came a day after a British Lynx military helicopter was apparently shot down in the southern city of Basra, triggering unrest as jubilant Iraqis pelted British troops with stones and firebombs. Britain’s Defense Ministry said up to five British personnel were killed in the crash, but it would not be more specific.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani sent a message to British Prime Tony Blair expressing his condolences over the helicopter crash and denouncing the “vile act.”

Also on Saturday, a suicide bomber wearing an Iraqi army uniform blew himself up on an Iraqi military base in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, killing at least three Iraqi officers, officials said.

The dead included a lieutenant colonel, a major and a lieutenant, and another lieutenant colonel was wounded at the base in western Tikrit, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed Jassim, a spokesman for Iraq’s Defense Ministry.

The bomber targeted a group of Iraqi army recruits who had just finished their training and were being dispatched to another area of Iraq, Jassim said.

The attack in a Sunni Arab city appeared to be part of a campaign by Sunni-led insurgents to discourage Sunnis from joining Iraqi security forces. The Bush administration hopes that newly trained Iraqi soldiers and police can one day improve security in Iraq enough to begin withdrawing U.S. forces from the country.

In other violence Saturday:

Suspected insurgents kidnapped seven Iraqis, including three paramilitary policemen, near the town where a roadside bomb killed three U.S. service members the day before, police said.
A roadside bomb hit an Iraqi police patrol in east Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding one, said police Lt. Bilal Ali. Such bombs have long been the most effective means of insurgent attacks on coalition forces.
Two mortars were fired in northern Baghdad, one hitting a home and killing two children and wounding a woman, said police Maj. Moussa Abdul-Karim.
Police in Baghdad also found the bodies of seven Iraqi men, five of them relatives from Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, who had been kidnapped and brutally killed. They appeared to be the latest victims of a wave of sectarian killings by “death squads,” police said.
Saturday’s kidnappings of the seven Iraqis occurred in and around Mahaweel, a city of Sunnis and Shiites about 35 miles south of Baghdad, police said.

In one, heavily armed insurgents stopped a car carrying three paramilitary policemen from Iraq’s Interior Ministry to work and captured them, said police Capt. Muthana Khalid. Nearby, suspected militants stopped four minibuses that were driving toward a bus station to pick up passengers and kidnapped all four drivers, Khalid said.

On Friday, a roadside bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy had killed three soldiers in the same area, police said. The attack raised to at least 2,416 the number of U.S. military members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.