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More than 30 killed in Iraq violence
By Paul Schemm
AFP
BAGHDAD
Petroleumworld.com 05 14 06
More than 30 people were killed in a spate of attacks on Sunday, including 14 dead in a double suicide bombing near Baghdad airport, Iraqi and US security officials said.
Meanwhile, two British soldiers were killed and one other wounded in a roadside bombing in the southern port city of Basra on Saturday, the defence ministry in London said.
Fourteen Iraqis were killed and six wounded in the two suicide car bombings near a US base close to Baghdad international airport, the US military said.
Two vehicles packed with explosives were detonated in a parking lot near a Victory Base checkpoint, it said in a statement, adding that the attacks did not target the base itself.
"This was not an attack on the compound. Instead, it targeted Iraqis congregated in a parking lot," the military said.
Earlier, the interior ministry had said mortars fell on the parking lot and a checkpoint at the entrance to the airport, wounding 18 people and temporarily closing the road to the facility.
On a day of multiple attacks, five Iraqis were killed in a blast on Baghdad's Palestine Street that targeted a passing police patrol, Iraqi security officials said.
The roadside bombing in the east of the capital missed the police patrol but killed the bystanders and wounded four others, a defence ministry source said. Al-Kindi hospital said two of the five dead were women.
Three policemen were killed when their patrol was targeted by a bomb in the traditional Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah in north Baghdad. Ten civilians and three other policeman were injured.
Three more people were killed in a bomb attack in southern Baghdad in a popular marketplace of Zafaraniyah neighborhood.
Five bullet-riddled corpses were also found in two southern neighborhoods of the capital.
In the north of Iraq, a roadside bomb in the remote hilly area of Hamreen area between Kirkuk and Tikrit hit an eight car convoy of Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari's bodyguards, killing three and wounding three, police said.
The minister was not with the convoy.
In the oil-refining town of Baiji, the scene of much recent unrest, gunmen shot dead a man in front of his home before fleeing, said police, who said the victim may have been working for US forces.
Insurgents in the far north of the country, in the restive city of Mosul, clashed with police in the city center, leaving one policeman dead and three wounded.
Later in the day, a suicide car bomb went after a passing US army patrol but succeeded only in killing two civilians and wounding nine, including two women.
East of the capital in Balad Ruz, near the Iranian border, an army patrol responding to a distress call from the home of an army lieutenant colonel was hit by a roadside bomb, wounding five soldiers.
Outside the nearby city of Baquba, insurgents late Saturday destroyed at least two small shrines of local Shiite holy figures, the Abdullah bin Ali shrine in the village of Wajhiya and the Tamim shrine, both in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas.
Gunmen just south of Baquba shot also dead a police captain and wounded his brother.
The British defence ministry said the two soldiers killed in the Basra roadside bombing were from the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment. Their deaths bring to 111 the number of British troop fatalities in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion.
In the restive Sunni city of Samarra, central Iraq, US and Iraqi army sweeps over the past few days rounded up more than 200 people for questioning in a counter-insurgency operation named Iron Triangle, the US military said.
"The search yielded IED (improvised bomb) materials including blasting caps and detonation cords," said Lieutenant Colonel Edward Loomis of the army's 101st Airborne Division.
"During the operation, Iraqi police, Iraqi army and coalition forces initially detained 213 individuals," he said. "Five individuals suspected of being foreign fighters were among the 106 detained."
AFP 14 1129 GMT 05 06
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