[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Attacks in Iraq Kill 25 People Attacks in Iraq Kill 25 People * Sign In to E-Mail or Save This * Print * Reprints * Share o Del.icio.us o Digg o Facebook o Newsvine o Permalink Article Tools Sponsored By By CARA BUCKLEY Published: December 8, 2007 BAGHDAD, Dec. 7 — Twenty-five people were killed Friday in the tumultuous Iraqi province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, when a suicide attacker detonated a bomb near the headquarters of a local committee of former insurgents working with American forces and a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint in Baquba. Fifteen people were killed and 20 wounded in the suicide attack in the town of Muqdadiya. It was not clear whether the bomber was a man or a woman because two heads were found alongside shredded bodies near the bombing site, according to a police official from the town. The separate car bomb attack on the checkpoint in the restive city of Baquba killed seven Iraqi soldiers and three volunteers who had been working with American forces. Baquba was the scene of a suicide car bomb attack earlier this week that detonated at the entrance to a bus station and killed five people. Diyala is ethnically mixed and continues to be racked by violence even as attacks throughout Iraq have fallen. The violence has been exacerbated as Sunni insurgents have moved to areas north of Baghdad after the American military increased troop levels in the Iraqi capital earlier this year as part of the so-called surge. A police official there said he expected attacks in Diyala to increase because local security forces were weak and Sunni extremists had established strong footholds across the province. The local committee that was attacked Friday in Muqdadiya consisted of former Sunni insurgents who had allied themselves with the Americans. Their headquarters are in a bustling neighborhood, and the nearby streets were especially crowded because Fridays are holidays here. The bomb exploded around 9:30 a.m. A police official said one of the severed heads that was retrieved after the bombing belonged to a former member of Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baath Party. Elsewhere, the Iraqi police near Mr. Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit said they raided a hide-out that belonged to Mr. Hussein’s former vice president, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who has eluded capture for nearly five years. Documents retrieved during the raid indicated that Mr. Douri had been there recently, the police said. The documents detailed ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi group that American intelligence says has foreign leadership. They also laid out Iraqi police targets and included the blueprints of Iraqi military bases, the police said. The authorities said they also found the attack plan for a Mosul jailbreak that occurred in May, when five prisoners accused of terrorism escaped and two guards were killed. Weapons, including mortars, were also found. Mr. Douri sits at the top of the Iraqi government’s most-wanted list, and is accused by Washington of heading and financing terrorist operations here. Outside the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Friday, extremists blew up an oil pipeline with such force that people nearby said they thought they had been under missile attack. No one was killed. Also on Friday, an official with the political party of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr lashed out at one of Mr. Sadr’s chief political rivals, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, for his recent visit to Washington. “America represents the tyranny in the world,” the official, Sheik Salah al-Ubaidi, said to worshipers at a mosque in the holy city of Najaf. “And visiting the head of the tyranny without justification reflects submission to the tyranny.” Mr. Hakim, who heads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, met with President Bush last week. For years, his followers engaged in bloody clashes with Mr. Sadr’s militia. Two months ago, the leaders announced a peace agreement that has been credited with driving down violence, though it is unclear how long the cease-fire will last. Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting. Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||