Winks Blog

14 Killed, 3 Corpses Found, Dozens Wounded

Good morning,

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents attacked a police station Wednesday for a second day in a row, but U.S. and Iraqi forces captured 50 of them after a two-hour gunbattle.

About 60 gunmen attacked the police station in Madain, south of Baghdad, with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, said police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammadawi. U.S. troops and a special Iraqi police unit responded, catching the insurgents in crossfire, he said.

Four police were killed, including the commander of the special unit, and five were wounded, al-Mohammadawi said. None of the attackers died, and among the captives was a Syrian.

Gunmen in the capital targeted Shiite Muslims returning from a religious commemoration in the holy city of Karbala, killing six pilgrims and wounding 50 others traveling in minivans and the back of trucks, police said.

Earlier, gunmen killed three civilians transporting bricks on a road outside the city of Baqouba northeast of the capital. A roadside bomb then exploded when a police patrol responded, wounding an officer, police said.

Police continued to find corpses in the shadowy war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Three bodies, blindfolded and bearing signs of torture, were found in a western Baghdad neighborhood just after midnight, and the body of a young man shot in the chest was discovered in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of the capital, police said.

The body of a man in an Iraqi military uniform who had been killed outside Madain was also taken to a morgue in the southern city of Kut, an official said.

Back in the capital, roadside bombs targeting police patrols wounded at least six officers _ including four who work as guards at the Education Ministry _ and two other policemen and a passer-by were wounded in a drive-by shooting, police said.

Have a nice day.

posted by Wink @ 8:16 AM