Winks Blog

8 Killed and 12+ Injured , Several Bodies Found

Good Morning,

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents set a fire in a vegetable market to lure British soldiers into a gunbattle Sunday that left five civilians dead and more than a dozen hurt by the crossfire, Iraqi police said.

The fighting was part of a string of violent incidents Sunday amid a government stalemate and threats of continued violence from insurgents after the death of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Police Capt. Hussein Karim said insurgents started the blaze in the market in south Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, to draw the troops into an ambush.

The British Defense Ministry offered a different account, saying soldiers were sent to search the suspected launch site of a rocket attack and came under small-arms fire.

The ministry said there were reports of "a small number of terrorist casualties," but full details of the incident remained unclear. It could not confirm that civilians were among the dead and wounded.

In other violence Sunday:

_ Drive-by gunmen fired on a civilian car, killing the driver, police said.

_ Police in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora found four unidentified bodies, all of which had been tortured and shot.

_ Baghdad police said they separately found the body of a Health Ministry security guard who appeared to have been shot in the head after being tortured and the corpse of a taxi driver who was reported kidnapped yesterday in Dora.

_ Unidentified gunmen in Mosul shot and killed a former Iraqi Army officer, police said. The assailants were in a speeding car and killed Ali Ahmed Abdullah with a machine gun as he was walking in one of the city's commercial centers.

_ A roadside bomb in western Mosul killed one bystander and injured six others, police Col. Abdul-Karim Ahmed said.

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Have a nice day.

posted by Wink @ 10:00 AM