Winks Blog

10 Killed, 50 Kidnapped, 8 Killed In Car Bombing, 38 Injured, Bodies Found, Police Chief Killed & More Death

Good Afternoon,

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen ambushed minibuses south of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 10 passengers and kidnapping about 50 others, police reported.

The abductions took place at around 7:30 p.m. nearly the highly volatile city of Latifiyah, said an officer who asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals.

Gunmen believed to be local Sunnis set up a false security checkpoint to stop the passengers, occupants of several minibuses. Latifiyah lies in the so-called Sunni Triangle of Death, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, where Shiites and U.S. and Iraqi security forces have been repeatedly targeted.

Earlier on Saturday, a pair of car bombs tore through a downtown shopping district in the capital, killing eight people, while a Slovak and Polish soldier were reported killed overnight by a roadside bomb south of the capital.

Police and a medical workers said at least 38 others were injured in the explosion at Hafidh al-Qadhi square, a formerly bustling area on the eastern bank of the Tigris River. It was one of at least three deadly attacks Saturday in the beleaguered capital, where U.S. forces searching for a kidnapped American soldier offered a $50,000 for information leading to his recovery.

In other violence in Baghdad, one passenger was killed and four injured when their car was hit by a a roadside bomb that targeted but missed a police patrol, police Cap. Mohammed Abdel-Ghani said.

A driver was killed when his car exploded as he was approaching a public market in a southeastern district, Abdel-Ghani said. He said that appeared to have been a botched suicide bombing.

One police officer was also killed when gunmen opened fire on their pickup truck in eastern Baghdad, said Lt. Muhsin of the Rissafa station.

Earlier Saturday, police said mortar fire hit the U.S. government's representative office in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Capt. Muthanna Khalid Ali said part of the compound was set ablaze, although there was no immediate word on damage or casualties in the attack _ at least the second on the office in recent weeks.

Inaccurate but highly mobile, the mortar is growing increasingly popular among Iraqi fighters because it can be fired from a secure location several miles from a target and then hauled away or hidden. Some insurgent groups mount the weapons on pickup trucks, remaining in constant motion except when firing.

Police special forces, meanwhile, said they killed two suspected insurgents and arrested 10 others during an overnight search for those behind a suicide bombing Friday that killed six Iraqi soldiers in the western city of Tal Afar.

Hand grenades and 20 AK-47 assault rifles were seized in the raid just east of the city, police Brig. Najim Abdullah al-Jubouri said. Officers also found fake ID cars and passports, and seized mobile phones and a pair of pickup trucks used by the group, he said.

In a suicide attack Saturday, a bomber drove a car rigged with explosives into the police station in the northern town of Zaganya, killing the police chief, setting four vehicles on fire, and badly damaging the building, the provincial police information office said.

In nearby Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, a staffer with the local agriculture directorate, Zuhair Hussein Alwan, was shot and killed in the city's downtown area, the information office said.

Two bodies that had been bound and shot in the head and chest were pulled from the Tigris River Saturday morning in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, morgue administrator Maamoun al-Ajili said. Scores of such bodies are recovered around Iraq each week, most believed to be the victims of sectarian death squads.

Have a nice day.

posted by Wink @ 1:22 PM