Winks Blog

At Least 112 Murdered & Dozens Wounded In Iraq

Good Evening,

A suicide bomber in the predominantly Shiite city of Hillah south of Baghdad lured men to his KIA minivan with promises of a day's work as laborers, then blew it up, killing at least 22 and wounding 44, police said.

Babil province police Capt. Muthana Khalid said three suspected terrorists, two Egyptians and an Iraqi, were arrested on suspicion of planning the suicide attack with the bomber, a Syrian.

Within hours, a roadside bomb and two car bombs exploded one after another near a bus station in Mashtal, a mostly Shiite area of southeastern Baghdad, killing 11 and wounding 51, police said.

Besides the victims of the bombings in Hillah and Baghdad, at least 23 other people were killed nationwide. In addition, the bodies of 56 murder victims, many of them tortured, were dumped in three Iraqi cities, 45 of them in Baghdad alone.

Also Sunday, gunmen kidnapped Iraq's deputy health minister from his home in northern Baghdad, the Iraqi army and police reported. They said the gunmen wore police uniforms and arrived in seven vehicles to abduct Ammar al-Saffar, a Shiite.

Al-Saffar was snatched nearly a week after dozens of suspected Shiite militia gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped scores of people from a Ministry of Higher Education office in Baghdad. That ministry is predominantly Sunni.

In the deep south of Iraq, security forces searching for five private security contractors, four Americans and an Austrian who were kidnapped near the Kuwait border, detained about 200 suspected insurgents, police said Sunday. Police Maj. Gen. Ali al-Moussawi said none of the hostages was found.

Have a nice evening.

posted by Wink @ 6:26 PM