15 Killed
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq will close its borders with Syria and Iran for 72 hours as part of the drive to secure and pacify Baghdad, the Iraqi commander of the crackdown said Tuesday, hours after a suicide bombing in a mainly Shiite neighborhood killed at least 15 people.
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At Least 80 Killed In Bombings, 165 Wounded
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thunderous explosions and dense smoke swirled through central Baghdad on Monday when three car bombs ripped apart a crowded marketplace in a Shiite neighborhood, setting off secondary explosions and killing at least 71 people, police said. A suicide bombing nearby killed at least nine.
The blasts shattered the city center on the first anniversary, according to the Muslim lunar calendar, of the bombing last year of the important Shiite Golden Dome shrine in Samarra, north of the capital. That attack by al-Qaida in Iraq set off the sectarian bloodletting that has turned Baghdad and much of central Iraq into a battleground.
The suicide bomber detonated an explosives-filled vest in a crowd near a popular falafel restaurant in the Bab al-Sharqi area, not far from Shorja, police said, adding that 19 people also were wounded in that blast.
About a half-hour later, as the government called for a short period of commemoration for last year's shrine attack, three parked car bombs exploded within seconds of each other, targeting two buildings about 200 yards apart. One of the cars was parked near the entrance to a parking garage under one of the buildings.
Shops and stalls were obliterated and smoke blackened the area, obscuring what had been a sunny day as it rose hundreds of feet into the air above the market near the east bank of the Tigris River.
Ambulances and pickup trucks rushed many of the nearly 165 wounded to nearby al-Kindi hospital in the largely Shiite neighborhood, which has been hit by a series of deadly bombings this year. The sectarian killings have continued despite a U.S. and Iraqi new operation aimed at stopping the violence set off by the Feb. 22 bombing of the Samarra mosque.
After Monday's market bombing, debris and clothing mannequins were scattered in pools of blood on the floor of the warehouse-type building while men piled up plastic chairs. Two men carried the limp body of one of the victims, while small fires burned in the rubble on the street outside the building.
One 38-year-old Shiite man said the blasts were clearly timed to coincide with the commemoration of the bombing in Samarra. Other people in the area screamed, "Where is the government?" "Where is the security plan?" "We have had enough?" "We have lost our money and goods and our source of living."
Brig. Abdul Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the interior ministry, told Iraqiya television that three suspects were arrested _ an Iraqi and two foreigners. He said three car bombs were planted in the marketplace.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, some roads and bridges in Baghdad were cordoned off after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for a 15-minute sit-in to commemorate the Samarra bombing.
The anniversary fell on Monday according to the Islamic lunar calendar. The lunar month is never longer than 30 days or shorter than 29. The beginning of each lunar month is set by religious authorities.
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32 + Killed 50 Wounded
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide truck bomber slammed into a crowd of police lining up for duty Sunday near Tikrit, collapsing the station and killing at least 30 people and wounding 50, police said.
Minutes later, a roadside bomb struck a car on a highway on the western outskirts of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding two others, police said.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Iraqi security forces would deploy in force this week as part of a U.S.-backed security sweep aimed at stopping the violence in the capital.
The Shiite prime minister stressed that the operation would be comprehensive.
"The new security plan will not start from a specific area, but it will start from all areas and at the same time and those who will take part in it are from all formations of the army and police," he said, facing criticism that delays in starting the operation have allowed attacks that have killed hundreds over the past few weeks.
"The operation will continue to escalate and very soon, during this week, we will witness a big start and the intensive deployment of army, police and other security forces in different areas in Baghdad."
The first blast near Tikrit occurred about 8 a.m. as police were arriving for work at the Adwar police station, provincial police Capt. Abdel-Samad Mohammed said, giving the casualty toll. He said 21 of the 30 killed were policemen.
The bomber drove a small truck that was packed with explosives covered by hay and the force of the blast flattened the building and heavily damaged three houses close to the station, along with municipal offices and the post office.
Local residents who rushed to the scene tried to help with rescue efforts before civil defense squads arrived with shovels to remove the debris and pull out the dead and those injured. U.S. and Iraqi forces later surrounded the area.
Bashir Masour, a 46-year-old laborer, said the explosion blew out the windows of his house, about 500 yards away.
"I ran to help and I saw destruction everywhere, along with charred bodies and body parts. Blood was spilled across a big area," he said. "I carried six people who I thought were still alive but then realized they had died after being torn apart by shrapnel."
Adwar, about 12 miles southeast of Tikrit, is where former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was captured on Dec. 13, 2003.
Insurgents frequently target Iraqi security forces, accusing them of collaborating with the U.S.
A suicide bomber also blew himself up next to a police patrol in the religiously mixed neighborhood of Ilam in southwestern Baghdad, killing one policeman, police said.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, a parked car bomb exploded near an intersection, killing two people and wounding three in Mansour, an upscale western neighborhood that has been the scene of repeated bombings and kidnappings, police said.
The violence came a day after Gen. David Petraeus took charge of U.S. forces in Iraq, becoming the third commander in the war and declaring the American task now was to help Iraqis "gain the time they need to save their country."
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51 + Killed or Found Dead
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At least 51 Iraqis were killed or found dead Saturday across the country. In one attack in central Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in a shopping district, killing six civilians and wounding 14.
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104 Killed Or Found Dead In Iraq
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At least 104 people were killed or found dead Thursday in Iraq, including at least 10 Sunni men gunned down in the village of Rufayaat, just east of Balad. Balad is a majority Shiite town 50 miles northeast of the Iraqi capital, but it is surrounded by territory that is mainly populated by Sunnis.
In the day's deadliest attack, a parked car bomb exploded at a food market in the predominantly Shiite town of Aziziyah, 35 miles southeast of Baghdad, killing 20 people and wounding 45, police said.
Another parked car bomb tore through a minibus in the mainly Shiite Amin neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad, killing seven passengers and wounding 10, police said.
In Anbar province west of Baghdad, a U.S. airstrike killed 13 insurgents in a raid on two safe houses where intelligence showed foreign fighters were assembled near Amiriyah, the military said. Five militants were detained and a weapons cache was found in an initial raid on a target near the safe houses.
Police and hospital officials in the area offered a conflicting account, saying the airstrike hit the village of Zaidan south of Abu Ghraib and flattened four houses, killing 45 people, including women, children and old people.
An Associated Press photo showed the body of a boy in the back of a pickup truck at the nearby Fallujah hospital and people there said he was a victim of the Zaydan airstrike. Other photos showed several wounded children being treated in the hospital.
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74 Killed
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bombings and mortar attacks killed dozens across Baghdad on Monday as Iraqi troops set up new checkpoints and an Iraqi general took command _ indications that the much-awaited operation to restore peace to the capital is gearing up nearly a month after it was announced.
With little sign of an end to the carnage, many Iraqis have begun complaining that the security drive has been too slow in starting, allowing extremists free rein to launch spectacular attacks that have killed nearly 1,000 in the past week.
Monday's death toll supported their frustration. At least 74 people were killed or found dead across the country _ all but seven of them in Baghdad.
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1,000 Iraqis Killed Last Week, 103 Killed or Found Dead Today
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On Sunday, an Interior Ministry official said about 1,000 Iraqis _ including civilians, security forces and gunmen _ had been killed in the last week alone. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the figures.
At least 103 people were killed or found dead Sunday, most of them in Baghdad, police reported.
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At Least 121 Killed and 300+ Wounded In Market Bombing
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with a ton of explosives hidden beneath cooking oil, canned food and bags of flour obliterated a Baghdad food market on Saturday, killing at least 121 people in one of the most fearsome attacks in the capital since the U.S. invasion in 2003.
It was the fifth major bombing in less than a month targeting predominantly Shiite districts in Baghdad and one provincial city to the south. This one leveled about 30 shops and 40 houses, witnesses said.
The Health Ministry said more than 300 people were injured in the thunderous explosion that sent a column of smoke into the sky on the east bank of the Tigris River. The nearby al-Kindi hospital _ quickly overwhelmed _ began turning away the wounded and directing ambulances to hospitals in the Shiite Sadr City neighborhood.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the bombing was "an example of what the forces of evil will do to intimidate the Iraqi people."
The bombing came just days before American and Iraqi forces were expected to start an all-out assault on Sunni and Shiite gunmen and bombers in the capital.
Only a day earlier, 16 American intelligence agencies made public a National Intelligence Estimate that said conditions in Baghdad were perilous.
"Unless efforts to reverse these conditions show measurable progress ... in the coming 12 to 18 months, we assess that the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate," a declassified synopsis of the report declared.
Emergency workers and civilians wheeled scores of bloodied and mangled victims into the hospitals with intravenous drips already in their arms. Doctors and paramedics were in a frantic triage to save the lives of the most seriously wounded.
"We don't allow big trucks in the market, but the driver convinced us that he had food to deliver for a shop. Once he got inside, he detonated the bomb," said Kamil Ibrahim, a 36-year-old vegetable vendor at the entrance to the market district.
Ibrahim _ wounded in his head, chest and abdomen _ said two of his workers, young men 18 and 19 years old, were killed instantly.
The shopkeeper spoke from a bed in al-Kindi Hospital, where he was rushed in a private car after rescuers wheeled him out of the market on a wooden cart.
Suspicion immediately fell on Sunni insurgents _ al-Qaida in Iraq and allied groups in particular. The militant bombers are believed to have stepped up their campaign against Shiites in the final days before the joint U.S.-Iraqi crackdown in Baghdad. Many saw the operation as a last-chance effort to clamp off violence that has turned the capital into a sectarian battleground.
Suspected Sunni attackers have appeared emboldened in recent weeks after radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, under pressure from fellow Shiites who dominate the government, ordered the thousands of gunmen in his Mahdi Army militia to avoid American attacks in the coming assault.
In the hours after the explosion, Shiite and Sunni mortar teams traded fire across the darkened city. Two people were killed and 20 wounded in one predominantly Sunni district.
The White House called the bombing an atrocity and said, "Free nations of the world must not stand by while terrorists commit mass murder in an attempt to derail democratic progress in Iraq and throughout the greater Middle East."
Violence shattered the northern city of Kirkuk as well. Eight bombs exploded within two hours, the opening blast a suicide car bomber apparently targeting the offices of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
Two people were killed in that blast and four nearby homes destroyed. There was no claim of responsibility for the series of bombings in the oil-rich city where Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen all claim ascendance.
Sunni insurgents were seen as likely suspects, however, as many of them have fled to the north of the country in a bid to escape the crackdown in the capital.
Further signs the insurgents were migrating north appeared in Mosul, where insurgent forces fought Iraqi police and soldiers. Police said five insurgents were killed. Police spokesman Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri said fighters abandoned their attack when Iraqi security forces moved in backed by U.S. air power.
In the Baghdad blast, Maj. Gen. Jihad al-Jabiri of the Iraqi Interior Ministry said one ton of explosives ripped through the Sadriyah market.
"There are still bodies under the rubble," he said. In an outburst of frustration and anger he called for the government to "deport (non-Iraqi) Arabs immediately."
The general's comments reflected growing displeasure inside the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with neighboring Syria, which Baghdad charges has done too little to close its border to Sunni militants.
In his second heated verbal attack on Damascus in two days, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said "50 percent of terrorism enters Iraq from Syria, and we have evidence" to prove that.
"The Interior Ministry and the Ministry of State for National Security gave them (the Syrians) evidence about those who are conspiring and are sending car bombs. We gave them the numbers of their apartments and the buildings where they live," al-Dabbagh said on Al-Arabiya satellite television.
The Sadriyah market sits on a side street lined with shops and vendors selling produce, meat and other staples. The market is about 500 yards from a Sunni shrine.
The blast was the deadliest attack in the capital since Nov. 23, when suspected al-Qaida in Iraq fighters hit Sadr City with a series of car bombs and mortars that killed at least 215 people.
Not far from the Sadriyah marketplace, a suicide bomber crashed his car into the Bab al-Sharqi market 12 days ago and killed 88 people.
South of Baghdad, a pair of suicide bombers detonated explosives Thursday among shoppers in a crowded outdoor market in the Shiite city of Hillah, killing at least 73 people and wounding 163.
An Iraqi militant group tied to al-Qaida in Iraq announced, meanwhile, it had launched its own new strategy to counter the coming U.S.-Iraqi crackdown.
In an audiotape posted on a Web site commonly used by the insurgents, a voice purported to be that of Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, said the group would "widen the circle of battles" beyond Baghdad to all of Iraq. Al-Baghdadi heads The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of insurgent groups in Iraq.
The U.S. military reported the deaths of five more soldiers _ four in fighting and one of an apparent heart attack. All died Friday.
Iraqi authorities said that 145 people were killed or were found dead Saturday, including those killed in the market bombing. Of the total, 19 were found dumped in the capital, most of the bodies showing signs of torture.
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62 Killed & 150 Wounded in Bombings and Attacks In Iraq
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Thursday in a crowded outdoor market in a Shiite city south of Baghdad, killing 45 people and wounding 150, police said.
Capt. Muthanna Khaled, police spokesman in the southern province of Babil, of which Hillah is the capital, reported the casualties. The attackers reportedly strolled into the Maktabat outdoor market in the center of Hillah about 6 p.m. as shoppers were buying food for their evening meals. Police said they thought one of the men appeared suspicious and stopped him.
The bomber then detonated his explosives and the second attacker, who was walking behind him, set off his, police added.
Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, was the scene of one of the deadliest attacks in the war, when a suicide car bomber killed 125 people on Feb. 28, 2005.
Meanwhile Iraq had invited neighboring countries, including U.S. rivals Iran and Syria, to a meeting on security next month in Baghdad, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday, while bombings and mortar attacks tore through Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods in the capital, killing at least 17 people.
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