IRAQ: Violence continues across the country

Record ID: 354165

  • Title: IRAQ: Violence continues across the country
  • Date: 22nd May 2006
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) MAJOR YA'COUB OF THE IRAQI ARMY SAYING: "We were heading to the battalion base when a car bomb exploded, damaging a number of cars including a Kia (car)."
  • Embargoed: 6th June 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVA96HMGH7S0NQW5WV0ZQIVZ872P
  • Story Text: Two bombs went off at a Baghdad market on Monday (May 22), killing three people and wounding 12, police sources said.
    A car bomb and another bomb, apparently planted close to the street, struck the crowded area in the mainly Shi'ite east of the capital. As well as the market, there was also a health clinic nearby.
    The injured were taken to nearby Al-Kindi hospital.
    Earlier, a bomb exploded in the Shi'ite neighbourhood of al-Kadhimiya, wounding two civilians, police said.
    They said that the bomb was put inside trash container and was aimed at civilians. The wounded were taken to Al Kadhimiya hospital.
    A car bomb went off in a crowded street in southeastern Baghdad on Monday (May 22), killing at least three people and setting a building ablaze, police sources said.
    One policeman said he saw at least three bodies lying on the road and four cars on fire after the explosion in the Zaafaraniya district.
    "We were heading to the battalion base when a car bomb exploded, damaging number of cars including a Kia (car)," said Major Ya'coub from the Iraqi army.
    Elsewhere in Baghdad on Monday, a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army convoy in al-Waziriya district in the north of the city, causing no casualties.
    "Guards who are protecting the (employees) of the Ministry of Environment and Iraqi army were parking here, we did not feel it when an Opel (car) approached the Iraqi army and exploded next to them. Thanks be to God no one was hurt in the blast but one man who was slightly wounded in the head," said Aws, an Iraqi police.
    And a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed four people and wounded six in the town of Jurf al-Sakhr on Monday (may 22), police said.
    The blast took place while the Iraqi police and U.S. forces in Iraq were on their way to raid terrorists safe heaven in the area.
    "This morning at 0830 a.m. (0430 GMT) out patrols accompanied by the foreign forces raided terrorists in Jurf al-sakhr area. A roadside bomb exploded close to them, killing four policemen in one of the patrols," said Tahseen Saleh, an Iraqi policeman.
    Meanwhile, five bodies were taken to hospital in Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, after clashes with insurgents that erupted in the nearby town of Dhuluiya on Sunday (May 21), a hospital source said.
    Sectarian tensions are running high after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February, which unleashed a wave of reprisal attacks.
    Officials have warned of a possible increase in attacks by Sunni militants like al Qaeda following the appointment of a new, national unity government on Saturday, after months of negotiation. At least 19 people were killed in three bomb attacks in the capital on Sunday.
    The latest violence took place as British Prime Minister Tony Blair met Iraq's new premier in Baghdad on Monday and said Iraq was at a "new beginning" after a process since the 2003 invasion that he admitted had been "longer and harder" than he had hoped.
    Blair's trip, just a day after new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's first cabinet meeting, underlined the political capital Blair has invested in Iraq.
    Washington and London count on Maliki, a tough-talking Shi'ite Islamist who has vowed to use "maximum force against terrorists", to start tackling such violence plaguing Iraq.
    His government's appointment to some extent completes the process of rebuilding Iraq's political institutions, so much is now riding on those institutions performing to end the conflict.
    Saddam himself was back in court just a few hundred metres (yards) from where Blair was due to meet Maliki. Saddam is accused of crimes against humanity for bloody reprisals that followed a failed assassination attempt against him in 1982.
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