IRAQ: Violence in Iraq claims more lives

Record ID: 355114

  • Title: IRAQ: Violence in Iraq claims more lives
  • Date: 26th June 2004
  • Summary: SV TWO IRAQI SOLDIERS, ONE WITH BLOODIED JACKET, WALKING IN HOSPITAL CORRIDOR SV INJURED MAN IN HOSPITAL BED
  • Embargoed: 11th July 2004 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: ARBIL, BAGHDAD, FALLUJA AND BAQUBA, IRAQ
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVACGWZ8BC3WIUTK39EH2ZYKB162
  • Story Text: Violence in Iraq claims more lives.
    A car bomb explosion killed a man and wounded 40 people in the Kurdish city of Arbil on Saturday (June 26) as insurgents kept up a bloody drive to derail Iraq's transition to an interim government in four days' time.
    The blast in Arbil, 350 km (220 miles) north of Baghdad, killed a shopkeeper and wounded Mahmoud Mohammed, culture minister in the Kurdish regional government, in the head.
    One wounded person at the hospital said he had been hit by the blast whilst he was driving to the ministry.
    Arbil has been relatively free of trouble since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq last year, though twin suicide attacks on Kurdish party offices in February killed more than 100 people.
    In another attack in the north, gunmen ambushed a police patrol 30 km (19 miles) south of Kirkuk on Saturday, killing one policeman and wounding another, police said.
    The U.S. military said an American soldier died of his wounds overnight after an ambush in Baghdad. That brought to 623 the U.S. combat toll in Iraq since last year's invasion.
    In the holy city of Najaf armed militiamen, loyal to rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr, were shooting in the air near the Imam Ali mosque, soon after prayers. A truce was agreed in Najaf earlier this month after weeks of fighting.
    Residents ran across the streets fearing for their lives.
    A US military convoy was then involved in a shootout on the outskirts. Some witnesses said the convoy came under fire from Shi'ite militiamen. But a spokesman for rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr said the US forces fired first after entering the old city.
    The shooting around the convoy of Humvees and trucks was on the outskirts of the holy city, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, where U.S. forces spent weeks putting down a rebellion by Shi'ite militiamen.
    There were no immediate reports of any casualties or damage in the exchange of fire. The U.S. military said it had no information. At least one child was wounded and doctors were fighting to save his life at Najaf hospital.
    U.S. and Iraqi officials say they expect more violence in the run-up to the June 30 handover of power. A string of bloody attacks on Thursday killed about 100 people in five cities.
    A group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for those attacks and on Friday U.S.
    planes bombed what the U.S. military called a "known Zarqawi network safe house" in the city of Falluja, west of Baghdad.
    The house was reduced to rubble, but one Falluja resident at the scene denied that anyone had been killed in the strike.
    "I swear to God, nobody died here except this rabbit,"
    said a man dangling a dead rabbit in one hand.
    Zarqawi, said by Washington to have links with al Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for several major attacks in Iraq, as well as the beheading of an American and a South Korean.
    Militants in Falluja issued a statement on Friday denying Zarqawi was holed up in the town.
    Zarqawi threatened this week to assassinate Allawi, who responded by vowing to crush him and other insurgents.
    A multinational force of 160,000 mostly U.S. troops will stay to support Iraqi forces after June 30.
    Allawi has asked NATO to help train fledgling Iraqi security forces and alliance members are expected to respond positively at a NATO summit in Istanbul on Monday and Tuesday.
    NATO's role in Iraq will be a far cry from the deployment of troops originally sought by Washington.
    France and Germany, which opposed the Iraq war, shot down that idea.
    Gunmen assaulted a Shi'ite party building in Baquba, northwest of Baghdad, killing three guards, and blew up a building used by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party.
    Two guards were wounded in the attack on the office of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a moderate Shi'ite group. One of them said the gunmen stormed the building in the mixed Sunni-Shi'ite town at 8:30 a.m.

    (0430 GMT) on Saturday (June 26).
    In a separate attack in Baquba, armed men chased the guards from a building used by Allawi's Iraqi National Accord group and then destroyed it with explosives, police said.
    Witnesses said that U.S. forces began shooting indiscriminately.
    "There are U.S. here and here. They started shooting in different directions. The streets were empty -- there was resistance. They started shooting indiscriminately" a witness said.
    U.S. and Iraqi officials say they expect more violence in the run-up to the June 30 handover of power. A string of bloody attacks on Thursday killed about 100 people in five cities.
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