IRAQ: AT LEAST 15 PEOPLE KILLED BY INSURGENTS IN NEW ATTACKS AIMED AT TOPPLING IRAQ'S NEW U.S.-BACKED GOVERNMENT

Record ID: 355522

  • Title: IRAQ: AT LEAST 15 PEOPLE KILLED BY INSURGENTS IN NEW ATTACKS AIMED AT TOPPLING IRAQ'S NEW U.S.-BACKED GOVERNMENT
  • Date: 23rd May 2005
  • Summary: (W3) BAGHDAD, IRAQ (MAY 23, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. VARIOUS OF WRECKAGE AT SCENE OF RESTAURANT BLAST 0.07 2. BODY CARRIED ON STRETCHER AND PLACED IN AMBULANCE 0.25 3. ROW OF CHARRED CARS 0.30 4. IRAQI TROOPS AT THE SCENE 0.37 5. CHARRED CARS BEING HOSED DOWN 0.49 6. WIDE VIEW OF THE SCENE / IRAQI SOLDIERS AND RESCUE WORKE
  • Embargoed: 7th June 2005 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BAGHDAD, TUZ KHURMATU, SAMARRA, IRAQ
  • Country: Iraq
  • Reuters ID: LVA2AEZ1WESZBCKDY175ZPEZS1JO
  • Story Text: Insurgents kill at least 15 in new Iraq attacks.


    Guerrillas attacked a Baghdad restaurant and
    detonated a suicide truck bomb outside a mayor's office, as
    a deadly campaign aimed at toppling Iraq's new U.S-backed
    government killed at least 15 people on Monday (May 23).

    Police said a car bomb blew up outside a restaurant in
    northern Baghdad at lunch time, killing at least four
    people and wounding more than 100.

    The truck bomb exploded near the mayor's office in the
    town of Tuz Khurmatu, south of the oil city of Kirkuk,
    killing five and wounding 18.

    Among the dead in Tuz Khurmatu was the brother of a
    senior official in one of Iraq's main Kurdish parties, the
    Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, police said.

    The official, Mohammed Mahmoud Jigareti, was wounded in
    the blast. Both men had been in a car that was entering the
    mayor's office compound when the bomber struck.

    Earlier on Monday, gunmen in Baghdad shot and killed
    Wael Rubaie, an official in the operations room of the
    Ministry of State for National Security, a government
    statement said. His driver was also killed.

    Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu
    Musab al-Zarqawi, said it was behind the assassination of
    Rubaie And in Samarra, insurgents targeted a U.S. base with
    two car bombs and a suicide bomber strapped with
    explosives, killing four Iraqis and wounding four U.S.

    soldiers.

    The bloodshed came as mostly Sunni Muslim insurgents
    stepped up a campaign of attacks that have killed more than
    500 people in the three weeks since a new Shi'ite-led
    government came to power with the promise of stability.

    The wave of suicide bombings, assassinations and
    ambushes have raised fear that violence could spark civil
    war.

    Insurgents also have been targeting the U.S. military.

    Three American soldiers were killed in separate attacks
    in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday, the military said,
    and another U.S. soldier was killed by a bomb blast near
    Tikrit.

    More than a dozen senior Iraqi government officials
    have been killed in Baghdad in well planned attacks in
    recent weeks.

    U.S. and Iraqi forces detained 285 suspected insurgents
    in the western Baghdad district of Abu Ghraib after a
    widespread search, the U.S. military said. It said the
    operation called "Squeeze Play" was designed to kill or
    capture guerrillas who have been staging attacks in the
    capital.

    Iraqi officials are hoping to give Sunnis a bigger role
    in politics after they were sidelined in January 30
    elections, in a strategy designed to defuse the Sunni-led
    insurgency.

    Tit-for-tat killings between Shi'ites and Sunnis have
    raised fears that violence will push Iraq towards civil
    war. A senior U.S. official said he didn't think such an
    outcome was likely, but added it was on his "list of things
    to worry about".

    Leaders of Iraq's two Muslim sects have moved rapidly
    in the past few days to try to dispel the rising sectarian
    tensions.

    Moqtada al-Sadr, a young cleric who led two armed
    uprisings against U.S. troops last year, on Sunday (May 22)
    sent a delegation to see the Sunni Muslim Clerics'
    Association, and another team met representatives of SCIRI,
    the main Shi'ite party, and its militia, the Badr
    Organisation. Officials in Sadr's office said a summit
    between the two sides may be held.

    Zarqawi, who Iraqi officials accuse of trying to spark
    a full-scale sectarian conflict, has warned Sunnis not to
    join the political process because it would make them
    infidels.


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