- Title: IRAQ: INSURGENT ATTACKS CLAIM 15 MORE LIVES IN IRAQ.
- Date: 23rd June 2005
- Summary: (BN06) ARBIL, IRAQ (JUNE 20, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. LV: POLICE CAR AT SOCCER FIELD WHERE CAR BOMB EXPLODED 0.04 2. GV: IRAQI SOLDIERS WALKING AT SITE 0.10 3. GV/MV/CU: WRECKAGE OF CAR BOMB; BLOOD STAIN (5 SHOTS) 0.40 4. LV: BLAST SITE 0.48 5. LV/CU/MV: PEOPLE GATHERING OUTSIDE ARBIL HOSPITAL; "EMERGENCY HOSPITAL" SIGN; PEOPLE AT
- Embargoed: 8th July 2005 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: ARBIL, KIRKUK, BAGHDAD, IRAQ
- Country: Iraq
- Reuters ID: LVA5PH6XHUYNGDO4A2VYQQ8I0X9L
- Story Text: Insurgent attacks claim at least 15 more lives in
Iraq.
At least six car bombs exploded across Iraq on
Monday killing at least 17 people as insurgents defied a
widespread U.S.-Iraqi security clampdown.
In the Kurdish city of Arbil, a suicide bomber drove
his car into a crowd of police recruits, killing at least
12 and wounding about 100 on a soccer field, officials
said. Five car bombs blew up in Baghdad, targeting Iraqi
police and soldiers.
The wave of violence came as two influential U.S.
senators criticised fellow Republican President George W.
Bush's handling of the two-year-old war and said Americans
needed to be told that U.S. troops faced a "long, hard
slog" in Iraq.
The Arbil bombing was the second time in six weeks that
the relative peace has been shattered in the northern
Kurdish area, where a regional president was sworn in last
week. In early May a suicide bomber killed 46 police
recruits in the city.
On Monday, a crowd of around 200 traffic police
recruits had gathered for roll call in a dusty field behind
the police headquarters when the suicide bomber raced his
red vehicle towards them and blew up among them as they
scattered.
"Some people were running away but others couldn't move
and the car blew up," said Raeder Mohammed, one of the
trainees.
The attack followed a major pre-dawn raid by insurgents
on a police station in southwest Baghdad, where they
detonated two car bombs and then ambushed Iraqi police and
soldiers who came to assist a U.S. unit that also came
under fire.
The U.S. military said five police and soldiers were
killed and 20 wounded in the complex attack, which only
subsided after U.S. air and ground support was called in.
Iraqi police at the scene told Reuters 18 insurgents were
killed and 14 captured.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group led by Jordanian militant
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility in a Web
posting.
Reuters television pictures showed smoke rising from
buildings as a helicopter circled low and gunfire rang out.
It was not the first time a Baghdad police station has
been attacked, but the assault appeared particularly brazen
coming during Operation Lightning, a high-profile sweep by
around 40,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops and police in the city.
Two more car bombs targeted Iraqi police in the Mansour
district of western Baghdad, Iraq's Defence Ministry said,
and a fifth blew up at a checkpoint on the road to Baghdad
airport. Early reports said three people were wounded in
those blasts.
The series of explosions came a day after 23 people,
many of them police and security guards, were killed and 30
wounded when a suicide bomber walked into a busy restaurant
and blew himself up, the worst bombing in Baghdad in six
weeks. Zarqawi's group also claimed the restuarant bombing.
Zarqawi, for whom Washington is offering a $25 million
bounty, has come to symbolise the U.S. military's struggle
to bring order to Iraq.
The perceived failure to make inroads against him and
the broader Iraqi insurgency may have hit Bush's approval
ratings, a recent poll indicated.
Another U.S. soldier died on Monday after being hit in
a roadside bomb blast in the northern town of Tal Afar,
raising to at least 1,720 the number of troops to have died
in the war.
U.S. commanders say Operation Lightning, launched a
month ago, is having an impact with around 1,200 suspects
detained, car bomb "factories" uncovered and suicide
attacks down. But insurgents still appear determined to
strike whenever possible.
Since late April, when a new Shi'ite-led government was
formed, attacks have surged, with more than 1,000 Iraqis,
many of them police and soldiers, and around 120 U.S.
troops killed.
In Kirkuk a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi police
convoy wounding six people, police said.
They said two policemen were among the wounded in the
blast.
"I'm a labourer working in painting pavements. An
explosion took place close to us. There are three wounded
in the hospital and i'm the fourth, three men and a woman,"
said Ahmed Ghanm Dhiab, a wounded civilian in the hospital.
Insurgents frequently target Iraqi police at
checkpoints but have not attacked a police station for some
time.
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