IRAQ: Violence in Iraq as sectarian attacks and strikes against coalition forces continue

Record ID: 837807

  • Title: IRAQ: Violence in Iraq as sectarian attacks and strikes against coalition forces continue
  • Date: 14th May 2006
  • Summary: (BN08) MUSTANSIRIYA, BAGHDAD, IRAQ (MAY 14, 2006) (REUTERS) WIDE SHOT DAMAGE NEAR SITE WHERE TWO CAR BOMBS EXPLODED; REMNANT OF MORTAR NEAR SITE OF BLAST; POLICEMEN / FIREMEN CLEANING SITE OF BLAST / POLICEMEN BESIDE 6 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 29th May 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • City:
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVABUMMW90D2FSFU6IVM33UL3NJ9
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Witnesses reported on Saturday (May 13) that clashes had erupted between U.S. forces and Iraqi rebels in the restive city of Ramadi.
    Ramadi, the capital of semi-lawless Anbar province, is a base of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.
    U.S. and Iraqi troops have launched a series of offensives in Anbar over the past few months aimed at securing western Iraq against the insurgents.
    The attacks continued on Sunday (May 14) and witnesses said four civilians were killed and several other wounded when the U.S. forces bombed a residential area in the city.
    "Snipers are everywhere, shooting over our heads, we do not know where to go? God can not accept this. A student in secondary school being carried like this (killed during attack). Four people from the same family were killed and four others were seriously wounded," said a resident while crying.
    And a man said that the people of the town had done nothing to warrant the attack.
    "The residents of Ramadi did not do anything. There were only victims to military operations launched by the US forces. They (US forces) targeted the residential area of al-Qittar (railway), rockets and mortars (against them).", he said.
    Meanwhile roadside bombs targeting Iraqi police and Interior Ministry forces were responsible for more deaths on Sunday (May 14), police said.
    An eye witness to one of the bombs, Haidar al-Atwani, said that a police vehicle had been driving in the street with a bus was driving behind it. The bomb, planted in the roadside exploded near the bus, he said.
    In another deadly blast, four people were killed and five wounded when a bomb aimed at an Iraqi police convoy went off near Beirut Square in northeastern Baghdad. The identity of the victims was not clear, police said.
    A further attack targeting a checkpoint manned by Interior Ministry forces in Tayaran Square in central Baghdad killed two and wounded five. The victims' identities were also unclear.
    And at least six people were killed, including three policemen, and ten wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in the Iraqi capital's northern Adamiya district on Sunday (May 14), police said.
    In separate attacks, two car bombs exploded in eastern Baghdad targeting Iraqi police patrols. One exploded near al-Mustansiriya University in northeastern Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding 11 people, including three policemen, police said.
    Sunni Arab insurgents launch frequent attacks against the U.S.-trained Iraqi forces, which Washington hopes will gradually take over security to allow American forces start going home.
    Earlier, Insurgents attacked a convoy of trucks carrying supplies to the U.S. military west of Baghdad, police said.
    They said that gunmen fired at the trucks, which were carrying huge pipes and then set them on fire before leaving.
    The trucks were left burning on a bridge west of Baghdad as black smoke billowed from them.
    There is no word on the fate of their drivers and the U.S. military could not be reached immediately for details of the attack.
    Fourteen Iraqis were killed on Sunday (May 14) when two suicide bombers detonated vehicles close to the main civilian entrance to a zone housing Baghdad airport and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, the military said.
    Witnesses saw at least three burnt out trucks and a car in a car park used by Iraqi civilians just outside the base.
    The sprawling zone, the size of a considerable town in its own right, contains Baghdad International Airport and a number of palaces once used by Saddam Hussein and which now house military bases, among them the Camp Victory U.S. headquarters.
    In Zaafaraniya area southeastern Baghdad, Three people were killed and 15 wounded when a roadside bomb went off in a crowded market, police said.
    In the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb exploded close to an Iraqi police patrol on Sunday, wounding eight policemen, police said.
    The attack took place in central Iraqi northern oil city of Kirkuk.
    Kirkuk's oil wealth is a source of dispute between rival ethnic groups in the city -- Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen -- and it has seen significant violence over the past year or so.
    Sunni Arab insurgents launch frequent attacks against the U.S.-trained Iraqi forces, which Washington hopes will gradually take over security to allow American forces start going home.
    Bombs wrecked six small Shi'ite Muslim shrines in a rural area about 60 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police said on Sunday (May 14), in what appeared to be the latest acts of sectarian violence in Iraq.
    No one was hurt in Saturday's (May 13) shrine attacks round the small town of Wajihiya and local residents expressed anger and concern that militants were trying to create friction in their mixed Sunni and Shi'ite community, which is typical of the region.
    "I'm serving this shrine, which people usually visit on Saturday. People gathered inside the shrine and I was there until sunset, I left home and nothing happened but it seems that the blast took place after my leaving. Two Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were exploded inside the shrine. The first blast took place at about 0900 p.m. (1700 GMT) and the second one exploded about ten minutes after the first blast," said Um Waleed who served in the shrine.
    Two of the shrines -- mostly one-room buildings attached to the tombs of noted clerics -- honoured relatives of two Shi'ite imams commemorated at the Golden Mosque in Samarra, where a bombing in February sparked weeks of intense communal bloodshed.
    Residents of Wajihiya, a town of about 5,000 people 30 km (20 miles) east of the regional capital Baquba, showed reporters five sites where explosions after dark had damaged the shrines, the most notable of which was dedicated to Abdullah bin Ali al-Hadi. A sixth was blown up in countryside nearby, police said.
    A local man said that Sunnis also used the shrines for worship -- a common practice in Iraq, although shrines are most often set up by Shi'ites.
    Blamed on al Qaeda's Sunni Islamist guerrillas -- though they have denied it -- the Samarra bombing provoked reprisal attacks by Shi'ites and a wave of sectarian bloodshed that has pitched Iraq toward civil war.
    Diyala province, stretching from Baghdad east to the Iranian border, has seen much violence in recent months, with its mixed population offering targets for gunmen and bombers from all Iraq's ethnic and sectarian factions.
    Sunday's blasts came as parliament is about to convene for its third normal session since it was elected in December with Shi'ite Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki trying to put together a national unity government that can avert a slide into all-out conflict. Disputes over the key posts of interior, defence and oil are complicating efforts by the no-nonsene Maliki to form a cabinet.
    Five months after an election, he has another week to present a cabinet to parliament under a constitutional deadline set when he was appointed last month.
    Violence also flared in southern Iraq where two British soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Basra, Iraq's second city. Last week, a British military helicopter came down there, possibly hit by a rocket, killing five troops and sparking clashes between British forces and militias.
    U.S. and Iraqi officials have said the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is stepping up a campaign to target majority Shi'ites in and around Baghdad in an attempt to provoke retaliatory attacks against minority Sunnis, dominant under Saddam Hussein, and ignite all-out sectarian warfare.
    There were more signs of factional wrangling over key posts delaying the formation of the government. Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, has repeatedly expressed confidence he would put together a cabinet of Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds well within his 30-day deadline. He is now running it close.
    Sunni leaders have accused the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry of running death squads, and Maliki has said he will appoint an independent with no ties to armed militias to the post.
    Near the southern holy Sh'ite city of Kerbala, police found the bodies of five people, blindfolded, bound and with gun shots. Separately, the bodies of four brothers who worked in a humanitarian organization were found beheaded also in Kerbala.
    Two British soldiers were killed and a third was seriously wounded by a roadside bomb in the southern Iraqi city of Basra late on Saturday (May 13), military officials said on Sunday (May 14).
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