This week 07/25/05

[Moses]

Security incidents in Iraq, July 25 ["security incidents"?]
25 Jul 2005 12:49:43 GMT
Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, July 25 (Reuters) - Following are security incidents reported in Iraq on Monday, July 25 as of 1245 GMT. U.S. and Iraqi forces are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.[?]


BAGHDAD - 12 Iraqi civilians were killed when a suicide car bomber blew up his minivan outside a hotel in central Baghdad, the defence ministry said.

BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber killed three Iraqi commandos and injured six when he struck their compound in Nisour Square, western Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen stormed a house in the southern Baghdad district of Dora killing four, including two women, and injuring three, including a child, police said.

SAMARRA - The head of Samarra's local council, Taha Ahmed, was assassinated with an associate by insurgents in the town of Samarra late on Sunday, police said. (Reporting by Lutfi Abu Oun, Huda Majeed Saleh in Baghdad and Amer Salman in Tikrit)

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WRAPUP 1-Gunmen kill 17 in Baghdad bus ambush
26 Jul 2005 17:39:31 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Peter Graff and Waleed Khalid


BAGHDAD, July 26 (Reuters) - About 10 gunmen emptied their automatic rifles into a bus carrying Iraqi workers from a factory west of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing up to 17 people, police and hospital sources said.

Police said 12 people had died in the attack on the bus, but a source at one hospital said it had received 17 bodies.

"We were on the bus going home. Two cars with about 10 insurgents opened fire on us. We don't know why: we are just workers," said Adil Zamal, being treated for multiple gunshot wounds to the back at the An Noor hospital, which received about 20 wounded patients from the attack.

"We fell to the floor. They just kept shooting and shooting until they ran out of ammunition," he said.

Al Qaeda's Iraq wing, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is blamed for most of the violence in Iraq. [?-- in the other reuters story, the culprit was a "Sunni insurgency battling a Shi-ite and Kurdish led democratic government" [paraphrase]]

On Tuesday it released a video of two kidnapped Algerian diplomats it has vowed to kill. One of the two blindfolded men identified himself as Ali Belaroussi, Algeria's mission chief.

A statement accompanying the video said the diplomats' "confessions" would be posted soon. In another statement it vowed to kill them and said this would be "the fate of the ambassadors and the envoys of all infidel governments."

The group earlier this month issued a similar video of Egypt's mission chief and said it killed him. The U.S.-backed government says the violent campaign against diplomats was aimed at preventing Iraq from improving ties with its neighbours.

Several countries have reduced their presence in Baghdad due to attacks this month, and no Arab country has yet given its envoy in Baghdad the full status of ambassador.

MORE VIOLENCE

In other violence, two police were killed by a mortar on Baghdad's southern outskirts, and three more were killed by a rocket attack in Hilla, a town further south, police said.

An aide of the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was shot dead while stepping out of his car in Baquba north of Baghdad. A paramedic and an Iraqi woman were killed during clashes between the Iraqi army and insurgents in Mosul.

Three Ministry of Health workers were shot dead in their car in the capital's eastern New Baghdad district. Gunmen killed a Pakistani truck-driver in Tikrit, and a police officer and a child were killed by gunmen in central Basra.

Despite the spiralling violence, work resumed on Iraq's new constitution after Sunni Arabs ended a week-long boycott of the drafting committee that had threatened to scupper the process.

The Sunnis, who were added to the committee last month in a bid to win support for the charter from the minority community behind the insurgency, had stormed out after one of their members was gunned down in a drive-by shooting.

The constitution is due by Aug. 15, but the chairman of the committee writing it has said it will be ready by the end of this month, the deadline to call for an extension if needed.

Several Iraqi and western news organisations have published leaked versions of the text, some of which contained language that women's groups have complained may allow a greater role for religious law in family issues like divorce and child custody.

But a Western diplomat who has worked closely with members of the drafting committee said it was still too early to say whether the language would be included in the final text.

"There are a lot of formulations of the text in circulation. Nothing is definitive at this stage," the diplomat said and expressed confidence that the document would be ready on time despite the brief boycott.

"Even though the Sunnis suspended their activities for a few days, it wasn't as if they stopped working on their positions."

(Additional reporting by Luke Baker and Lutfi Abu-Oun)

[Moses]

Alissa Rubin of the Los Angeles Times adds:

'
A U.S. soldier also was killed near Samarra when an explosive device detonated under his vehicle, the military said Monday. His name was being withheld until his family had been notified.

[Moses]

Posted on Mon, Jul. 25, 2005


Four soldiers from Georgia's 48th Brigade killed in Iraq

Associated Press


ATLANTA - Four members of the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Brigade were killed in action in Iraq Sunday, brigade spokesman Jim Driscoll said.

Driscoll said Monday he had few details, and that the identities of those killed would not be released until the families are notified.

The 48th arrived in Iraq in May. One member of the brigade was killed in an accident last month, but these are its first members killed in combat in the war, Driscoll said. "We've had little experience with this," he said.

The brigade's 4,300 citizen-soldiers make up the largest combat unit of the Georgia National Guard to deploy since World War II.