Post by Moses on Oct 24, 2005 7:56:04 GMT -5
Blasts rattle Iraq cities as US toll rises
Sun Oct 23, 2005 1:44 PM ET
By Aseel Kami
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least three car bombs and several roadside bombs hit U.S. and Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens more, Iraqi police said.
The past 10 days have seen a relative lull in violence despite a constitutional referendum on October 15 and the start of Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity. But U.S. commanders have warned of more attacks in the run-up to December 15 elections that they fear insurgents will try to disrupt.
The U.S. military death toll in Iraq is approaching the psychological landmark of 2,000, focusing attention on the security situation more than 2-1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion. The toll stood at 1,996 on Sunday afternoon.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was determined to face down the insurgency and build Iraq into a stable, democratic ally.
"It is absolutely the case that you have evil men, violent men, who seem determined to try to throw this off course. But they haven't been able to," she told BBC television in an interview.
Britain's ambassador in Baghdad urged the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government to mount an inquiry into accusations its security forces operate clandestine "death squads" against minority Sunni Arabs -- who are blamed for most of the insurgent violence.
In the first of Sunday's attacks, a car bomb killed four people, including two police officers, when it exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in central Baghdad. The blast also injured 14 others, both police and civilians.
Another car bomb in the northeastern Zaiuna district of the capital targeted a U.S. patrol of three Humvee armored vehicles, according to Iraqi police who said at least three U.S. soldiers were wounded and one Humvee was set alight. There was no immediate confirmation from the U.S. military.
Iraqi police also reported that one U.S soldier was killed and one wounded when a roadside bomb hit a U.S patrol in central Baghdad. The U.S military had no immediate information.
KIRKUK BOMBS
About 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, battling an insurgency by those who oppose the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government and its U.S. backers.
In Kirkuk on Sunday, seven Iraqi civilians were wounded when a car driven by a suicide bomber rammed a U.S. Humvee, Iraqi police said. There was no immediate word from the U.S. military on whether there were any U.S. casualties.
Another Iraqi was killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in Kirkuk, police colonel Taha Abdulla said, while other attacks in Baquba and Tikrit killed two Iraqi police officers.
Britain's Sunday Telegraph reported a secret poll said to have been commissioned by British defense leaders that showed 45 percent of Iraqis believe attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified. Eighty-two percent of those polled said they were "strongly opposed" to the presence of the troops.
In a sign of concern among the Baghdad government's allies, British Ambassador William Patey urged a probe into "death squad" allegations by Sunnis, which the government has repeatedly denied.
"We have made clear that the way to deal with this is to have a properly independent investigation," Patey told reporters after a week in which a journalist for a British newspaper was abducted by men driving a police car and a defense lawyer in the Saddam Hussein trial was shot by men claiming to be from the Interior Ministry.
There were also reports of new attacks on Iraq's vital oil industry, a frequent target of the insurgency.
Four sabotage blasts have brought oil exports from northern Iraq to a halt and it could take up to one month for repairs, an oil official said on Sunday.
The Ceyhan pipeline, designed to carry more than 1.5 million barrels per day, has been closed for most of the post-U.S. invasion era due to sabotage. It runs through Sunni Arab areas hostile to American forces and the U.S.-backed government.
Repeated sabotage -- combined with poor project management and political instability -- has hampered Iraq's aim of ramping up output to 3 million barrels per day, last seen in 1990.