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| quote: | Iraqi Insurgents Go on Rampage, Kill 60
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 43 minutes ago
A string of bombings, including one by a man with explosives strapped to his body, struck several Iraqi cities Wednesday, killing more than 60 people and wounding more than 100.
Meanwhile, a U.S. offensive in the lawless region near the Syrian frontier aimed at followers of Iraq's most-wanted terrorist entered its fourth day, the military said, adding that evidence obtained from captured insurgents confirmed the presence of foreign fighters in the area.
The operation came amid a surge of deadly car bombings, ambushes and other attacks after Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced April 28. Insurgents are averaging about 70 attacks a day this month, up from 30-40 in February and March, said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq.
In Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, a man with hidden explosives slipped past security guards protecting a police and army recruitment center on Wednesday and blew himself up just outside the building where some 150 applicants were lined up. At least 30 people were killed and 35 injured, police said.
"I was standing near the center and all of a sudden it turned into a scene of dead bodies and pools of blood," police Sgt. Khalaf Abbas said by cell phone from the chaotic scene. "Windows were blown out in nearby houses, leaving the street covered with glass."
In Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded in a small market near a police station, killing at least 27 people and wounding 75, police and hospital officials said. The attacker swerved into a crowd after heavy security prevented him from reaching the police station, police said.
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army said on its Web site Wednesday that it was behind the blast. But it denied the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber and that it targeted a local market, saying instead it was aimed at Iraqis who work in the U.S. base in Tikrit. The statement, which could not be authenticated, claimed its fighters left a booby-trapped car at a "site where dozens of renegades who work in an American base pass."
Four more car bombs exploded in Baghdad, three of them in suicide attacks, the U.S. military said. One caused an unspecified number of casualties in a U.S. patrol, it said.
Iraqi police confirmed three attacks targeting a police station and patrols in Baghdad. Four Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded, including at least three policeman, they said.
Another bomb exploded at Iraq's largest fertilizer plant in the southern city of Basra, setting fire to a gas pipeline and destroying about 60 percent of the plant. One person was killed and 23 wounded in the blast, police and employees said.
In Brazil, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, on his first foreign trip since being elected to head the interim government, appealed to South American nations to support his country's efforts to defeat its insurgency.
"Terrorism is not limited to Iraq, it is a global curse," Talabani said, addressing heads of state and ministers gathered for the first summit of South American and Arab countries.
Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari also suggested that some of Iraq's neighbors have become unnerved by the American-backed attempt to establish a democratic government in Baghdad and still are not doing enough to stop militants from trying to undermine the newly elected government. He singled out Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey.
"There is some tolerance for these terror networks on the part of the neighboring countries," Zebari told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday on the sidelines of the summit in Brazil.
Operation Matador, which began around midnight on Saturday, continued Wednesday with U.S. Marines conducting combat operations near the Syrian border, said U.S. military spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool. He provided no details of the day's fighting.
The offensive was launched after U.S. intelligence showed that followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had taken refuge in the desert border region — believed to be a haven for smugglers and foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria. Many of the insurgents were believed to have fled to remote parts of Anbar province after losses in Fallujah and Ramadi, farther east.
As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the offensive as U.S. troops cleared villages along the southern banks of the meandering Euphrates River, then crossed in rafts and on a pontoon bridge, the U.S. command said. Many of the dead remained trapped under rubble after attack planes and helicopter gunships pounded their hideouts.
An unspecified number of insurgents were also detained during the operation, Pool said in a statement.
"Information gathered prior to the operation about the presence of foreign fighters in the region has been confirmed by clothing, identification, dialect and by admissions from the detainees," he added.
At least three Marines were reported killed and 20 wounded in the first four days of the offensive — the biggest U.S. operation since Fallujah was taken from militants six months ago.
Two civilians — a woman and a child — were killed Tuesday at a U.S. checkpoint southeast of Obeidi, the border town 200 miles west of Baghdad that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the offensive, the military said.
Pool said Marines fired at their vehicle after it ignored repeated warnings to stop. The driver jumped out of the moving car and fled, leaving the vehicle and its passengers to continue toward the checkpoint, Pool said. The driver was apprehended and held for questioning. The Marines said they believed the vehicle was a suicide car bomb, the statement said.
East of Husaybah, a town about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, Marine AH-1W Super Cobra helicopters shot and killed three armed men seen digging holes Tuesday in a road in which to place explosives, Pool said. Late that night, in the same town, Marines shot and killed four insurgents armed with AK-47 automatic rifles, he said.
After intense fighting with militants entrenched on the south bank of the Euphrates River early in the operation, Marines saw only light resistance Tuesday and advanced through sparsely populated settlements along a 12-mile stretch toward the border, said James Janega, a Chicago Tribune reporter embedded with the assault.
Gunmen kidnapped the governor of Anbar province Tuesday and told his family he would be released only when U.S. forces withdrew from Qaim, the town 200 miles west of Baghdad where the offensive began Saturday. Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi, his brother, Hammad, told AP.
His brother said Wednesday that the kidnappers were offering to release the governor in exchange for three al-Zarqawi followers captured by U.S. forces in Qaim. He did not identify the insurgents in question.
Qaim residents reached by telephone Wednesday said the town was calm and a few shops were open. But fighting continued nearby.
"We are hearing explosions of shells," said one resident, Ahmed al-Ani.
At the Pentagon, Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the assault in the northern Jazirah Desert had run into well-equipped and trained fighters.
"There are reports that these people are in uniforms, in some cases are wearing protective vests, and there's some suspicion that their training exceeds what we have seen with other engagements further east," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050511/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq |
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