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Baghdad car bombings body count now at 45
Followup to what Fred posted earlier today.
Suspected insurgents launched deadly car bomb attacks Thursday in Baghdad, killing at least 45 people -- most of them children -- and wounding scores more in operations aimed at Iraqi government targets. A hospital official told The Associated Press 35 children were killed. "We are obviously seeing a major onslaught by the terrorists on Baghdad and some other Iraqi cities," said interim Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.

Most of the casualties occurred in western Baghdad where 42 were killed and 137 injured, Yarmouk Hospital officials said.

Around 1 p.m. (5 a.m. ET), two car bombs detonated at the opening ceremony for a sewage plant, also in western Baghdad, according to U.S. military officials. The ceremony was being led by Iraqi officials. About a half-mile away, another car bomb detonated at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint, about two miles (3 km) west of Baghdad University, U.S. military officials said. A suicide car bomber hit a compound used by the U.S. military and Iraqi police in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib neighborhood around 9:40 a.m. (1:40 a.m. ET), killing a Task Force Baghdad soldier and two Iraqi police officers, U.S. military and Iraqi police officials said.

Three other soldiers were wounded, the U.S. military said. The Ministry of Health said 60 more people were wounded.

"This despicable act killed not only a multinational forces soldier, but Iraqis who were merely going about their business of defending this country," said Lt. Col. James Hutton, a 1st Cavalry Division spokesman. "The terrorists offer nothing but destruction."

An attack Thursday on the Tal Afar police chief's convoy killed four Iraqi civilians and wounded seven others -- five civilians and two police officers, according to a Task Force Olympia officer. Initial reports received by Task Force Olympia that were passed on by the Iraqi police say that it was a car bomb. A Mosul police officer also confirmed the incident to CNN. Tal Afar is west of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq.

In the northern city of Mosul, an Iraqi police official was killed, along with his driver, in a drive-by shooting Thursday morning, according to the security chief for Nineveh province. Another police official was wounded in the attack which killed Maj. Ghassan Mohammed and his driver, according to Maj. Gen. Salim al-Haj Issa.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-09-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=44679