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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Bombings kill 12 Iraqis, 1 American soldier |
| 2004-06-14 |
| A pair of car bombings killed a U.S. soldier and 12 Iraqis on Sunday and gunmen assassinated a senior Education Ministry official. The attacks continued a wave of violence against the U.S. occupation and Iraqis who cooperate with it as the June 30 transfer of power approaches. Three rockets were fired into the heavily guarded compound where U.S. authorities live and work in downtown Baghdad. A senior U.S. military official said that only one of the rockets detonated, causing minor damage and no deaths or injuries. But the blast, heard by Iraqis through much of the city during morning rush hour, underlined the city’s lack of security. About 15 vehicles rigged with explosives, some driven by suicide bombers, have been sent against U.S. occupation and Iraqi government targets so far this month, U.S. military officers said -- an average of at least one car bombing a day somewhere in Iraq. The bombings were among a variety of violent engagements, occurring at the rate of 35 to 40 a day, in a campaign designed to demonstrate a lack of U.S. and government control in the days leading to the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty June 30, the officers said. The first car bombing, which took place in the eastern part of the capital as Iraqis drove to work in a morning traffic jam, killed four policemen and eight civilians, the U.S. military said. Witnesses told reporters that an Iraqi police patrol tried to stop the vehicle as it sped toward Camp Cuervo, but it crossed the median and detonated in a suicide attack, demolishing the police car. The second bombing, which came later in the day near the northern suburb of Taji, killed one U.S. soldier, who was not identified, and wounded two others, spokesmen reported. The assassinated Education Ministry official, Kamal Jarrah, 63, was responsible for cultural relations with foreign countries and the United Nations. Gunmen shot him as he left for work from his home in the Ghazaliya district, police said. Jarrah was the second high-ranking government professional to be killed by gunfire in the last two days. Assassins killed Deputy Foreign Minister Bassam Salih Kubba, a career diplomat, in a hail of gunfire Saturday as he drove away from his home on the way to work. Iraqi police reported Sunday that Sabri Bayati, a professor who headed the geography department at Baghdad University, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen as he left the campus. Amer Nayef Hiti, who teaches in the university’s language department, said a number of professors had received written threats from unknown people warning them that if they continued teaching, they would be killed. In Baqubah, 35 miles to the northeast, the dean of Diyala University, Khosham Atta, escaped injury when gunmen shot at his car as he went to work. In northern Iraq overnight, four gunmen broke into the house of Iyad Khorshid, a Kurdish religious leader, and killed him, the Reuters news service reported. Khorshid had condemned violence against occupation forces. "These random, senseless acts of violence only prove that anti-Iraqi forces have no regard for the people of Baghdad or the future of this country," said Lt. Col. James Hutton, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division based at Camp Cuervo. "The Iraqi people will not be denied their future or their freedom." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 Is the average Iraqi so oblivious that they don't notice that the bad guy strategy seems to be switching from blowing us up to blowing them up? If it was me, I'd be pissed off about that. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-06-14 12:12:13 PM |
| #1 The continued terrorist murders of US & other allied Coalition troops coupled with new terror hits against top Iraqi government officials proves the evil & true nature of the enemy, but the focus of Washington's attention should also be fixed on Iran as the centre of organized terrorism in an effort to totally destabilize neighbouring Iraq, thus keeping the heat off of the radical mullahs in Tehran. The terrorist promoters in Iran are on borrowed time and they know it. |
| Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-06-14 1:26:18 AM |