Insurgents in Iraq yesterday launched fresh attacks with bombs and bullets, killing 21 Iraqis and two US soldiers. Four Iraqi National Guardsmen died in a roadside bombing in Basra and two Iraqi troops died from a blast that hit a patrol in Samarra. The two US soldiers from Task Force Danger were killed in a roadside bombing on Friday night near Baiji.A member of the Baghdad city council, Abbas Hasan Waheed, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Assassins also killed a member of Iraq's intelligence service in a dive-by shooting in the capital. The brother of the police chief for Mosul and the surrounding Ninevah province was kidnapped yesterday, three days after the chief, General Mohammed Ahmed Al Jubouri, had threatened to destroy rebel sanctuaries if insurgents did not surrender their weapons within two weeks.
Three Iraqi National Guard soldiers were also killed in clashes west of Mosul, in the city of Tal Afar, on Friday night. West of Baghdad, a US convoy in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi was rocked by a roadside bomb that killed two Iraqi bystanders. On the capital's western outskirts, several mortar rounds exploded with thunderous booms, sending up a cloud of black smoke.
Early yesterday, a colleague of an Italian journalist abducted in Iraq said she received a call from the woman's mobile phone. Giuliana Sgrena, 56, was seized by gunmen on Friday near Baghdad University. Radio journalist Barbara Schiavulli, who received the call from Sgrena's phone, heard no voices but only Arab music playing in the background, said Cristiana Tomei, a colleague of Schiavulli's speaking in Rome.
Associated Press Television News obtained video footage yesterday from the Islamic Army of Iraq, showing a militant firing a shoulder-fired missile at what appears to be a C-130 transport plane flying at a low altitude. The plane's crew fired flares and the missile veered away from the aircraft's rear without hitting it. It wasn't clear where or when the footage was recorded.
Also yesterday, an Iraqi police commander said 11 of his officers were missing after their convoy was ambushed in a western Baghdad suburb. Militant group Army of Ansar Al Sunna said yesterday it shot dead seven abducted Iraqi National Guards and posted an Internet video of the killings. The group said on its website that the seven had been captured in an attack on an Iraqi police convoy in the Abu Ghraib area near Baghdad this week. The video showed the seven hostages being shot outdoors. In Mosul, the bodies of three unidentified Iraqis who had been shot in the head were found on the streets of the city's eastern sector, police said.