Six Iraqis, including security force members, were killed and 58 wounded when three suicide car bombs exploded in quick succession at an army base yesterday, police said. The attack came as police, struggling to stem a surge in violence, announced they had arrested 11 Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, including a man who allegedly confessed to a Baghdad bombing that killed 18 people including two US security contractors.
Insurgents said they had killed a Japanese hostage seized in Iraq and posted footage on the Internet apparently showing his bloodied corpse. Japan's Foreign Ministry confirmed that the video footage showed the body of Akihiko Saito, 44, a former paratrooper and veteran of the French Foreign Legion, who was captured on May 8 when insurgents ambushed a civilian security convoy. The Army of Ansar Al-Sunna, which claimed responsibility for killing Saito, is one of Iraq's most feared insurgent groups. In the video footage the group posted on the Internet yesterday, a corpse was shown lying on its back, its face bloodied. "This is your punishment ... infidel," shouted an unseen man as gunshots rang out.
At least 650 people have been killed, many of them security forces, in attacks this month that coincided with the formation of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's government. In the oil refining city of Baiji, north of Baghdad, an Iraqi soldier was killed when a joint US-Iraqi patrol was targeted by a suicide car bomber while in Tarmiyah, about 40 kilometers north of the capital, truck driver Husham Ata was killed early yesterday by a roadside bomb.
Meanwhile, police said Zaal Awad Al-Kubaisi, the Al-Qaeda linked insurgent picked up earlier this week, had confessed to taking part in a May 7 attack in Baghdad that killed 18 people. In Kut, southeast of Baghdad, police arrested 10 suspected members of the Ansar Al-Sunna group.