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| Iraq-Jordan |
| 33 killed in northern Iraq violence |
| 2005-06-02 |
| At least 33 people were killed in a wave of violence that swept northern Iraq, while the government said more than 700 insurgents had been arrested in its Operation Lightning dragnet in the capital. "More than 700 terrorists have been killed and 28 others killed," an Interior Ministry official said, adding "enormous quantities" weapons had also been seized since the offensive was launched on Sunday. Operation Lightning is aimed at barring rebel access to the capital and rooting out insurgents hiding there after a wave of attacks that killed some 700 people nationwide in May alone. But while progress was being trumpeted in Baghdad, dozens died in northern Iraq. The worst blast, in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, ripped through a restaurant as bodyguards of Kurdish Deputy Prime Minister Roj Shaways were having breakfast. "Seven cars were destroyed and 12 charred bodies were pulled from the wreckage," a Defence Ministry statement said. A local medic said he had treated 38 people for their wounds. The guards had stopped in the town, 70 kilometres south of the oil hub of Kirkuk, on their way to meet up with Mr Shaways. "I was having my breakfast at the Baghdad Restaurant when a powerful explosion rocked the place," taxi driver Nozad Abdullah said, who survived because he was in the bathroom. "I went outside to see what happened and I saw two of my passengers wounded inside the taxi and three shattered bodies lying on the ground." Ansar al-Sunna, a group linked to Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on an Islamist website that said Mr Shaways belonged to an "apostate Kurdish party". The statement could not be verified. An hour later, a second suicide car bombing targeted a US diplomatic convoy entering the compound of the Northern Oil Company in Kirkuk, killing a four-year-old child and wounding 11 civilians, police said. Four more people were killed, including a local politician, and five wounded in a suicide car bomb attack in Baquba, north of Baghdad. Another five people were killed in an attack that targeted Iraq's fledgling security forces in the main northern city of Mosul. "Five people, including a policeman, were killed and 13 wounded in a double motorcycle bombing in front of a cafe near a police station in the city," Commander Mootaz Abdel Wahed Mohammed said. Two firefights between US and Iraqi forces and insurgents later killed three Iraqi troops, two gunmen, and a Turkish truck driver. In Siniyah, an Iraqi soldier died and another was injured during a mortar attack on their base, while further north in the Shorgat region, four civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 Re-read it again, yep. Never mind. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-02 18:56 |
| #2 "More than 700 terrorists have been killed and 28 others killed," an Interior Ministry official said, adding "enormous quantities" weapons had also been seized since the offensive was launched on Sunday. I assume the 700 referes to detained? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-02 18:56 |
| #1 Trying to start a civil war? |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-06-02 16:15 |