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| Iraq |
| Blasts in Baghdad kill 15, wound 29 |
| 2008-11-05 |
| Bombs exploded at a bus station and a small market in Baghdad, killing 15 people and wounding 29 others Tuesday, police and hospital officials said. A string of other attacks also took place in Mosul, which has experienced a spike in violence in recent months. A bomb hidden under a car blew up at a bus depot in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Mashtal on the Baghdad's east side, killing 11 people, including two women. Twenty-one others were wounded in the attack, authorities said. In the northern Shiite-dominated district of Qahira, four people were killed and eight others injured when a roadside bomb exploded near a market place, police said. Also Tuesday, one person died when a roadside bomb in central Baghdad targeted the convoy of a Shiite government official and former member of the Iraqi Governing Council. Ahmed Shiyaa al-Barak, who currently serves as the head of a government real estate commission, escaped the attack without injury. Five of his guards and four bystanders were injured in the bombing, police said. Unknown assailants also gunned down a policeman in east Baghdad. U.S. officials say attacks in the Iraqi capital are averaging about four a day--down nearly 90 percent from levels of late 2006, when Shiite-Sunni fighting was at its high point and just before the U.S. troop surge that helped bring down violence in the capital. But Tuesday's blasts--coming a day after a series of bombings killed 10 people and wounded 40 more--mark an increase in bloodshed in Baghdad and underscore that extremists still pose a threat. Meanwhile, in the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a passing police patrol, injuring four officers, police said. A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded another, while gunmen shot dead a civilian and a policeman in separate drive-by-shootings, officials said. Also, an Iraqi soldier was injured when his patrol struck a roadside bomb, and a gunman wounded a policeman in a separate incident. Elsewhere, a mortar shell struck a house in Madain, south of Baghdad, killing a woman and her two young children, police said. Near the city of Tikrit, some 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of the capital, one civilian died on the scene of a road accident with coalition troops, the U.S. military said. A second Iraqi died after being rushed to an aid station. Iraqi police said an American Humvee ran over four Iraqis while they were trying to hang a banner in the middle of a road, killing two and wounding two others. Violence has dropped in Iraq since the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces have gained the upper hand against insurgents, but scattered attacks still occur daily. |
| Posted by:Fred |