Suicide bomber kills 23, wounds 36

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide bombing ripped through a popular Baghdad kebab restaurant at lunchtime, killing at least 23 people and wounding 36 Sunday as insurgents stepped up attacks nationwide, defying two major U.S.-led offensives aimed at routing foreign fighters.\nThe U.S. military also announced that a Marine died Saturday during Operation Spear -- the first American death reported in the twin offensives.\nThe bomber detonated a vest laden with explosives at about 2:45 p.m. in the Ibn Zanbour restaurant, just 400 yards from the main gate of the heavily fortified Green Zone and is especially popular with Iraqi police and soldiers.\nThe explosion killed seven police officers, while the injured included 16 police officers and the bodyguards of Iraqi Finance minister Ali Abdel-Amir Allawi, police Lt. Col. Talal Jumaa said. The minister was not in the restaurant.\nElsewhere, militants staged attacks that killed at least nine people, despite two joint U.S.-Iraqi offensives -- operations Spear and Dagger -- that began earlier this week with about 1,000 U.S. forces and Iraqi soldiers each.\nInsurgents also exploded a water pipeline in the capital, and Mayor Alaa al-Timimi said the city of 5 million people would suffer a 24-hour water \nshortage.\nNearly 60 insurgents have been killed and 100 captured so far in the offensives, which are aimed at destroying militant networks near the Syrian border and north of Baghdad, the military said. Three Americans have been wounded.\nThe Marine who was killed Saturday by small-arms fire during Operation Spear had been assigned to Regimental Combat Team 2 of the 2nd Marine Division. At least 1,720 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.\nTroops participating in Operation Spear -- in its third day in the Anbar province town of Karabilah -- fired Hellfire missiles overnight at two homes where insurgents holed up after shooting mortars at coalition forces, said Lt. Col. Tim Mundy, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment. The military said they believed four or five militants may have been killed in the counterattack.\nA battle tank killed a suspected suicide truck bomber, Marine Capt. Jeffrey Pool said from Ramadi, the provincial capital. The vehicle exploded, and the tank crew observed secondary blasts from explosives rigged to it.\nU.S. and Iraqi forces have been shouting through loudspeakers to residents of the western town to leave their homes with white flags and head to a safer area. But most homes already are empty, said Marine Capt. Christopher Goland of Lima Company, a unit of the 3rd Battalion.