29 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(05/29/07 3:13pm)
BAGHDAD – A car bomb exploded Tuesday at an outdoor market in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing 25 people and wounding at least 60, the deadliest in a string of attacks that stoked sectarian tension in and around the capital.\nThe blast occurred in Amil, one of a cluster of neighborhoods in southwestern Baghdad where Sunni-Shiite tension is running high three months after the start of the U.S.-led security crackdown.\nFollowing the blast, terrified survivors ran through the streets hauling buckets and pots of water to try to put out fires in shops that were shattered by the bomb. Volunteers tore through the rubble, searching for survivors.\nSami Hussein, 25, was heading to the market with her 5-year-old son when she heard the explosion, “followed by gray and black smoke, which engulfed the market and made me to fall on the ground.”\nShe suffered shrapnel wounds in her face and legs.\n“I lost my son and have no idea about his fate,” she said. Medical officials at the hospital said he died in the blast. \nFadhil Hussein, 32, who sells spices in the market, said he was thrown from his stall and wounded with shrapnel in his back and head.\n“I found myself in a pickup truck with other people. Some of them were bleeding and yelling,” he said.\nNo group claimed responsibility for the blast. But U.S. officials believe Sunni extremists are stepping up car bombings, especially against Shiite civilians, to enflame sectarian hatred and undermine public confidence in government security forces.\nThere were other signs Tuesday that Sunni-Shiite tensions are again rising after they eased last winter following the start of the Baghdad security operation Feb. 14.\nIn north Baghdad, gunmen wearing army uniforms stopped a bus carrying college students to a Shiite neighborhood, entered the vehicle and sprayed the passengers with gunfire, police said. Eight students were killed and two were wounded.\nAt another fake checkpoint near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen killed six people from one family – a woman, her 5-year-old son and four men – and stole their car, police said. It was unclear whether the victims were Sunnis or Shiites.\nIn Baghdad, mortar shells struck a college in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, killing four people and wounding 27. Four rounds landed around the office of prominent Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi, causing no casualties but destroying three cars, his staff said.\nGunmen in two vehicles ambushed a car in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Khadra carrying three plainclothes police officers from the major crimes unit, killing two and wounding the third, police said.\nAnother officer was killed when a roadside bomb exploded next to a police patrol driving through an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, police said. Three other officers were wounded.\nIn all, at least 100 Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide Tuesday, according to police. They included 33 people found shot execution-style, presumably by sectarian death squads, and their bodies scattered across Baghdad.
(01/29/07 8:00pm)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S.-backed Iraqi troops on Sunday attacked insurgents allegedly plotting to kill pilgrims at a major Shiite Muslim religious festival, and Iraqi officials estimated some 250 militants died in the daylong battle near Najaf. A U.S. helicopter crashed during the fight, killing two American soldiers.\nMortar shells, meanwhile, hit the courtyard of a girls' school in a mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Baghdad, killing five pupils and wounding 20. U.N. officials deplored the attack, calling the apparent targeting of children "an unforgivable crime."\nTwo car bombs exploded within a half hour in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing 11 people and wounding 34, police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader said. Three ethnic groups -- Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen -- are in a bitter struggle for control of that oil-rich area.\nIn addition to confirming the two Americans killed in the helicopter crash near Najaf, the U.S. command announced three combat deaths from Saturday -- one Marine in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province and two Army soldiers in the Baghdad area.\nAuthorities said Iraqi soldiers supported by U.S. aircraft fought all day with a large group of insurgents in the Zaraq area, about 12 miles northeast of the Shiite holy city of Najaf.\nCol. Ali Nomas, spokesman for Iraqi security forces in Najaf, said more than 250 corpses had been found. Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Othman al-Ghanemi also spoke of 250 dead but said an exact number would not be released until Monday. He said 10 gunmen had been captured, including one Sudanese.\nProvincial Gov. Assad Sultan Abu Kilel said the assault was launched because the insurgents planned to attack Shiite pilgrims and clerics during ceremonies marking Ashoura, the holiest day in the Shiite calendar commemorating the 7th century death of Imam Hussein. The celebration culminates Tuesday in huge public processions in Karbala and other Shiite cities.\nOfficials were unclear about the religious affiliation of the militants. Although Sunni Arabs have been the main force behind insurgent groups, there are a number of Shiite militant and splinter groups that have clashed from time to time with the government.\nIraqi soldiers attacked at dawn and militants hiding in orchards fought back with automatic weapons, sniper rifles and rockets, the governor said. He said the insurgents were members of a previously unknown group called the Army of Heaven.\n"They are well-equipped and they even have anti-aircraft missiles," the governor said. "They are backed by some locals" loyal to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.\nAbu Kilel said two Iraqi policemen were killed and 15 wounded, but there was no word on other Iraqi government casualties.\nA U.S. statement said the American helicopter went down while "conducting operations to assist Iraqi Security Forces" in the attack. It said two crew members died and their bodies were recovered. The statement did not give any information on why the aircraft crashed.\nThe mortar attack in Baghdad occurred about 11 a.m. at the Kholoud Secondary School in the Adil neighborhood, police and school officials said. The principal, Fawzyaa Hatrosh Sawadi, said students were mingling in the courtyard during a break in exams when at least two shells exploded.\nThe blasts shattered windows in classrooms, spraying students with shards of glass. Associated Press Television News footage showed pools of blood on the stone steps and walkways.
(07/10/06 4:57am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Four more U.S. soldiers have been charged with rape and murder and a fifth with dereliction of duty in the alleged rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman and the killings of her relatives in Mahmoudiya, the military said Sunday.\nThe five were accused Saturday following an investigation into allegations that American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division raped the teenager and killed her and three relatives at her home south of Baghdad.\nEx-soldier Steven D. Green was arrested last week in North Carolina and has pleaded not guilty to one count of rape and four counts of murder.\nThe U.S. statement said the five soldiers still on active duty will face an Article 32 investigation, similar to a grand jury hearing in civilian law. The Article 32 proceeding will determine whether there is enough evidence to place them on trial.\nOne of the soldiers was charged with failing to report the attack but is not believed to have participated in it directly, the statement said.\nThe names of the four soldiers were not released.\nThe March 12 attack on the family was among the worst in a series of cases of U.S. troops accused of killing and abusing Iraqi civilians. U.S. officials are concerned that the alleged rape-slaying will strain relations with the new U.S.-backed government and increase calls for changes in the agreement that exempts American soldiers from prosecution in Iraqi courts.\nPrime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has demanded an independent investigation into the case, which followed a series of allegations that U.S. troops killed and mistreated Iraqi civilians.\nAccording to an FBI affidavit filed in Green's case, Green and at least two others targeted the teenager and her family for a week before the attack, which was not revealed until witnesses came forward in late June.\nThe soldiers drank alcohol, abandoned their checkpoint, changed clothes to avoid detection and headed to the victims' house, about 200 yards from a U.S. military checkpoint in the so-called "Triangle of Death," a Sunni Arab area south of Baghdad known for its violence, the affidavit said.\nThe affidavit estimated the rape victim was about 25. But a doctor at the Mahmoudiya hospital gave her age as 14. He refused to be identified for fear of reprisals.\nGreen is accused of raping the woman and killing her and three relatives, an adult male and female and a girl estimated to be 5 years old. An official familiar with the investigation said he set fire to the rape victim's body in an apparent cover-up attempt.\nIraqi authorities identified the rape victim as Abeer Qassim Hamza. The other victims were her father, Qassim Hamza; her mother, Fikhriya Taha; and her sister, Hadeel Qassim Hamza.
(04/06/06 4:35am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A video posted Wednesday on the Internet in the name of an extremist group claimed to show Iraqi insurgents dragging the burning body of a U.S. pilot on the ground after the crash of an Apache helicopter.\nParts of the video were blurry, and the face of the man was not shown. His clothes were so tattered it was impossible to tell if he was wearing an American military uniform, but he appeared to be wearing military fatigues.\nThe U.S. military condemned the posting and said that although reports of a Web site video "suggest that terrorists removed part of a body from the crash site, the authenticity of the video cannot be confirmed."\nThe U.S. military said an AH-64D Apache Longbow crashed about 5:30 p.m. Saturday because of possible hostile fire west of Youssifiyah, about 10 miles southwest of Baghdad, while the pilot was conducting a combat air patrol.\nThe time and date stamp on the video was Sunday, April 2, and it runs from 4:03 to 4:08 p.m. The stamp shows that the minutes and seconds do not run sequentially and the scenes appear disjointed, suggesting the tape was altered.\n"We are outraged that anyone would create and publish such a despicable video for public exposure," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington said.\nOn Sunday, the military said the pilots were "presumed dead" and that recovery efforts were under way, indicating they had not fully secured the site or retrieved the bodies. The military later identified the pilots killed as Capt. Timothy J. Moshier, 25, of Albany, N.Y., and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Michael L. Hartwick, of Orrick, Mo.\nThe video, posted by a group calling itself the Shura Council of Mujahedeen, claimed its military wing had shot down the aircraft.\nAccording to statements on Islamist Web sites, the Mujahedeen Shura Council was organized in January to consolidate al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups. The move was seen as a bid by insurgents to lower the profile of al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, whose mass attacks against Shiite civilians have tarnished the image of the insurgents among many Iraqis.\nThe video was blurry, but the burning helicopter could be seen clearly. It showed the outlines of its destroyed blades and blood on various jagged pieces of wreckage spread over a field. It was not possible, however, to see if it had U.S. markings.\nThe video also clearly showed the bloodied, burning body of a man being dragged by other men through a field. Before the body was moved, the camera zoomed in on what appeared to be his waistline, which showed a scrap of underwear with the brand name "Hanes" on it. The man also appeared to be wearing camouflage fatigues.\nThe U.S. military said it had recovered "all available remains found on the scene, given the catastrophic nature of the crash."\nIn political developments, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said he won't abandon his bid for a second term to break the deadlock over a new government, and more than 1,000 of his supporters rallied in the holy city of Karbala, urging an end to "U.S. interference" in Iraqi politics.\nAlthough parliament might have to decide al-Jaafari's future, Shiite officials said they are reluctant until there is a deal among all ethnic and religious-based parties, including an agreement on who will be the new president.\nU.S. officials believe a broad-based government of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds offers the only hope for reversing Iraq's slide into anarchy. Without such a government, the Americans cannot begin withdrawing troops.
(12/09/05 5:02am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide bomber detonated explosives Thursday inside a packed bus bound for a southern Shiite city, killing 32 people and wounding 44, police said. The blast pushed the three-day death toll from suicide attacks in the capital to at least 75.\nMeanwhile, a statement posted on the Internet in the name of the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed to have killed an American hostage. The statement did not name the hostage or provide photos, but the group earlier identified its captive as Ronald Alan Schulz and threatened to kill him unless all prisoners in Iraq were released.\nThe suicide attack occurred as the bus was pulling away from east Baghdad's Nadhaa station bound for Nasiriyah, 200 miles to the south. A man carrying a bag suddenly jumped on the vehicle through the open door, apparently waiting until the last moment to board in order to avoid security checks.\nHe was challenged by the conductor, but insisted on taking a seat, police Lt. Wisam Hakim said.\n"He sat in the middle of the bus and then the explosion took place," Hakim said.\nMost of those killed were on the bus, which was gutted by flames, but several people around a food stall also died, police said.\nOfficials at the scene said the death toll was especially high because the blast triggered secondary explosions in gas cylinders at the stall.\nSeveral other explosions rumbled through the heart of the capital Thursday morning, including one that struck an American convoy killing a U.S. soldier, the military said. The U.S. command also said a Marine was killed the day before in a bombing in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.\nAt least 1,819 Iraqis have been killed in suicide attacks since the new government took office April 28, according to a count by The Associated Press. During that period, at least 4,676 Iraqis were killed in war-related violence, including suicide attacks.\nThe latest attacks broke a relative lull in suicide missions in the capital, a respite U.S. authorities had attributed to military operations against al-Qaida-led insurgents west of Baghdad.\nWhite House press secretary Scott McClellan said he could not confirm the death of the American hostage. Schulz's family in North Dakota said he was an electrician and was last heard from in Amman, Jordan. His brother, Ed, said he was advised by the State Department that Schulz might still be alive, and his sister, Julie, said the family was "just trying to get some information."\nThe Web statement posted Thursday said the Islamic Army killed "the American security consultant for the Housing Ministry" after the United States failed to respond to its demand of the release of Iraqi prisoners.
(12/09/05 3:05am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide bomber detonated explosives Thursday inside a packed bus bound for a southern Shiite city, killing 32 people and wounding 44, police said. The blast pushed the three-day death toll from suicide attacks in the capital to at least 75.\nMeanwhile, a statement posted on the Internet in the name of the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed to have killed an American hostage. The statement did not name the hostage or provide photos, but the group earlier identified its captive as Ronald Alan Schulz and threatened to kill him unless all prisoners in Iraq were released.\nThe suicide attack occurred as the bus was pulling away from east Baghdad's Nadhaa station bound for Nasiriyah, 200 miles to the south. A man carrying a bag suddenly jumped on the vehicle through the open door, apparently waiting until the last moment to board in order to avoid security checks.\nHe was challenged by the conductor, but insisted on taking a seat, police Lt. Wisam Hakim said.\n"He sat in the middle of the bus and then the explosion took place," Hakim said.\nMost of those killed were on the bus, which was gutted by flames, but several people around a food stall also died, police said.\nOfficials at the scene said the death toll was especially high because the blast triggered secondary explosions in gas cylinders at the stall.\nSeveral other explosions rumbled through the heart of the capital Thursday morning, including one that struck an American convoy killing a U.S. soldier, the military said. The U.S. command also said a Marine was killed the day before in a bombing in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.\nAt least 1,819 Iraqis have been killed in suicide attacks since the new government took office April 28, according to a count by The Associated Press. During that period, at least 4,676 Iraqis were killed in war-related violence, including suicide attacks.\nThe latest attacks broke a relative lull in suicide missions in the capital, a respite U.S. authorities had attributed to military operations against al-Qaida-led insurgents west of Baghdad.\nWhite House press secretary Scott McClellan said he could not confirm the death of the American hostage. Schulz's family in North Dakota said he was an electrician and was last heard from in Amman, Jordan. His brother, Ed, said he was advised by the State Department that Schulz might still be alive, and his sister, Julie, said the family was "just trying to get some information."\nThe Web statement posted Thursday said the Islamic Army killed "the American security consultant for the Housing Ministry" after the United States failed to respond to its demand of the release of Iraqi prisoners.
(11/21/05 4:35pm)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. forces sealed off a house in the northern city of Mosul where eight suspected al-Qaida members died in a gunfight -- some by their own hand to avoid capture. A U.S. official said Sunday that efforts were under way to determine if terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.\nIn Washington, a U.S. official said the identities of the terror suspects killed in the Saturday raid was unknown. Asked if they could include al-Zarqawi, the official replied: "There are efforts under way to determine if he was killed."\nThe official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.\nOn Saturday, police Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaida operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house in the northeastern part of the city.\nDuring the intense gunbattle that followed, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture. Eleven Americans were wounded, the U.S. military said. Such intense resistance often suggests an attempt to defend a high-value target. American soldiers controlled the site Sunday, and residents said helicopters flew over the area throughout the day. Some residents said the tight security was reminiscent of the July 2003 operation in which Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, were killed in Mosul.\nThe elusive al-Zarqawi has narrowly escaped capture in the past. U.S. forces said they nearly caught him in a February 2005 raid that recovered his computer.\nIn May, the group said he was wounded in fighting and was taken out of the country for treatment. Within days, it reported he had returned -- though there was never any independent confirmation that he was wounded. \nThe U.S. soldier killed Sunday near the capital was assigned to the Army's Task Force Baghdad and was hit by small arms fire, the military said. The Marine, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, died of wounds suffered the day before in Karmah, a village outside Fallujah to the west of the capital.\nIn the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb killed a British soldier and wounded four others, the British Ministry of Defense said. \nThe U.S. military also said Sunday that 24 people -- including another Marine and 15 civilians -- were killed the day before in an ambush on a joint U.S. Iraqi patrol in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad in the volatile Euphrates River valley.\nAccording to the U.S. statement, the attack began Saturday with a roadside bomb detonating next to the Marine's vehicle, followed by a heavy volley of fire from insurgents.\n"Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another," the statement said.\nThe three American deaths brought the number of U.S. military deaths to at least 2,093 since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
(11/09/05 4:50am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Three masked gunmen in a speeding Opel assassinated a second lawyer in the Saddam Hussein trial Tuesday, casting doubt on Iraq's ability to try the case and leading a prominent war crimes prosecutor to urge moving the proceedings to another Arab country.\nAdel al-Zubeidi, lawyer for former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, died when bullets sprayed his car in a largely Sunni Arab neighborhood of western Baghdad. The shots also wounded Thamir al-Khuzaie, attorney for another co-defendant, Saddam's half brother Barazan Ibrahim.\nThe brazen daylight attack on a major avenue came three weeks after the kidnap-slaying of another defense lawyer, Saadoun al-Janabi. His body was found Oct. 20, one day after the trial's opening session, where he represented Awad al-Bandar, a former official in Saddam's Baath Party.\nNo group claimed responsibility for the killings. An Iraqi government spokesman pointed to Saddam loyalists for the latest attack, while the dictator's lawyer blamed the Shiite-dominated government.\nRegardless of who was responsible, the killing of another defense lawyer reinforced grave misgivings among human rights groups and international lawyers about holding the trial in a country gripped by a brutal insurgency -- much of it led by the defendants' supporters in the Sunni Arab minority.\n"I don't understand how you can have a fair trial in this atmosphere of insecurity, with bombs going off," said Richard Goldstone, the first prosecutor at the U.N. tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and one of the world's most prominent jurists.\nHe told The Associated Press by telephone that Iraq's government should consider shifting the trial to an Arab country "where there is security."\nLaith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, brushed aside that idea and insisted the next session would proceed Nov. 28 in Baghdad as planned. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Washington would support Iraq as it proceeds with the trial.\nBoth the Iraqi government and the United States have long insisted the trial be held in Iraq before an Iraqi court so Saddam could answer for crimes allegedly committed against his own people.\nIraq's insistence on the right to execute Saddam and his allies if they are convicted rules out holding the trial before an international court, such as the U.N. tribunals hearing cases from the Balkans and Rwanda.\nKubba suggested pro-Saddam insurgents were responsible for Tuesday's killing. \n"We know that Saddam and his followers are ready to do anything when it serves their interest and to block the work of the court," he said.\nSaddam's chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, accused the Iraqi government, claiming the killing was carried out by "an armed group using government vehicles." He repeated his previous demand that the trial be held in a neutral country.\n"The aim of these organized attacks is to scare Arab and foreign lawyers," al-Dulaimi told Al-Jazeera television. "We call upon the international community, especially the secretary-general of the United Nations, to send an investigative committee because the situation is unbearable."\nSaddam and seven co-defendants went on trial Oct. 19 in a special court in the heavily guarded Green Zone. They are charged in the 1982 deaths of 148 Shiite Muslims in Dujail following an assassination attempt against Saddam in that town north of Baghdad.\nTrial judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin postponed the proceedings until Nov. 28 to allow the defense time to prepare.\nAfter the killing of the first lawyer, defense attorneys announced they would not cooperate with the court and would refuse to appear at the next session until they were satisfied with security. Kubba said the lawyers twice turned down invitations to move to the Green Zone, where they could be protected by U.S. and other international troops.\nIn a statement, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton said the United States "considers defense counsel a vital part of the judicial process" and puts a priority on their security. \n"All parties have been offered various security measures and some have accepted," she added.\nThe United States has worked for years to train an Iraqi judiciary to conduct the proceedings by international standards.\nRichard Dicker, an expert in international law at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said a fair trial is impossible "if effective measures are not implemented to provide security for defense attorney who are clearly at risk."\nElise Groulx, president of the International Criminal Defense Attorneys Association, voiced similar concerns.
(11/07/05 5:14am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Scores of terrified Iraqis fled a besieged town Sunday, waving white flags and hauling their belongings to escape a second day of fighting between U.S. Marines and al-Qaida-led militants along the Syrian border. U.S. and Iraqi troops battled insurgents house-to-house, the U.S. military said.\nThe U.S. commander of the joint force, Col. Stephen W. Davis, told The Associated Press late Sunday that his troops had moved "about halfway" through Husaybah, a market town along the Euphrates River about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad.\nAt least 36 insurgents have been killed since the assault began Saturday and about 200 men have been detained, Davis said. He did not give a breakdown of nationalities of the detainees. Many were expected to be from a pro-insurgent Iraqi tribe.\nDavis would not comment on U.S. and Iraqi government casualties but said the militants were putting up a tough fight because "this area is near and dear to the the insurgents, particularly the foreign fighters."\n"This has been the first stop for foreign fighters, and this is strategic ground for them," he said by telephone.\nEarlier Sunday, Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters in Baghdad that none of the 3,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops had been killed so far.\nThe U.S. Marines said American jets struck at least 10 targets around the town Sunday and that the U.S.-Iraqi force was "clearing the city, house by house," taking fire from insurgents holed up in homes, mosques and schools.\nResidents of the area said by satellite phone that sounds of explosions diminished somewhat Sunday, although bursts of automatic weapons fire could be heard throughout the day. The residents said coalition forces warned people by loudspeakers to leave on foot because troops would fire on vehicles.\n"I left everything behind -- my car, my house," said Ahmed Mukhlef, 35, a teacher who fled Husaybah early Sunday with his wife and two children while carrying a white bed sheet tied to a stick. "I don't care if my house is bombed or looted, as long as I have my kids and wife safe with me."\nThe Marines said in a statement that about 450 people had taken refuge in a vacant housing area in Husaybah under the control of Iraqi forces. Others were believed to have fled to relatives in nearby towns and villages in the predominantly Sunni Arab area of Anbar province.\nU.S. officials have described Husaybah, which used to have a population of about 30,000, as a stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Husaybah had long been identified as an entry point for foreign fighters, weapons and ammunition entering from Syria. From Husaybah the fighters head down the Euphrates valley to Baghdad and other cities.\nSeveral people identified as key al-Qaida in Iraq officials have been killed in recent airstrikes in the Husaybah area, the U.S. military has said. Most were described as "facilitators" who helped smuggle would-be suicide bombers from Syria.\nDamascus has denied helping militants sneak into Iraq, and witnesses said Syrian border guards had stepped up surveillance on their side of the border since the assault on Husaybah began.\nThe Americans hope the Husaybah operation, codenamed "Operation Steel Curtain," will help restore enough security in the area so the Sunni Arab population can participate in Dec. 15 national parliamentary elections.\nIf the Sunnis win a significant number of seats in the new parliament, the Americans hope that will persuade more members of the minority to lay down their arms and join the political process, enabling U.S. and other international troops to begin withdrawing next year.\n"The insurgents are throwing everything they have at the Iraqi people and coalition forces in an effort to derail Iraq's democratic reforms," Alston said.\nHe said the offensive is aimed at interrupting the supply lines that al-Qaida in Iraq uses to launch some of the deadliest suicide attacks hitting Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.\nHowever, a protracted battle in Husaybah with civilian casualties risks a backlash in the Sunni Arab community, which provides most of the insurgents.\nIn Baghdad, Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, head of the largest Sunni Arab political party, sharply criticized "all military operations directed against civilian targets" because they "lead to the killing of innocent people and the destruction of towns and cities."\nSaleh al-Mutlaq, head of another Sunni faction and a member of the committee that drafted the new constitution, accused the Americans and their Iraqi allies of mounting "a destructive and killing operation of secure cities and villages" on the "pretext that they hide and secure terrorists."\nThe U.S.-led assault includes about 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and will serve as a major test of the fledgling army's capability to battle insurgents -- seen as essential to enabling Washington to draw down its 157,000-strong military presence.\nElsewhere, U.S. Army snipers killed eight insurgents Sunday in separate incidents in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, the U.S. command said.\nIn Baghdad, two people were killed and nine wounded when a car bomb exploded near a tunnel, police Capt. Qassim Hussein said. Gunmen firing from two speeding cars also fired on civilians near a bus stop in the capital, killing a policeman and wounding five other people, police said.
(10/26/05 4:44am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The American military death toll in the Iraq war reached 2,000 Tuesday with the announcements of three more deaths, including an Army sergeant who died of wounds at a military hospital in Texas and a Marine and a sailor killed last week in fighting west of Baghdad.\nThe 2,000 mark was reached amid growing doubts among the American public about the Iraq conflict, launched in March 2003 to destroy Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. None was ever found.\nIn Washington, the U.S. Senate observed a moment of silence in honor of the fallen 2,000. "We owe them a deep debt of gratitude for their courage, for their valor, for their strength, for their commitment to our country," said Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist.\n"Our armed forces are serving ably in Iraq under enormously difficult circumstances, and the policy of our government must be worthy of their sacrifice. Unfortunately, it is not, and the American people know it," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat.\nPresident Bush warned the U.S. public to brace for more casualties in the fight against "as brutal an enemy as we have ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of common humanity and by the rules of warfare."\n"No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead," Bush said in a speech Tuesday before the Joint Armed Forces Officers' Wives' luncheon in Washington.\nAs a sign of those challenges, one of Iraq's most ruthless terror groups -- al-Qaida in Iraq -- claimed responsibility for Monday's suicide attacks against hotels housing Western journalists and contractors in Baghdad, as well as suicide bombings Tuesday in northern Iraq.\nIn the latest casualty reports, the Pentagon said Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander Jr., 34, of Killeen, Texas, died Saturday in San Antonio of wounds suffered Oct. 17 in a blast in Samarra, a city 60 miles north of the Iraqi capital.\nEarlier Tuesday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of two unidentified service members -- a sailor and a Marine -- in fighting last week in a village 25 miles west of Baghdad. Those announcements brought the U.S. death toll to 2,000, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.\nIt was unclear who was the 2,000th service member to die in Iraq since the U.S. military often delays death announcements until families are notified. On Monday, for example, the U.S. command announced that an unidentified Marine was killed in action the day before - after the deaths of the three service members reported Tuesday.\nIn an e-mail statement to Baghdad-based journalists, command spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Boylan said media attention on the 2,000 figure was misguided and "set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."\nHe described the grim statistic as an "artificial mark on the wall" and urged news organizations to focus more on the accomplishments of the U.S. military mission in Iraq.\nFor example, Iraqi officials announced Tuesday that voters had approved a new constitution in the Oct. 15 referendum, laying the foundation for constitutional, democratic Iraqi government after decades of Saddam's tyranny.\n"I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq," Boylan wrote. "The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone."\nBoylan said the 2,000th service member to die in Iraq "is just as important as the first that died and will be just as important as the last to die in this war against terrorism and to ensure freedom for a people who have not known freedom in over two generations"
(02/14/05 6:05am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Clergy-backed Shiites and independence-minded Kurds swept to victory in Iraq's landmark elections, propelling to power the groups that suffered most under Saddam Hussein and forcing Sunni Arabs to the margins for the first time in modern history, according to final results released Sunday.\nBut the Shiites' 48 percent of the vote is far short of the two-thirds majority needed to control the 275-member National Assembly. The results threw immediate focus on Iraqi leaders' backdoor dealmaking to create a new coalition government -- possibly in an alliance with the Kurds -- and on efforts to lure Sunnis into the fold and away from a bloody insurgency.\nInterim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the secular Shiite chosen by the United States to lead this country for the last eight turbulent months, fared poorly -- his ticket finishing a distant third behind the religious Shiites and Kurds.\n"This is a new birth for Iraq," election commission spokesman Farid Ayar said, announcing results of the Jan. 30 polling. Iraqi voters "became a legend in their confrontation with terrorists."\nThe Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance ticket received 4,075,295 votes, or about 48 percent of the total cast, officials said.\nThe Kurdistan Alliance, a coalition of two main Kurdish parties, finished second with 2,175,551 votes, or 26 percent. And the Iraqi List headed by Allawi stood third with 1,168,943 votes, or nearly 14 percent.\nOverall, national turnout was about 60 percent, the commission said -- but only 2 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots in Anbar province, the Sunni insurgent stronghold that includes Ramadi and Fallujah.\nParties have three days to lodge complaints, after which the results will be certified and seats in the new Assembly distributed. Seats will generally be allocated according to the percentage of votes that each ticket won. It appeared only 12 coalitions would take seats. The Shiites stand to gain up to 140 seats with the Kurds could end up with about 75.\n"This is a great victory for the Iraqi people," said Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon protege and member of the Shiite ticket who is lobbying for the prime minister's post. \nOther leading contenders for the top post include fellow Shiites Ibrahim Jaafari, a vice president; Finance Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi; and former nuclear scientist Hussain al-Shahristani.\nThe election results highlighted the sharp differences among Iraq's ethnic, religious and cultural groups -- many of whom fear domination not just by the Shiites, estimated at 60 percent of the population, but also by the Kurds, the most pro-American group with about 15 percent.\nIn contrast, many Sunni Arabs, who make up an estimated 20 percent of the population, stayed home on election day, either out of fear of violence or to support a boycott call by radical clerics opposed to the U.S. military.
(01/24/05 4:41am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. ambassador to Iraq acknowledged serious problems ahead of next weekend's election but assured on Sunday that "great efforts" were being made so every Iraqi can vote. In an audiotape posted on the Web, a speaker claiming to be Iraq's most-feared terrorist declared "fierce war" on democracy, raising the stakes in the vote.\nRebels who have vowed to disrupt the balloting blew up a designated polling station near Hillah, south of Baghdad, and stormed a police station in Ramadi, west of the capital, authorities said. A U.S. soldier was killed Saturday on a security patrol in Mosul, the U.S. command said Sunday.\nU.S. and Iraqi officials fear more such attacks in the run-up to Sunday's election and have announced massive security measures to protect voters. Iraqis will choose a 275-seat National Assembly and provincial councils in Iraq's 18 provinces in the first nationwide balloting since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.\nLarge turnouts are expected among Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims in the south and minority Kurds in the northeast. But the big question is whether Sunni Arabs, who form the core of the insurgency, will defy rebel threats and their clergy's calls for a boycott and participate in substantial numbers.\nFailure of significant numbers of Sunnis to participate would call into question the legitimacy of the new Iraqi leadership, widening the gulf among the country's ethnic and religious groups and setting the stage for even more turmoil.\n"The Iraqis will be just fine," Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice told reporters Sunday at the White House. "They're starting a process and this is an important step, a first step for them in this democratic process."\nIn a series of interviews Sunday on American television talk shows, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte acknowledged an increase in rebel intimidation of Iraqi officials and security forces and said serious security problems remain in the Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad.\n"But security measures are being taken, by both the multinational forces here in Iraq as well as the Iraqi armed forces and police," Negroponte told "Fox News Sunday."\n"There will be some problematic areas ... But even there, great efforts are being made to enable every Iraqi eligible to do so to be able to vote," he said.\nUnderscoring the threat, a speaker identifying himself as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the leader of Iraq's al-Qaida affiliate -- condemned the election, branding candidates as "demi-idols" and saying those who vote for them "are infidels" -- a clear threat to the safety of all those who participate in the balloting.\n"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," the speaker said in an audiotape posted Sunday on an Islamic Web site. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it."\nThe speaker warned Iraqis to be careful of "the enemy's plan to implement so-called democracy in your country." He said the Americans have engineered the election to install Shiite Muslims in power. Al-Zarqawi has in the past branded Shiites as heretics.\nThe United States has offered a $25 million reward for al-Zarqawi's capture or death -- the same amount as for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.\nMost of the insurgents are believed to be Sunni Arabs, who lost influence and privilege with the fall of their patron Saddam. Their ranks have been reinforced by non-Iraqi Arab extremists who have come to wage holy war against the Americans.
(10/25/04 4:15am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In one of their boldest and most brutal attacks yet, insurgents waylaid three minibuses carrying U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers heading home on leave and massacred about 50 of them -- many of them shot in the head execution-style, officials said Sunday.\nA claim of responsibility posted on an Islamist Web site attributed the attack to followers of Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.\nThe killing of so many Iraqi soldiers -- unarmed and in civilian clothes -- in such an apparently sure-footed operation reinforced American and Iraqi suspicions that the country's security services have been infiltrated by insurgents.\nElsewhere, a U.S. diplomat was killed Sunday morning when a rebel-fired rocket or mortar shell crashed into the trailer where he was sleeping at an American base near the Baghdad airport, the U.S. Embassy announced.\nEdward Seitz, an agent with the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, was believed to be the first U.S. diplomat killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. Al-Jazeera television reported Sunday that the militant Islamic Army of Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.\nA Bulgarian soldier was killed and two others were injured in a car-bombing near Karbala, the Bulgarian Defense Ministry said. Karbala, a Shiite holy city south of Baghdad, has been quiet for months after U.S. troops routed Shiite militia there last spring.\nThe unarmed Iraqi soldiers were killed on their way home after completing a training course at the Kirkush Military Training Base northeast of Baghdad. Their buses were stopped Saturday evening by rebels near the Iranian border about 95 miles east of Baghdad, Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.\nSome accounts by police said the rebels were dressed in Iraqi military uniforms.\nThere was confusion over precise figures, although the Iraqi National Guard said 48 troops and three drivers were killed.\nAbdul-Rahman said 37 bodies were found Sunday on the ground with their hands behind their backs, shot in the head execution-style. Twelve others were found in a burned bus, he said. Some officials quoted witnesses as saying insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at one bus.\n"After inspection, we found out that they were shot after being ordered to lay down on the earth," Gen. Walid al-Azzawi, commander of the Diyala provincial police, said, adding that the bodies were laid out in four rows, with 12 bodies in each row.\nIn a Web site posting, the al Qaeda in Iraq, formerly known as Tawhid and Jihad, claimed responsibility for the ambush, saying "God enabled the Mujahedeen to kill all" the soldiers and "seize two cars and money."\nThe claim could not be verified but appeared on a Web site used in the past by Islamic extremists.\nAl-Zarqawi and his movement are believed to be behind dozens of attacks on Iraqi and U.S.-led forces and kidnappings of foreigners. Many of those hostages, including three Americans, have been beheaded -- some purportedly by al-Zarqawi himself.\nThe United States has put a $25 million bounty on al-Zarqawi -- the same amount as for Osama bin Laden.\nU.S. officials believe al-Zarqawi's group is headquartered in Fallujah, an insurgent bastion 40 miles west of Baghdad. Sunday, a U.S. Marine F-18 Hornet jet struck an insurgent position there, the U.S. military said. Witnesses said six people were killed.\nFallujah fell under rebel control after the Bush administration ordered Marines to lift their three-week siege of the city in April. U.S. commanders have spoken of a new offensive to clear rebel strongholds ahead of Iraq's crucial elections in January.\nScattered explosions rumbled through central Baghdad late Sunday but the cause could not be determined.\nIraqi police and soldiers have been increasingly targeted by insurgents, mostly with car bombs and mortar shells. However, the fact that the insurgents were able to strike at so many unarmed soldiers in such a remote region suggested the guerrillas may have had advance word on the soldiers' travel.\n"There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups," Diyala's deputy Gov. Aqil Hamid al-Adili told Al-Arabiya television. "Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed."\nLast week, a U.S. defense official told reporters in Washington that some members of the Iraqi security services have developed sympathies and contacts with the guerrillas. In other instances, infiltrators were sent to join the security services, the official said on condition of anonymity.\nHe cited a mortar attack Tuesday on an Iraqi National Guard compound north of Baghdad as a possible inside job. The attackers apparently knew when and where the soldiers were gathering and dropped mortar rounds in the middle of their formation. At least four Iraqis were killed and 80 wounded.\nThe extent of rebel infiltration is unknown. However, it raises concern about the American strategy of handing over more and more responsibility to Iraqi security forces so U.S. forces could be drawn down.\nOne American soldier also was wounded in the pre-dawn attack that killed Seitz, the State Department official. The attack occurred at Camp Victory, the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition's ground forces command.\nSeitz was believed to be the first full-time State Department officer killed in Iraq. Last October, a female U.S. Foreign Service officer was severely wounded in the arm in a rocket barrage on the Al Rasheed Hotel.\nDeputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, was in the hotel at the time but escaped injury.
(10/20/04 5:54am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gunmen seized the head of CARE International's operations in Iraq -- a woman who has worked on behalf of Iraqis for three decades -- as the British government on Tuesday weighed a politically volatile American request to transfer soldiers to dangerous areas near the capital.\nEarly Wednesday, CARE Australia, which coordinates the international agency's Iraq operations, announced it had suspended operations because of the abduction, but it said staff would not be evacuated.\nElsewhere Tuesday, a mortar attack killed at least four Iraqi National Guard soldiers and wounded 80 at a base north of Baghdad. An American contractor also died when mortar shells crashed onto a U.S. base in the Iraqi capital. And three car bombs exploded in the northern city of Mosul, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding three.\nMargaret Hassan, who holds British, Irish and Iraqi citizenships and is married to an Iraqi, is among the most widely known humanitarian officials in the Middle East. She is also the most high-profile figure to fall victim to a wave of kidnappings sweeping Iraq in recent months.\nThe Arab television station Al-Jazeera broadcast a brief video showing Hassan, wearing a white blouse and appearing tense, sitting in a room with bare white walls. An editor at the station, based in Qatar, said the tape contained no audio. It did not identify what group was holding her and contained no demand for her release.\nHassan, who is in her early 60s, was kidnapped about 7:30 a.m. while being driven from her home to CARE's office in a western neighborhood of the capital, a CARE employee said. The employee said the group did not employ armed guards.\nIn an interview with Al-Jazeera, Hassan's husband, Tahseen Ali Hassan, said his wife was abducted near the CARE office.\n"Two cars intercepted her from the front and back," he said. "They attacked the car and pulled out the driver and a companion. Then they took the car to an unknown destination."\nHe said his wife had not received threats and that the kidnappers had not contacted anyone with any demands. "Nothing like this happened before, because CARE is a humanitarian organization, and she has served the Iraqi people for 30 years," he said.\nHassan has lived in Baghdad for 30 years, helping supply medicines and other humanitarian aid and speaking out about Iraqis' suffering under international sanctions during the 1990s.\nShe went to work for CARE International soon after it began operations in Iraq in 1991 following the Gulf War, with programs focusing on rebuilding and maintaining water and sanitation systems, hospitals and clinics.\nThe kidnapping was the latest attack against humanitarian organizations, many of which have curtailed operations and withdrawn international staff because of the violence in Iraq. It also follows a wave of abductions targeting foreigners in the heart of the capital.\n"Our staff are not operating currently there, they're certainly not working there now in light of the current situation," Robert Glasser, CARE Australia's chief executive officer, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.\nAlthough militants have kidnapped at least seven other women over the past six months, all were later released. By contrast, at least 30 male hostages have been killed, including three Americans beheaded by their captors. Hassan's abduction occurred less than two weeks after a video posted on an Islamic Web site showed the beheading of British hostage Kenneth Bigley.\nCARE said Hassan was born in Britain, but the British and Irish foreign offices said she was born in Ireland, which is not part of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. When the kidnappers sent the tape to Al-Jazeera, they said they had abducted a "British aid worker," according to the station.\nThe British government is weighing a U.S. request to shift some of the country's 9,000 soldiers from relatively peaceful southern Iraq to areas south of Baghdad -- presumably to free U.S. troops for an all-out assault on the insurgent bastion Fallujah.\nBritish lawmakers are worried about sending their soldiers to the more volatile U.S.-controlled sector at a time when public opposition to the war in Britain has reduced Prime Minister Tony Blair's popularity.\nThe U.S. command said U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers have rounded up nearly 130 suspected insurgents over the past two days in areas south of Baghdad where British media say the British forces would be sent.\nU.S. officials have admitted in the past that faulty intelligence had led to the arrests of thousands of Iraqis who had no ties to the insurgency. However, officials claim their intelligence is better now that Iraqi security forces are playing important roles in such operations.\nThe mortar attack on the Iraqi National Guard occurred early Tuesday when six mortar shells crashed onto a base in Mushahidah, 25 miles north of Baghdad. The troops were lined up in a courtyard for the morning formation, according to Iraqi and multinational officials.\nThe U.S. military said four guardsmen were killed and 80 wounded. Iraqi officials on the scene said five guardsmen were killed and more than 100 injured. American helicopters helped ferry the wounded to U.S. hospitals in the area. Iraqi police and security units have been a frequent target of insurgents trying to undermine U.S.-led security efforts ahead of January national elections.\nAn American contractor working for KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, was killed and a U.S. soldier was wounded during a pre-dawn mortar and rocket barrage Tuesday at a garrison in Baghdad, officials said.\nThe three car bombs in Mosul, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding three, occurred between 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., the military said. One bomb targeted a provincial convoy belonging to the governor of Ninevah, though he was not in the convoy himself. Another hit a military coalition convoy, causing minor injuries to one U.S. soldier.\nThe wave of violence that has swept Iraq has convinced many humanitarian organizations -- even those that have hung on through conflicts in Africa, Asia and the Balkans -- that it is time to leave.\nLast month, Italian aid workers Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, were kidnapped from their Baghdad offices. They were released after three weeks in captivity.\nAstrid van Genderen Stort, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said it was up to each non-governmental organization whether to keep staff in Iraq.\n"We, the U.N., decided last year not to have international presence anymore because we deemed the situation too dangerous for us," van Genderen Stort said. "The kidnapping of the Italian and Iraqi women only a while ago should have alerted others even more as to the dangers of operating in Iraq."\nLast year, as U.S.-led forces massed for the invasion, Hassan told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she would not leave "because I think it's important for my staff that I stay with them. The strength comes from us supporting one another."\nAssociated Press reporters Fisnik Abrashi and Rawya Rageh in Baghdad and Edward Harris in Taji contributed to this report.
(10/07/04 4:28am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide car bomber plowed into an Iraqi military checkpoint northwest of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing 16 Iraqis and wounding about 30, as U.S. and Iraqi forces sealed off roads south of the capital in a campaign to curb the insurgency before January's elections.\nThere were hopeful signs, meanwhile, that talks may produce a cease-fire agreement with a Shiite militia headed by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. A negotiator also reported progress in talks to end the military standoff in Fallujah.\nThe car bomb attack occurred about 11:15 a.m. at an Iraqi National Guard encampment near Anah, 160 miles northwest of Baghdad on the main highway to Syria. According to the U.S. military, the camp came under fire, and a few minutes later a vehicle sped to a nearby National Guard checkpoint and exploded.\nDr. Waleed Jawad Qamar of the Anah health clinic said his facility recorded 13 dead and 25 injured. Another hospital in nearby Hadithah reported three dead and five injured. U.S. officials said no Americans were killed or wounded but had no report of Iraqi casualties.\nCar bombs have become an increasing threat to multinational and Iraqi forces because insurgents find them safer than other forms of attack that can draw devastating American return fire. In September, 29 Iraqi and multinational troops were killed by car bombs, according to the U.S. command, which did not break down the figure by nationality.\nU.S. and Iraqi forces are trying to restore enough control of this turbulent country so that national elections can be held in January. President Bush and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi have insisted the elections must take place throughout the country, despite warnings by some U.S. military officials that balloting may not be possible in certain areas.\nMore than 3,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major operation Tuesday to retake control of insurgent-held parts of Babil province south of Baghdad. The operation in Babil followed last week's ouster of insurgent forces from Samarra, 60 miles north of the capital.\nAs part of the Babil operation, American troops and Iraqi National Guardsmen on Wednesday blocked the roads leading to Qasir town in the Youssifiyah area, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. Residents said two explosions hit two bridges in the area Wednesday, an ap parent attempt by insurgents to bar the movement of Iraqi and U.S. forces.\nResidents were divided over whether the U.S.-led operation was justified.\n"The Americans want to stop the resistance, which they call terrorism, and this is wrong," said Mohammed Fadhil, 20, of Youssifiyah. "In fact, it is a legitimate reaction to the occupation."\n"I support the military operation. We should get rid of the armed groups in our area because their (the insurgents) only goal is to kill more Iraqis and to ignite civil war," said Mohammed Hussein, 29, a farmer.\nAs military operations increase, Allawi's government is accelerating moves to peacefully restore control of insurgent strongholds. Iraqi mediators said the government and followers of al-Sadr were near agreement on a deal to end weeks of clashes between American soldiers and the cleric's militia in the Sadr City district of the capital.\nAllawi told reporters there was no cease-fire so far but that a committee was being formed to discuss what he termed an "initiative" to end the conflict.\nKareem al-Bakhatti, a pro-al-Sadr tribal elder, said the framework agreement calls for al-Sadr's militiamen to turn in their weapons in exchange for cash payments and immunity from prosecution for most of them. Iraqi police would take over security responsibilities in Sadr City and American forces would enter the district only with the approval of Iraqi authorities, he said.\nSome al-Sadr aides expressed reservations about some of the conditions, and the fiery cleric, whose Mahdi Army launched bloody uprisings in April and August, has frequently zigzagged in negotiations. A senior al-Sadr follower, speaking on condition of anonymity, said his side rejected a proposal this week because it did not include a halt to arrests, the release of prisoners or an end to house raids.\nThe Iraqi government is eager to pacify his movement and end the major source of militancy among the majority Shiite community as the country struggles against the increasing Sunni Muslim insurgency.\nTalks were held Wednesday in Baghdad between the government and representatives from Fallujah, a Sunni-majority city west of the capital that fell under insurgent control after the Marines abandoned a three-week siege last April. Fallujah is believed a center of the Tawhid and Jihad movement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, responsible for numerous beheadings of foreign hostages.\nAfter the talks, Fallujah representative Khaled Hammoud al-Jumeili said the meeting produced agreement on several points, including a deal to allow Iraqi forces into the city but without sweeping powers of search or arrest.\nThere was no confirmation from government negotiators, and claims of breakthroughs in the past have proved premature.\nDuring the fighting in Samarra, which U.S. forces restored to government control last weekend, 127 insurgents were killed and 128 captured, including 21 foreign fighters, a senior U.S. officer said Wednesday.\nMaj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, told reporters in Tikrit that the insurgents included some supporters of Saddam Hussein as well as ordinary criminals.\nBatiste also disputed civilian casualty claims from Iraqi medical personnel in Samarra. He said the final count from hospitals in Samarra and Tikrit showed 20 civilians killed and 61 wounded. He said there could have been others killed or wounded who were never brought to a hospital.\nSamarra General Hospital reported receiving 70 bodies during the fighting, including 23 children and 18 women. An additional 160 people were treated for injuries, it said Sunday.
(09/13/04 4:16am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Insurgents hammered central Baghdad Sunday with one of their most intense mortar and rocket barrages ever in the heart of the capital, heralding a day of violence which killed nearly 60 people nationwide as security appeared to spiral out of control.\nAt least 37 people were killed in Baghdad alone. Many of them died when a U.S. helicopter fired on a disabled U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle as Iraqis swarmed around it, cheering, throwing stones and waving the black and yellow sunburst banner of Iraq's most-feared terror organization.\nThe dead from the helicopter strike included Arab television reporter Mazen al-Tumeizi, who screamed, "I'm dying, I'm dying," as a cameraman recorded the chaotic scene. An Iraqi cameraman working for the Reuters news agency and an Iraqi freelance photographer for Getty Images were wounded.\nMaimed and lifeless bodies of young men and boys lay in the street as the stricken U.S. vehicle was engulfed in flames and thick black smoke.\nAcross the country, the death toll Sunday was at least 59, according to figures from the Health Ministry, the Multinational Force command and local authorities.\nNearly 200 people were wounded, more than half of them in Baghdad.\nStrong detonations again shook the center of Baghdad after sunset Sunday. There were no reports of damage or casualties.\nAs the early morning barrage was under way in Baghdad, insurgents attacked the infamous U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison on the city's western edge. Several mortar shells exploded outside the complex about 6 a.m., and about 20 minutes later a pickup truck packed with artillery shells crashed through the chain-link fence on the outer perimeter.\nMarines opened fire and the vehicle exploded before reaching the main security wall, killing the driver, a military statement said. Seven people were later arrested, it said.\nTawhid and Jihad, a militant group linked to al-Qaida and led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said it carried out Sunday's coordinated campaign of violence in Baghdad.\nIn an Internet statement, the group boasted it holds the initiative in the Iraqi insurgency and possesses the "capability to surprise the enemy and hit its strategic installations at the right time and place."\nThe statement's source could not be verified, but the scope and intensity of the attacks raised serious questions about the state of security, which has deteriorated since the June 28 transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government.\nIn Basra, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi vowed to pursue insurgents.\n"We are adamant that we are going to defeat terrorism," Allawi said. "We intend to confront them and bring them to justice."\nInterior Minister Falah Hassan al-Naqib suggested the attacks could be in response to a government operation against the Adel neighborhood of west Baghdad, an insurgent hotbed. However, the scope of the attacks suggested they had been in preparation for some time.\nSecretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged the U.S.-led coalition faced a "difficult time" in Iraq but said the United States had a plan to squash the insurgency and bring those areas under control in time for national elections in January.\nThe insurgency "will be brought under control," Powell said on NBC's 'Meet The Press.' "It's not an impossible task."\nNear Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, three Polish soldiers were killed in an ambush - raising Poland's death toll in Iraq to 13 -- and a bomb killed three Iraqi national guardsmen. A district police chief was killed in an attack in Baghdad's Yarmouk neighborhood.\nMeanwhile, 10 people were killed and 40 were wounded in fighting in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, said hospital director Abdel Munim Aftan.\nThree American soldiers and two Iraqi civilians were wounded Sunday when a suicide driver blew up his car next to a U.S. Army convoy on the road to Baghdad International Airport, American sources said. The vehicle was one of seven car bombs reported Sunday in Iraq, two of which did not explode, the sources said.\nPowell did not elaborate on the plan for addressing the insurgency, but senior U.S. officials in Iraq have spoken of a multi-pronged strategy involving overtures to tribal leaders, economic incentives and the use of force as the best way to prevail against the resistance.\nRockets and mortar shells began raining down before dawn on the Green Zone, headquarters of the Iraqi government and its U.S. allies, and other parts of central Baghdad. As the shelling continued after sunrise, U.S. troops backed by armored vehicles moved into the streets searching for the attackers.\nA Bradley fighting vehicle rushing down Haifa Street, a major traffic artery near the Green Zone, to assist a U.S. patrol was disabled by a car bomb about 6:50 a.m., the U.S. military said. Two Bradley crewmen were wounded by the bomb, and four were injured by grenades and small-arms fire as they fled the vehicle, the military said.\nJubilant fighters, curiosity seekers and young boys swarmed around the burning vehicle, dancing, cheering and hurling firebombs. Several young men placed a black and yellow banner of Tawhid and Jihad in the barrel of the Bradley's main gun.\nFearing the crowd would loot the vehicle of weapons and ammunition, American soldiers called for air support, and as U.S. Army helicopters flew over the burning Bradley "they received small-arms fire from the insurgents in vicinity of the vehicle," a military statement said.\nThe helicopters "fired upon the anti-Iraqi forces and the Bradley preventing the loss of sensitive equipment and weapons," the statement said. "An unknown number of insurgents and Iraqi civilians were wounded or killed in the incident."\nIraq's Health Ministry said 13 people were killed and 61 wounded on Haifa Street, though it was unclear how many were killed by the helicopter strike. Scattered shoes, pools of fresh blood and debris littered the street.\n"We were standing near the destroyed vehicle when the helicopter started firing, so we rushed to safety in a nearby building," Alaa Hassan, 24, said from his hospital bed. "I went back to the scene to help the wounded people when the helicopter fired again and I was hit in the chest."\nTwelve more people died and 41 were injured in other violence across the city Sunday, the Health Ministry said.
(09/10/04 5:28am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- American warplanes struck militant positions in two insurgent-controlled cities Thursday, and U.S. and Iraqi troops quietly took control of a third city in a sweeping crackdown following a spike in attacks against U.S. forces.\nMore than 60 people were reported killed, most of them in Tal Afar, one of several cities that American officials acknowledged this week had fallen under insurgent control and become "no-go" zones.\nNine people, including two children, were reported killed in an air strike in Fallujah against a house which the U.S. command suspected of being used by allies of the Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. American and Iraqi troops also moved into Samarra for the first time in months.\nThe robust strikes came during a week in which nearly 20 American troops were killed -- pushing the U.S. military death toll in the Iraq campaign above 1,000 -- and al Qaeda claimed U.S. forces neared defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan.\n"The Americans in both countries are between two fires, if they continue, they bleed to death, and if they withdraw, they lose everything," Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin-Laden's top deputy, said on a videotape broadcast Thursday by Al-Jazeera.\nPresident Bush received a National Security Council briefing on Iraq early Thursday from Gen. John Abizaid, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte and other top officials. White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to say what they told Bush of the surging violence.\nIn a statement, the U.S. command said military operations around Tal Afar were designed to rid the city of "a large terrorist element that has displaced local Iraqi security forces throughout the recent weeks."\nThe U.S. military said 57 insurgents were killed in the attack on Tal Afar, a northern city near the border with Syria that lies on smuggling routes for weapons and foreign fighters. The provincial health director, Dr. Rabie Yassin, said 27 civilians were killed and 70 wounded. It was unclear whether those reported by the Iraqis as civilians were counted as insurgents by the Americans.\nLate Thursday, the regional government's television station reported U.S. and Iraqi government forces had agreed to allow medical teams to enter Tal Afar to care for the wounded but that military operations would continue "until the city is liberated from outsiders and saboteurs so that peace can be restored."\n"Fighting went on throughout the night in three streets of Tal Afar between U.S. and Iraqi forces on the one hand and the resistance on the other," said Bashar Mohammed, a teacher who fled the city with his family.\nThe air strike in Fallujah was the third in as many days against suspected insurgent positions in the city 30 miles west of Baghdad. A two-story house was destroyed and two adjacent homes were substantially damaged, witnesses said.\nU.S. and Iraqi authorities lost control of Fallujah after U.S. Marines ended a three-week siege last April and turned the city over to a U.S.-sanctioned force, the Fallujah Brigade, which has now all but disappeared.\nUsing a different strategy, American and Iraqi forces entered the central city of Samarra for the first time in months under an agreement with local leaders to restore central government control peacefully.\nA member of the Samarra council, Raad Hatem, said the deal called for the appointment of a new mayor and police chief and for reconstruction to begin next week. In return, Samarra residents agreed to remove guns from the streets. The Americans pledged to stop raiding private homes.\nThe troops that entered the city will maintain joint traffic control points in the city and will also open the Samarra Bridge.\nMaj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said this week he had offered a deal to insurgents under which they would be free to leave Samarra or to remain inside as long as they stopped fighting. U.S. said they believed a hundred or so extremists, including some 40 foreigners -- Saudis, Yemenis, Sudanese and Jordanians -- had been the biggest obstacle to Batiste's initiative.\nRestoring government control to major cities is essential if the country is to hold national elections by the end of January. The weakening of central government authority has led to a wave of kidnappings of Iraqis and foreigners, including two French journalists seized last month and two Italian female aid workers taken captive Tuesday in Baghdad.\nGen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged this week that it could take months before U.S. and Iraqi authorities can take back all those cities -- especially the toughest Sunni insurgent bastions such as Fallujah and Ramadi.\nContacts are under way between Fallujah representatives and the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to restore some degree of control over the city. The Fallujah residents want the U.S. attacks to stop and the Americans to pay compensation to people killed in attacks.\nAllawi wants city officials to hand over al Qaeda-linked terrorists that he and the Americans say are in Fallujah.\nRelative calm returned to much of the Shiite Muslim heartland after an agreement negotiated last month by Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The agreement brought an end to weeks of fighting between U.S. troops and Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.\nScattered clashes continue between al-Sadr's loyalists and American forces in the radical cleric's Baghdad stronghold, Sadr City.\nIraqi officials want to prevent al-Sadr from rebuilding his forces in Najaf. Toward that end, dozens of Iraqi soldiers and police raided al-Sadr's Najaf office to search for weapons. Al-Sadr was not there at the time, and no weapons were found, although Iraqi officials said ammunition and mortars were confiscated from nearby houses.
(06/24/04 1:24am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's interim prime minister said Wednesday he was determined to confront the mastermind of bombings and beheadings who threatened to assassinate him, and the U.S. military said it killed 20 foreign fighters at the suspected terrorist's hideout.\nA recording purportedly made by Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi threatened to kill interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and fight the Americans "until Islamic rule is back on Earth."\nThe audio was found Wednesday on an Islamic Web site from the group that claimed responsibility for the beheading of American hostage Nicholas Berg and Kim Sun-il, a South Korean whose decapitated body was found Tuesday between Baghdad and Fallujah.\nAfter the slaying, U.S. forces launched an airstrike on what the Americans said was an al-Zarqawi hideout in Fallujah. A senior coalition military official said 20 foreign fighters and terrorists were believed to have been killed in the Tuesday night strike. The official briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.\nDr. Loai Ali Zeidan at Fallujah Hospital put the death toll at three with nine wounded. It was the second U.S. airstrike on Fallujah since Saturday.\n"In both cases, we believe we hit significant numbers of al-Zarqawi lieutenants and al-Zarqawi fighters," said another official, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. The airstrikes also destroyed large ammunition stores, Kimmitt, coalition deputy operations chief, said Wednesday in an interview with Associated Press Television News.\nIn the audiotape, the speaker thought to be al-Zarqawi told Allawi that "we will continue the game with you until the end." The speaker said "we will not get bored" until "we make you drink from the same glass" as Izzadine Saleem, the Iraqi Governing Council president killed last month in a car-bombing claimed by al-Zarqawi's group.\n"We will carry on our jihad against the Western infidel and the Arab apostate until Islamic rule is back on Earth," the voice said.\nAn official with Allawi's office dismissed the threat, saying it would not derail the transfer of sovereignty next week.\nPresident Bush called Allawi to "reiterate his commitment to the Iraqi people," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. During the call, which was scheduled before the al-Zarqawi statement, Allawi raised the topic of the assassination threat, McClellan said.\nMcClellan did not provide Bush's response but said Allawi "is determined to confront these terrorist threats."\nSouth Koreans reacted with sorrow and anger to Kim's beheading Wednesday, with President Roh Moo-hyun calling it a "crime against humanity."\nKim's body was found two days after he appeared on a videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, pleading, "I don't want to die," and begging his government to pull its soldiers out of Iraq.\nSouth Korea refused and said it would go ahead with plans to send another 3,000 forces here by August, which will make it the third-largest troop contributor after the United States and Britain.\n"When we think of his desperate appeals for life, our hearts are wrenched with grief," Roh said Wednesday in a national address.\nA roadside bomb exploded Wednesday near Baghdad's Kindi Hospital, killing a policeman who was handling the bomb and a mother and her child who were riding in a taxi, Iraqi police said. Another man, his shirt off, was seen being led away in handcuffs.\nIn Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 60 miles west of Baghdad, gunmen killed two policemen and wounded a third in a drive-by shooting, witnesses said.\nA roadside bomb also exploded as an Iraqi National Guard patrol passed in the northern city of Mosul, killing one Iraqi soldier and wounding four others, the U.S. military said.\nThe beheading of Kim, 33, who worked for a South Korean company providing supplies to U.S. forces, stunned South Korea and prompted Seoul to order all nonessential civilians to leave Iraq as soon as possible.\nLate Tuesday, Al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape of a terrified Kim kneeling, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit similar to those issued to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.\nKim's shoulders were heaving, his mouth open and moving as if he were gulping air and sobbing. Five hooded and armed men stood behind him, one with a big knife slipped in his belt.\nOne of the masked men read a statement addressed to the Korean people: "This is what your hands have committed. Your army has not come here for the sake of Iraqis, but for cursed America." South Korea is a U.S. ally in Iraq.\nAl-Jazeera did not show the actual beheading, saying it was too graphic.\nAmerican troops found Kim's body between Baghdad and Fallujah, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil said. It was identified by a photograph sent by e-mail to the South Korean Embassy.\nThe killing and kidnapping was claimed by al-Zarqawi's group, Tawhid and Jihad.\nAlso Tuesday, two American soldiers were killed and another wounded in an attack on a convoy near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. The dean of the University of Mosul law school was murdered in another attack against the country's intellectual elite. Gunmen also killed two Iraqi women working as translators for British forces in Basra, Iraqi officials said.
(06/17/04 1:45am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Insurgents struck at the heart of Iraq's economic livelihood Wednesday, blasting a major pipeline to halt vital oil exports and killing the top security chief for the northern oilfields.\nA rocket slammed into a U.S. logistics base near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding 25 other people, including two civilian workers, the military said. A mortar exploded in central Baghdad after midnight, setting off sirens in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone headquarters. There was no report of casualties.\nElsewhere, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militiamen to leave the holy cities of Najaf and Kufa unless they live there, fulfilling a key aspect of an accord meant to end fighting between his fighters and U.S. troops.\nAn explosion before dawn Wednesday damaged a pipeline carrying crude oil from Iraq's southern fields to the Basra oil terminal in the Persian Gulf. Iraqi engineers had diverted crude shipments to that pipeline after another was bombed two days ago.\n"Due to the damage inflicted on the two pipelines, the pumping of oil to the Basra oil terminal has completely stopped," said Samir Jassim, spokesman of the state-owned Southern Oil Co. "Exports have come to halt."\nExports were halted last month through Iraq's other export avenue -- the northern pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, Turkey -- after a May 25 bombing, Turkish officials said.\nGunmen killed Ghazi Talabani, the official in charge of protecting the northern oilfields, in an ambush in Kirkuk. Gen. Anwar Amin of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps said three gunmen attacked Talabani's car after his bodyguard briefly left the vehicle in a crowded market.\nThe bodyguard was wounded. Talabani was the third Iraqi official slain since Saturday.\n"What you are seeing here is effectively a terrorist war against Iraq's critical infrastructure, including the oil infrastructure," coalition spokesman Dan Senor told CNN. "It is an effort to basically, economically, impoverish the Iraqi people."\nPresident Bush, in a speech beamed live to U.S. forces worldwide, said democracy was being born in Iraq despite the killings and pipeline attacks.\n"We have come not to conquer, but to liberate people and we will stand with them until their freedom is secure," Bush told several thousand troops at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., home of the U.S. Central Command. "By helping the rise of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan and throughout the world, you are giving people an alternative to bitterness and hatred, and that is essential to the peace of the world."\nAl-Sadr's order to his fighters does not remove the militia presence from Najaf and Kufa, since most of his followers in the twin cities live there and are not affected.\nHowever, the order is a major step toward ending the uprising al-Sadr launched in April after the coalition closed his newspaper, arrested a top aide and issued an arrest warrant for him in the 2003 murder of a rival cleric. Hundreds died in the uprising. Skirmishes continue between U.S. troops and the al-Sadr's followers in Baghdad's Sadr City.\nIn Sadr City, an al-Sadr lieutenant and cleric, Abdul-Rahman al-Shuaili, told mourners at Wednesday's funeral of a militiamen killed by U.S. soldiers that the militia "will continue fighting the occupation" because "we want them out of our city and out of the other Iraqi cities."\nHowever, after nearly eight weeks of fighting, officials of the U.S.-led coalition have tacitly agreed to let the new government and the Shiite leadership deal with al-Sadr, whom the Americans had once threatened to "capture or kill."\nIraqi officials said they hoped to repair the southern pipelines in a few days, and the effects were not expected to have a substantial effect on world petroleum supplies. Although Iraq has the world's second-largest petroleum reserves after Saudi Arabia, sabotage and decrepit facilities have prevented it from taking a leading role in global oil markets.\nThe economic and psychological effects in Iraq are more far-reaching, coming during a surge in violence ahead of the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis.\nThe two southern pipelines export about 1.7 million barrels a day, according to the Middle East Economic Survey. Each day that the southern lines are closed will cost Iraq about $50 million, said Walid Khadduri, an expert on Iraq's oil industry.\nPipeline sabotage "has a large psychological effect on the markets and leads to higher prices," independent economist Jassem al-Saadoun told The Associated Press. "The issue here is not that of supply and demand, but a political one that has to do with instability in the area, including what is happening in Saudi Arabia" -- scene of recent deadly attacks on foreign workers.\nInsurgents have stepped up attacks on Iraqi industrial sites to undermine support for the interim Iraqi government that takes power at the end of the month.\nAlso Wednesday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, began talks with the interim Iraqi leadership. Coalition officials say about 60 percent of the Iraqi government already has been transferred to Iraqi control, including 15 of the 26 ministries.\nWolfowitz met with interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and others. Afterward, the coalition said the talks were "just the beginning of a new relationship between the government of Iraq and the members of the coalition."\nIraq's new leaders have begun to assert their independence, speaking out against some positions taken by their U.S. backers. Allawi told an Arab TV station Monday that Iraq wants to take custody of Saddam Hussein, although Bush said the transfer must wait until security arrangements are adequate,\nPresident Ghazi al-Yawer has insisted on the return of the Republican Palace, now used as coalition headquarters; the Americans want to use it for office space.
(02/17/04 4:23am)
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's U.S. administrator suggested Monday he would block any move by Iraqi leaders to make Islamic law the backbone of an interim constitution, which women's groups fear could threaten their rights. Roadside bombs killed two more American soldiers, Monday.\nThe U.S. military also said Monday that gunmen killed an American Baptist minister from Rhode Island and wounded three other pastors in a weekend ambush south of the capital.\nA grenade exploded Monday in an elementary school playground in Baghdad, killing one child and wounding four others. The children apparently triggered the explosive while they were playing, Iraqi police said.\nDuring a visit to a women's center in Karbala, Administrator L. Paul Bremer said the current draft of the interim constitution, due to take effect at the end of this month, would make Islam the state religion and "a source of inspiration for the law."\nMohsen Abdel-Hamid, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council and a Sunni Muslim hard-liner, has proposed making Islamic law the "principal basis" of legislation.\nIraqi women's groups fear it could cost them the rights they hold under Iraq's longtime secular system, especially in such areas as divorce, child support and inheritance.\nBremer was asked what would happen if Iraqi leaders wrote into the interim charter that Islamic sharia law is the principal basis of legislation. "Our position is clear," Bremer replied. "It can't be law until I sign it."\nBremer must sign all measures passed by the 25-member council before they can become law. Iraq's powerful Shiite clergy wants the interim constitution to be approved by an elected legislature. Under U.S. plans, a permanent constitution would not be drawn up and voted on by the Iraqi people until 2005.\nUnder most interpretations of Islamic law, women's rights to seek divorce are strictly limited, and they only receive half the inheritance of men. Islamic law also allows for polygamy and often permits marriage of girls at a younger age than does secular law.\nEarlier this month, 45 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter to President Bush urging him to preserve women's rights in Iraq.\nU.S. leverage with the Iraqis will decline, however, after the U.S.-led coalition returns sovereignty to an Iraqi administration at the end of June.\nThe United States also hopes to hand over more responsibility for internal security to U.S.-trained Iraqi forces, which could reduce American casualties as the U.S. presidential election approaches.\nIn the latest attacks, an American soldier from Task Force Iron Horse was killed and four were wounded in a roadside bombing Monday in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. One of the wounded was critically injured and the other three were in guarded condition, the military said.\nTwo Iraqis were arrested, one with a cell phone that may have been used to detonate the bomb, said Master Sgt. Robert Cargie, a spokesman in Tikrit.\nThe other fatal bombing occurred in the center of Baghdad, killing one soldier from the 1st Armored Division and wounding another, the military said.\nThe latest deaths bring to 540 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the United States launched the Iraq war in March. Most have died since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.\nIn the ambush Saturday, gunmen in a sedan opened fire on a taxi carrying Americans from a Baptist religious group from the site of the ancient city of Babylon to Baghdad, the U.S. command said.\nThe Rev. John Kelley, 48, of Rhode Island, was killed and three Baptist ministers were wounded, according to a spokesman for Kelley's family.\nThe spokesman, Roland Vukic, said Kelley and about 10 other pastors from the New England area left Feb. 6 to help start a church in Baghdad.\nPolice, meanwhile, arrested five Iraqis suspected in the assassination of Aquila al-Hashimi, a member of the Governing Council who was gunned down Sept. 20 as she left her Baghdad home, the Interior Ministry said.\nThe men were arrested 10 days ago in the city of Amarah, 180 miles southeast of the capital, Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim told The Associated Press. They were arrested for using drugs but police uncovered "indications" they may have been involved in the al-Hashimi slaying, he said. Police were still investigating.\nAl-Hashimi was the highest official in the post-Saddam Hussein administration to be killed in the persistent violence in Iraq since Saddam's fall.\nAttacks against the U.S.-led occupation force have continued unabated despite the capture of Saddam Hussein on Dec. 13 and the arrest of numerous figures whom the American military has identified as key figures behind the insurgency.\nU.S. officials are divided about whether Iraqis or foreign fighters are responsible for recent attacks, including last weekend's bold daylight assault against police and civil defense compounds in Fallujah in which at least 25 people were killed.\nMonday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations chief, said it appeared all the attackers wounded or killed in Fallujah were Iraqis, despite initial reports that foreigners, including Lebanese and Iranians, were involved.\nHe said a number of Iraqis were being questioned in the attack, including the mayor of Fallujah who had submitted his resignation a few days before Saturday's assault.\nThe general said there were indications the attack may have been staged to free four Iraqis held for firing at an Iraqi civil defense bus.