May 6, 2005
By Jack Kim
MSNBC News Services
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two suicide car bombs killed at least 22 Iraqis on Friday, continuing nine days of violence that have left a death toll now at 269 people.
One bomb exploded at a market in Suwayrah, killing at least 14 people and wounding 43, police said. The town, 25 miles south of the capital, is in a notorious insurgent stronghold known as the Triangle of Death.
The other bomb destroyed a police minibus at a checkpoint in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing at least eight policemen and wounding seven people, officials said.
The attack was part of a surge of violence since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his new government on April 28.
Those assaults included 73 people who died when suicide bombers with explosives strapped to their bodies set them off in lines of job applicants waiting outside two separate recruitment centers for security forces in Baghdad and the northern city of Irbil.
Bodies found in garbage dump
Separately Friday, scavengers sifting through garbage for scrap metal and other items to sell stumbled across at least 12 bodies at a dump in Kasra Waatash, on the northeastern edge of Baghdad, police and soldiers said.
There were conflicting accounts of how many bodies were found. Bassim al-Maslokhi, a soldier who was guarding the area during the recovery, counted 14; Kadhim al-Itabi, a local police chief, put the number at 12.
The victims, believed to be Iraqis, were found in shallow graves and seemed to have been killed recently, al-Maslokhi said. Some were blindfolded and had been shot in the head, he said.
At Baghdad’s central morgue, an official said 12 bodies had been received. Families identified some of the victims as farmers who disappeared recently on their way to a market to sell their produce, said Rahoumi Jassim, a morgue official.
8 police killed
In Tikrit, a car packed with explosives -- and with a taxi sign on its roof -- destroyed the minibus at 8:30 a.m. Friday (11:30 p.m. ET Thursday), said U.S. Army 1st Sgt. Brian Thomas and Iraqi National Guard Maj. Salman Abdul Wahid.
Initial reports by police had mistakenly said the attack involved explosives hidden inside the minibus and set off by remote control in Tikrit, which is 80 miles north of Baghdad.
Thursday also saw several attacks, the deadliest of which was when a man wearing a suicide belt packed with explosives walked up to an army recruitment center in Baghdad which, like many others, have been turned into small fortresses of concrete blast walls and razor wire to prevent car bombings.
Photo: An Irai man bleeds from his head wounds at a local hospital after being injured in a suicide car bomb attack in Baghdad on Saturday.
At least 13 people were killed and 20 wounded in the blast.
A similar attack Wednesday, in which a suicide bomber blew himself up in a line of police recruits in the northern city of Irbil, killed 60 Iraqis and wounded 150.
Rise in use of suicide belts
Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said there has been an escalation in the use of suicide belts since security was stepped up around recruitment centers and other insurgent targets. Recent raids in and around Baghdad uncovered some assembled car bombs, he said, and foiled many attacks.
"But it is rather difficult to find out about an explosive belt put on by a person," Rahman said.
On Jan. 30, Iraqis voted in historic parliamentary elections and private cars were banned from the streets. There were nine attacks that day by bombers who had explosives strapped to their bodies.
Insurgents often target Iraqi security forces, which are being recruited and trained by the U.S.-led coalition as part of its exit strategy in Iraq. An estimated 1,800 Iraqi soldiers and police officers were killed between June 2004 and April 27 this year, the latest date for which statistics were available, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Hospital search for al-Zarqawi?
In a separate development, U.S. forces searched a hospital in central Iraq last week for suspected terrorists after receiving a tip, but none were found, the military said Thursday.
It would not say if troops were looking for militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi at the hospital in Ramadi. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. officials had been alerted to “possible terrorist activities related to” al-Zarqawi “in and around” the hospital.
Another U.S. official said it would be inappropriate to say publicly whether U.S. officials believe al-Zarqawi is ill or injured because that information could complicate efforts to capture him.
Al-Zarqawi, leader of the country’s most feared terrorist group, al-Qaida in Iraq, is the most-wanted man in Iraq, and he is tied to many bombings and kidnappings since Saddam Hussein was driven from power in 2003.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7721003/
