[NYTr] Bombs kill 6 in Baghdad and north Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP - Oct 12, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=IADES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Bombs kill 6 in Baghdad and north Iraq

By KATARINA KRATOVAC
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD (AP) -- A parked car bomb went off near a police patrol Friday
afternoon in a central Baghdad shopping district, killing four people
as Iraq's Sunnis began marking the Eid al-Fitr holiday that ends the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said it was working with local Iraqi
officials and tribal officials to investigate the killings of 15
civilians - six women and nine children - as well as 19 suspected
insurgents Thursday in a U.S. ground and air assault targeting al-Qaida
in Iraq northwest of Baghdad.

Streetside parking was banned in the capital during the three-day
holiday, an Interior Ministry official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to media.

Citing improved security, Baghdad authorities lifted a weekly four-hour
driving ban that had coincided with Friday prayers and shortened the
curfew in the capital. But Iraqis have faced a series of car bombings
in recent days as al-Qaida in Iraq promised an offensive to coincide
with the holy month.

Two policemen were among the four people killed and 15 other people
were wounded in the blast in Baghdad, an official said, adding that
several shops and two nearby cars also were damaged.

The police officer, who declined to be identified because he was not
supposed to release the information, said the attacker had parked the
explosives-laden car near clothing stores, pretended to go shopping
during the busy start of the holiday, then fled.

In northern Iraq, a bomb planted among toys in a cart left near a
children's playground in the religiously mixed city of Tuz Khormato,
killed a civilian and wounded 17, including five children, one of whom
later died in hospital, police Col. Abbas Mohammed said. The cart owner
was arrested in his home in the town, about 130 miles north of Baghdad.

The U.S. military operation near the man-made Lake Tharthar, about 50
miles northwest of the capital, inflicted one of the heaviest civilian
death tolls in the offensive against the terror network in recent
months.

Nineteen insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, died in
the raid, the military said.

The military statement said ground and air assault troops acted on
intelligence reports about an al-Qaida meeting at an initial location,
then pursued suspected insurgents to another area. Two suspected
al-Qaida members, a woman and three children were also wounded.

In a statement Friday, the military said the Tharthar incident was
under investigation and that U.S. forces "take every precaution to
protect innocent civilians and only engage hostile threats."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently confronted top American
commander Gen. David Petraeus about what he sees as overly aggressive
U.S. tactics that harm the innocent, according to Iraqi officials.

On Oct. 5, a pre-dawn U.S. raid on Khalis, a Shiite city north of
Baghdad, killed 25 people when U.S. troops under attack called in
airstrikes. Village leaders said the victims included civilians, but
the military insisted the 25 killed were militants.

Tensions also are high over the recent shooting deaths of Iraqi
civilians allegedly by private security contractors hired to protect
U.S.-government funded work.

A representative of the country's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani urged the parliament to take up the issue of unjustified
killings of Iraqi civilians by the armed teams from mostly Western
companies.

"Iraqi blood has become the cheapest thing in Iraq," Sheik Abdul Mahdi
al-Karbalai said in a Friday sermon in the Shiite holy city of Karbala.
"So we demand the Iraqi parliament meet to discuss the devaluing of
Iraqi blood and souls by these companies."

Investigations are under way into the Sept. 16 killing of 17 Iraqi
civilians allegedly by Blackwater USA guards protecting a U.S. Embassy
convoy in Baghdad, and the shooting deaths on Tuesday of two Armenian
Christian women by security contractors working for Australian-owned
Unity Resources Group. Both companies said their employees were
responding to what they perceived as a threat.

In a grim reminder of the dangers facing U.S. forces in Iraq, the U.S.
military said weapons have been found that belonged to four American
soldiers kidnapped or killed in an insurgent attack south of Baghdad
five months ago. The weapons were in a cache discovered Tuesday near
where the soldiers had came under attack, about 20 miles south of
Baghdad, the military said Thursday in a statement.

The weapons belonged to Sgt. Anthony Schoeber, who was killed in the
attack; Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr., whose body was found at the edge of the
Euphrates River 11 days later; and Spc. Alex Jimenez Jr, who has been
classified as missing-captured, along with Pvt. Byron Fouty.

[Associated Press Writers Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad and Yahya
Barazanji in Kirkuk contributed to this report.]

© 2007 The Associated Press.