Baghdad bombings claim 16 lives

AT LEAST 27 Iraqis were killed yesterday, including 16 in a pair of Baghdad car bombings, while the US military said five of its troops lost their lives in attacks.

Sixteen died and 90 were wounded in two car bombings in Baghdad’s Al-Amin neighbourhood - one near a petrol station and the other in a market - an interior ministry official said.

“Most of the casualties were from the blast in the market,” the official said. The other car bomb blew up a parked petrol tanker.

The US announced that five of its soldiers had died a day earlier.

Three were killed when their vehicle was hit by a bomb in southern Baghdad. The fourth succumbed to wounds suffered when his unit came under fre.

A marine also died of his wounds after coming under fire near the former rebel bastion town of Fallujah.

It takes the number of US fatalities since the March 2003 invasion to 2,247.

Four Iraqis were killed in fighting reportedly between the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi’ite Moqtada al-Sadr and US forces in Baghdad, a US military spokesman said.

He said fighting began when US-led forces came under attack during a nighttime raid in the poor, predominantly Shi’ite district.

Mr Sadr’s militia and US troops have often clashed in the past, most dramatically in August 2004 when the cleric waged a bloody rebellion in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf in which hundreds of his men were killed.

The interior ministry also reported that gunmen in a four-wheel drive vehicle of the kind used by foreign security details opened fire on a commuter minibus south of Baghdad, killing two.

In Mosul, rebels killed three police and wounded 10 in separate attacks, while gunmen assassinated the police intelligence officer responsible for an area south of Basra and his driver.

Meanwhile, the interior ministry reported the discovery of 14 bodies, blindfolded and with their hands tied, in a ditch at the edge of Sadr City. They had been shot in the head.

Three policemen’s bodies were found in Madaen, east of the capital, and two corpses were also found in Nabaie, north of Baghdad. They were all believed to be among an ill-fated expedition of police hopefuls from Samarra in mid-January.

At least 60 men had been returning from Baghdad after failing to be accepted by the police academy when their bus was stopped by insurgents and they were taken into the desert.

So far, police and medical sources have identified more than three dozen corpses from the group.