US blitzes Fallujah on first day of Ramadan
Meanwhile, a car loaded with 300lb of explosives blew up in Baghdad near a police station in south-west Baghdad, killing 10 Iraqi civilians and wounding four others, the US military said.
The car bomb apparently targeted a nearby Iraqi police patrol. Four Iraqi police officers were hurt.
The US military said four Iraqi labourers working in a nearby palm grove died in the blast, while a family of four driving down the road was also killed. Two other bystanders also died.
The attack came at the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which began yesterday.
In Fallujah, US troops detained the city’s top negotiator in the peace talks, witnesses said. Khaled al-Jumeili, an Islamic cleric, was arrested as he left a mosque after Friday prayers in a village about 10 miles south of Fallujah, they said.
Fallujah clerics insisted al-Zarqawi was not in the city and called for civil disobedience across Iraq if the Americans try to overrun the insurgent bastion.
If civil disobedience won’t stop the attack, clerics said they would proclaim a jihad, or holy war, against multinational forces “as well as those collaborating with them”.
Al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group has claimed responsibility for Thursday’s twin bombings inside Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone - home to US officials and the Iraqi leadership - which killed six people, including three US civilians. A fourth American was missing and presumed dead.
Two Iraqis were killed, at least one of them a suicide bomber. The identity of the other wasn’t known.
Also a car bomb exploded near a police station in Baghdad, killing one person and injuring at least 11 others, according to the Interior Ministry and hospital officials. Elsewhere, several mortar rounds believed fired from Syria exploded near the border town of Husaybah, said Marine Lt Col Chris Woodbridge.
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