Insurgents unleash deadly attacks in Iraqi cities

A string of bombings in Iraqi cities – including one by a man with explosives strapped to his body – killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 100 today as US troops pushed on in an offensive aimed at followers of Iraq’s most-wanted terrorist.

This week’s offensive came amid a surge of deadly attacks after Iraq’s first democratically-elected government was announced on April 28. Insurgents are averaging about 70 attacks a day this month, up from 30-40 in February and March, said Lt Col Steven Boylan, a spokesman for US forces in Iraq.

In Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, a man with hidden explosives slipped past security guards protecting a police and army recruitment centre today and blew himself up just outside the building where some 150 applicants were lined up. At least 30 people were killed and 35 injured, police said.

“I was standing near the centre and all of a sudden it turned into a scene of dead bodies and pools of blood,” police Sgt Khalaf Abbas said by cell phone from the chaotic scene. “Windows were blown out in nearby houses, leaving the street covered with glass.”

In Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded in a small market near a police station, killing at least 27 people and wounding 75, police and hospital officials said. The attacker swerved into a crowd after heavy security prevented him from reaching the police station, police said.

The Sunni militant Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a posting on its website today. But it denied the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber and said it was aimed at Iraqis who work in the US base in Tikrit.

Four more car bombs exploded in Baghdad, three of them suicide attacks, the US military said.

One of them caused an unspecified number of casualties in a US patrol, it said.

Iraqi police confirmed three attacks targeting a police station and patrols in Baghdad. Four Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded, including at least three policeman, they said.

Another bomb exploded at Iraq’s largest fertiliser plant in Basra, setting fire to a gas pipeline and destroying about 60% of the plant. One person was killed and 23 wounded in the blast.

Iraq’s new interior minister Bayan Baqir Jabr said committees of police and military officials had been formed to implement a plan to protect Iraqi cities.

Operation Matador entered its fourth day with US Marines continuing combat operations near the Syrian border.

The offensive was launched after US intelligence showed that followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had taken refuge in the desert border region – believed to be a haven for smugglers and foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria. Many of the insurgents were believed to have fled to remote parts of Anbar province after losses in Fallujah and Ramadi, further east.

As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of the offensive as US troops cleared villages along the Euphrates River. Many of the dead remained trapped under rubble after attack planes and helicopter gunships pounded their hideouts.

An unspecified number of insurgents were also detained during the operation, said US military spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool.

At least three Marines were reported killed and 20 wounded in the first four days of the offensive – the biggest US operation since Fallujah was taken from militants six months ago.

Two civilians – a woman and a child – were killed yesterday at a US checkpoint south-east of Obeidi, the border town west of Baghdad that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the offensive.

Pool said Marines fired at their vehicle after it ignored repeated warnings to stop. The driver jumped out of the moving car and fled, leaving the vehicle and its passengers to continue toward the checkpoint, Pool said. The driver was apprehended and held for questioning. The Marines said they believed the vehicle was a suicide car bomb, the statement said.

After intense fighting with militants entrenched on the south bank of the Euphrates River early in the operation, Marines saw only light resistance yesterday and advanced through sparsely populated settlements toward the border.

East of Husaybah, a border town, Marine AH-1W Super Cobra helicopters shot and killed three armed men seen digging holes in a road in which to place explosives, Pool said. Late that night, in the same town, Marines shot and killed four insurgents.

Gunmen kidnapped the governor of Anbar province yesterday and told his family he would be released only when US forces withdrew from Qaim, where the offensive began on Saturday. Gov Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi.

Today his brother Hammad, said the kidnappers were offering to release the governor in exchange for three al-Zarqawi followers captured by US forces in Qaim. He did not identify the insurgents in question.