Suicide bombings hit Iraq as attacks kill 38

Three suicide car bombings struck within an hour and two parked motorcycles exploded in northern Iraq today, while gunmen in speeding cars opened fire on a crowded market in Baghdad in a series of attacks that killed at least 38 people.

Continuing violence during the past days has claimed the lives of at least four children, two US soldiers and a Sunni Muslim cleric, underscoring the rampant, random nature of an insurgency that has killed at least 810 people since the April 28 announcement of Iraq’s new Shiite-led government.

Twenty people were killed as a wide swathe of northern Iraq was hit by three suicide bombings within an hour.

A suicide bomber struck a restaurant in Tuz Khormato, 55 miles south of the northern city of Kirkuk, earlier today, killing at least 12 people, including a bodyguard of Iraq’s Kurdish deputy prime minister, Rowsch Nouri Shaways, and wounding 40, according to the Iraqi Defence Ministry and police.

The blast set ablaze eight cars in the restaurant’s parking lot, the focal point of a bloody, rubble-strewn scene that US and Iraqi police quickly cordoned off. Shards of glass, shoes and splattered breakfast meals covered the restaurant’s floor as emergency workers raced around overturned tables and wooden chairs in a bid to treat the casualties. Ambulances and pick-up trucks ferried bloodied bodies and mutilated corpses away.

Earlier in Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber targeting a convoy of Toyota Land Cruisers carrying civilian contractors killed four Iraqi bystanders and wounded at least 11 others, said Dr Bassam Mohammed of Kirkuk Emergency Hospital. None of the occupants in the convoy was injured, although one vehicle was damaged, the US military said.

“My five-year-old boy Ayad and I were passing by the car bomb exploded and the blast killed him,” Robert Jerges, the child’s father, said. “Why did I lose my child? why did he deserve this?”

Another suicide bomber killed four people and wounded four in Baqouba, about 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, police Col Mudhafar Mohammed said. The victims included Hussein Alwan al-Tamimi, 41, deputy head of Iraq’s northeastern Diyala provincial council since January, and three of his bodyguards.

A new online posting purportedly by the al Qaida group in Iraq has declared the creation of a new cell of suicide bombers called the “al-Bara bin Malek Brigade,” and claimed it has already carried out a number of unspecified attacks. It wasn’t possible to verify the authenticity of the four-minute-audio tape by a man claiming to be Abu Doujana al-Ansari, the purported head of the group.

Two parked motorcycles rigged with explosives also detonated near a coffee shop frequented by policemen today, killing five Iraqis, wounding 13 and destroying several shops in Mosul, police and hospital officials said.

Gunmen firing randomly from three speeding cars also killed nine Iraqis in a crowded market in the ethnically mixed neighbourhood of Hurriyah, north-western Baghdad, a Defence Ministry official said.

“There were no security targets there, they were all civilians,” Defence Ministry spokesman Radhi Badir said. ”They were shooting randomly, shooting at shops in the bazaar.”

An announcement released by the Defence and Interior Ministries today said “an armed group in three cars opened fire in the al-Hurriyah district, martyring nine civilians.”

Earlier this year, gunmen killed the governor of the Baghdad province and six of his bodyguards in a drive-by shooting in the same neighbourhood.

The massive explosion in Tuz Khormato tore apart the town’s Baghdad Restaurant, where bodyguards of Iraq’s Kurdish deputy prime minister, Rowsch Nouri Shaways, were eating, police Brig Sarhad Qadre said.

Shaways was not at the restaurant at the time of the blast. Kurds, who want oil-rich Kirkuk to be part of their autonomous Kurdistan region, have been regularly targeted by insurgents.

A roadside bomb blast today forced a car off the road in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing three passengers and wounding three others.

Militants also attacked an Iraqi police patrol with gunfire and a car bomb, killing a female bystander, plus wounding a civilian and a policeman in Baghdad’s southern Dora district. Police captured the insurgents, however, and raided a car bomb-making workshop south of Baghdad.

Separately, the US military announced the deaths of three soldiers, including two assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, who died yesterday.

One was killed when a bomb struck the vehicle he was travelling, while the other died from enemy small-arms fire received in combat near Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.

Another soldier, attached to Task Force Liberty, died of non-battle-related wounds yesterday in Kirkuk, the military said. The incident is under investigation.

An Iraqi civilian also was killed and another wounded in a suicide bombing yesterday near the village of Mishada, 20 miles north of the capital. Another suicide bomber tried to attack a US convoy nearby but failed.

A Sunni cleric, Imad al-Hayali, was “mistakenly” killed by an Iraqi soldier at a checkpoint in Latifiyah, south of Baghdad, police Lt Adnan Abdullah said today. Al-Hayali was shot on Tuesday by soldiers who thought he was driving dangerously toward the checkpoint, Abdullah said.

In a bid to curb Iraq’s insurgency, Shiite leaders have been reaching out to Sunni Muslim insurgent groups believed responsible for multiple attacks.

But the country’s two main Sunni Muslim Arab organisations, angered over the recent arrest of one their leaders and an Iraq-led offensive against insurgents in Baghdad, threatened during a conference today not to participate in drafting Iraq’s new constitution.

At least 700 “terrorists” have been captured and 28 killed four days into Operation Lightning, which involves 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said. An additional 118 criminal suspects also were rounded up.

The operation has angered members of the Sunni community, many of whom fear the crackdown is aimed at them in light of the spate of attacks linked to Sunni extremists.

Among those detained includes the suspected leader of the terror group, the National Islamic Resistance/1920 Revolution Brigade, Badir said.

Badir did not reveal the detainee’s name, only referring to him as the “Prince of Abu Ghraib,” a western Baghdad district where the group has conducted multiple attacks. The group leader was captured during the Iraqi-led Operation Lightning.

Iraqi police have also arrested the brother of an at-large member of the 55 most wanted list of former Saddam Hussein regime figures.

Anwar Abdel Karim Abdallah al-Sadun was captured with three other Baathists near Nasiriyah. He is the brother of Abdel Baqi Abdel Karim Abdallah al-Sadun, the former Baath Party regional command chairman and No 40 on the most wanted list.