Car bombs target US and Iraqi forces

A series of car bombs targeted American and Iraqi troops in separate areas of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, a day after security forces captured a would-be suicide bomber near the entrance to the heavily guarded Green Zone. Scattered mortar fire shook two north Baghdad districts.

One car bomb targeted a US convoy in the Rustamiyah area of southeastern Baghdad, witnesses said. The others exploded near Iraqi forces in the north of the city and in Andalus square, police said.

Iraqi officials said there were casualties in the two attacks against their forces, but there was no comment from US authorities about the blast in Rustamiyah. American soldiers kept reporters from the site.

Police said the Andalus Square blast was a suicide attack, but it was unclear whether the two others were.

Earlier today, mortar shells exploded near the headquarters of an Iraqi commando battalion in the Sunni neighbourhood of Azamiyah in north Baghdad, police said. Three mortars also fell across the Tigris River in the Shiite district Kazimiyah, police added. No casualties nor damage were reported in any of the blasts.

The blasts occurred on the Muslim day of prayer, ordinarily a relatively quiet period in the capital. There were no claims of responsibility for the attacks.

Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for a largely unsuccessful suicide attack yesterday near the Green Zone entrance. The area is home to the US Embassy and major Iraqi government offices.

The attack was intended to be part of co-ordinated assaults by a suicide car bomber and two pedestrians strapped with explosives. The attackers apparently planned to detonate the car bomb first. Then the two pedestrians would blow themselves up in the midst of troops, police and rescue workers rushing to the scene, US officials said.

The car bomb exploded successfully. But one pedestrian bomber was killed after an Iraqi policeman shot him, setting off his explosive vest, a US statement said.

The second pedestrian bomber was wounded by shrapnel from the blast before he could detonate his own vest, and was in critical condition at a US military hospital in the Green Zone, the statement said.

Five policemen and four civilians also were wounded by the blasts and gunfire, officials at Yarmouk Hospital said.

Would-be bombers are rarely captured in Iraq. A 19-year-old Saudi was taken into custody after he survived the explosion of his fuel tanker in December, a blast that killed nine people. A Yemeni was arrested in 2003 when his car bomb failed to detonate at a Baghdad police station.

There was no word on the identity of the failed bomber, but his arrest could yield valuable intelligence on the shadowy network of Islamic extremists – many of them believed to be foreigners linked to al-Qaida.

Also today, the US command said American and Iraqi forces raided suspected “terrorist safe houses” in the Ghazaliyah and the Abu Ghraib districts Thursday. The areas are two of the most dangerous in the city.

Eight suspects were taken into custody, a US statement said Friday, and soldiers found an Iraqi general’s uniform in one location.

The raids occurred as US and Iraqi troops appeared to be accelerating the search for insurgents, including those linked to Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al Qaida’s branch in Iraq.

About 30 suspected al Qaida members were arrested in the past week, the US command said yesterday. They included Khamis Abdul-Fahdawi, known as Abu Seba, who was captured on Saturday after operations in the Ramadi area west of Baghdad.

A US statement said Abu Seba was a suspect in the “attacks against diplomats of Bahrain, Pakistan and the recent murder of Egyptian envoy” Ihab al-Sherif, who was abducted in western Baghdad on July 2.

Al-Qaida claimed in an internet posting on July 7 that it had killed al-Sherif to punish Egypt for supporting the US-backed Iraqi government.

Another top suspect, Abdullah Ibrahim al-Shadad, or Abu Abdul-Aziz, was arrested during a raid on Sunday in Baghdad, the US statement said. It identified him as the operations officer for al-Qaida in Iraq.

In an internet statement yesterday, al-Qaida acknowledged that Abu Abdul Aziz had been apprehended, but played down his importance.

In other violence late yesterday, gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier in Baghdad and another outside the Taji air base north of the capital, police said.

Elsewhere, police said gunmen killed five Iraqi employees of an American base in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, as they were driving outside the base. At least nine other policemen also were killed in separate attacks nationwide.

However, figures obtained yesterday from Iraqi government ministries show violent deaths among Iraqi civilians far exceeded those of soldiers or police during the first six months of this year.

Between January 1 and June 30, 1,594 civilians were killed, according to the Ministry of Health. By contrast, 895 security forces – 275 Iraqi soldiers and 620 police – were killed in bombings, assassinations or armed clashes with insurgents, according to figures from the interior and defense ministries.

The number of insurgents killed during the six-month period was 781, the government said.