More than 50 killed in Iraq violence

More than 50 Iraqis died today in violence including a car bombing that killed 25 people in the third major attack on a police station in three days.

A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at the entrance to the Interior Ministry Major Crimes unit in Baghdad’s central Karradah district, killing 10 civilians and 15 policemen employed there, authorities said.

The Interior Ministry is a predominantly Shiite organisation and heavily infiltrated by members of various Shiite militias.

The unit attacked today investigates large-scale crimes and has about 20 suspected insurgents in custody, police Lt Col Falah al-Mohammadawi said.

Al-Mohammadawi ruled out that the assault was aimed at releasing the prisoners, which was the goal of previous days’ attacks on other police facilities.

Insurgents, emboldened by a successful jailbreak releasing more than 30 prisoners north of Baghdad on Tuesday, laid siege to another prison south of the capital yesterday.

But that time, US troops and a special Iraqi unit thwarted the pre-dawn attack, overwhelming the gunmen and capturing 50 of them, police said.

In today’s assault, more than 35 people, mainly employees at the crimes unit, were wounded, police said.

A second car bomb hit a market area outside a Shiite Muslim mosque in the mostly mixed Shiite-Sunni neighbourhood of Shurta in south-west Baghdad.

At least six people were killed and more than 20 wounded, many of them children, police said.

Roadside bombs targeting police patrols killed four others – two policemen and two bystanders – in Baghdad and at least one policeman in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad.

Police said dozens were wounded.

Another two policemen were killed and two were wounded when gunmen ambushed their convoy in north Baghdad, an attack that police said was an aborted attempt to free detainees who were being transferred to the northern city of Mosul.

Elsewhere throughout the capital, two police were killed in gunbattles with insurgents and two civilians – a private contractor and power plant employee - were gunned down in drive-by shootings.

Fourteen more bodies were found in the continuing string of shadowy sectarian killings: six in the capital and eight brought in by US forces to a hospital in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, police said.

Back in the capital, a mortar round fell on a house wounding three civilians, police Lt. Ziad Hassan said.

Another civilian was seriously wounded by an Iraqi army patrol that was shooting in the air to clear traffic in the western neighbourhood of Yarmouk, police said.

Wednesday’s attack on the prison in Madain, 15 miles south-east of Baghdad, began with 60 insurgents firing 10 mortar rounds. Four police officers - including the commander of the special unit – died in a two-hour battle, which was subdued only after American forces arrived. Among 50 insurgents captured, police said, one was Syrian.

The US military did not respond to a request for comment about its role in the counterattack.

The raid came a day after 100 Sunni gunmen freed 33 prisoners and wrecked a jail, police station and courthouse in Muqdadiyah, a town north-east of Baghdad near the Iranian border.

Madain is at the northern tip of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated “Triangle of Death,” a farming region rife with sectarian violence – retaliatory kidnappings and killings in the underground conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.

Police have discovered hundreds of corpses in the past four weeks, victims of religious militants on a rampage of revenge killing.

At least 21 more bodies were found Wednesday, including those of 16 Shiite pilgrims discovered on a Baghdad highway, police said. Millions were returning home Wednesday at the conclusion of an important Shiite commemoration in the holy city of Karbala this week.

In the northern town of Beiji, meanwhile, a mortar fell on a government facility that Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi was visiting yesterday, an aide said.

Chalabi was not harmed and later returned to Baghdad. Chalabi, who is also the interim oil minister, was believed to have been visiting the refinery in Beiji, the nation’s largest.