Sixteen killed in Iraq car bomb blasts

Two car bombs rocked northern Baghdad neighbourhoods today while another struck a Shiite holy city, in attacks that left at least 16 dead and 49 wounded, police and provincial officials said.

The attacks came a day after a British military helicopter with five people on board, was apparently shot down in the southern city of Basra, triggering a confrontation in which jubilant Iraqis pelted British troops with stones, firebombs and chanted slogans in support of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The explosions in Baghdad occurred as a suicide car bomb went off in the Karbala, home to one of the two holiest Shiite shrines, killing five and wounding 19 near the province’s government building, governor’s aide Hassanein al-Zubeidi and police spokesman Rahman Mishawi said.

The attack occurred as workers were returning to their offices after the weekend, said al-Zubeidi.

The bomber got within 300 yds of the heavily fortified government building, and set off the explosives in an area of heavy traffic. Eight cars were burned.

The worst strike in Baghdad – a suicide car bombing – targeted an Iraqi army patrol outside an army base in the northern Baghdad neighbourhood of Azamiyah near the Ibn al-Haitham College, killing 10 and wounding 15, most of them Iraqi soldiers, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.

The patrol was leaving the base when the attacker set off his bomb.

The first car bomb in Baghdad targeted a police patrol and blew up near the offices of the state-run al-Sabah newspaper. It missed the patrol, but left one civilian dead and wounded five others, police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said.

In Basra, Iraqi police said four Iraqi adults and a child were killed during the melee that followed the helicopter crash. Shiite gunmen exchanged fire with British soldiers who hurried to the scene. About 30 civilians were injured in the day’s chaos, but the city was largely calm overnight.

The violence underscored that discontent over the presence of foreign soldiers has been growing among Iraq’s majority Shiites even though they have generally steered clear of the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency.

Basra police said the helicopter went down between two houses after it was hit by a shoulder-fired missile. British soldiers with armoured vehicles rushed to the site, only to be pelted with rocks by a crowd of at least 250 people. Authorities said as many as three British armored vehicles were set on fire.

The crowd chanted “we are all soldiers of al-Sayed,” a reference to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ardent foe of foreign troops being in Iraq. The city was largely calm today.

Trouble in the largely Shiite region is due in part to the growing influence of al-Sadr, who led two armed uprisings against US-led forces in 2004 and who has been an outspoken critic of the US-led foreign military mission.

While an uneasy calm held in Basra, the violence continued unchecked elsewhere in Iraq.

In Baghdad, the bound and bullet-ridden bodies of eight men, ranging in age between 25 and 30, were found early today near al-Kindi Hospital in eastern Baghdad, said police Lt. Bilal Ali.

The men appeared to have been tortured before being killed and dumped near a garbage container.

Authorities also found four charred bodies dumped in two separate locations in the violent southern Baghdad district of Dora where kidnapping victims frequently turn up murdered, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said. The men, three of whom were brothers, were found late Saturday night and had been burned.

Two bodies of two people shot dead were also found in eastern Baghdad, said police Cap.

Haider Ibrahim. In Madain, about 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, the bound bodies of three men were found on Saturday night, said police Lt. Col. Sabah Hussein.

Fierce clashes also broke out between gunmen and police in the southwestern Baghdad neighbourhood of Saydiyah. The hour-long fighting left three policemen wounded and led to the arrest of three of the gunmen.

Unidentified gunmen also shot dead a man in another southwestern Baghdad neighbourhood as he headed to work at a wholesale market, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.

A roadside bomb hit a police patrol in eastern Mosul, killing three policemen and wounding another, said police Maj. Gen. Wathiq Mohammed Abdul-Qadir.

In the mainly Shiite eastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Kamaliya, gunmen shot dead a police sergeant in a drive-by shooting as he was leaving his house, said police Maj. Maher Mohammed.

Iraqi police also said they arrested a man as he was setting up a roadside bomb near a police station in Hawija, about 150 miles north of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the US military announced the arrest of three suspected insurgents in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad.

The men were fleeing the area when they were observed by a patrol on Saturday. At the scene, US troops found a weapons cache.

The US military also said two insurgents were killed in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, on Saturday while they were planting a roadside bomb.