Coffee shop blast death toll rises to 21 in Iraq

Police raised the death toll in a suicide bomb attack on a Shiite coffee shop in Baghdad to 21 today, with 25 others injured, while gunmen killed at least one man and wounded four in an attack on a Shiite bakery.

The coffee shop explosion, which followed days of mortar attacks on Sunni neighbourhoods that killed at least 16 people, had originally been reported as a mortar barrage, but police Lt. Ali Muhssin said that was incorrect.

Mortar attacks on Sunni neighbourhoods continued unabated, however, with one person killed and four wounded when two rounds slammed into Qahira in north Baghdad early Wednesday, Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said.

US forces said they killed four suspected insurgents in gun battles and detained 48 others during a raid yesterday afternoon on a site used by the al Qaida in Iraq terrorist group in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.

The military said the area had been used as a staging point for foreign fighters launching suicide car bomb attacks on US and Iraqi army checkpoints. Rocket-propelled grenades, machine-guns, grenades and explosives-rigged vests used by suicide bombers were found in a vehicle used by the group, the military said.

Fighting involving US forces also left nine Iraqi gunmen dead in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, police Brig. Sarhat Abdul-Qadir said, without giving other details. There was no word of US casualties in the clash and the American military had no immediate comment on the report.

Police said they found the bodies of three apparent victim of death squads dumped on city streets, a day after the bullet-riddled bodies of 15 victims were found floating in the Tigris River south of Baghdad. Hundreds of such killings - in which victims are bound hand and feet, blindfolded, and often tortured – have been recorded in the capital since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in February that ignited successive waves of sectarian killings.

Bakeries are the frequent target of sectarian attacks because most are owned and run by Shiites. Police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq said there was no immediate word on the identities of the gunmen in Wednesday’s attack in a predominantly Sunni section of western Baghdad. He said they sped away in two cars after raking the bakery with machine gun fire.

One person was killed and six wounded when car bomb detonated early Wednesday near the al-Nidaa Sunni mosque in Waziriyah, north-east Baghdad, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.

Shiite militia also raided a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad, police 1st Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said. He had no word on any resulting casualties.