BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bombings and shootings killed more than 70 people in Iraq on
Tuesday in a surge of bloodshed as U.S. forces prepare to take back Baghdad's
streets from gunmen. The dead included 20 Iraqi troops, a U.S. soldier and a
British soldier.
Iraqi police secure
the site where a suicide car bomb exploded in Palestine street in north
Baghdad. Bombers and gunmen killed more than 54 people in a wave of
attacks around Iraq as insurgents pursued their campaign against the
security forces of the embattled coalition
government.[AFP] |
The American soldier, who was assigned to the 1st Armored Division, died "due
to enemy action" in Anbar province west of Baghdad, the U.S. command said. In a
separate statement, the military said a U.S. soldier from the 16th Corps Support
Group died the day before in a roadside bombing south of the capital.
In further violence, officials confirmed that about 45 Shiite Muslims were
kidnapped over the last two weeks on the main highway to Syria and Jordan. The
highway passes through Sunni insurgent strongholds west of Baghdad.
The deadliest attack Tuesday occurred when a roadside bomb devastated a bus
packed with Iraqi soldiers near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. All 24 people
aboard were killed, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said. All but
four of the dead were Iraqi soldiers, police said.
In Baghdad, 14 people died and 37 were wounded when a car bomb exploded at a
bank where police and soldiers were picking up monthly paychecks, police Lt.
Col. Abbas Mohammed Salman said.
The blast set several other cars ablaze and scattered dismembered bodies
along the street as bystanders carried the injured to ambulances.
Abdul-Hassan Mohammed, 62, a retired teacher who had gone to the bank to pick
up his pension, said the explosion slammed him about 12 feet into a wall.
"My friends took me to one of their stores, gave me water and asked me to
relax," Mohammed said. "I didn't even get my pension."
It was the third major attack in less than a week in Karradah, a fashionable,
mostly Shiite neighborhood in central Baghdad that is home to several prominent
politicians. Last Thursday, 31 people were killed in an attack that included
rockets, mortars and a car bomb.
On Monday, gunmen dressed in military fatigues abducted 26 people from the
offices of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and a nearby mobile phone
company.
