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At Least 120 Killed In Separate Iraqi Attacks
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An
injured Iraqi is comforted by relatives as he lies in his hospital
bed in Baquba (AFP)
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BAQUBA,
Iraq, July 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - At least 120
people were killed on Wednesday, July 28, in separate attacks across
as the interim government marked its first month in office.
Up
to 68 were killed and dozens wounded in the morning blast in the town
of Baquba, north of Baghdad, that struck as dozens of police recruits
queued outside a police post seeking work and a bus passed by laden
with passengers, reported Agence France Presse (AFP).
"The
hospital officials have told me that 68 were dead and 56 injured in
the Baquba blast," Health Minister Alaadin Alwan told AFP.
A
doctor at Baquba hospital put the number of injured as high as 70,
adding that emergency workers were continuing to collect bodies from
the scene of the explosion.
An
AFP correspondent said he saw at least a dozen bodies lined up outside
the hospital's morgue, already crammed to capacity with the dead.
Dozens
of maimed bodies were strewn outside the police post amid pools of
blood mixed into the mud.
Provincial
police chief General Walid Khaled Abdel Salam confirmed that a bomber
triggered the massive explosion outside the rapid reaction unit
building at about 9:30 am (0530 GMT).
Police
officer Mohammed Jassim said the area had been jammed with people at
the time of the blast.
"Young
men were queuing outside to join the police and a bus passed by,"
he said.
Another
officer said 600 police recruits were due to come to the station
Wednesday and Thursday.
It
was impossible to squeeze all the applicants into the building, so
some had to wait outside.
"We
tried to force them back, but they wouldn't listen. A car just came by
and blew up in their midst."
Nervous
police began firing into the air as residents, desperate for news of
loved ones, tried to get to the scene.
Baquba,
a mixed Sunni and Shiite town, has experienced frequent car-bombings
and attacks over the past year.
Many
of those have targeted Iraqi policemen, who some Iraqi fighters regard
as collaborators with US and foreign occupation troops in the country.
The
latest car bomb in Iraq killed three Iraqis, including a child, on
Monday, July 26, in the northern city of Mosul.
On
July 14, a car bomb killed
at least 10 people near the heavily-guarded Green Zone in Baghdad.
Iraqi
scholars had ruled such indiscriminate attacks were strictly
prohibited in Islam, stressing, in the meantime, the legitimacy of
the unabated resistance operations against the US-led occupation
troops.
Joint
Raid
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Residents
of Rahmaniya district attempt to put out a fire after a mortar
round exploded (AFP)
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Meanwhile,
35 fighters and seven Iraqi troops were killed in a joint raid with
the US-led forces south of Baghdad, the US military said.
"Approximately
35 anti-Iraqi force members were killed and more than 40 were
detained," in the joint raid around the town of Sueira at 7:00 am
(0300 GMT), a statement said.
"Seven
Iraqi force members were killed and 10 were injured during the
operation," it added.
None
of the Ukrainian or US troops who took part were wounded, said the
statement.
West
of Fallujah, four Iraqi policemen were killed and one was wounded when
a homemade bomb targeted a joint US and Iraqi convoy, a local security
officer said.
The
explosion went off at 8:00 am (0400 GMT) on a bridge in Habaniya, said
Walid Mohammed, responsible for hospital security.
Two
people were killed, including a 13-year-old child, and seven wounded
when a mortar round exploded in a Baghdad residential neighborhood
Wednesday, hospital doctors said.
"A
13-year-old child was killed when a projectile landed on houses in the
Rahmaniya district. Three children were injured, as well as three men
and a woman," said a source at the Karama hospital.
A
doctor at the nearby Al-Karkh hospital said a dead man had also been
brought in there after the mortar attack.
In
the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, two Iraqis suspected of trying to
bomb an oil pipeline were shot dead as a policeman was killed making
his way home, police said.
"Two
Iraqis wearing traditional Arab dress were killed as they tried to
take a bomb out of their car and plant it near a pipeline just after
9:00 am (0500 GMT)," said Jawdat Abdullah, the top policeman in
Al-Dibis, north of Kirkuk.
Lieutenant
Uday Saddam Alyan, 28, was gunned down as he left his office in Kirkuk
to return home at around 10:00 am (0600 GMT), said Lieutenant Colonel
Hussein Abdullah al-Sabawi.
Three
sons of the governor of Iraq's restive Al-Anbar province, where many
foreign hostages are thought to be hidden, were kidnapped by gunmen
who barged into the official's private home in the flashpoint city of
Ramadi, police said.
The
sons, one of them a teenager, were snatched before gunmen torched the
building while Governor Abdul Karim Burghis Al-Rawi was at work,
police said.
An
AFP correspondent said US troops had cordoned off the scene of the
abduction.
Ramadi
is the main city in the predominantly Sunni Muslim province of
Al-Anbar, where US troops have come under persistent attacks.
Separately,
one fighter was killed and 11 US troops wounded when their military
camp outside the flashpoint city of Ramadi was attacked, the US
military said.
"The
camp around Ramadi came under attack around 1:00 pm (0900 GMT). Ten US
service members were injured, one enemy killed and one enemy
wounded," a US military spokeswoman said.
Minutes
later, two US aircraft were forced to land after coming under small
arms fire, in which one pilot was wounded and both planes were damaged
at around 2:30 pm.
The
source was unable to confirm the type of aircraft nor medical reports
that a mother was killed during the clashes, which also wounded her
husband and three children.
Luayi
Hamadi died and members of her family were hurt when their house was
hit after fighters fired mortars at the US base, east of Ramadi,
hospital sources said.
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