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2 roadside attacks injure Iraqi forces
Insurgents wounded several Iraqi soldiers and policemen in two separate attacks with roadside bombs Saturday, officials said, one day after a car bomb ripped through a crowded mosque during prayers, killing eight people and wounding 26. In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army convoy on Saturday morning, wounding three soldiers, said Dr. Bahaaldin al-Bakri at the city's al-Jumhouri hospital.
In eastern Baghdad, two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their car in another morning attack, said police Capt. Mahir Abdelsatar.
The violence was part of a surge of militant attacks that have caused heavy casualties in recent weeks, ending a relative lull since Iraqis voted in historic Jan. 30 elections. Iraqi leaders are struggling to form a Cabinet that will include members of the Sunni minority, believed to be the driving force in the insurgency. Friday's car bomb at Al-Subeih mosque targeted the Shiite majority. Witnesses said the vehicle had been parked outside the building since the morning. Frantic worshippers searched through rubble for loved ones, and women wailed and beat their chests in grief.
A 10-year-old child was among the eight people killed, and the 26 wounded included two 9-year-olds, hospital officials said. Body parts were strewn among piles of bricks, shattered glass and pools of blood. One man clutched a child's foot, shaking and weeping.
"This is a cowardly and savage act that aims to create conflict among Iraqis," said Abdelallah Faraj, a grocer who survived the attack.
Shiite mosques and funerals have become a frequent target of Sunni-led insurgents.
In February, suicide bombers attacked a number of them during the Shiite commemoration of Ashoura, killing nearly 100 people. In recent weeks, police have pulled dozens of bodies from the Tigris River in a region south of Baghdad that has seen retaliatory kidnappings and killings by Shiite and Sunni groups. Elsewhere, the U.S. military sent investigators to the grassy field north of Baghdad where a helicopter carrying 11 foreign civilians was shot down Thursday.
A video posted on a militant Web site suggested insurgents gunned down the lone survivor of the crash, and the Bulgarian company that owns the helicopter confirmed Friday the man seen in the footage was indeed one of the aircraft's pilots.
In another development, al-Jazeera aired part of a video Friday in which it said a militant group was threatening to kill three kidnapped Romanian journalists and their Iraqi-American translator unless Romanian troops leave Iraq within four days.
In violence targeting the coalition, one U.S. soldier was killed Friday by a roadside bomb north of Tal Afar, 95 miles east of the Syrian border, the military said.
On Thursday, a U.S. Marine died in a non-hostile incident at Camp Delta, near Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, the military said. More than 1,500 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war two years ago.
North of the capital, Col. Paul Bricker led a team of investigators who surveyed the site where the helicopter crashed Thursday, the military said.
The chartered flight between Baghdad and Tikrit was believed to be the first civilian aircraft shot down in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. A spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq said an American medical team arrived at the site within a half hour of Thursday's crash and found no survivors. The dead included six American bodyguards for U.S. diplomats, three Bulgarian crew and two security guards from Fiji, officials said. Their bodies were taken to Balad Air Base, and an aircraft recovery team from the 3rd Infantry Division was moving the wreckage of the helicopter to Baghdad International Airport for further inspection, the military said. Two militant groups claimed responsibility for shooting down the Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter and released video to support their claims. A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq posted footage on the Internet purporting to show militants capturing and shooting the lone survivor, found lying in the grass near burning wreckage and charred bodies. Mihail Mihailov, the manager of Heli Air, the Bulgarian owner of the helicopter, identified the man in the footage as Lyubomir Kostov, one of the aircraft's two pilots. Al-Jazeera broadcast another video from a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Army in Iraq that showed the helicopter flying about 100 feet above the ground. At one point, the camera suddenly shook, swinging down to show the ground near the cameraman's feet — apparently as a missile hit the helicopter. When the camera turned back toward the sky, the helicopter was in flames, arcing toward the ground and trailing a pall of black smoke. There was no independent confirmation of the authenticity of either video. Toronto-based SkyLink Aviation Inc. chartered the helicopter, and the six Americans were employed by Blackwater Security Consulting, a subsidiary of North Carolina-based security contractor Blackwater USA. |
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