At least 54 Iraqis died Tuesday in bombings, officials said, including a coordinated strike that killed 25 in western Baghdad. Separately, the US military announced the deaths of seven American soldiers. The three coordinated car bombs in western Baghdad injured at least 55 people, said a doctor at Yarmouk hospital, where the victims were taken. The attacks occurred in a mixed Sunni and Shiite neighbourhood.In separate attacks, another car bomb exploded near a mosque in northern Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding 35, a doctor at Al-Nuaman hospital said. A bomb also exploded in a central Baghdad market, killing five people and wounding 14, police said. Two roadside bombs targeted an Iraqi police patrol in an eastern neighbourhood of the capital, killing four policemen and injuring 12 people.
In Kirkuk, 180 miles north of the Iraqi capital, a roadside bomb killed three civilians - including an 8-year-old girl - and wounded six others, police said.
The US military on Tuesday announced the deaths of seven more American soldiers, pushing the US military death toll since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,978 – five more than the number killed in the September 11 attacks. The milestone came with a military announcement that three soldiers had been killed on Monday. Three more service members were killed on Tuesday in roadside bombings near Baghdad, and another died in a vehicle rollover, the military said.At least 18 people died in bombings and clashes in Iraq on Monday. American troops fought gunmen in a Shiite militia stronghold in east Baghdad on Tuesday, witnesses said. Fighters loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr were engaged in the clashes with US forces in and near Sadr City, an official in al-Sadr’s office said. There was no immediate word on casualties.
British soldiers were on alert for reprisals a day after they raided a police station in the southern city of Basra, killing seven gunmen in an effort to stop renegade Iraqi officers from executing their prisoners.
Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani protested on Monday against the arrest by US forces in Iraq of two Iranian diplomats who US officials said were seized in raids against Iranians suspected of planning attacks on Iraqi security forces. Iran said the diplomats had been invited by the Iraqi government and warned their detention would “provoke unpleasant repercussions”, a local Iraqi news agency said. “Two Iranian diplomats were detained by the Americans,” said Hiwa Othman, media adviser for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. “The president is unhappy. He is talking to the Americans about it as we speak. The diplomats came to Iraq at the invitation of the president,” Othman told Reuters. He said he was not aware if they had met Talabani.
The US State Department said “a small number” of Iranian diplomats were among those initially detained in the raids, but that they were turned over to Iraqi authorities and released. Several other Iranians remained in custody, it said. “We suspect this event validates our claim about Iranian meddling,” said a White House spokesman.In Washington on Tuesday, Senator Joseph Biden, the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he would fight President George W Bush if the administration decides to send more US troops to Iraq. He also warned that if congressional Republicans do not join him in speaking out to Bush, then they - not Democrats – would suffer in the 2008 elections. “I just think it’s the absolute wrong strategy,” Biden, a potential presidential contender, said of an increase in troops.