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| Iraq |
| Dupe entry: Update in Diyala |
| 2007-06-21 |
| A suicide truck bomber struck the city hall in a predominantly Sunni area in northern Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 13 people and wounding 70, an Iraqi commander said. The explosion occurred about 10:30 a.m. in the town of Sulaiman Bek, located 100 miles north of the capital and just outside the border with Diyala province, where thousands of U.S. troops are engaged in an offensive against al-Qaida in Iraq. Maj. Gen. Anwar Hama Amin, the commander of the Iraqi army's 2nd Brigade who gave the casualty toll, said the target apparently was the mayor, who has lost five relatives in previous assassination attempts. The blast heavily damaged the city hall, along with several nearby houses and stores. A U.S. airstrike aimed at a booby-trapped house in one of the centers of those offensives, the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba, missed its target and "accidentally hit" another structure, wounding 11 civilians, the military said, adding the incident was under investigation. U.S. troops had cleared the area to destroy a house containing explosives believed placed by al-Qaida, but "the bomb missed its intended target and struck another structure," the military said. "Reports indicate that 11 civilians were injured." The initial target was later destroyed by a Hellfire missile, producing a large secondary explosion, according to the statement. A spokesman for the 1920s Revolution Brigades, a nationalist Sunni insurgent group that has begun cooperating with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the fight against al-Qaida in Diyala, said the airstrike mistakenly If the Sunnis buy this story, Karl Rove really is good! Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Rubaie of the Iraqi army in Diyala, said that overall the offensive that began Monday in Diyala was going well and operations were focused on Thursday on the areas of Jurf al-Milih and the northern part of the Baqouba market, which has been the site of several execution-style killings by al-Qaida in recent weeks. Hospital officials said ambulances were bringing dozens of bodies of militants who have been killed from the western half of the city, which was under a strict curfew. The latest military report on the Diyala offensive said U.S.-led forces had killed 41 insurgents, discovered five weapons caches and destroyed 25 bombs and five booby-trapped houses. And in other good news... The director of a branch office of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr near the southern city of Hillah also was killed in a drive-by shooting, police said, declining to be identified due to security concerns. |
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