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| Iraq |
| 7 Iraqis dead in Baquba bombing |
| 2005-11-09 |
| Seven Iraqis were killed and four others injured Wednesday when a suicide car bomb exploded in Baquba, north of Baghdad. Four police officers were among the dead in a bombing apparently targeting an Iraqi police patrol in the city, located about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of the capital. Baquba often has been the scene of sectarian violence and attacks on Iraqi security forces. In other deadly violence Wednesday, a driver for an Education Ministry official was gunned down in Baghdad's Shula neighborhood, Iraqi police said. A Sudanese administrative attaché for the Sudanese Embassy also was shot dead while driving his car Wednesday morning in Baghdad, Iraqi emergency police said. Earlier Wednesday, a U.S.-led airstrike in western Iraq destroyed what was believed to be an al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist weapons cache in a village near Qaim along the Syrian border, the military said. Also Wednesday, a U.S. Marine died from wounds he received earlier this week in a roadside bomb attack in Anbar province west of Baghdad, a military statement said. Meanwhile, Operation Steel Curtain, the latest in a series of U.S.-led offensives in northwest Iraq, a region that borders with Syria, enters its fifth day. On Tuesday, the U.S. military said it uncovered a bomb-making factory and a weapons store in an attempt to wrest control of the town of Husayba from insurgents. U.S. commanders say the Syrian border region has been used by foreign fighters heading to Iraq and smuggling in weapons and add that insurgents have taken over Husayba and are using it as a command center. With about 3,000 U.S. personnel and 550 Iraqi soldiers, the operation is one of the largest since last year's battle to retake Falluja from insurgents. An Iraqi garrison will remain in the area to prevent the return of insurgents, as has happened after previous operations. As of Tuesday, one Marine and 36 insurgents had been reported killed in the fighting. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, the discredited former exile leader, is scheduled to meet Wednesday with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington. Chalabi also will speak to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and meet with Treasury Secretary John Snow during his visit to the United States. Chalabi, a Pentagon favorite before the war, fell from favor with the Bush administration in 2004 when U.S. intelligence officials accused him of leaking information to Iran. He has denied any wrongdoing, but U.S. officials said that an FBI probe into those allegations remains unresolved. A day after a lawyer for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants was killed, the chief attorney for the ex-Iraqi dictator said counsel for Hussein and his seven co-defendants would sever dealings with the tribunal in the first trial of alleged crimes against humanity by the former regime, Reuters reported. The next hearing is set for November 28, but Khalil al-Dulaimi told Reuters that defense attorneys are not able to work because of threats to their lives. Gunmen shot and killed Adil Muhammed al-Zubaidi, a lawyer for ex-Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, while he was driving Tuesday in Baghdad, Iraqi police said. Al-Zubaidi was the second lawyer involved in the trial to be assassinated within the past month. The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to extend for another year the U.N. authorization of U.S. and other foreign troops in Iraq, which number about 180,000. The present mandate expires December 31. The adoption extends the multinational force's presence until December 31, 2006, but it will be reviewed in six months. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |