#4 Hah! AP it is.
Suspected Sunni insurgents bombed and badly damaged a span over the main north-south highway leading from Baghdad on Tuesday - the third bridge attack in as many days in an apparent campaign against key transportation arteries. The attack on the bridge occurred six miles south of a bridge brought down on Sunday by what was believed to be a suicide truck bomber. The explosion at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday - not thought to be a suicide bomb - struck a bridge linking the villages of al-Qariya al-Asriyah and al-Rashayed in northern Babil province, 35 miles south of Baghdad.
About 60 percent of the bridge was damaged, but one lane was passable, police said. Debris from the blast fell on the main north-south expressway below, further complicating efforts to reopen that main artery, closed after Sunday's blast dropped masses of concrete onto the roadway.
On Monday, a parked truck bomb destroyed a bridge carrying traffic over the Diyala River in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. There were no casualties, but vehicles were being forced to detour to a road running through al-Qaida-controlled territory to reach important nearby cities. The attacks on the bridges were only the latest in a bid to deepen turmoil in Iraq, especially on the vital transportation network linking Baghdad to the rest of the country. Such bombings - especially suicide attacks - are an al-Qaida trademark and one of the group's many and ever-shifting tactics against U.S. and Iraqi forces.
Earlier this month, a bomb heavily damaged the Sarhat Bridge, a key crossing 90 miles north of the capital on a major road connecting Baghdad with Irbil, Sulaimaniya and other Kurdish cities. In March and April, three of Baghdad's 13 bridges over the Tigris River were bombed. The attacks were blamed on Sunni insurgent or al-Qaida attempts to divide the city's predominantly Shiite east bank from the mostly Sunni western side of the river.
The most serious attack, an April 12 suicide truck bombing, collapsed the landmark Sarafiyah bridge and sent cars plunging into the brown waters of the Tigris. Eleven people were killed.
Paul Kane, a fellow with the International Security Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said the attacks on bridges are an extension of earlier insurgent attacks on "electric generation sites, infrastructure for water and also the obvious target of oil pipelines." Kane noted that Iraq does not have railroad service so insurgents "may be at the end of the transit list. If anything, it means they're trying to be creative and they're running out of targets." |
BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber struck a major bridge in IraqÂ’s volatile Diyala province on Monday, police said, cutting the span over the Diyala River. Police said they did not know if there were any casualties. The bridge, normally guarded by Georgian troops, links the provincial capital Baquba with villages in the north of Diyala. No other details were immediately available.