BAGHDAD, 18 September 2005 — A car bomb killed 30 people and wounded 38 in a town east of Baghdad yesterday at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks in and around the Iraqi capital since the US-led invasion of 2003. A police spokesman said the explosion in Nahrwan, some 45 km from Baghdad, also wounded 38 people. “It was not a suicide bomb,” he said. “A car parked in the middle of the square and later it blew up.”
More than 200 people have been killed in bombings and shootings in and near Baghdad this week, including at least 114 in a single suicide bomb on Wednesday that targeted a crowd of day laborers waiting to be hired in a Shiite district. Iraq’s Shiite- and Kurdish-led government, backed by the United States, faces a Sunni Arab revolt that has intensified ahead of an Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution.
Earlier yesterday police in Baghdad found nine bodies shot in the head and chest in three separate incidents. One civilian was killed and 17 people, including three Iraqi soldiers, were wounded when a car driven by a suicide bomber exploded near an Iraqi army patrol in Baqouba, police said.
Earlier, a suicide car bomber attacked a US convoy near Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, destroying three vehicles, and insurgents shelled the notorious lockup with seven mortar rounds, police said. In the same area, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a second US convoy, damaging three armored vehicles, said police Lt. Alaa Hussein. In the northern city of Mosul, coalition forces said they have arrested two alleged leaders of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group. The two — identified as Taha Ibrahim Yasin Becher, whose alias was Abu Fatima, and Hamed Saeed Ismael Mustafa, also known as Abu Shahed — allegedly headed Al-Qaeda’s organization in Iraq’s third-largest city.
A statement said the arrests occurred on Sept. 5 and that Abu Fatima took over as Al-Qaeda’s top-ranking operative in Mosul after one of predecessors was captured in June and another killed in August. He held the post for only 12 days, said the statement. In Baqouba, 60 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, one man was killed and six wounded when a suicide bomber drove his car into an Iraqi army patrol.
In Friday sermons, some Shiite and Sunni clerics condemned the rash of insurgent attacks but also slammed the US-backed Iraqi government and American forces, holding them responsible for the violence because they were unable to improve security in the country 2 1/2 years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Sheikh Abdul-Zahraa Al-Suwaidi, a Shiite, said the violence had tarnished the image of Islam and Muslims. He said, however, that the continued presence of 140,000 US troops was fueling sectarian tension. “You have to know that Iraq will gain its security if the occupation troops leave this country,” Suwaidi told worshippers in Baghdad’s Risafaa district.
