BAGHDAD, 17 August 2006 — Bombs killed at least 19 people in the Iraqi capital yesterday, as British troops drove off dozens of gunmen who laid siege to the governor’s office in the southern city of Basra, apparently to avenge a tribal leader killed the day before.
In Baghdad, deputy Health Minister Adel Mohsen said about 3,500 Iraqis died last month in sectarian or political violence nationwide. Mohsen said he had no comparative figures for other months but added that the July figure was the highest monthly tally of the war.
Last week, the ministry said about 1,500 violent deaths were reported in the Baghdad area alone in July.
Eight people, most of them day laborers waiting for work, were killed when a bomb exploded at 11:10 a.m. in the Nahda district, police Lt. Bilal Ali said. Two other bombs went off in the evening in central Baghdad, killing 11 people and injuring 44, police said.
Clashes broke out in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, when members of the Bani Assad tribe attacked the Basra governor’s office, believing provincial officials were behind the killing of a tribal leader on Tuesday, according to an official trapped in the besieged building. The tribesmen fled after British armored vehicles arrived. Basra Gov. Mohammed Al-Waeli said one policeman was killed and four others wounded. Seven attackers were arrested, he added.
Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew on the city to allow tempers to cool.
In Mosul, 360 km northwest of Baghdad, armed clashes erupted between police and assailants in three neighborhoods on the western side of the Tigris River, police Lt. Col. Abdul-Karim Ahmed Khalaf said.
At least five gunmen were killed and six were arrested, he said. Western Mosul is predominantly Sunni Arab, while Kurds dominate in the east of the city.
The clashes occurred one day after a suicide car bomber killed nine people in an attack on the Mosul headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a Kurdish party headed by President Jalal Talabani.
Also yesterday, a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi Army patrol north of Hillah, killing three soldiers and wounding four, police 1st Lt. Osama Ahmed said. Hillah is a mostly Shiite city about 95 km south of Baghdad.
An Iraqi militant group yesterday released a video showing a Katyusha rocket purportedly fired at the US-controlled Green Zone in a gesture of solidarity with Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The footage obtained by The Associated Press showed several masked men casually setting up a launcher in a parking lot containing a number of burned out buses before firing the rocket, which streaked across the sky out of view.
The group, calling itself “Screaming the Truth,” said the rocket was fired Sunday to demonstrate support for Hezbollah who battled the Israelis in Lebanon until a UN cease-fire ended 34 days of fighting on Monday.
As they prepared to fire the weapon, the militants showed little concern that they might be discovered by a ground or aerial security patrol.
