BAGHDAD, 20 February 2005 — Insurgent attacks killed at least 48 people yesterday, including a US soldier, a Defense Ministry official said.
Insurgents carried out a steady stream of attacks using suicide bombers, mortars and gunmen, across the country, said Capt. Sabah Yassin, a Defense Ministry official. Among the deadliest attacks came when a suicide bomber blew up his car at an Iraqi Army checkpoint in Latifiya, 30 kilometers south of the capital, killing nine Iraqi soldiers, he said.
At least eight suicide bombers staged attacks in and around Baghdad alone yesterday, targeting religious gatherings and Iraqi checkpoints. An Associated Press count of the dead from those attacks alone totaled 24, but many more explosions were audible in the capital throughout the day.
It was unclear which of the attacks in Baghdad claimed the life of the soldier, whose identity was withheld by the military pending notification of his next of kin. Another soldier was wounded in the attack, which killed an Iraqi, the military said.
Yesterday’s bombings came despite stepped-up security around the country. Authorities had hoped to prevent a repeat of last year’s attacks in which insurgents killed at least 181 people in twin blasts in Kerbala and Baghdad.
The attacks also came as a five-member US congressional delegation that includes Sen. Hillary Clinton, a Democrat from New York, met with Iraqi government officials in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone. “The fact that you have these suicide bombers now, wreaking such hatred and violence while people pray, is to me, an indication of their failure,” Hillary told reporters.
Authorities did make some progress against the insurgency, arresting two of its leaders, including a top aide to Iraqi Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi.
In western Baquba, police chief Abdel Molan said his forces had arrested Haidar Abu Bawari, also known as the “Prince of the Holy Warriors.” He was described as a top aide to Zarqawi and the man behind the insurgency in Baquba.
The Iraqi government also said it had arrested one of the masterminds of the insurgency in the northern city of Mosul, Harbi Abdul Khudair Al-Mahmoudi, 50, also known as Abu Noor. He was a former member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, an announcement said. Nearly all of yesterday’s attacks inside Baghdad took place in the northern Adhamiya and Kadhimiya districts. The attacks began before noon, when a bomber walked into a tent outside a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad and blew himself up, killing at least three people and injuring 10, police Capt. Hussain Al-Ani said. About 50 people were inside the tent attending a funeral.
It was unclear why the attacker blew himself up inside a tent full of Sunnis, set up outside the Fatah Pasha Mosque, but similar structures were set up outside Shiite mosques. — With input from agencies
