BAGHDAD, 16 July 2005 — A series of suicide car bombs and explosions rocked wide areas of the Iraqi capital yesterday, targeting US and Iraqi security forces and killing dozens of people. Two US Marines died in a blast near the Jordanian border, the US military said.
At least 111 people, including seven American soldiers, were wounded in the bombings — seven of them suicide attacks. One of the suicide bombings occurred after sundown on a bridge overlooking the home of President Jalal Talabani, according to police.
Three security guards were killed and nine people were wounded, police added. Talabani was at home at the time, aides said, but the target may have been a US convoy.
The wave of attacks, which began at midmorning and persisted after nightfall, marked an escalation in car bombings in the capital after a six-week US-Iraqi military offensive sharply reduced their numbers since May.
They took place one day after a suicide attack on the Green Zone, in which one would-be bomber was captured. A suicide blast near a US convoy Wednesday killed 27, including 18 children and one American soldier.
In the deadliest attack yesterday, a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi Army base in the Shaab neighborhood of northern Baghdad, killing eight Iraqis, including civilians and security personnel, and wounding 20, Maj. Khazim Al-Tamimi said.
A suicide car bomb exploded yesterday evening in western Baghdad targeting a police commando patrol, killing six policemen and wounding 45 people, including 38 civilians, police Capt. Taleb Thamer said.
Two Iraqi soldiers died and seven people were wounded when a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb near an Iraqi patrol in Andalus Square in central Baghdad, Col. Salman Abdul Karim said.
A car bomb also exploded near a US convoy in the Rustamiyah area of southeastern Baghdad, wounding two Americans, the US military said.
Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and 14 people wounded in a suicide car bombing at the former Defense Ministry building in northern Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.
Another car bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad, wounding six people, including a US soldier, police said.
Also yesterday, a roadside bomb exploded as a US military patrol was passing near the west Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah, police Lt. Majed Zaki said. US soldiers and Iraqi insurgents exchanged gunfire after the blast, he said. One Iraqi civilian was killed and eight people, including four US soldiers, were wounded, officials said.
Al-Qaeda’s wing in Iraq claimed responsibility in Internet statements for the attacks in Rustamiyah and Andalus Square, but the authenticity could not be confirmed.
“The terrorists continue to strike at the most innocent,” US Col. Joseph DiSalvo said of the civilian casualties. “There is no place in a civilized society for these murderers.”
Elsewhere, gunmen killed three Iraqi policemen yesterday at a checkpoint near Baquba, 55 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, police said. The two US Marines died Thursday in a roadside bombing during combat operations near the border with Jordan, the US military said in a statement yesterday.
At least 1,761 members of the US military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,356 died as a result of hostile action. The figures include five military civilians.
During a Friday sermon at a mosque, a prominent Sunni imam condemned the violence, especially the Wednesday suicide bombing that killed the 18 children in eastern Baghdad.
Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafour Al-Samarrai, a moderate member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, called the Wednesday attack a “crime” but added that the Americans and their international partners share some of the blame.
“The (US-led) occupation that has destroyed the country and turned things upside down is responsible for that,” Al-Samarrai said.
Meanwhile, the commander of US forces in northcentral Iraq said the level of violence in his sector remains about where it was prior to the January election — a sign of the insurgency’s resilience.
“The suicide bomb, of course, is the weapon of choice now,” Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Taluto, commander of the 42nd Infantry Division, told reporters at the Pentagon via an audio link from Baghdad.
Taluto said the number of attacks on US and Iraqi forces by roadside bombs, mortars and small arms has declined substantially. But the number of suicide bomb attacks grew from a monthly average of five to eight prior to the January elections to 15 in May and June, Taluto said. He blamed religious extremists for the increase.
He said US forces in his area were making steady progress in giving more responsibility to Iraqi forces, but he would not say how soon the Iraqis would be ready to assume full control.
