69 Said Dead in Attacks Across Iraq
Jun 24, 8:46 AM (ET)
By HAMZA HENDAWI
BAQOUBA, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents launched coordinated attacks against police and
government buildings across Iraq on Thursday, less than a week before the
handover of sovereignty. The strikes killed 69 people, including three American
soldiers, and wounded more than 270 people, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.
The large number of attacks, mostly directed at Iraqi security services, was a
clear sign of just how powerful the insurgency in Iraq remains and could be the
start of a new push to torpedo Wednesday's transfer of sovereignty to an
interim transitional government.
In Baghdad, the Health Ministry said at least 66 people were killed and 268
injured nationwide. However, those figures did not include U.S. dead and
injured.
Some of the heaviest fighting was reported in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of
Baghdad, where two American soldiers were killed and seven were wounded, the
U.S. 1st Infantry Division said. Attackers also targeted police stations in
Ramadi, Mahaweel, and the northern city of Mosul, where car bombs rocked the
Iraqi Police Academy, two police stations and the al-Jumhuri hospital.
Khalid Mohammed, an official at the hospital, said dozens of injured were
brought there. At least 50 people died and 170 were wounded there, he said. A
U.S. soldier also was killed and three were wounded in Mosul.
Mosul's governor imposed a 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew, and the city television
station urged people to stay home for the "general good."
In other attacks, four Iraqi soldiers were killed in an explosion near a
checkpoint manned by Iraqi and American soldiers in the southern Baghdad
district of Dora. Three U.S. soldiers tended to what appeared to be a wounded
American soldier on the road. The soldier's helmet lay nearby. Black smoke and
flames shot up from a burning pickup truck.
Also in Baghdad, insurgents attacked four Iraqi police stations using mortars,
hand grenades and AK-47s on Wednesday and Thursday. Police fought back and
defended the stations with minimal assistance from coalition forces, a U.S.
statement said.
A statement quoted Thursday by a Saudi Web site claimed responsibility for the
Baqouba attacks in the name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who said the insurgents
belong to his Tawhid and Jihad movement. He called residents to "comply with
the instructions of resistance."
The statement appealed to residents to remain in their homes "because these
days are going to witness campaigns and attacks against the occupation troops
and those who stand beside them."
U.S. aircraft dropped three 500-pound bombs against an insurgent position near
the city soccer stadium in Baqouba, said Maj. Neal E. O'Brien, a U.S. 1st
Infantry Division spokesman. Insurgents roamed the city with rocket launchers
and automatic weapons and occupied two police stations.
Insurgents destroyed the home of the police chief of the Diyala province where
Baqouba is, O'Brien said.
At the main hospital in Baqouba, doctors continuously received injured people
and the corridors were spattered with blood. Civilian cars sped up carrying
people with gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
One man in the emergency ward vented his anger, screaming, "May God destroy
America and all those who cooperate with it!"
U.S. officials projected calm.
"Coalition forces feel confident with the situation," said Brig. Gen. Mark
Kimmitt, coalition deputy operations chief.
Explosions and shelling shook Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, as armed men
ran through the streets, witnesses said. Residents said U.S. forces were
shelling from positions outside the city and helicopters were in the skies, but
the U.S. military could not immediately be reached for comment.
One Marine helicopter made an emergency landing, but no one was wounded.
U.S. forces manning a checkpoint opened fire on a local government convoy that
included Fallujah's mayor and police chief, who were trying to meet the
Americans to discuss the violence, an Iraqi police lieutenant said on condition
of anonymity. The convoy turned back, and no injuries were reported.
A motorist who drove through Fallujah Thursday morning said Iraqi police and
insurgents were cooperating, chatting amicably along the streets, and seemed to
be working together.
U.S. forces launched two airstrikes on Fallujah in recent days against what
they said were safehouses of al-Zarqawi, whose group claimed responsibility for
the beheading of American hostage Nicholas Berg and South Korean hostage Kim
Sun-il, whose decapitated body was found Tuesday between Baghdad and Fallujah.
On Tuesday, an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site attributed to al-Zarqawi
threatened to assassinate Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi.
U.S. Marines besieged Fallujah for three weeks in April after four American
civilian contractors working for the Blackwater USA security company were
ambushed and killed, their bodies mutilated and hung from a Euphrates river
bridge.
The city has been relatively calm since Marines announced a deal to end the
siege that created the Fallujah Brigade, commanded by officers from Saddam
Hussein's army.
(AP) An Iraqi man looks at the destruction of the Ramadi, Iraq police station
after a militant attack...
Full Image
Though the Fallujah Brigade patrols the city, hard-line clerics and fighters
who held off the Marines still control the town.
In other attacks on security forces, insurgents wearing black and using masks
fired rocket-propelled grenades to attack two police stations in the insurgent
stronghold of Ramadi 60 miles west of Baghdad, police said.
"We were inside the al-Qataneh police station and suddenly a very heavy
explosion happened," said 1st Lt. Ahmed Sami. "We discovered later on that the
station was attacked from all around."
He said the station was destroyed in the initial blast. Seven people were
killed and 13 were wounded, hospital officials said.
Another group attacked the Farook police station in Ramadi, also with
rocket-propelled grenades, Sami said. In a third assault, insurgents attacked a
Ramadi government building, destroying several police cars.
And in Mahaweel, a bomb exploded outside the police station, killing one
officer and wounding six in the town 40 miles from Baghdad.
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