BAGHDAD, Iraq – At least 50 people were killed in Iraq on Sunday in violence that included a mortar attack, military firefights, roadside bombs and other explosions.
In addition, the U.S. military reported the deaths of six soldiers and airmen on Sunday, including two who were killed when their helicopter apparently was shot down southwest of Baghdad. The U.S. military said in a statement that it had recovered the remains of two pilots of a U.S. AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter that went down during a combat air patrol southwest of Baghdad at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.
| New charges
An investigative judge will file new criminal charges against Saddam Hussein in the next few days charging him in the deaths and deportation of thousands of Kurds in the 1980s, a government prosecutor said Sunday. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said the new charges would involve Hussein’s alleged role in “Operation Anfal,” which included the 1988 gassing of about 5,000 Kurdish civilians in the village of Halabja. In all, Kurds maintain that more than 180,000 of their people were killed in the operation, which began in 1987 and ended a year later. Hundreds of Kurdish villages in northern Iraq were destroyed and thousands were forced to leave their homes. Al-Moussawi did not specify when the charges would be filed, but the Iraqi court that handles cases against the ousted ruler announced a news conference for Tuesday. Associated Press |
In the single deadliest incident, at least nine people, including three women and two children, were killed in a mortar barrage on the south Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, a predominantly Sunni Arab area, according to Baghdad police Col. Abdullah Nuaimi. He said that 15 people were wounded in the attack.
The bodies of 10 men, all blindfolded and hands bound, were found in three areas of west Baghdad, Nuaimi said. All the men had been shot.
About 40 miles north of Baghdad, in the village of Gubba, insurgents blew up the local Shiite mosque, leaving it in ruins and killing a guard who was posted inside, Baqubah police Col. Adnan Lafta said.
The killings and attacks, which seemed to target specific religious communities, are the sort that military and political analysts say are being used by sectarian and insurgent groups to foment strife between Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs and majority Shiite Muslims and push the country toward civil war.
In other statements Sunday, the military said two U.S. soldiers on foot patrol were killed by a roadside bomb in central Baghdad on Saturday. A Marine died from wounds sustained during hostile action Friday in Anbar province, a stronghold of Sunni insurgents west of the capital. And a soldier died of injuries received March 30 in a nonbattle-related operation in Kirkuk.
No other details were available.
In other areas of the country, five people, including three children, were killed when a firefight erupted in Ramadi, an insurgent hotbed 55 miles west of Baghdad, after a U.S. military Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb, a local hospital official and witness said.
Witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity, and an inspection of the scene indicated that there were U.S. casualties.
A doctor at Ramadi General Hospital, Thamir Aisawi, said that fighting erupted after the Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb while traveling through the center of town, and the soldiers inside scrambled out to defend themselves. As they huddled near the vehicle, insurgents attacked the group, and the soldiers returned fire in what witnesses described as a random manner, leading to the civilian casualties. The soldiers were subsequently evacuated from the scene.
A U.S. military spokesman said he had no information about the incident.
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