BAGHDAD, Iraq – Car bombs killed at least a dozen people in Baghdad and another major city Tuesday as pressure mounted on interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to avert a full-scale U.S. attack on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
There was no word on an American and two other foreigners abducted Monday night in Baghdad, although the kidnappers freed two Iraqi guards also captured in the attack. Some diplomats speculated the foreigners may have been seized to pressure the Americans against a Fallujah attack.
Meanwhile, the kidnappers of aid worker Margaret Hassan threatened to turn her over to al-Qaida in Iraq – a group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – unless Britain agreed within 48 hours to pull its troops from Iraq, Al-Jazeera television reported Tuesday. Hassan, 59, is an Irish-British-Iraqi citizen who heads CARE International in Iraq, and who was abducted last month.
In northern Iraq on Tuesday, saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline and attacked an oil well, violence that is expected to stop oil exports for the next 10 days, Iraqi oil officials said. Iraq’s oil industry, which provides desperately needed money for reconstruction efforts, has been the target of repeated attacks by insurgents.
At least eight people, including a woman, died early Tuesday when an explosives-laden car slammed into concrete blast walls and protective barriers surrounding the Education Ministry and exploded in Baghdad’s Sunni Muslim district of Azamiyah.
Ten others were injured, including a 2-year-old girl, according to Al-Numan Hospital. Officials at Baghdad Medical City Hospital reported two more deaths and 19 injured. Dr. Raed Mubarak said he was unsure whether some of the wounded were transferred from other hospitals.
In Mosul, a car bomb exploded near a military convoy carrying an Iraqi general, killing four civilians and wounding at least seven soldiers. Iraqi police said the attack was an assassination attempt on Maj. Gen. Rashid Feleih, commander of a special task force, who was not injured.
The violence came as American forces prepare for a major offensive against Fallujah, which U.S. officials believe is al-Zarqawi’s stronghold, and other Sunni militant strongholds. However, pressure mounted Tuesday on Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, to continue negotiating with the hardline Sunni clerics who run the city.
Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi, spokesman of the Association of Muslim Scholars, said his clerical group would use “mosques, the media and professional associations” to proclaim a civil disobedience campaign and a boycott of the January elections.
Associated Press
A civilian car burns as an Iraqi police officer guards the scene of an attack on an Iraqi military convoy in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq, on Tuesday. Seven soldiers were reported injured.
U.S. military deaths
The latest identifications reported by the U.S. military of personnel who recently died in Iraq:
Army Spc. Segun Frederick Akintade, 34; New York, died Thursday in Abd Allah when his unit was attacked; assigned to 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry Regiment, New York.
Army Sgt. Maurice Keith Fortune, 25, Forestville, Md.; died Friday in Ramadi when an explosive detonated near his vehicle; assigned to 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, Camp Hovey, Korea.
Marine 1st Lt. Matthew D. Lynch, 25, Jericho, N.Y.; died Sunday in Anbar province; assigned to 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Associated Press
U.S. Marines of the 1st Division raid the house of a city council chairman in the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad, Iraq, on Tuesday. The Marines arrested the council chairman of Nasar Wa Sulaan, Baghdad, Taha Rasheed and other council members following the raid. American forces are preparing for a major assault on Fallujah in an effort to restore control to a swath of Sunni Muslim towns north and west of the capital ahead of crucial national elections due by Jan. 31.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
