BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents plowed a car bomb into a bus carrying Kurdish militiamen in northern Iraq Saturday, while Sunni and Shiite militias fought a pitched battle south of Baghdad. The day’s violence, which killed dozens, underscored the continuing rise in ethnic and sectarian tensions as Iraq heads toward nationwide elections in January.
Across the country, other insurgent attacks claimed the lives of U.S. soldiers and allied Iraqi forces. Two American troops were killed in roadside bombings in the capital and near the central Iraqi city of Baqubah, and two other U.S. soldiers died in a suicide bombing of their post near the Jordanian border Friday, the military said.
In Baghdad, insurgents detonated two car bombs simultaneously at an Iraqi police station near the fortified headquarters of the U.S. Embassy and the interim Iraqi government, killing at least three Iraqi policemen and wounding dozens of others.
The attacks illustrated both the geographical reach and diverse goals of the country’s tenacious insurgency. For more than a year, guerrillas have targeted U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces, while other attacks have seemed aimed at exacerbating ethnic and sectarian strife to undermine the U.S.-led occupation.
Both the U.S. military and the insurgents see the elections, scheduled for Jan. 30, as a turning point. The Americans hope the elections will create a government with a measure of legitimacy and hasten a withdrawal of U.S. troops, whose numbers are set to grow from 138,000 to 150,000 by mid-January. The guerrillas aim to disrupt the vote, whose success would probably be seen as a victory for the U.S. project in Iraq.
Speaking in Bahrain, Army Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander for the Middle East, acknowledged that Iraqi security forces alone weren’t capable of providing security during the elections.
“It had been our hope that we would be able to have a combination of increases that mainly were Iraqi troops’ increases,” Abizaid said. “And while the Iraqi troops are larger in number than they used to be, those forces have to be seasoned more, trained more. So, it’s necessary to bring more American forces.”
In one of the bloodiest attacks Saturday, a driver smashed a car packed with explosives into a Toyota minibus carrying Kurdish militiamen into Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city and home to a mixed Kurdish and Sunni Arab population. Hospital officials said at least 18 Kurds on the bus were killed.
The attack in Baghdad was the second in two days on Iraqi police in the capital, a dramatic show of the insurgents’ ability to strike at the heart of the country when they choose. A day earlier, guerrillas overran a police station in southern Baghdad, killing 16 police officers, freeing dozens of prisoners and emptying a police arsenal.
The two car bombs detonated at about 9:30 a.m., the U.S. military said. The sound of the blasts, which sent up a column of black smoke, reverberated across the capital, rattling windows on both sides of the Tigris river dividing Baghdad.
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