BAGHDAD, Iraq – An insurgent blew up his car in a Baghdad square Sunday, killing four people in the first significant suicide bombing in the capital in weeks. More than 20 Iraqis died in a swell of violence, including a bomb that killed a police colonel and four children.
Still, with the toll among American service members in the Iraq war approaching 2,000 dead, the U.S. military said it has hampered insurgents’ ability to unleash more devastating suicide bombings with a series of offensives in western towns that disrupted militant operations.
“We have interrupted the flow of the suicide missions into the large urban areas. Certainly, we have had success denying free movement of car bombs into Baghdad,” Brig. Gen. Donald Alston said.
“It is also a function of Iraqi citizens who have come forward and with their support we have found car bomb factories. We have found a series of large weapon caches,” he said.
In Sunday’s attack, the bomber plowed his explosives-laden car into two police vehicles in downtown Tahrir Square, killing two police officers and two civilians. U.S. troops rushing to the scene in Humvees found bystanders tending to 11 wounded.
Roadside bombs hit three separate U.S. convoys in Baghdad on Sunday morning, wounding a total of five soldiers, a military spokesman, U.S. Sgt. 1st Class David Abrams, said.
A suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy Sunday morning in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing two civilians and wounding 13.
Attacks also flared in north-central Iraq. The slaying of the police colonel and his children came in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad.
Lt. Colonel Haitham Akram had just left his home and was getting into his car with his two sons when a bomb nearby went off, killing the three of them, police Lt. Qusay Mushaal said. The explosion set a nearby car ablaze, killing two young girls, aged 7 and 9.
Also Sunday, investigative judges took testimony from the first witness in the mass murder trial of Saddam Hussein and seven members of his former Baathist regime over the 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail.
The judges went to a military hospital to take the deposition from Wadah Ismail al-Sheik, a cancer patient who was director of the investigation department at Hussein’s feared Mukhabarat intelligence agency at the time of the Dujail massacre. Al-Sheik is too sick to appear in court, and officials feared he may die before the trial resumes Nov. 28.
Associated Press
Idaho-based Army National Guard Maj. Ron Wie of Lakewood hugs his boys, Travis (left), Kyle and Andru on Sunday at a welcome-home ceremony at Fort Lewis. About 300 members of the 116th Cavalry Brigade combat team came home Sunday from Iraq duty.
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