Suicide Bombers Kill 5 in Northern Iraq
"Iraq"05/28/2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Two suicide attackers detonated car bombs in northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least five Iraqis in violence that claimed more than 20 lives, hospital and police officials said.
The bombs exploded at the entrance to an Iraqi military base in Sinjar, about 75 miles northwest of Mosul, a police official said on condition of anonymity.
The bodies of least five Iraqis killed in the attack were brought to Sinjar Hospital, said hospital official Ahmed Ali. He added that 40 people had been wounded.
More than 20 people have been killed across Iraq during the past 24 hours, all victims of a raging, increasingly sectarian insurgency that U.S.-backed authorities are struggling to put down.
Meanwhile the brother of Akihiko Saito, a Japanese security consultant missing in Iraq, confirmed he is the dead man pictured on the Internet, Japanese news media reported. Saito’s alleged abductors, the Sunni militant group Ansar al-Sunnah Army, purportedly posted the photos of his bloodied body. Saito, whose convoy was ambushed early in May, worked for Hart Security Ltd., a British security firm based in Cyprus.
Ten Iraqis were killed and their bodies dumped in the volatile western border city of Qaim after returning from a pilgrimage to a holy site in neighboring Syria, police commander Brig. Abdul Wahab Al Adily said Saturday.
Al Adily said relatives of five of the victims told police the group had been visiting the Sayda Zeinab Shiite Muslim shrine in Damascus and returned via the Waleed border crossing, about 140 miles southwest of Qaim.
At a funeral Saturday for four of the victims in the predominantly Shiite Muslim city of Diwaniyah, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, many of the 150 mourners chanted for revenge.
Violence continued throughout cities south of Baghdad in a region dubbed the Triangle of Death, where scores of bodies have been found in an apparent tit-for-tat wave of sectarian violence.
Two civilians were killed and three wounded when clashes erupted late Friday between militants and Iraqi soldiers in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Dawood Al-Taie of Mahmoudiya hospital.
Gunmen killed another five people Friday during a car exhibition in the nearby city of Latifiyah, police Capt. Muthana Khalid Ali said Saturday.
Ali said police have also found the bullet-riddled bodies of five Iraqis in a car on a road in the volatile Anbar province, west of Baghdad, before they were returned to their home city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol instead killed three civilians Friday in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, police Lt. Khudhair Ali said. Six policemen were among 18 people wounded.
North of Baghdad in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, Sheik Sabhan Khalaf al-Jibouri, a moderate Sunni Muslim tribal leader with close ties to Iraqi Kurds, was killed late Friday in a hail of machine-gun fire, police Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin said.
In the capital, gunmen killed a western Baghdad tribal leader Samir Abdel Laith and real estate agent Sheik Samir Abdul-Razziq in separate drive-by shootings Friday in the western Jihad neighborhood, said Capt. Talib Thamer on Saturday.
Iraqi authorities are preparing to launch a massive security crackdown, involving more than 40,000 soldiers and policemen, in Baghdad to try root out insurgents responsible for a wave of violence.
Operation Lightning has received planning and logistical support from U.S. troops who are keen to train and equip Iraqi security forces so they can eventually take over security in the capital.
More than 660 people have been killed since the country’s new Shiite-led government was announced April 28, according to an Associated Press count.