Roadside Bomb Kills 4 Civilians in Iraq

03/22/2005

March 22, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Militants targeted a U.S. patrol with a roadside bomb Tuesday that killed four nearby civilians in the northern city of Mosul, where an assassination attempt against top police officials sparked clashes that left more than two dozen insurgents dead or captured.

Morgue officials in southern Iraq, meanwhile, said they had received a half dozen corpses of Iraqi army soldiers, each with bound hands and bullet-riddled heads and torsos.

Iraq returned its ambassador to Jordan on Tuesday, Iraqi embassy officials said, ending a diplomatic row between the neighboring nations over Iraqi accusations the kingdom was not doing enough to stop militants from crossing the border.

The return of Ata Abdul-Wahab came a day after King Abdullah II ordered the return of Jordan’s charge d’affaires in Iraq to Baghdad.

Attackers in Mosul ambushed a convoy late Monday carrying security forces officials, including top police chief Brig. Gen. Abu Al-Waled, sparking a gunbattle in front of a main mosque. Police killed 17 militants and captured 14, said Col. Wathiq Ali, deputy police commander.

Ali said no security forces were injured in the clash, which saw guerillas carrying mortar launchers, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles.

Insurgents have carried out countless attacks on Iraq’s army and police - fledgling security forces the U.S. military says must gain better control of the country before any major U.S troop drawdown in Iraq, now in its third year of post-invasion conflict.

Mosul hospital officials citing witnesses said insurgents hit a U.S. patrol with a jerry-rigged bomb in a northwestern neighborhood early Tuesday, damaging a Humvee as it crossed a bridge and killing four civilians in a car near the blast.

It wasn’t clear if U.S. troops suffered casualties. U.S. military officials weren’t immediately available for comment.

Mosul residents said five mortar shells landed in a Kurdish enclave of the ethnically mixed city 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, injuring one.

And three rockets landed overnight on the town of Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, killing one child, said a local police official, who asked not to be named fearing retribution from militants.

Officials at the morgue in the southeastern city of Kut said the facility received on Monday the bodies six slain Iraqi army soldiers - five collected together, one separately.

Each of the soldiers had their hands tied behind their backs, with multiple gunshot wounds to the head and chest, said Hadi Al-Itabi, head of the morgue at Al-Zahraa Hospital in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Iraq army officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Gunbattles broke out Tuesday in the streets of the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, where militants riding in three cars opened fire on people shopping along a main thoroughfare, interior ministry officials said.

Shopkeepers and residents returned fire, killing two attackers and injuring a third, said the official.

Earlier, gunmen in the same quarter killed a policeman as he drove to work, said police Lt. Col. Hafidh Al-Ghrayri.

The U.S. military reported the death of a Marine in a restive western province.

The Marine assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed in action Monday in Anbar province, which contains the flashpoint cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the U.S. military said in a statement. No further details were given.

Tension between Iraq and Jordan boiled over last week. At one point, Iraqi demonstrators angered over the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a deadly suicide bombing hoisted the Iraqi flag at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad.

Iraq and Jordan engaged in a tit-for-tat withdrawal of envoys Sunday in a dispute over Iraqi claims that Jordan was failing to stop would-be insurgents from slipping across the border and allegations that a Jordanian had carried out a deadly suicide attack this month.

Both countries said the diplomats were being recalled for “consultations.”

In a bid to heal the rift, Jordan’s Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez met outgoing Iraqi President Ghazi Al Yawar and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Monday in Algeria, where they are attending the Arab summit that starts Tuesday.

Seeking to seal a political deal after Jan. 30 elections, the Shiite-clergy’s spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was expected to meet Wednesday with Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader likely to become Iraq’s next president.

The Kurds want the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk to be returned to the autonomous Kurdistan region immediately after the government convenes, but an official from al-Sistani’s office said the spiritual leader wants the country’s new National Assembly to decide that in Iraq’s future constitution.

Former dictator Saddam Hussein conducted ethnic cleansing in Kirkuk and the surrounding region, driving Kurds from their homes and replacing them with Iraqi Arabs.