Car Bomb Kills 17 Outside Iraqi Hospital

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A car bomb exploded in front of a hospital in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad on Saturday, killing 17 people and wounding 21 others, officials said, a day after 23 people were killed in two attacks aimed at the Shiite community.

A police captain who refused to give his name said Saturday’s blast occurred in front of the main hospital in Musayyib, 35 miles south of the capital, in a religiously mixed area that has been the scene of frequent attacks by Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Another car bomb detonated in a Baghdad neighborhood as a U.S. military convoy passed, killing an Iraqi woman and wounding three other people on a minibus, Iraqi police Capt. Mohammed Latif said.

The bomb exploded near an intersection in Baladiyat, about half a mile from Camp Cuervo, a U.S. Army base. It was detonated by remote control, Latif said.

Further south, a roadside bomb blasted an American military convoy, killing an Iraqi bystander but causing no U.S. casualties, a police official in the city of Youssifiyah said.

Elsewhere, a prominent Iraqi judge under Saddam Hussein, Taha al-Amiri, was assassinated Saturday by two gunmen in the southern port city of Basra, Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi said.

Al-Amiri, a former chief judge at Basra’s highest criminal court, is one of several former Baath Party figures assassinated in the Basra area during the past 18 months. Suspicion has fallen on Shiite extremists seeking revenge for Saddam’s oppression of the majority Shiite community.

Fierce clashes erupted Saturday between American forces and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul. The fighting began when U.S. troops responding to a mortar strike on a base were attacked by insurgents firing rifles and rocket-propelled grenades from a mosque, said Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla of the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment.

The insurgents disabled a U.S. tank and a Stryker armored vehicle. Nine insurgents were killed in the hourslong battle, and there were no American casualties, Kurilla said. Several cars and buildings were left burning.

A woman died when a mortar round hit her house, and another person was killed when a bomb exploded in the city’s south, hospital officials said.

Earlier Saturday, police in Mosul said they discovered the bodies of six men dressed in Iraqi National Guard uniforms dumped on a main highway east of the city. The six were shot in the chest and head, police Lt. Ali Hussein said.

A note left on one of the bodies said, “This is the destiny for those who participated in besieging Fallujah,” suggesting their killers believed the men had participated in the U.S.-led assault on the former rebel stronghold in November.

Also, the bodies of six Kurds who apparently worked as security guards were found in the city, a hospital official said.

Attacks against Iraq’s security forces have risen steadily following the Jan. 30 national elections. Insurgents have vowed to intensify their attacks against the Iraqi forces at a time when the United States is trying to give those forces more security responsibility.

But the body count of police seems to be particularly high in Mosul, the country’s third-largest city, which has now become another flashpoint in the running battle between insurgents and U.S. and coalition troops.

Last week, a suicide bomber walked into a crowd of Iraqi policeman in Mosul, killing himself and 12 policemen. In December, more than 150 bodies, mostly of Iraqi security forces, were found in Mosul in the span of one month.

Three months after Fallujah fell in the U.S. military siege, several hundred traffic police returned to the streets Saturday for the first time. The return of about 500 traffic policemen seemed to be an initial tentative step at redeploying the city’s Iraqi security forces.

South of Baghdad, gunmen shot dead a Sunni imam, who worked for an endowment that handles funds for mosques, and his son. Their bodies were found dumped on a highway Thursday, officials said. It was unclear whether the attacks were reprisal killings by Shiites seeking revenge for insurgent attacks on their community.

Sunni Arab extremists form the core of Iraq’s insurgency.

On Friday, a vegetable truck rigged with explosives blew up outside a Shiite mosque northeast of Baghdad, and gunmen sprayed automatic fire into a bakery in a Shiite district of the capital in sectarian violence that killed at least 23 people.

The attacks occurred as election officials announced provisional final results for councils in 12 of the 18 provinces, showing Shiite religious groups winning over secular tickets in local races around much of the country.

Final results from the more closely watched national race for the 275-member National Assembly are expected in a few days. A Shiite-dominated ticket endorsed by the clergy is also leading in the national contest, indicating the growing influence of religion in the politics of the new Iraq.