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9 U.S. Soldiers Killed in 2 Days in Iraq

Posted on: Tuesday, 24 May 2005, 15:07 CDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded Tuesday near a Baghdad junior high school for girls, killing six people, and nine American troops were killed in two days of insurgent attacks in and around Baghdad, the military said.

Al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, blamed for numerous terror attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets, said in an Internet posting that its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been wounded and called on supporters to pray for his recovery. The posting's authenticity could not be verified.

In the last two days, the military announced that 14 American troops have been killed since Sunday. Those reports came as insurgents carried out a string of explosions, suicide attacks and drive-by shootings around the country that also killed 49 Iraqis.

At least 620 people, including 58 U.S. troops, have been killed since April 28, when Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his new Shiite-dominated government. Washington hopes his government will eventually train police and an army capable of securing Iraq, allowing the withdrawal of coalition troops.

In Tal Afar, where two car bombs Monday killed at least 20 people, there were various reports that militants were in control and that Shiites and Sunnis were fighting in the streets. One police official said the city was experiencing "civil war." Journalists were blocked from entering the city of 200,000.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday in central Baghdad when a car bomb exploded next to their convoy at about 1:30 p.m., said military spokesman Sgt. David Abrams.

About a half-hour later, a U.S. soldier sitting in the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle at an observation post was shot to death by gunmen in a passing car, Abrams added.

The military also announced that a Marine was killed Monday during an attack on Camp Blue Diamond, an American base in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. The Marine's name was not released.

Four soldiers were killed Monday after they were attacked in Haswa, 30 miles south of Baghdad, the military said. The soldiers were assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, II Marine Expeditionary Force.

The U.S. military said Monday that three American soldiers were killed Sunday and one wounded in two separate attacks in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Another soldier was reported killed when his patrol was hit by a car bomb just north of Tikrit, 80 miles north of the capital, and a fifth died in a vehicle accident in Kirkuk.

As of Tuesday, at least 1,643 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The U.S. military said a two-day operation involving more than 2,000 Iraqi soldiers and police - the largest-ever joint campaign in the Baghdad area - had rounded up 428 suspected insurgents.

But insurgents continued to wreak havoc in the capital despite the ongoing crackdown in the Abu Ghraib area, which targets militants believed responsible for multiple attacks on the U.S.-detention facility there and the road linking downtown to the international airport.

Residents called police about a suspicious-looking car parked opposite the Dijlah Junior High School for Girls in Alwiyah, near eastern Baghdad's well-known Withaq Square, a Christian neighborhood. As bomb disposal experts approached the vehicle, it exploded and killed six bystanders, said police Capt. Husham Ismael.

Three civilians and one policeman also were injured. No students were believed to be hurt.

Militants also gunned down two people and seized control of Tal Afar, a town 50 miles west of the northern city of Mosul, police said Tuesday, hours after two car bombs killed at least 20 people there late Monday.

Separately, gunmen opened fire on a four-car convoy carrying conservative Shiite legislator Salamah al-Khafaji, one of the most prominent women in Iraq's new parliament. The lawmaker escaped unharmed, but four of her bodyguards were critically injured.

The item on al-Zarqawi was posted on a Web site known for carrying prior statements by al-Qaida in Iraq and other militant groups.

The statement, purportedly from the group's media coordinator, Abu Maysarah al-Iraqi, did not say how or when al-Zarqawi was injured.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, has claimed responsibility for attacks on Iraqi civilians and security forces, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners, and has a $25 million bounty on his head - the same as for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

U.S. forces, meanwhile, announced the capture of two leading militants with links to al-Zarqawi.

Mohammed Daham Abd Hamadi, leader of the al-Noaman Brigades, was captured in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Monday, the military said. Hamadi's terror cell has claimed responsibility for kidnapping Chinese and Turkish citizens who were later freed.

The other capture was of Mullah Kamel al-Aswadi, described by U.S. forces as the "most-wanted terrorist in north-central Iraq." The statement said al-Aswadi was captured recently in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Iraq's National Assembly convened Tuesday, during which a conservative Shiite lawmaker said he was appointed to head a 55-member committee charged with drafting Iraq's new constitution, which must be drawn up by mid-August and put to a referendum by October.

Cleric Hummam Hammoudi, an aide to the leader of Iraq's largest Shiite Arab party, told the AP he was appointed head of the committee and a Sunni Arab and a Kurd were appointed his deputies.

At least 20 people were killed in Monday's deadliest attack when two car bombs exploded near the home of Hassan Baktash, a Shiite Muslim with close ties to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, in Tal Afar, a predominantly Turkmen town of 200,000 people, officials said.

On Tuesday, militants sprayed Baktash's house with machine-gun fire, killing two civilians and clashing with security forces, said Col. Saleh Jamil Sultan.

"Now terrorists have deployed throughout Tal Afar and I consider that Tal Afar is a city that is under the terrorist control," Sultan said.

A Turkmen lawmaker told parliament that "street wars" were raging in Tal Afar, but Iraqi and U.S. forces had not intervened.

"I demand the assembly's intervention to stop this evil and save the innocents in that city," said Sheik Mohammed Taqi al-Maollah.

Journalists were blocked from entering Tal Afar after police blocked all roads leading into it. Police Capt. Ahmed Hashem Taki said Sunni and Shiite fighters from the town's predominantly Turkmen population started clashing following Monday's bombings.

"Tal Afar is living now some kind of civil war," he said.

A nearly two-week siege in Tal Afar late last year by U.S.-led forces targeted foreign fighters holed up in the city, which is astride a smuggling route to Syria.

At least 23 other people were killed and more than 120 wounded in three separate suicide bombings in Baghdad; Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad; and Tuz Khormato, south of the northern city of Kirkuk.

Amid a wave of sectarian violence, there have been calls for greater Sunni political participation. Only 17 Sunni Arabs are in the parliament, following a decision by many Sunnis not to take part in the Jan. 30 elections, either by choice or for fear of insurgent reprisals.

Sunnis are believed to make up the core of the insurgency.

Shiite lawmaker al-Khafaji was driving from Baghdad to the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of the capital, when the assassination attempt took place, her spokesman, Bahaa Hassan Hamida, said.

Al-Khafaji survived previous assassination attempts, including one that killed her 17-year-old son. She was one of three women on the 25-member, U.S.-appointed Governing Council until the transitional government took over.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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