Car bomb kills 30 in market east of Baghdad

By Sebastian Alison

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A car bomb blew up in a market town
east of Baghdad on Saturday, killing 30 people and wounding 38
at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks in and around the
Iraqi capital since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

A police spokesman said the explosion in Nahrwan, some 45
km (30 miles) from Baghdad, also wounded 38 people.

“It was not a suicide bomb,” he said. “A car parked in the
middle of the square and later it blew up.”

More than 200 people have been killed in bombings and
shootings in and near Baghdad this week, including at least 114
in a single suicide bomb on Wednesday that targeted a crowd of
day labourers waiting to be hired in a Shi’ite Muslim district.

Iraq’s Shi’ite- and Kurdish-led government, backed by the
United States, faces a Sunni Arab revolt that has intensified
ahead of an October 15 referendum on a new constitution.

Sunni Arabs, the dominant community under ousted leader
Saddam Hussein, fear they will lose influence under the new
charter and many have vowed to reject it.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, which has
claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks in the
country, this week proclaimed all-out war on majority Shi’ites.

He issued his call in response to an assault by Iraqi
troops, backed by U.S. forces, on the northern town of Tal
Afar, long regarded by Baghdad and Washington as a stronghold
of “terrorists and foreign fighters.”

SHOW OF CONFIDENCE

In a show of confidence, Defense Minister Saadoun
al-Dulaimi visited the town on Saturday to congratulate Iraq’s
fledgling army “on the high standard of their performance in
Tal Afar,” the ministry said in a statement.

The U.S. military said last week the Tal Afar assault had
killed 145 insurgents and detained 361, adding that another 226
had been killed and 757 captured in separate recent operations
in nearby Mosul, northern Iraq’s largest city.

Despite this, the insurgency shows no signs of abating.

A U.S. general said on Thursday the military was ready to
strike more targets in western Iraq where he said intelligence
shows Zarqawi is most active, especially in towns along the
Euphrates valley near Syria.

Washington and Baghdad accuse Syria of letting foreign
fighters and weapons flow across the border into Iraq. Damascus
denies it. Iraq closed parts of the frontier last Sunday.

Iraq has made much of the fact that its own troops led the
operation in Tal Afar. The U.S. military says it has now
trained more than 190,000 Iraqi soldiers. President Jalal
Talabani said in the United States this week that Iraqi forces
were ready to take over some duties from U.S. troops, but gave
no timetable.

Earlier on Saturday police in Baghdad found nine bodies
shot in the head and chest in three separate incidents.

One civilian was killed and 17 people, including three
Iraqi soldiers, were wounded when a car driven by a suicide
bomber exploded near an Iraqi army patrol in Baquba, police
said.