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60 Iraqis Are Killed or Found Dead Today

Posted on: Wednesday, 8 November 2006, 09:00 CST

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 60 Iraqis were killed or found dead on Wednesday, including seven who died from injuries received in the previous day's suicide bombing of a coffee shop in a Shiite district of Baghdad. Today, Iraqi police said a pair of mortar rounds slammed into a soccer field in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, killing at least eight players and bystanders.

The mortars struck at just after 4:30 p.m. as a game was in progress between young men from the sprawling slum that is home to about 2.5 million people, a captain with the local police force, Mohammed Ismail, said.

Another 20 people were injured in the attack, Ismail said.

Dozens of people have been killed in recent days in mortar attacks by rival Sunni and Shiite groups on residential areas in Baghdad.

U.S. forces, meanwhile, said they killed 14 suspected insurgents, detained 48, and rescued a kidnapped Iraqi policeman in a pair of raids beginning on Tuesday afternoon. There was no word on U.S. casualties in those actions, although separately, the military said a Marine assigned to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division died on Wednesday from wounds sustained in fighting in Anbar province.

Also Wednesday, the American ambassador to Iraq said U.S. support for Iraq would continue following the Democratic Party's seizure of control of the U.S. House of Representatives in midterm elections Tuesday.

Iraq's violence and political instability were key issues benefiting the Democrats, who have been highly critical of U.S. President George W. Bush's conduct of the war.

In Wednesday's single bloodiest incident, at least six people were killed and 28 injured when explosives hidden in a minivan detonated in an open-air market in the city of Mahmoudiyah, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Baghdad, policeman Haider Satar said. Another 16 people were killed in a string of shootings and bombings in Diyala province north of the capital, while car bomb in western Baghdad killed three people and wounded three, Lt. Mutaz Salaheddin said.

Daily mortar attacks on civilians in Baghdad have killed more than two dozen people this week, including two people killed in northern Baghdad's primarily Shiite Kazimiyah district just before noon on Wednesday.

One more person was killed when two rounds slammed into Qahira in north Baghdad early Wednesday, police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said, while at least 12 people were injured in the two incidents.

Two policemen were killed and two wounded when a suicide car bomber slammed into a check point in Baghdad's Palestine Street at about 10 a.m., police Lt. Bilal Ali Majis said.

Gunmen early Wednesday killed at least one man and wounded four in an attack on a Shiite-owened bakery in a predominantly Sunni section of western Baghdad, Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq said.

Authorities had originally called Tuesday's coffee shop explosion a mortar attack, but later determined it was caused by a suicide bomber, Lt. Ali Muhssin said. He said a total of 21 have now died from the blast, including the seven additional victims, and another 25 people were injured, many of them seriously.

Saddam Hussein's trial for genocide resumed Wednesday with a demand from defense lawyer Badee Izzat Aref that authorities investigate an alleged break-in at the defense team's offices in Baghdad's high-security Green Zone last month.

The lawyers claim intruders damaged and stole dozens of documents, undermining their ability to defend the former president and six defendants against charges related to a crackdown on Iraq's Kurdish population in 1987-88 in which the prosecution says up to 180,000 people were killed.

However, it appears increasingly unlikely that Saddam will see the trial through to completition, following the death sentence handed down to him on Sunday in a separate case.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was quoted as telling the British Broadcasting Corporation that if an appeals panel upholds that sentence, the former leader could be executed before the end of the year.

Saddam on Tuesday urged Iraqis to "forgive, reconcile and shake hands," while the ousted dictator's former second in command, the fugitive Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has ordered bosses in Saddam's Baath party still in Iraq to cease attacks, according to government and parliamentary officials who claimed knowledge of the developments.

Former Baathists are thought to be a major component of Sunni resistance to the Shiite-led Iraqi government and foreign forces, but not the only component. Even if they halt their attacks, fighting could continue to rage in insurgent areas because there are many other groups attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces as well as Shiite Muslim civilians and militias.

In a videotape distributed by the embassy, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Bush "sees success (in Iraq) as imperative for American's national interests."

"Americans are prepared to continue to support Iraq as Iraqis takes the needed steps," said the Afghan-born envoy, a member of the neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party that pushed for the American invasion in 2003.

But some Iraqis said they hoped the Democrats would change U.S. policies.

"I'm glad the Democrats won and the Republicans lost. I hope this will change the Bush policy in the Islamic world and especially in Iraq," said 48-year-old engineer Suheil Jabar, a Shiite Muslim. "We hope American foreign policy will change and that living conditions in Iraq will improve."

U.S. forces said they killed 10 suspected insurgents and rescued a kidnapped Iraqi policeman early Wednesday in a raid near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Acting on a tip-off, the troops fought their way into a building, where they found the hostage blindfolded and shackled to the floor. The policemen told troops two other patrolmen captured with him days earlier had already been ransomed by their families. A sniper rifle, mortar system, bomb making materials and other weapons were found on the scene, the military said.

U.S. troops also said they killed four suspected insurgents and detained 48 others during a raid on Tuesday afternoon in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad. Rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, grenades and explosives-rigged vests used by suicide bombers were found in a vehicle, the military said.

Fighting involving U.S. forces also left nine Iraqi gunmen dead in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, police Brig. Sarhat Abdul-Qadir said, without giving details. There was no word of U.S. casualties in the clash and the American military had no immediate comment on the report.

Police also said they found the bodies of three apparent death squad victims dumped on Baghdad streets, a day after the bullet-riddled bodies of 15 victims were found floating in the Tigris River south of the capital. Hundreds of such killings - in which victims are bound hand and feet, blindfolded, and often tortured - have been recorded since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in February that ignited successive waves of sectarian killings.

One person was killed and six wounded when car bomb detonated early Wednesday near the al-Nidaa Sunni mosque in Waziriyah, northeast Baghdad, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.

Shiite militia also raided a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad, police 1st Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said. He said he had no word on any resulting casualties.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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