Bombings Kill At Least 35 in, Around Baghdad

Attacks come as Defense Secretary Gates arrives on unannounced visit

Damaged and burnt-out vehicles alongside the road following a double car bombing in the central Baghdad district of Karrada on Sept. 15, 2008. Two near simultaneous car bombings in central Baghdad killed 12 people and wounded 32, security officials said (Photo credit: Ali Yussef / AFP — Getty Images)

September 15, 2008

BAGHDAD — A female suicide bomber blew herself up Monday among police officers who were celebrating the release of a comrade from U.S. custody, killing at least 22 people, Iraqi officials said. Separate bombings in Iraq killed another 13 people. …

The suicide bombing happened in Diyala, a province northeast of Baghdad where Sunni insurgents have carried out persistent attacks despite security gains elsewhere in the country. The bomber targeted the home of a police commissioner who had been detained by American troops for allegedly cooperating with the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim al-Rubaie, the military commander in Diyala, said most of the 22 fatalities were police and that 33 people were wounded in the evening attack in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. …

In Baghdad, a double car bombing struck a busy commercial district, killing 13 people in one of the deadliest attacks in the capital in weeks. Iraqi officials said the explosives-laden cars were parked between a passport office and a courthouse when they blew up almost simultaneously in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Karradah. …

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Late update

Bombs Kill 3 North of Baghdad

A boy looks at a destroyed vehicle after a car bomb attack in central Baghdad’s Karrada district on Monday, Sept. 15, 2008. (Photo credit: Mohammed Jalil / EPA)

September 16, 2008

BAGHDAD – A bicycle laden with explosives exploded near a military truck in a market north of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing two civilians and wounding 19, Iraqi officials said.

The bicycle was left near the truck parked at the main market in Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, said a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The soldiers from the truck were patrolling the market on foot when the blast went off. …

In other violence, a member of a Sunni group allied with U.S. forces was killed by a bomb stuck to his car late Monday in a mainly Sunni neighborhood in northern Baghdad, an official said. The victim was a member of one of Iraq’s awakening councils — groups of Sunni fighters, often including former insurgents …

Meanwhile, in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, about 2,000 residents demonstrated Tuesday against the visit to Iraq by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. … The protesters carried Iraqi flags and images of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, chanting: “Down, down U.S.A.” …

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U.S. Soldiers Battling Hard in Iraqi City

September 16, 2008

MOSUL, Iraq — The sign was ominous, the humor dark. Iraqis who live in the neighborhood had suddenly vanished, often an indication that an attack is imminent. …

Seconds later, a roadside bomb detonated just ahead of the convoy. …

Although security in Iraq has improved, it remains fragile … “Since the start of Ramadan, it’s been crazy. We’ve been mortared, we’ve had fire come at the guard towers, we’ve had IEDs,” said Spc. Erich Hellwig. The 20 soldiers in Hellwig’s unit occupy Outpost Rabiy, a converted salvage yard in a western neighborhood shattered by fighting.

“It’s getting to the point where people are leaving their boots on when they sleep. You get worried that someone would come in and take out our gate,” said Hellwig, who survived an ambush of his convoy last week. In that attack, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded near a U.S. military vehicle, kicking up a cloud of dust but inflicting no casualties.

Hellwig’s company recorded 15 attacks, including car bombs, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, in the week before Ramadan started on Sept. 1 in the large area of western Mosul that it patrols. Attacks in the first six days of Ramadan nearly tripled to 42, the unit’s figures show. The unit did not suffer any casualties during that time. …

“Honestly, I don’t know who we are fighting,” said Staff Sgt. Tim Carter, who has survived six roadside bomb attacks. “If I see them placing a roadside bomb or firing at us, then that’s who we are fighting, but otherwise there is no way to tell if he is a civilian or al-Qaida. Here, a kid can run up to shake your hand and then later throw a grenade at you.”

U.S. soldiers at the outpost said some of their attackers had been as young as 11, armed with grenades or firebombs. …

“I think the (American) people think the war is over,” Carter said. “But they don’t realize the amount of contact that we receive out here.”

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