Car Bombs, Shooting Leave At Least 19 Dead in Iraq

Explosion targets restaurant where police were having breakfast

Video

9/11: ‘The end of peace in the Middle East’ (NBC News, Sept. 9, 2011) — Iraqis reflect on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “They used the events of Sept. 11 as an excuse to enter Iraq,” says Lana Shaikhly, a law student in Baghdad. (00:55)

September 14, 2010

BAGHDAD — Three violent strikes against Iraqi security forces on Wednesday killed 19 people and wounded more than 50 across Iraq as the country struggles to protect itself while facing the U.S. military’s departure at the end of the year.

Two morning bombings and a drive-by shooting at dawn revealed how vulnerable Iraqi forces remain to attacks after more than eight years of war. …

In the bloodiest attack Wednesday, a car bomb parked outside a restaurant where local police were having breakfast killed 15 people and wounded 41 in the southern town of al-Shumali, said Hillah hospital Dr. Zuhair al-Khafaji. …

Earlier, in the dawn attack, gunmen opened fire on a security patrol in a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. The gunmen escaped after killing two policemen and wounding a third, according to a police official and a medic at Baghdad city hospital.

Later in the morning, about a half hour after the al-Shumali blast and more than 100 miles away, a bomb exploded on a minibus that was carrying soldiers to a training area in western Iraq’s Anbar province. Two soldiers were killed and 11 wounded by the bomb, which was hidden on the bus, inside their own camp near the town of Habbaniyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad. …

The attacks come at a precarious time for Iraq, torn between wanting to assert its sovereignty without the help of U.S. forces while also recognizing that its own soldiers and police are not yet ready to stop militants on their own. …

There are currently about 45,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Plans by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad call for hiring just under 8,000 private security contractors to protect American government offices and residential buildings in Iraq if the military leaves.

Full story

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Muqtada al-Sadr: ‘Stop Killing Americans’ (Sept. 12, 2011)

Iraqi Lawmaker Killed in Mosque Bombing (Aug. 28, 2011)

Baghdad Area Bombings Continue (July 5, 2011)

Spate of Bombings in Baghdad (April 18, 2011)

Iraq Violence Persists (Feb. 9, 2011)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

One Year Ago — September 14, 2010

Iraq-Afghanistan Casualties

One year ago today, I provided my weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Two Years Ago — September 14, 2009

Bin Laden Attacks Obama

Two years ago today, on September 14, 2009, I reported that bin Laden released a new tape in which he cited U.S. support for Israel as the reason for the attack of 9/11, saying, “the cause of our disagreement with you is your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine.”

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Three Years Ago — September 14, 2008

Bush Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman: U.S. ‘Not Winning the War’ in Afghanistan

Three years ago today, on September 14, 2008, I reported on the assassination of a provincial governor in Afghanistan, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, an assessment by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Bush administration that the U.S. was “not winning the war” in Afghanistan and “running out of time,” and ongoing violence in Iraq.