Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 2, 2007
By Kirk Semple
BAGHDAD, April 1 — Mortar attacks, suicide car bombs, roadside bombs, ambushes and gun battles killed at least two dozen people on Sunday, including four American soldiers, the authorities said.
The American military command said the soldiers were killed southwest of Baghdad just after midnight as they responded to an earlier bombing that had killed two other American soldiers. The insurgents have frequently tried to reap greater death tolls by carrying out attacks against rescue crews rushing to bomb sites.
The attacks coincided with a visit to Iraq by a Republican Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain, who declared at a news conference that the new American security plan was “making progress” and that there was cause for “very cautious optimism.”
In sometimes testy comments to reporters in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Mr. McCain said the American public was not receiving “the full picture about what’s happening,” and he described the delegation’s visit to a downtown market where scores of people have died this year in multiple car bombings and other attacks. There, the members of Congress said, they strolled around, haggled with merchants and drank tea.
But the outing was far from carefree. The delegation traveled in a convoy of armored military vehicles and was accompanied by a large contingent of heavily armed soldiers. The politicians wore body armor while they shopped.
“We had protection today,” Mr. McCain acknowledged when pressed by reporters.
A top official at the Interior Ministry said over the weekend that an investigative judge had dropped a case against several police officers accused in February of raping a 20-year-old Sunni Arab woman. Maj. Gen Hussein Kamal said Saturday at a news conference that doctors who examined the woman concluded that she had not been raped. The judge ordered the release of the defendants on March 19.
In Anbar Province on Sunday, at least 15 militants linked to the group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia were killed Sunday in a battle with men in a village that has provided recruits for the Iraqi Army and the police, officials said. Hassan Abid Muttar, a government intelligence officer in the town of Qaim, said the fighting had erupted in the village of Jubayda, near the Syrian border, and lasted for three hours. Six civilians, including two women, were also killed in the fighting, he said.
Mr. Muttar said the insurgents’ attack had probably been intended as revenge for the village’s cooperation with Iraqi security forces.
In Mosul, two suicide car bombers detonated themselves outside an Iraqi Army base, killing two civilians and wounding 15 soldiers and 2 civilians, an official at the Interior Ministry said. In Tuz Khurmatu, 130 miles north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a popular market, killing three people and wounding four, news agencies reported. A police colonel was shot and killed in Tikrit, a government security official in the city said.
Two unexploded suicide vests were found in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Rear Adm. Mark Fox, an American military spokesman, said at a news conference on Sunday. Saying an investigation was under way, he refused to divulge more details about the discovery, The Associated Press said.
The government has endorsed a plan to encourage Arab relocation from the disputed city of Kirkuk by offering a cash incentive to Arabs who were moved there by Saddam Hussein in an effort to ensure Arab control of the oilfields. The country is expected to hold a referendum later this year to decide whether the city should be governed by Iraqi Kurdistan.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Ramadi.
April 2, 2007
By Kirk Semple
BAGHDAD, April 1 — Mortar attacks, suicide car bombs, roadside bombs, ambushes and gun battles killed at least two dozen people on Sunday, including four American soldiers, the authorities said.
The American military command said the soldiers were killed southwest of Baghdad just after midnight as they responded to an earlier bombing that had killed two other American soldiers. The insurgents have frequently tried to reap greater death tolls by carrying out attacks against rescue crews rushing to bomb sites.
The attacks coincided with a visit to Iraq by a Republican Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain, who declared at a news conference that the new American security plan was “making progress” and that there was cause for “very cautious optimism.”
In sometimes testy comments to reporters in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Mr. McCain said the American public was not receiving “the full picture about what’s happening,” and he described the delegation’s visit to a downtown market where scores of people have died this year in multiple car bombings and other attacks. There, the members of Congress said, they strolled around, haggled with merchants and drank tea.
But the outing was far from carefree. The delegation traveled in a convoy of armored military vehicles and was accompanied by a large contingent of heavily armed soldiers. The politicians wore body armor while they shopped.
“We had protection today,” Mr. McCain acknowledged when pressed by reporters.
A top official at the Interior Ministry said over the weekend that an investigative judge had dropped a case against several police officers accused in February of raping a 20-year-old Sunni Arab woman. Maj. Gen Hussein Kamal said Saturday at a news conference that doctors who examined the woman concluded that she had not been raped. The judge ordered the release of the defendants on March 19.
In Anbar Province on Sunday, at least 15 militants linked to the group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia were killed Sunday in a battle with men in a village that has provided recruits for the Iraqi Army and the police, officials said. Hassan Abid Muttar, a government intelligence officer in the town of Qaim, said the fighting had erupted in the village of Jubayda, near the Syrian border, and lasted for three hours. Six civilians, including two women, were also killed in the fighting, he said.
Mr. Muttar said the insurgents’ attack had probably been intended as revenge for the village’s cooperation with Iraqi security forces.
In Mosul, two suicide car bombers detonated themselves outside an Iraqi Army base, killing two civilians and wounding 15 soldiers and 2 civilians, an official at the Interior Ministry said. In Tuz Khurmatu, 130 miles north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a popular market, killing three people and wounding four, news agencies reported. A police colonel was shot and killed in Tikrit, a government security official in the city said.
Two unexploded suicide vests were found in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Rear Adm. Mark Fox, an American military spokesman, said at a news conference on Sunday. Saying an investigation was under way, he refused to divulge more details about the discovery, The Associated Press said.
The government has endorsed a plan to encourage Arab relocation from the disputed city of Kirkuk by offering a cash incentive to Arabs who were moved there by Saddam Hussein in an effort to ensure Arab control of the oilfields. The country is expected to hold a referendum later this year to decide whether the city should be governed by Iraqi Kurdistan.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Ramadi.