Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Insurgents launch new attacks in Baghdad; victims include two children
By THOMAS WAGNER
BAGHDAD, Iraq - (AP) A roadside bomb exploded near a U.S.
military convoy in Baghdad on Tuesday, missing the soldiers but killing a 7-year-old boy who was selling cans of black-market gasoline on a street and wounding nine other civilians, officials said.
Also Tuesday, Iraqi and U.S. forces refortified a hotel complex where many international journalists live after three suicide car bombs exploded the day before, killing as many as 20 Iraqis and wounding about 40.
Most of the victims were people driving or walking through the area.
The Tuesday blast hit Iraqi pedestrians in Askan, a commercial district of western Baghdad at about 8:45 a.m., and destroyed several parked cars, said police Capt. Qassim Hussein and Dr. Mohammed Jawad at Yarmouk Hospital. The wounded included a 10-year-old Iraqi girl, they said.
In three separate drive-by shootings, insurgents killed a policeman and wounded an Iraqi army officer and his driver in the Dora section of Baghdad, and killed a policewoman in Mosul, a city 360 kilometers (225
miles) northwest of the capital, police said.
The attacks occurred as the number of American service members who have died in Iraq approached the landmark total of 2,000. At least 1,997 members of the military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The Iraqi death toll is unknown, but estimates range much higher.
Iraq Body Count, a British research group that compiles its figures from reports by the major news agencies and British and U.S. newspapers, has said that as many as 30,051 Iraqis have been killed since the start of the war. Other estimates range as high as 100,000.
U.S. and coalition authorities say they have not kept a count of such deaths, and Iraqi government accounting has proven to be haphazard.
Overnight, crews repaired a breach in the blast walls around the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in central Baghdad following a bold evening attack. One of the bombs blew a hole in the wall, enabling a cement truck packed with explosives to enter the compound and explode, causing considerable damage to the Palestine Hotel, which houses offices of The Associated Press, Fox News and other media organizations.
In another development, Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq was expected on Tuesday to announce final results in the country's landmark constitutional referendum, which was held on Oct. 15 under tight security to prevent insurgent attacks at polling stations.
Many Sunni Arabs oppose the draft document, believing it would divide Iraq into three competing regions, but to defeat the constitution the minority needs to produce a two-thirds "no" vote in three of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Kurds or majority Shiites favor the document, and that has been clear in the solid "yes" vote of many of the provinces where they form a majority.
On Monday, the Electoral Commission released the final tallies in 14 of the country's 18 provinces. It said the constitution was overwhelmingly rejected in two: Anbar by nearly 97 percent and Salahuddin by about 82 percent. Both are predominantly Sunni Arab.
That is why attention was now focusing on the results of Ninevah, an ethnically mixed northern province where Sunnis could theoretically produce enough "no" votes to defeat the constitution. Ninevah has been a focus of fraud allegations since preliminary results showed an overwhelming majority of voters had approved the constitution, despite a significant Sunni Arab population there.
But representatives of the commission reiterated on Monday that they had found no cases of election violations that significantly affected results.
If approved, the constitution would be another major step in the country's democratic transformation, clearing the way for the election of a new Iraqi parliament Dec. 15. Such steps are important in any decision about the future withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from Iraq.
By THOMAS WAGNER
BAGHDAD, Iraq - (AP) A roadside bomb exploded near a U.S.
military convoy in Baghdad on Tuesday, missing the soldiers but killing a 7-year-old boy who was selling cans of black-market gasoline on a street and wounding nine other civilians, officials said.
Also Tuesday, Iraqi and U.S. forces refortified a hotel complex where many international journalists live after three suicide car bombs exploded the day before, killing as many as 20 Iraqis and wounding about 40.
Most of the victims were people driving or walking through the area.
The Tuesday blast hit Iraqi pedestrians in Askan, a commercial district of western Baghdad at about 8:45 a.m., and destroyed several parked cars, said police Capt. Qassim Hussein and Dr. Mohammed Jawad at Yarmouk Hospital. The wounded included a 10-year-old Iraqi girl, they said.
In three separate drive-by shootings, insurgents killed a policeman and wounded an Iraqi army officer and his driver in the Dora section of Baghdad, and killed a policewoman in Mosul, a city 360 kilometers (225
miles) northwest of the capital, police said.
The attacks occurred as the number of American service members who have died in Iraq approached the landmark total of 2,000. At least 1,997 members of the military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The Iraqi death toll is unknown, but estimates range much higher.
Iraq Body Count, a British research group that compiles its figures from reports by the major news agencies and British and U.S. newspapers, has said that as many as 30,051 Iraqis have been killed since the start of the war. Other estimates range as high as 100,000.
U.S. and coalition authorities say they have not kept a count of such deaths, and Iraqi government accounting has proven to be haphazard.
Overnight, crews repaired a breach in the blast walls around the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in central Baghdad following a bold evening attack. One of the bombs blew a hole in the wall, enabling a cement truck packed with explosives to enter the compound and explode, causing considerable damage to the Palestine Hotel, which houses offices of The Associated Press, Fox News and other media organizations.
In another development, Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq was expected on Tuesday to announce final results in the country's landmark constitutional referendum, which was held on Oct. 15 under tight security to prevent insurgent attacks at polling stations.
Many Sunni Arabs oppose the draft document, believing it would divide Iraq into three competing regions, but to defeat the constitution the minority needs to produce a two-thirds "no" vote in three of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Kurds or majority Shiites favor the document, and that has been clear in the solid "yes" vote of many of the provinces where they form a majority.
On Monday, the Electoral Commission released the final tallies in 14 of the country's 18 provinces. It said the constitution was overwhelmingly rejected in two: Anbar by nearly 97 percent and Salahuddin by about 82 percent. Both are predominantly Sunni Arab.
That is why attention was now focusing on the results of Ninevah, an ethnically mixed northern province where Sunnis could theoretically produce enough "no" votes to defeat the constitution. Ninevah has been a focus of fraud allegations since preliminary results showed an overwhelming majority of voters had approved the constitution, despite a significant Sunni Arab population there.
But representatives of the commission reiterated on Monday that they had found no cases of election violations that significantly affected results.
If approved, the constitution would be another major step in the country's democratic transformation, clearing the way for the election of a new Iraqi parliament Dec. 15. Such steps are important in any decision about the future withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from Iraq.