Bombings in Iraq Kill Dozens

By ROD NORDLAND and SAM DAGHER | August 10

BAGHDAD — At least 39 people were killed and more than 209 were wounded early Monday morning as a series of bomb attacks struck Baghdad and a village near the northern city of Mosul.

A pair of truck bombs exploded simultaneously, destroying an entire Shiite village known as Khazna, about ten miles east of Mosul, according to an official in the Ministry of Interior who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with ministry policy.

The village is inhabited mainly by Shiite Shabaks, a small Kurdish-speaking minority that lives in northern Iraq.

The police in Mosul said 30 homes were destroyed from the two bombs, which were placed in trucks that had been parked overnight in the village. Police officials put the preliminary toll of casualties at 23 dead and 128 wounded.

George Kako, a resident and contractor in the nearby town of Bartella, said many people in Khazna were still trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings. He said he had provided an earthmover to help in the rescue effort.

“It is a horrifying and disgusting scene,” said Mr. Kako, speaking by telephone from Bartella. “Those who did it are not human.”

In Baghdad, two other blasts targeted lines of workers who had gathered to look for jobs as day laborers, one in the El Amal district, the other in Shorta, both of which are Shiite areas.

The El Amal blast went off at 6 a.m., killing seven and wounding 46. Half an hour later, the explosion in Shorta killed nine and wounded 35, according to the ministry official. Both explosions were attributed to bombs in cars that had been parked in the areas for a long period of time.

A similar string of attacks struck Mosul and Baghdad last Friday, the weekly day of public prayer in Islam. Those bombings killed at least 43 people and wounded hundreds, police officials said, and they came at the end of an important Shiite religious occasion.

The attacks on Friday occurred just two days after the Iraqi government said it would lift all blast walls from the main roads in the capital, and the head of Baghdad’s operations command, Maj. Gen. Abud Qanbar, declared that “security is not an issue anymore.”

A week earlier, five Shiite mosques in Baghdad had been bombed in coordinated attacks. At least 29 people were killed in those blasts.

The sprawling, seething city of Mosul, among the most violent places in Iraq, is home to militants with ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the mostly homegrown insurgent group that is known to have some foreign leadership. The city is also the home of the banned Baath Party, once led by Saddam Hussein, who erected a large palace compound there. It was from Mosul and other towns in Nineveh Province that Saddam recruited many of his senior generals and closest aides.

Most American forces have withdrawn from posts within Mosul and are now garrisoned at a base. A fractious power struggle between Sunni Arab and Kurdish political factions has further complicated the security issue in the province, which is home to a number of ethnic and religious groups.

Source: New York Times

Iraq suicide bombers kill 42 in court strike

July 10

MOSUL: Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in northern Iraq last night, killing at least 42people in the deadliest attack since US forces pulled out of towns and cities nationwide just over a week ago.

The bombers targeted two brothers working for the Iraqi security forces in Tal Afar in an attack on a court building used to interrogate suspects, police colonel Khaled Omar said.

The attackers struck minutes apart, with the second explosion engulfing civilians who had gathered to help those hit in the first blast.

The attack was the worst in the strife-torn country since US forces pulled out of Iraqi towns and cities on June 30 under an agreement between Baghdad and Washington.

A doctor at Tal Afar hospital said 35 people were killed and 61 wounded in the attack, which came a day after two car-bombs exploded in the main northern city of Mosul, killing 12 people and wounding dozens more.

Neither of the two brothers targeted by the Tal Afar bombers were killed, police said, but the casualties included women and children.

A further six people were killed and 24 injured when two bombs went off at a market in the large Shia area of Sadr City in Baghdad.

Tal Afar is a mostly Turkmen town between Mosul and the Syrian border, and has often been the target of violence. In March 2007, it was hit in one of the deadliest attacks since the US-led invasion of 2003 when a suicide truck-bomb killed more than 150 people.

The spate of bombings comes just over a week after US troops pulled back from Iraq's urban centres under an agreement that paves the way for a US military withdrawal by the end of 2011.

The four weeks leading up to the partial US withdrawal brought the highest death toll in 11 months. A total of 437 people, including 372 civilians, were killed last month.

Source: The Australian

Military kills Abu Qaswarah in Mosul

October 16, 2008

THE US military says it has killed al-Qa'ida's No.2 commander in Iraq in a city in the country's north.
The military said a foreign insurgent killed in the main northern Iraqi city of Mosul this month has been identified as Abu Qaswarah, al-Qa'ida's second in charge in Iraq.

"Abu Qaswarah, also known as Abu Sara, was the al-Qa'ida in Iraq senior leader of northern Iraq," it said in a statement.

It said Abu Qaswarah, a native of Morocco who was killed in a raid on a building in Mosul on October 5, had ties to al-Qa'ida in Iraq's (AQI's) founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US air strike in Iraq in June 2006.

"He was responsible for organising and leading al-Qa'ida in Iraq efforts in northern Iraq, including operations against Iraqi and coalition targets in Mosul."

The US military also said Abu Qaswarah had trained with al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan and been in contact with senior leaders of the group's wing in Pakistan.

He directed the movement of foreign terrorists into northern Iraq, a position which he took up in 2007, it said.

There was no independent confirmation of the report.

American commanders see Mosul, the country's third largest city, as al-Qa'ida's last urban stronghold in Iraq. The capture of Abu Qaswarah would undermine the insurgent group's capabilities, the US military said.

"Abu Qaswarah's death will cause a major disruption to the AQI network, as he played a significant role in tying numerous al-Qa'ida links together in order to conduct terrorist activities in Iraq.

"His death will significantly degrade al-Qa'ida in Iraq operations in Mosul and northern Iraq, leaving the network without a leader to oversee and coordinate its operations in the region."

The US raid on a Mosul building which apparently served as a command and control centre for al-Qa'ida also led to the death of four other insurgents as well three women and three children, the military said in an earlier report.

"As coalition forces entered the building housing the terrorist, they began receiving small-arms fire. Coalition forces returned fire once engaged," it said.

"A terrorist detonated a suicide vest shortly thereafter in the house ... Five terrorists along with three women and three children were killed."

Over the past few days religiously mixed but troubled Mosul has grabbed headlines after a series of murders of Christians that prompted thousands in the minority group to abandon their homes.

Although nobody has claimed responsibility for the ethnic violence, US military spokesman Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll today blamed al-Qa'ida, calling it "typical" of the network.

Also this month, US forces killed a suspected al-Qa'ida militant believed to have planned some of the deadliest bombings in Baghdad and to have killed a group of Russian diplomats in 2006.

Mahir Ahmad Mahmud al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Assad or Abu Rami, was killed along with an unnamed woman in Baghdad's Sunni district of Adhamiyah on Friday, the military said.

It said Abu Rami's group was responsible for suicide bombings in Baghdad on October 9.

Source: The Australian