May 31, 2007 7:50 am US/Eastern
Suicide Bombings Kill Several In Western Baghdad
BAGHDAD (CBS News) ―
A suicide bomber hit a police recruiting center Thursday in Fallujah, killing as many as 25 people, police said. The U.S. military said only one policeman was killed and eight were wounded.
U.S. forces backed by helicopter gunships clashed with suspected Al Qaeda gunmen in western Baghdad in an engagement that lasted several hours.
The American military also reported the deaths of three more soldiers, two killed Wednesday in a roadside bombing in Baghdad and one who died of wounds from a roadside bomb attack northwest of the capital Tuesday. At least 122 American forces have died in May, the third-deadliest month of the Iraq conflict.
U.S. forces also continued a search for five Britons who were kidnapped Tuesday in Baghdad, as well as for two of its soldiers who have been missing since a May 12 ambush south of the capital.
The Fallujah suicide bomber killed at least 10 policemen in the attack, which occurred about 11 a.m., according to a police official in the city who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The rest of the dead were civilians, many of them in line seeking jobs as policemen. He said as many as 50 were wounded.
Fallujah General Hospital had received 15 bodies and 10 wounded, according to a doctor there, who would not allow the use of his name because he feared retribution. The physician said he believed other casualties were taken to the nearby Jordanian Hospital and private clinics.
A member of the Fallujah city council, who also asked for anonymity for fear of attack by insurgents, said there were at least 20 killed and 25 injured.
The coordination of information in Fallujah was particularly difficult because the mobile telephone system has been working only sporadically.
Maj. Jeff Pool of the Multi-National Force-West said the Anbar province governor's office and the provincial police put the total number of dead at one Iraqi policeman, with six police and two civilians wounded in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Police said the bomber detonated explosives in his vest at the third of four checkpoints, standing among recruits who were lining up to apply for jobs on the force. The center had only opened Saturday in a primary school in eastern Fallujah.
The U.S. military and Iraqi army and police were running the center along with members of Anbar Salvation Council, a loose grouping of Sunni tribes that have banded together to fight Al Qaeda.
Police stations and recruiting posts have been a favorite target of Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda throughout the war.
The fighting in western Baghdad's Amariyah neighborhood exploded after residents called for U.S. help.
Members of Al Qaeda, who consider the district part of their so-called Islamic State of Iraq, were preventing students from attending final exams, shooting randomly and forcing residents to stay in their homes, according to an official of the district council. He spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution from Al Qaeda.
Clashes continued into the afternoon, and the council official said the Al Qaeda leader in the region, known as Haji Hameed, was killed and 45 other fighters detained.
There was no immediate word on the fighting from the U.S. military.
U.S. forces, meanwhile, pressed on with the search for five kidnapped Britons, and a procession of mourners, some of them women wailing and beating their chests, marched through Sadr City behind a small bus carrying the coffins of two people who police said were killed in a U.S. helicopter strike before dawn.
The U.S. military said it had no report of airstrikes in Sadr City and that there were no civilian casualties in the second day of a search for the Britons, who were abducted Tuesday from a Finance Ministry data processing building in eastern Baghdad.
A U.S. military statement, however, said U.S. and Iraqi forces had arrested two "members of the secret cell terrorist network" in Sadr City. There was no mention of fatalities.
AP Television News videotape from Sadr City showed the coffins of the victims atop a small bus with men and women walking behind, crying. A young boy could be seen sitting next to the coffins.
A car in the area was punctured with big holes, as if hit by an airstrike.
A police officer in Sadr City, who refused to allow use of his name because he feared retribution, said the helicopter hit a house and car at 4:30 a.m., killing two elderly people sleeping on the roof of their home - a common practice in Iraq's extreme heat through late spring and summer.
The officer said a 13-year-old boy was wounded.
Also in Sadr City raids, which the U.S. has been conducting with a select unit of Iraqi army forces, Shiite cleric Abdul-Zahra al-Suwaidi claimed his home was raided and ransacked by American forces at 3 a.m. Thursday. The military said it had no report of the incident.
Al-Suwaidi, who runs the Sadr City political office of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said he was sleeping elsewhere at the time of the raid, expecting that he would be targeted. He said his home was badly damaged and a small amount of money was taken.
Dozens of U.S. Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles had taken up positions around Sadr City at nightfall Wednesday.
The five kidnapped Britons included four bodyguards working for the Montreal-based security firm GardaWorld and one employee of BearingPoint, a U.S.-based management consulting firm.
In Washington, Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military believed a helicopter that crashed Monday north of Baghdad was brought down by small-arms fire. The Islamic State of Iraq, an Al Qaeda front group, claimed responsibility.
Wiggins also said that more than 100 patrols a day were being launched to search for two missing troops who vanished after a May 12 ambush near Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Four Americans and one Iraqi soldier were killed in the attack and the body of another American was later found in the Euphrates River.
"Our determination and resolve to locate our missing soldiers is unwavering," Wiggins said.
In other developments: • The U.S. military late Wednesday reported the deaths of three more soldiers, two killed in a roadside bombing and one who died of a non-combat cause. The bombing victims died Wednesday, the third soldier on Tuesday. Their deaths raised to 119 the number of soldiers killed this month, the third-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops.
• Turkey's military massed more troops and tanks on the border with Iraq Thursday as the country's military chief said he was ready to stage a cross-border offensive to fight Kurdish guerrillas. Gen. Yasar Buyukanite said he had already sought government approval to mount military action. He complained about what he said was a lack of help from allies in fighting the Kurds as Turkish leaders publicly asked the United States and Iraq to destroy and scatter rebel bases inside Iraq.
• Police, Iraqi military, hospital and morgue officials reported a total of 72 people killed or found dead nationwide Wednesday.A secret incident report about the abductions - written by Najwa Fatih-Allah, director general of the Finance Ministry's data processing center, where the Britons were seized - quotes Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, as saying the Mahdi Army "will be profoundly sorry" if it carried out the assault.
Much of the Mahdi Army militia is said to be loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who resurfaced last week after nearly four months in hiding, apparently in Iran, and demanded U.S. troops leave Iraq.
Al-Sadr's return appeared to be partly an effort to regain control over his militia, which had begun fragmenting. It was unclear whether the 33-year-old cleric would have been aware of or condoned the kidnapping of the five British citizens - four bodyguards and an employee of a management consulting firm.
A top Interior Ministry official, who refused to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said suspicion immediately fell on the Mahdi Army because it was in control of the area around the data processing center and would have blocked such a massive operation by another group.
Fatih-Allah's report to Finance Minister Bayan Jabr revealed key new details about the attack. Portions of the report were read to The Associated Press on the telephone by a government official who did so on condition of anonymity because the document was not for public distribution.
The report said four men in civilian clothing appeared at the center about 10:45 a.m. Tuesday - 15 minutes before the kidnapping.
The account said the men claimed they were from the government anti-fraud commission and looked through each room in the center, then quickly left the building.
At about 11 a.m. dozens of men in army and police uniforms, the report said, burst into the building, disarmed guards and went directly into the room where the five Britons were working. The five were seized and rushed out of the building to 19 waiting four-wheel-drive vehicles. The convoy then drove away to the east.
The building sits on a side street off Palestine Street, a major thoroughfare in eastern Baghdad and not far from Baghdad's district of Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army.
The five kidnapped Britons included four bodyguards working for the Montreal-based security firm GardaWorld and one employee of BearingPoint, a U.S.-based management consulting firm.
Mahdi Army members, who refused to allow use of their names for fear of arrest, said searching Sadr City was likely to be pointless. They said their organization, if involved, would have moved the Britons to locations outside Baghdad.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
