Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Iraq

Bombs across Iraq kill 50

Three U.S. soldiers are among the dead, with a promise of more violence while American troops occupy the country.

BAGHDAD - Insurgents set off at least 17 bombs in Iraq on Friday, killing at least 50 people, including three U.S. soldiers, in a series of attacks aimed at shaking Iraq's newly formed government. An audiotape by one of America's most-wanted insurgents, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, warned President Bush there was more bloodshed to come.

The coordinated attacks, which also wounded 114 Iraqis and seven Americans, came as political leaders are trying to curb the insurgency by including all of Iraq's main religious and ethnic groups in an uncertain new Shiite-dominated government that takes office Tuesday. Most of the bombing targets were Iraqi security forces and police, whom insurgents accuse of collaborating with the Americans.

An association of Sunni Muslim clerics believed to have links with the insurgency saw little prospect for peace as long as U.S. forces remain in Iraq.

"We don't believe that the government will solve the problems of an occupied Iraq. We don't trust the government," Harith al-Dhari, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, told Turkey's Anatolia news agency. "We don't see hope because the occupation is continuing."

U.S. officials had hoped the new Cabinet approved Thursday would help dent support for the militants within the Sunni Arab minority that dominated under ousted leader Saddam Hussein and is now believed to be driving the insurgency. However, the lineup excludes Sunnis from meaningful positions and leaves the key defense ministry in temporary hands.

"You, Bush, we will not rest until we avenge our dignity," Zarqawi said in the audiotape that was posted on the Internet. "We will not rest while your army is here as long as there is a pulse in our veins."

He threatened more attacks against U.S. forces and warned against collaborating with Americans. In Washington, an intelligence official said the tape appeared to be genuine.

In separate statements, posted on a Web site known for its militant content, Zarqawi's al-Qaida group in Iraq claimed responsibility for two of the day's most deadly assaults - four suicide car bombings in a Baghdad neighborhood and four other bombings in Madain, south of the capital. The claims could not be verified.

The deadliest of Friday's attacks were bombings in the Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah and in the town of Madain, 12 miles southeast of the capital.

Despite the day's bloody toll, the U.S. military maintained that attacks are diminishing overall in Iraq.

"We see these attacks as another desperate attempt by the terrorists to discredit the newly formed Iraqi government" and "drive a wedge between the Iraqi people and their right to choose their own destiny," the military said in a statement.

Gen. Wafiq al-Samarie, Iraq's presidential adviser for security affairs, urged Iraqis to stand up to insurgents.

"Today too many car bomb attacks took place, but this is not the end," he said in an interview with al-Jazeera television. "Our people should stand up against these criminals. ... Security is everybody's responsibility."

At least 13 car bombs exploded in and around the capital Friday, killing at least 20 Iraqi security force members and wounding 31, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police said they included six suicide attacks. In the worst attack, four suicide car bombings took place within minutes in Azamiyah, said the police chief, Brig. Gen. Khalid al-Hassan. The first hit an Iraqi army patrol, the second a police patrol, and the third and fourth exploded at separate barricades near the headquarters of the police special forces unit.

The Azamiyah blasts killed at least 20 Iraqis, including 15 soldiers and five civilians, Col. Hussein Mutlak said. At least 65 were injured, including 30 troops and 35 civilians, he said.

In Baqubah, 35 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide attacker blew up an ambulance packed with explosives near a police special forces patrol, killing four Iraqis, including two policemen, said police Brig. Gen. Adel Molan. Twenty Iraqis were injured, including four police, he said.

At least nine more Iraqis were killed and nine wounded in other scattered violence, including bombings, shootings and mortar fire, officials said.

One American soldier was killed and two others wounded in a car bombing about 18 miles north of the capital, the military said. Two more U.S. soldiers were killed in another car bombing near Diyarah, south of Baghdad.

At least seven American soldiers were wounded in attacks in and around the capital, said military spokesman Greg Kaufman.

At least 1,575 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

BAGHDAD - U.S. investigators have exhumed the remains of 113 people - all but five of them women, children or teenagers - from a mass grave in southern Iraq that may hold at least 1,500 victims of Saddam Hussein's campaign against the Kurdish minority in the 1980s, U.S. and Iraqi officials said this week.

The recovered bodies are expected to be among the evidence used against the deposed Iraqi president by prosecutors at a special tribunal, investigators said.

ROME - After a five-week joint investigation, U.S. and Italian officials announced Friday they had failed to reach agreement on the circumstances of U.S. troops' fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent in Baghdad on March 5. The deadlock keeps alive a dispute that is undermining the standing of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a key U.S. ally on Iraq.

Italian criminal investigators pressed forward Friday with their own investigation, which includes inspection of the car in which agent Nicola Calipari and journalist Giuliana Sgrena were riding when U.S. troops opened fire on them. Sgrena was wounded.

Washington officials declined to release full U.S. findings but said a report would probably be issued soon.

CARDIFF, Wales - Conservative Party leader Michael Howard said British voters should punish Tony Blair over the Iraq war, saying the prime minister's justification for the U.S.-led invasion epitomized his "track record of not telling the truth."

Howard told the Associated Press that he did not criticize the prime minister for joining the U.S.-led invasion, but "I'm criticizing him for not telling the truth and for not having a plan" for securing the peace afterward.

Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.

[Last modified April 30, 2005, 00:51:14]