Mosul bomb attacks kill dozens
Three bomb attacks around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have killed more than two dozen people, many of them from the Iraqi security forces.
A car bomber wrecked a police headquarters on Sunday, while an attack on an Iraqi army base killed at least 15 people. Four police officers were killed when a bomber walked into Mosul’s General Hospital and blew himself up.
The third attack, on a police post inside the hospital, damaged the emergency ward where casualties had been brought from the previous incidents. Six police officers and nine civilians were wounded, police said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault on the hospital, but the earlier two bombings were claimed by al-Qaida’s Iraq wing, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The car bomber drove at a district police headquarters at Bab al-Toob in the city centre, striking a rear wall to bring down a section of the old, two-storey building and devastating surrounding market stalls as people started the working day.
Five police and a civilian were killed and 14 people were wounded, hospital staff said. A US military spokesman, Captain Mark Walter, said he had a report of 13 police and two civilians killed, but these figures were being checked.
Army post attacked
The Defence Ministry said a bomber killed 15 people and wounded 15, mostly civilians, at an army post at Kasak, near Mosul. Walter put the death toll at 16.
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Soldiers turned the bomber away from the base and he walked instead among a crowd of civilians, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.
Medical staff in Mosul said most of the casualties were building workers from the base. Kasak is near the town of Tal Afar, where residents reported heavy fighting on Saturday.
US troops have been fighting in Tal Afar for weeks. They say foreign fighters come into the city from nearby Syria.
More killings
Iraqi police and troops have become prime targets for the fighters battling US-led forces. The deputy head of one of Baghdad’s main police departments, Colonel Riyad Abdelkarim, was killed on his way to work on Sunday, police in the capital said. Al-Qaida also claimed that attack in an internet statement.
In Falluja, where six US troops were killed by a car bomber on Thursday, a rocket attack on an Iraqi army patrol caused several casualties, witnesses said. No other details were available.
A US soldier was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad on Sunday, the military said.
On Saturday, 20 or so fighters stormed a police post in the western city of Ramadi, killing eight officers, in the latest of a number of massed infantry-style attacks.
Six Iraqi police officers were killed in an ambush in al-Saydiya neighbourhood in Baghdad.
Defiant fighters
Speaking to Aljazeera from Baghdad, Iraqi journalist Walid al-Zubaydi said the recent upsurge in attacks was aimed at putting pressure on US forces.
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“These attacks are either targeting the US forces by bombing their military bases in several areas in Iraq or by targeting their convoys and officials,” he said. Iraqi police stations and security forces are also coming under daily attack, he said.
Al-Zubaydi said the fighters were seeking to disprove claims of improved security in Iraq.
“There have been announcements by Iraqi officials like Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari about a decrease in the attacks in Iraq,” he said.
The fighters have fought to control areas such as Bayaa, Khadhra and Amiriyah, al-Zubaydi said.
He said claims of improved security were politically motivated and aimed at the international audience.
“Iraqi officials have to see what is happening on the ground. Bloodshed is increasing,” he added.