Iraq hit by more suicide bombings

Reports said the suicide bomber was driving a lorry loaded with bricks and was allowed into the compound which was undergoing construction work.

 

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Hussam Ali, a police officer who witnessed the blast from a nearby guard post, said the attacker took advantage of the construction work to avoid the usually tight security and reach the main gate.

 

“There were many corpses lying in the compound of the police station. Some of the bodies were burnt, while some had shrapnel wounds … and many cars [were] destroyed,” said one US soldier who arrived on the scene.

 

 

Meanwhile, in the town of Tal Afar, in north-west Iraq, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a sweet shop, killing 10 people and wounding three, according to Najim Abdallah al-Juburi, the town’s mayor.

 

Another suicide car bomber struck a police station in the Qaim area of Anbar province, near the Syrian border, on Saturday while two others were reported to have struck police checkpoints at about the same time.

 

Hassan Abed Mottar, a police intelligence officer, said 10 people were killed, including seven policemen, and 18 more police were wounded.

 

South of Baghdad, five people were killed and 30 others wounded in another truck bombing outside a small Shia religious site in the mixed sectarian town of al-Haswa, a police source said.

 

Another eight Iraqis were killed in other attacks and 10 bullet-riddled corpses were found in Baghdad.

 

 

The Iraqi authorities have opened an investigation into Friday’s twin-bomb assassination attempt against Salam al-Zubayi, one of Iraq’s deputy prime ministers.

 

Al-Zubayi was in stable condition and was moved out of intensive care on Saturday morning, but remained under anesthesia at a US-run hospital in the Green Zone, Dhafer al-Ani, a Sunni legislator said.

 

Brigadier general Qassim al-Moussawi, a military spokesman, said he had visited al-Zubayi in the hospital and found him in good condition.

 

“The medical situation of Dr al-Zubayi is stable after he had a surgical operation to remove shrapnel from his lungs,” al-Moussawi told state-run Iraqiya television in a telephone interview.

 

Thousands of US and Iraqi troops are sweeping through Baghdad in a major operation to stem communal violence. The number of sectarian shootings appear to have been reduced but curbing Iraq’s daily car bombings has proven more difficult.