Monday, May 23, 2005
Ali Abbas/European Pressphoto Agency
Iraqis removed the body of a victim.
May 24, 2005
Car Bombings in Iraq Kill 33, With Shiites as Targets
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 23 - Insurgents carried out three major car bomb attacks against Iraqi Shiites on Monday, killing at least 33 and wounding 120 in what appeared to be the latest in a wave of violence intended to exploit the sectarian divisions that have tormented the country.
All told, attacks across Iraq killed at least 43 people, including Waiel al-Rubaie, a senior aide in Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's administration, and his driver, who were shot to death in the Mansour district of Baghdad. The American military said three American soldiers were also killed in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday.
Insurgents have long sought to play on the deeply ingrained fears and prejudices between Sunni Arabs, a minority that once ruled the country, and the Shiites and Kurds who now dominate the government.
In Baghdad on Monday, a Shiite and a Kurd were expected to be appointed to the committee drafting the new constitution, The Associated Press reported. Members of the National Assembly chose a Shiite cleric, Hummam Hammoudi, to lead the committee. His deputy is expected to be Fouad Massoum, a Kurd.
Political leaders fear that the insurgents have intensified their campaign to drive a wedge between Sunnis and Shiites and that they are trying to ignite a civil war.
Last month, Shiite leaders accused Sunnis of a mass killing of Shiites in Madaen, south of Baghdad, and Sunni leaders have accused the largest Shiite militia force of complicity in the killing of Sunni clerics.
The accusations have alarmed even Iraqi religious leaders known for militancy. On Sunday, the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr vowed to work for a "peaceful" fix to sectarian strife, and a leading Sunni party that claims ties to the insurgency, the Iraqi Islamic Party, issued a statement on Monday condemning "terrorist works" in Madaen and other Shiite areas.
The deadliest attack on Monday struck a Shiite neighborhood in the northern city of Tal Afar near the Syrian border. A pair of suicide car bombers tried to kill a community leader, a Shiite with close ties to Kurdish leaders, but they instead killed at least 15 people and wounded 20 others, Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Nineveh Province, said in a telephone interview.
Earlier on Monday, a car bomb exploded outside a popular and crowded restaurant near the mostly Shiite Sadr City district in Baghdad, killing at least 8 people and wounding 89 at the end of a busy lunch hour.
On Monday evening, a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in Mahmudiya, a restive and dangerous town south of Baghdad, killing at least 10 and wounding 15 more. Many victims were children, an Interior Ministry official said.
Five people were also killed in Tuz Khurmatu, about 120 miles north of Baghdad, when insurgents attacked a convoy carrying members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party that controls the eastern and southern reaches of the Kurdish territories, party officials said.
In the restive Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, a Sunni enclave, American and Iraqi troops carried out their own offensive on Monday in an effort to bring to heel what has been a major trouble spot for American forces.
The operation, which began Sunday morning, is essentially an extensive search-and-arrest mission. About 2,200 Iraqi soldiers and police officers raided suspected car-bomb factories and insurgent hide-outs. About 1,500 American troops are assisting by cordoning off the area to be raided and then providing backup.
American military officials described the effort as the first time that Iraqis have led an operation of this scale. Iraqi officers provided the information for the raids, which resulted in the capture of what the military said were 366 suspected insurgents by Sunday evening, including six from Syria, Egypt and Yemen, said Maj. Webster M. Wright, a spokesman for the Second Brigade of the Army's 10th Mountain Division.
"One of the purposes is to stop the rash of car bombs," Major Wright said. He said that no Americans had been killed in the operation and that one Iraqi soldier had died. Two insurgents are believed to have been killed, he said.
Other American soldiers arrested 15 terrorism suspects and seized $6 million during early morning raids on Sunday throughout central Baghdad, the military said.
The bombing near Sadr City demolished the Habayibna restaurant and much of the apartment building above it, and ignited at least a dozen cars parked nearby. An Iraqi reporter for The New York Times who was about 50 yards away when the bomb detonated said that after the blast friends and relatives of people at the restaurant rushed to the scene amid the screams of pain from victims inside. Policemen arrived quickly, fired pistols into the air and warned people to get away for fear that another bomb could go off.
Zuheir Rajab, a 26-year-old engineer at a cellphone company, said he and his roommate, Ahmad, were in their apartment nearby when they heard the deafening blast. "It was really fast and all we managed to do was protect our faces with our hands from glass shards from the window," Mr. Rajab said at Al Kindi hospital.
The force of the explosion wrecked their apartment. "I searched for Ahmad and found him under some wreckage," he said, holding his roommate, both their shirts stained with blood. "Our neighbor came and took us to the hospital."
Warzer Jaff and Layla Isitfan contributed reporting for this article.
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