September 18, 2007
23 Killed Across Iraq,
Kirkuk-Bayji Pipeline Attacked
Baghdad
Twenty-three people were reported killed and 59 wounded in separate
attacks across Iraq Tuesday, according to authorities.
Three car bombs exploded in central and eastern Baghdad, the police
said.
The first two bombs detonated in a parking lot near Baghdad's health
ministry in the central district of Bab al-Muazzam. The attack was
the most intense, killing 11 people and wounding 30. Initial reports
said seven people were killed and 23 wounded.
The third car bomb exploded just minutes later in the eastern
Zayouna neighbourhood, killing two persons and wounding five.
In another attack in the Zaafaraniyah suburb, southern Baghdad, a
blast near a police patrol killed a civilian and wounded two others.
In Baquba, 60 km north of Baghdad, three Iraqi members of a family
were gunned down and two wounded in an armed attack on their
vehicle, said the police.
In eastern Baquba, a civilian was killed and three members of the
newly formed Baquba Salvation Front were wounded in a mortar shell
attack, the source of which was unknown.
The front, founded by the city's tribal leaders, was formed to fight
Al Qaeda militants in the region.
Two people were injured in another round of shelling on a
residential area, security sources in Baquba said. Police sources
said they had also arrested nine wanted militants earlier Tuesday in
Hashimiya, western Baquba.
Iraqi security forces said two Iraqis were killed and 13 wounded
when an explosive charge detonated in a local market and near the
police station in Galulaa, northeastern Iraq.
Meanwhile, gunfights between militants and police left three people
dead and two injured in Tikrit, 170 km north of the capital, the
local police department said. A blanket curfew was imposed in the
hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Separately, Iraqi troops and US forces captured a senior member of
Al Qaeda in Iraq, two snipers and 15 suspected terrorists during
raids in Baghdad's north, the US military said in a statement on
Tuesday.
The captured militant was believed to be the second-in-command to
Abu Ghazwan, the head of a terrorist network with suspected links to
Al Qaeda that targets citizens and is reportedly responsible for
murder, robberies and kidnappings.
The US military said the network was suspected of staging attacks
from a local mosque, and to be financing car bomb attacks.
"The cell is further suspected of storing and supplying weapons such
as surface-to-air missiles, mortar rounds, mortar launchers, and
heavy machine-guns to be used in future terrorist attacks,"
according to the US statement.
US forces also captured a suspected Iraqi terrorist with links to
the Iranian Quds Force faction, in an operation early Tuesday, the
statement said.
The Quds Force faction is a special unit in Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guards that the US has recently accused of funding and
training Shiite death squads in Iraq.
The captured militant is suspected of involvement in smuggling
foreign fighters into Iraq.
In another development, an explosion along an oil pipeline extending
from the northern Kirkuk oilfields to Bayji refineries caused damage
to both the line and another parallel pipeline between Iraq and
Turkey.
The ensuing fire affected only a section of the Kirkuk-Bayji
pipeline, which runs over River Tigris, but caused an oil leak and
dense black smoke in the area.
Fire fighters struggled to contain the damage, a source in the local
oil industry said. The explosion is expected to result in a halt to
production at Bayji refineries, which supply more than half of
Iraq's oil products.
According to another source in the water department in Salahaddin,
the explosion caused oil to seep into the Tigris River damaging
water stations and triggering their temporary closure.
The water supply up to 40 km south of the explosion site was
affected, the source added.
In other developments, around 1.2 million children returned to
classrooms in the autonomous Kurdish region at the start of the new
school year on Tuesday.
Regional Vice President Omar Fatah told reporters this school year
was different as the education system had been overhauled and
improved, and promised the new methods would encourage students to
pursue their education and assured "that their efforts will not be
wasted."
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