BASRA, Nov 11: A bomb exploded on Tuesday killing at least four persons, including two policemen and the man who was planting it beside a road in Basra. Nine people, some of them schoolchildren, were reported to have been injured in the explosion.
A second blast was also reported in downtown Basra but it was not immediately known if there were further casualties.
In Baghdad, a bomb explosion outside a court wounded six Iraqis, two policeman and four prisoners, as US soldiers were bringing prisoners out of the building, police officials said.
The Basra blast, which ripped through a nearby minibus, occurred near a police check-post at a time when no British soldiers were in the area, the British military said. A spokeswoman said the man planting the bomb was killed.
Col Mohammed Khazim al-Ali, chief of internal security in Basra, said: “Some of the injured are school children (as they) ... use this road ... to go to school.”
Lieut Gen Ricardo Sanchez, top US commander in Iraq, said up to 20 people suspected of having links with Al Qaeda had been detained but no proof had been found.
Meanwhile, the coalition forces acknowledged that its soldiers shot and killed a municipal official, Mohannad Ghazi al- Kaabi, in Sadr City on Sunday, a volatile Shia neighbourhood where clashes have already claimed the lives of US troops, a statement said.
He was shot when he refused to follow security procedures for entering Sadr City’s municipal building, the US military said in a statement.
“During the altercation, a shot was fired, wounding Mohannad in the lower extremities,” the US military said in a statement, adding that an investigation had been launched.
A coalition source said: “Reports suggest he became aggressive. The soldiers fired a warning shot and then he was hit in the leg.”
The shooting also came at a moment when Moqtada Sadr appeared to be stepping back from his previously bellicose stance against US forces. He issued a statement last week urging the country’s 15-million strong Shia majority to find common ground with the coalition.
Meanwhile, US jet fighters have bombed a house south of Baghdad believed to be used for anti-coalition attacks after troops captured its six occupants, a US military official told AFP.
“We used F-16s to precision-bomb the house,” said Captain Dan Froehlich, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne’s 3rd Brigade.
He said the house near Mahmudiyah, south of the capital, was used to plan attacks on coalition forces and to stash weapons.
He said the operation highlighted the successes US forces have been achieving south of Baghdad, where they have been receiving numerous tip-offs from local residents.
The British forces, in the meantime, admitted there has been a surge of violence in Basra over the past week, saying Saddam loyalists were behind it.
“Yes, there has been (a rise) in the last week and not before. Some bombs or small explosive devices, a number of which we have defused,” Maj Charles Mayo, senior spokesman for the British troops in Basra told participants of a press conference.
He said that two explosions took place in the past few days and that five other devices were defused. Mayo discounted reports that the Al Qaeda terror network could be involved.
A high-ranking security source in Basra told AFP that at least three dozen women saboteurs arrived in Basra from the north a week ago.
“They are linked to Saddam Hussein’s people and they are here to carry out sabotage,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
BAGHDAD BLASTS: Several vehicles were damaged but no casualties was reported in a series of blasts that rocked Baghdad’s “green zone,” where Iraq’s US-led administration is based, the US military said.
An army spokeswoman said three rockets landed inside the fortified zone. “Several vehicles were damaged ... but no injuries (have been) reported at this time,” she told Reuters.
An AFP report said at least four rockets were fired into the Baghdad US-led coalition headquarters.—Agencies
BASRA, Nov 11: A bomb exploded on Tuesday killing at least four persons, including two policemen and the man who was planting it beside a road in Basra. Nine people, some of them schoolchildren, were reported to have been injured in the explosion.
