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| May 30, 2005 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 21, 1426 |
Baghdad clampdown fails to stop car bombings
BAGHDAD, May 29: Thousands of Iraqi soldiers on Sunday threw a security net over Baghdad to snare guerillas, who quickly struck back with a string of car bombings said to have been masterminded by Al Qaeda’s Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Four car bombs in and around the capital killed 16 people, most of them security personnel, in a swift response to Iraq’s widest homegrown clampdown since the fall of Saddam Hussein over two years ago.
Nine soldiers taking part in Operation Lightning died in a suicide car bombing at their roadblock just south of the capital, while two policemen were killed when a suicide car bomber targeted their patrol in southwestern Baghdad. In western Baghdad, a car bomb targeting police commandos killed three people and wounded 20, an interior ministry source said, adding that police had then fought a firefight with men in the area.
An earlier suicide bombing near the oil ministry left two dead, while violence elsewhere claimed the lives of a British soldier and seven Iraqis.
“Squadrons and brigades directed by the sheikh of the Mujahideen Abu Musab al Zarqawi on Sunday launched an operation... planned and supervised by our sheikh,” said an Internet statement attributed to his group.
The operation was a reply to the ‘aborted encirclement plan in Baghdad announced by the Iraqi ministers of defence and interior”, a reference to the security net involving up to 40,000 soldiers. It also claimed the deadly suicide bombing at the roadblock outside Baghdad.
OPERATION: Nevertheless, the government claimed it had already captured hundreds of guerillas.
“Search operations and raids have allowed us to arrest 500 people and find arms caches in several houses,” said spokesman Leith Kubba, adding that ‘we are expecting reactions but this will have no effect on the general course of the operation’.
A defense ministry source said: “The army has set up fixed checkpoints around Baghdad as well as mobile controls, and raids have been launched in the city.”
UK SOLDIER KILLED: In southern Iraq, a British soldier was killed when his convoy came under attack. “We confirm a hostile action against British forces... which resulted in a fatality,” a British army spokesman said from Basra.—AFP
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