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| May 31, 2005 | Tuesday | Rabi-us-Sani 22, 1426 |
Attacks leave 27 dead in Iraq
HILLA (Iraq), May 30: A double suicide attack killed at least 25 people south of Baghdad on Monday as insurgents struck back against a massive operation by Iraq to try to restore security in the capital. “We have 25 killed and 100 wounded,” said Hilla hospital director Mohammed Dhia, adding that all the casualties were former police commandos.
“The attack was carried out by two suicide bombers wearing explosives belts,” a police source told AFP. The early morning blasts in Hilla, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad, targeted a crowd of around 500 former commandos who had reportedly lost their jobs and come to get back-pay.
In February, a bomb in the same town killed 118 people. Insurgent attacks nationwide have killed around 700 people this month, following the swearing-in of Iraq’s first democratically elected post-Saddam government.
On Sunday, a string of car bombings in and around Baghdad — reportedly masterminded by Al Qaeda’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — 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.
“Squadrons and brigades directed by the sheikh of the mujahedeen 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, it said, 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 expected to involve up to 40,000 Iraqi security forces that was launched the same day.
It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the statement, the latest in a series of sometimes conflicting messages about the health of the Jordanian-born militant and his role in the insurgency. Nevertheless, the government claimed it had already captured hundreds of insurgents.
“Search operations and raids have allowed us to arrest 500 people and find arms caches in several houses,” spokesman Leith Kubba said on Sunday.
He added: “We are expecting reactions but this will have no effect on the general course of the operation.” A defence 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.”
Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi unveiled the operation on Thursday, saying: “We’re going to set up a security cordon around Baghdad.”—AFP
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