BAGHDAD, May 30: Violence killed 53 people in Iraq on Tuesday. Twenty-two Iraqis were killed and 58 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a crowded popular market place at sunset in Husseiniya, just northeast of the capital.
As police and rescue workers swarmed through the area, a second bomb was discovered and defused.
Only an hour earlier, 12 people were killed and 32 wounded when a car bomb, ripped through a used car lot in Hillah, the capital of Babel province, south of the capital.
And after dark, nine people died and another 10 were wounded when a bomb exploded as they queued up outside a Baghdad bakery to buy bread.
Baghdad’s interior ministry itself was targeted when a rocket slammed into its third floor, killing two female employees and wounding four policeman.
A station wagon had been fitted with improvised launchers and set to go off with a timer in the neighborhood of Zayuna, near the ministry, but exploded after the first rocket was launched.
Four mechanics leaving an industrial area in Bayaa, also in south Baghdad, were killed by gunmen and four other people died in various incidents around the capital.
The US military said an American soldier was killed in the northern city of Mosul on Monday, while the military announced the recovery of the bodies of two marine pilots whose helicopter crashed on Saturday.
ASSASSINATIONS: A wave of assassinations of local Sunni tribal leaders has decreased their cooperation with US forces.
Efforts at involving local tribes in providing security in the province have foundered in the past few months in the face of a campaign of intimidation and murder by insurgents.
On Sunday, pro-US tribal leader Osama Jedaan, whose Karabla tribe is based near Iraq’s border with Syria, was assassinated.
A key part of the US strategy for Iraq is the eventual handover of security duties to Iraqi security forces, something Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has predicted could take place near the end of 2007.
The process is being hindered by the lack of a defense minister, who is expected to be a Sunni Arab, but the appointment has to be acceptable to the diverse political and sectarian groups in the government of national unity.—AFP
