BAGHDAD, April 8: Baghdad on Sunday declared a 24-hour vehicle ban on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in a bid to prevent car bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital.
“All vehicles including motorcycles will be banned from 5 am (0100 GMT) on Monday to 5 am the next day,” an Iraqi Brigadier told the state television.
The daily night-time curfew between 10 pm and 5 am will also remain in force on Sunday.
On Sunday the relentless violence continued, with 23 more people reported killed.
In the deadliest attack, a car bomb near a residential building in an industrial zone in Mahmudiyah south of Baghdad killed 17 people, a local official said.
The attack coincided with a US military announcement that another four American soldiers had died in a roadside bomb explosion in Diyala province.
Another six Iraqis were killed in Baghdad’s Alam district on Sunday, five of them by a car bomb. South of Baghdad, fighting between militiamen and US and Iraqi troops continued on Sunday for a third day in the central city of Diwaniyah.
Doctor Hamid Gaati said that over the past three days the local hospital had recorded nine dead and 25 wounded. Medical supplies were running short and staff faced difficulties getting to work.
Iraq's radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Sunday urged his militiamen and security forces to stop fighting in Diwaniyah, calling it a “trap” by US-led forces.
“Iraq has had enough bloodshed. The occupation forces led by the biggest evil, America, are working to sow dissent either directly or through its agents,” said a statement from his office in Najaf.
On Sunday, thousands of people gathered in Najaf for a massive anti-US rally on Monday's anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, police said.
“It will be an Iraqi demonstration in the name of all Iraqis. We will raise the Iraqi flag and also banners demanding that the occupation leave,” a Sadr representative in Najaf said. ---AFP
