BAGHDAD, May 7: Suicide car bombers killed 20 more people on Monday as Iraqi and American forces battled to regain the initiative on a day where violence claimed at least 40 lives.
The attacks come one day after 59 Iraqis, nine US soldiers and a Russian journalist were killed across the country.
Twin car bombs exploded on Monday in the provincial capital of Ramadi, west of the capital, killing at least 20 people, security officials said.
“This cowardly terrorist attack from Al-Qaeda targeted civilians in a market place,” Lieutenant Colonel Thamer Ahmed of the local Iraqi emergency response told AFP amid the smouldering rubble at the scene.
The first blast appeared to have been from explosives hidden in a produce truck, while the second was a car bomb, police said.
Ten people were killed in each blast, including five police, Colonel Tareq al-Dulaimi said.
Increased cooperation between local tribes and US forces in combating insurgents had seen a reduction in violence in recent months in Ramadi, once one of the most dangerous cities in the country.
“There are going to be these rough spots and the enemy is not just going to sit back and wait for us to clean them out and be done with it,” said Major Joe Edstrom, a US military public affairs officer.
“We have to expect that there will be days like this. We are just going to do what they always do and just drive on, press forward, take measures and steps and ensure that there are not more casualties,” he said.
Mortar fire hit a family home in Bayaa district in southwest Baghdad, killing five people from the same family.
Just a day before in the same neighbourhood a car bomb ripped through a crowded street, demolishing two shops and killing at least 33 people.
Such spectacular massacres are carried out by Sunni insurgents to discredit Iraq's fragile government and its US allies, while provoking Shiite reprisals and leaving the country all but ungovernable.
Baghdad and Washington have responded with a massive security plan, backed up by a 28,000-strong “surge” in US troop reinforcements, designed to quell sectarian fighting and hunt down the car bomb gangs.
But the security forces themselves sometimes fall victim to increasingly audacious insurgent attacks, particularly in a belt of violent cities and rural communities in the lawless region around the capital.
On Sunday, insurgents ambushed a US patrol in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, killing six American soldiers and a Russian journalist travelling in a Stryker armoured vehicle.
The Russian ambassador in Iraq, Vladimir Chamov, identified the slain photographer as 29-year-old Dmitry Chebotayev, a Moscow-based freelancer working in Iraq for the Russian edition of Newsweek magazine.
An Al Qaeda-led militant umbrella group claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday in an unverifiable Internet message.
Attacks on security forces and civilians continued in Diyala province claiming a total of 10 lives, including five people who were killed when gunmen opened fire on their car near the provincial capital of Baquba.
Among the dead in Diyala was the head of a village council whose body was found just outside Baquba.—AFP
