Coordinated Attacks Strike 13 Towns and Cities in Iraq

BAGHDAD — In one of the broadest assaults on Iraq’s security forces, insurgents unleashed a wave of roadside mines and a more than a dozen car bombings across Iraq on Wednesday, killing dozens, toppling a police station in the capital and sowing chaos and confusion among the soldiers and police officers who responded.

Security members gathered at the site of a bomb attack in Basra, Iraq, on Wednesday.
The withering two-hour assault in 13 towns and cities, from southernmost Basra to restive Mosul in the north, was as symbolic as it was deadly, coming a week before the United States declares the end of combat operations here. Wednesday was seemingly the insurgents’ reply: Despite suggestions otherwise, they proved their ability to launch coordinated attacks virtually anywhere in Iraq, capitalizing on the government’s dysfunction and perceptions of American vulnerability.

For weeks, there had been sense of inevitability to the assaults, which killed at least 51 people, many of them police officers. From the American military to residents here, virtually everyone seemed to expect insurgents to seek to demonstrate their prowess as the United States brings its number of troops below 50,000 here. But the anticipation did little to prepare security forces for the breadth of the assault. Iraqi soldiers and police officers brawled at the site of the biggest bombing in Baghdad, and residents heckled them for their impotence in stopping a blast that cut like a scythe through the neighborhood.

“A bloody day,” Khalil Ahmed, a 30-year-old engineer, said simply, as he stared at the cranes and bulldozers trying to rescue victims buried under the police station.

“From the day of the fall of Saddam until now, this is what we have — explosions, killing and looting,” he said. “This is our destiny. It’s already written for us.”

The assaults began at 8:20 a.m. when a pickup truck packed with explosives detonated in a parking lot behind the police station in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Qahera. The police station collapsed, and the blast sheared off the top floors of nearby homes. Windows were shattered a half-mile away. One family was pulled out alive. Hours later, cranes and bulldozers tried to remove others trapped beneath the rubble.

Police officers kept angry residents from entering the scene.

“You get millions of dinars in salaries and you won’t let us help our families?” one youth shouted.

Another cried, “You just take money and don’t care about us!”

An Iraqi investigator walked by the scene.

“This is the state?” he muttered. “This is the government?”

Twice, soldiers and police officers brawled at the scene, and shots were fired in the air.

The rest of the capital was snarled with traffic, as police and army vehicles, sirens blaring, tried to break through the traffic jams. American soldiers in Humvees and armored vehicles, with a token Iraqi escort, drove through parts of the city.

For weeks, insurgents have carried out a daily campaign of bombings, hit-and-run attacks and assassinations against the security forces and officials, seeking to undermine confidence in their ability to secure the country. They remained the target Wednesday in attacks in Falluja, Ramadi, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Basra, Karbala, Mosul and elsewhere.

In one of the worst assaults, in the southern city of Kut, Iraqi officials said a car bomb detonated by its driver killed 19 people and wounded 87, most of them police, in an attack that destroyed the police station near the provincial headquarters.

In Diyala Province, five roadside bombs detonated in the morning in Buhriz, the first against a police patrol, a second against reinforcements who were heading to the scene and three others intended for houses belonging to policemen, officials said. They were followed by a car bombing that struck the provincial headquarters in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, killing three people. Another car bombing struck a hospital in nearby Muqdadiya.

“The beginning of the storm,” said Saleh Khamis, a 38-year-old teacher in Buhriz.

In Ramadi, a car bomb tore through a bus station, killing eight people.

Under a deadline set by the Obama administration, the United States has brought its number of troops here to a little below 50,000, a presence it intends to maintain through next summer. The administration and the American military have sought to portray the partial withdrawal as a turning point in the American presence here, insisting that Iraq’s army and police are ready to inherit sole control over security here.

Military officials have said they believe that insurgents only number in the hundreds, and the military has issued a daily drumbeat of announcements that leaders and cadres in the insurgency have been arrested in American-Iraqi operations.

“The message the insurgents want to deliver to the Iraqi people and the politicians is that we exist and we choose the time and the place,” said Wael Abdel-Latif, a judge and former lawmaker. “They are carrying out such attacks when the Americans are still here, so just imagine what they can do after the Americans leave.”

The attacks come amid deep popular frustration with the country’s politicians, who have failed to form a government more than five months after elections in March. Shoddy public services, namely electricity, have only sharpened the resentment.

At the scene of the bombing in Baghdad, residents grimly swept up glass from storefronts. Others milled among the dozens of police and army vehicles. No one seemed to express optimism; most said they were bracing for more of the same.

“The situation doesn’t let us live our lives here,” said Mahmoud Hussein, a 26-year-old mechanic. “No water, no electricity no security. Every day it gets worse.”

Stephen Farrell, Moises Saman and Khalid D. Ali contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, Baquba, Hilla, Kirkuk and Basra.

We kicked the ARVN and the Congs ass at Hue and the rest during TET .....it was their worst defeat ...the traitorous press painted it as a victory for the commies ....shame shame

Wave of Iraq suicide bombings target police
A wave of Iraq suicide bombings and other attacks largely targeted the police on Wednesday, leaving at least 41 Iraqis dead in 7 different provinces. A poll shows that a majority of Iraqis say the US is withdrawing combat troops too soon.

In one of the deadliest attacks, a suicide car bomb detonated outside a police station near the provincial headquarters in Kut, about 100 miles south of Baghdad. Initial reports had at least 20 people killed and 85 wounded, according to police officials.

In Baghdad, a suicide truck bomb detonated in the parking lot of a police station in the northeastern Qahira neighborhood, killing at least 15 people and wounding 34. A separate car bomb killed two police and wounded seven civilians in the city center while two other policemen were shot dead in the Al Amal neighborhood in south Baghdad.

No group has yet taken responsibility but Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki's office blamed the attacks on Al Qaeda and Baathists. The statement said the bombings would not derail the 'historic national achievement' of the troop withdrawal in line with Iraq achieving full national sovereignty.

The US military announced on Tuesday there were fewer than 50,000 troops left in Iraq following the departure of the last US combat brigade last week. The withdrawal is part of President Obama’s pledge to shift the Iraq effort from a combat to training and assistance mission on Sept. 1.

The US has not conducted unilateral combat operations since an Iraq-US security agreement took effect in June of last year, and is currently scheduled to withdraw all troops from the country by the end of 2011.

The White House on Tuesday characterized the drawdown to 50,000 troops as a “remarkable achievement” for the United States. But an Iraqi public opinion poll on Tuesday indicated that a majority of Iraqis want the US to stay. The Asharq research center poll found that almost 60 percent of Iraqis think the withdrawal is coming too soon, with 51 percent saying the withdrawal would harm the security situation; 26 percent said it would have a positive effect.

The US and Iraqi military have made significant inroads in dismantling the network of Al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups. US officials say they believe there are fewer than 200 hard-core Al Qaeda fighters left in Iraq. But they have not been able to halt regular, high-profile attacks against Iraqi security forces, particularly against police who are supposed to take over from the Iraqi Army in securing cities and towns.

More attacks

West of Baghdad, in Ramadi, three people, including two police officers, were killed and 16 wounded in two car bombs. One occurred at a police checkpoint. North of the capital, in the oil city of Kirkuk, attacks killed one and wounded 11 others. Another car bomb in Muqdadiya in Diyala Province killed three people and wounded 18, many of them police in one of at least five attacks in the province.

Car bombs in the southern cities of Karbala and Basra wounded more than 40 other people, according to security officials.

Attacks had been expected to spike during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims believe God revealed the Koran to the prophet Mohammad. The violence is continuing as Iraq's leading political factions have failed to form a government almost six months after Iraqis went to the polls.

“We are facing a stagnant pond – there is nothing new but continuous meetings,” says Haider al-Mulla, a member of parliament and spokesman for the Al Iraqiya bloc. “The main obstacle remains choosing the prime minister.”

Political fractures

Prime Minister Maliki’s Shiite alliance, which forms the biggest coalition, appears to be in danger of fracturing over Maliki’s insistence that he lead any new government. As prime minister, he sent Iraqi Army troops into Basra and Sadr City to fight Muqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia and he has alienated other former political allies by making major decisions without consulting them. The Sadrists are one of Maliki’s coalition partners.

Iraqiya is headed by one-time prime minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite whose party has substantial Sunni support.

The Sadr bloc has indicated it could abandon Maliki’s coalition to align itself with the more secular Iraqiya coalition but al-Mulla described those talks as ‘vague’ and inconclusive.

Neither Maliki nor Allawi’s political blocs won enough seats in the election to form a majority in parliament.

“The outcome of the election is complicated because there was no clear winner,” says Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who belongs to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani. “The Iraqi leadership is not accustomed to a culture of compromise.”

Laith Hammoudi and Mohammad Dulaimi contributed to this report.

Series of Iraqi bomb attacks kill more than 60
Suicide bombers and other attackers killed at least 62 people and wounded more than 250 in co-ordinated attacks on Iraqi security forces throughout the country.


The scene of a car bomb at the passport office in the city of Kut, southeast of Baghdad, one of a series of apparently co-ordinated car bombs and other attacks across Iraq Photo: AFP
The bombings also wounded more than 250 people, underscoring the fragility of Iraq's security and the uncertainty of its political situation more than five months after an election that produced no outright winner and as yet no new government.
The onslaught was launched a day after the US military in Iraq cut its strength to under 50,000.

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Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and former dictator Saddam Hussein's banned Baath party, and warned of more attacks as US troops end their combat mission on Aug. 31 ahead of a full withdrawal next year.
"It is necessary that our armed and security forces are at the highest levels of vigilance and cautiousness during this sensitive period of Iraq's history, and take all the required measures to protect the citizens and state institutions and fight terrorism strongly and firmly," he said in a statement.
The US military spokesman in Iraq, Major General Stephen Lanza, called the attacks "desperate attempts" to undermine faith in the Iraqi security forces and a sign that al Qaeda was trying to reestablish itself after suffering many blows.
The geographic spread of the attacks on the security forces showed that while weakened, the insurgency retains the ability to organise and carry out a nationwide assault involving dozens of operatives, under the noses of the authorities.
In Kut, 95 miles southeast of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed 30 policemen and wounded 87 after destroying a police station, said Lieutenant Colonel Aziz al-Amarah, head of the rapid response police force in the province of Wasit.
"Parts of the building collapsed and there are still policemen's bodies, including the police chief, under the rubble," Amarah said by telephone.
In Baghdad, a suicide truck bomber killed 15 people and wounded at least 56 others in an attack on another police station, Interior Ministry and police sources said.
Parts of the police station in Baghdad's northern Qahira district also collapsed and surrounding houses were severely damaged, the Interior Ministry source said.
Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi warned of more attacks as U.S. troops gradually withdraw.
"We have plans to face those terrorist attacks," he said.
Elsewhere, a car bomb near a police station in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, southwest of Baghdad, and a minibus packed with explosives near a police station in the southern oil hub of Basra, wounded more than 40 people.
In Buhriz, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen detonated bombs near the houses of policemen and raised the flag of al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate on a building.
Other attacks in Baghdad, Diyala province, Anbar province and the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, brought the national death toll from the attacks to at least 62.
Iraq is on high alert for attacks by suspected al Qaeda-linked groups following the inconclusive election.
Overall violence has dropped sharply since the height of sectarian carnage in 2006-07. But bombings and killings take place daily, suggesting insurgents are trying to exploit the political vacuum as Iraq's leaders jostle for power.