IRAQ: 22 killed and dozens injured in two separate bomb blasts targeting police in Baghdad

Two car bombs targeting police in Baghdad killed 22 people and wounded another 76 on Wednesday (September 13). The first killed 14 outside Baghdad's traffic police headquarters, a second targeted guards at an electricity station in the east of the city. A total of 57 people were injured in the first blast when two bombs in a parked car detonated in central Baghdad targeting police vehicles during the morning rush-hour police sources said. The casualty toll from the blasts included two policemen killed and three wounded. Police sources said the first explosion happened outside the city's traffic police headquarters and when people gathered near the site, another car bomb went off. "What did those people do? Some of them have come from the provinces and left their cars here. The public notaries work here to get 2000 Iraqi dinar as their daily bread," said Farhan Hashim, who was near the site when the blasts happened. Three mortar rounds also landed in central Baghdad, wounding four passers-by, police sources said. Also on Wednesday in Eastern Baghdad another car bomb apparently targeting police protecting an electricity distribution plant killed eight people and wounded 19 police sources said. The attack happened in the Zayouna district, it was not clear how many of the casualties were from the security forces. The United Nations estimated two months ago that about 100 people a day were being killed in a covert sectarian dirty war. U.S. military commanders have said the increased presence of troops on the streets, sweeping through violent neighbourhoods to prepare them for Iraqi police control, had reduced the "murder rate" by more than 40 percent in August. That figure included individual shootings but not bigger attacks such as bombings. Last week, the U.N. office in Baghdad said the number of unidentified bodies taken to the city morgue in August fell by about 17 percent from the record month of July to 1,536. Morgue officials, who have stopped giving data to the media, say that about 90 percent of the bodies they see are victims of violence. The Health Ministry has yet to publish its full data for other violent deaths in August. Figures for July put the total at more than 3,000 people, concentrated in Baghdad, where more than a quarter of Iraqis live.

ITN Source | September 13, 2006

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