IRAQ: A car bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least eight people and wounded 70 people in an attack on Thursday (October 19).

A car bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least eight people and wounded 70 people in an attack on Thursday (October 19). Officials said it was aimed at an Iraqi army patrol in a crowded market area. It was targeting a patrol of the Iraqi Army as soldiers were collecting salaries from a bank in the market area crowded with auto-parts and tyre stores. The oil-rich city of Kirkuk has witnessed a spate of attacks in recent months amid tensions between the Kurdish and Sunni Arab populations. On Sunday, four car bombs, three of them driven by suicide attackers, killed at least seven people in Kirkuk. One of the blasts went off near an Iraqi security force, which is also near a school for girls. Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, is disputed by Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. Its final status is one of Iraq's most sensitive issues. Six suicide bombers including one in a fuel truck blew themselves up near police stations and U.S. forces in the Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday in violence that killed at least 20 people. U.S. Major General William Caldwell said the Mosul attacks by suicide bombers in vehicles were aimed at three Iraqi police stations and two U.S. patrols in the city, which is a flashpoint of insurgent activity north of Baghdad. "The first report that has come in says there have been six suicide vehicle IDs, three targeted at Iraqi police stations and two were targeted at coalition patrols, again two different striker patrols that were operating in the city. We know at this point that there are some local and Iraqi security force casualties from these. We don't have good exact figures at this point. We do know that four to six indirect fire strikes also occured against Iraqi targets in the vicinity of those police stations." Nine charred bodies lay on the debris-strewn streets after the fuel truck attack, which killed 11 people. Shortly after the explosion, insurgents fired mortar shells at another police centre and clashed with police. Nine more people were killed in the violence, police said. Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, has witnessed a recent escalation of violence by Sunni insurgents and between Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds vying to control the urban area and the surrounding area. Caldwell declined to say whether any U.S. forces were killed in the attacks, which come a day after the U.S. military announced the deaths of 11 U.S. soldiers in one of the bloodiest days in the war for U.S. troops. Two blasts in eastern Baghdad on Thursday killed a civilian and wounding eight people, five of them were policemen, police and interior Ministry said. The first blast was caused by a car bomb targeting a police patrol and minutes later when crowd gathering in the area od blast a bomb exploded next to them, police added. "A blast in al-Ghadeer district, targeting police patrol of Baghdad al-Jadida. Policemen were wounded in the blast. A police officer was among them. The blast target police, it was near the sub-road of al-Ghadeer district," said an unidentified eye witness. Earlier, two bombs exploded in central Baghdad, wounding three civilians, police said. Insurgents determined to undermine Iraq's security forces target police daily, using car bombs, explosives planted in the road and drive-by shootings. Another U.S. death was reported by the military on Thursday and Caldwell said the death toll in October had now reached 73 coalition forces. October is on track to become one of the deadliest for U.S. forces since a massive offensive in Falluja two years ago. The rise, ahead of key U.S. congressional elections next month in which plummeting support for the war has become a major issue, has been blamed on more aggressive patrols in Baghdad, where U.S. troops have conducted raids to stamp out militias. "I think we are getting far beyond my realm to make analogies about the Vietnam war. But I will tell you, that we are very concerned about what we're seeing in the city and we're taking a lot of time to go back and look at the Baghdad security plan. We are asking ourselves, if the conditions under which it was first devised still exist today, or have the conditions changed, and therefore modification to that plan need to be made. We are never going to, everything stays very dynamic in this type of environment. And it is clear that the conditions under which we started, are not the same as today and so it does require some modification to the plan. And there is an intense about of discussion and briefings that are being at both the government of Iraq level and our level to specifically address these facets," U.S. Major General William Caldwell said."The first report that has come in says there have been six suicide vehicle IDs, three targeted at Iraqi police stations and two were targeted at coalition patrols, again two different striker patrols that were operating in the city. We know at this point that there are some local and Iraqi security force casualties from these. We don't have good exact figures at this point. We do know that four to six indirect fire strikes also occured against Iraqi targets in the vicinity of those police stations," Major General Caldwell said. At least 2,784 troops have died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Many more Iraqis have been killed and more than 300,000 have fled their homes in an internal exodus some fear is consolidating a sectarian partition of Iraq. Dozens of al Qaeda-linked gunmen took to the streets in Ramadi on Wednesday (October 18) in a show of force to announce the city was joining an Islamic state comprising Iraq's mostly Sunni Arab provinces, Islamists and witnesses said. Witnesses in Ramadi, the capital of western Anbar province, said gunmen dressed in white marched through the city as mosques' loudspeakers announced the statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, a Sunni militant group led by al Qaeda in Iraq. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is under mounting pressure to rein in militias blamed for most sectarian killings but they are tied to political parties he is dependent on. With signs of growing U.S. impatience over his inaction to curb militias, Maliki sought during a recent conversation with President George W. Bush assurances that Washington would not set a timetable for him to improve security. On Wednesday he flew to the holy city of Najaf to seek help from religious leaders. Previous spikes in U.S. fatalities coincided with major American operations against Sunni insurgent bastions, including the November 2004 offensive in Falluja, where 137 U.S. troops were killed.

ITN Source | October 19, 2006

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