IRAQ: Series of blasts in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, and 3 dead after attack in Kirkuk

A roadside bomb killed three civilians and wounded 15 others in the northern oil rich city of Kirkuk on Saturday (September 9, 2006), hospital sources and witnesses said. The blast took place near a bakery on a highway just south of Kirkuk, about 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad. "I was queuing at a bakery to get bread when the blast happened at 9am. I do not know if it was a car bomb or a bomb. Some of the people were wounded while others were killed," said Mahmoud Latif Rajab, who was wounded in the blast. An earlier blast at the same area wounded two policemen, according to police sources. Kirkuk where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen ethnic groups have staked competing claims to the capital of the big northern oil region, has been a scene of frequent attacks in recent months. Also on Saturday a car bomb targeting police patrols in northern Baghdad killed one policeman and wounded six people, including four policemen Interior Ministry sources said. The attack took place near a police station in the mainly Sunni district of Adhamiya. "Every day there is a car bomb . We want a solution. I collected pieces of flesh by my bare hands while the police evacuated the wounded," shouted an angry man at the blast site. Police sealed off the area as firemen cleared the site of debris caused by the blast. Meanwhile, five civilians were killed and four others wounded when mortar shells smashed into a residential district in southern Baghdad on Friday (September 8) night, witnesses said. The attack, which took place the in Abu Dsheer district damaged one house and a power transformer. Meanwhile gunmen killed Sabah al-Rubaie, an employee for the state-funded al-Sabah newspaper and wounded his driver in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad on Saturday, police said. Witnesses said gunmen in a car opened fire on al-Rubaie's car while he was driving in the Al-Sinaa area in eastern Baghdad as he was on his way to work. And north of Baghdad three people including the sheikh of a mosque and two worshippers were killed in a U.S. shelling of a mosque north of Baghdad on Saturday night, witnesses said. They said that U.S. forces shelled the mosque after coming under a bomb attack metres away from al-Siniya Mosque, 15 km west of the refinery city of Baiji. Witnesses said that the 80-year old Sheikh Ahmed al-Sayyid, the preacher of the mosque was killed in the attack "An American convoy came under attack 400 metres away then the Americans came and attacked the guards of the mosque," said a man working in mosque. The blast caused structural damage to the mosque and shattered the glass of the windows. The U.S. military could not be immediately reached for comment on the attack. Also in Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near fuel tankers in the southern Baghdad's neighbourhood of al-Doura, there were no major casualties but the explosion did disrupt traffic.

ITN Source | September 9, 2006

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