IRAQ: Roadside bomb hits U.S. military in Baghdad

A roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. military convoy was driving past in central Baghdad on Wednesday (August 1, 2007). Iraqi police said there were no casualties reported. They said that the bomb, in the city's central neighbourhood of Karrada, damaged one U.S. Humvee. Iraqi police and U.S. forces cordoned off the area after the blast. Fifteen people were killed and 20 others wounded in a suicide car bomb attack also in the mainly Shi'ite district of Karrada later on Wednesday, police said. Karrada, on the eastern side of the Tigris River, is normally one of the more stable areas in the Iraqi capital but has been hit by a string of bombs in the past 10 days. U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up security operations in Baghdad since mid-February in an attempt to stem bombings, many of them blamed on al Qaeda, the Sunni Islamist group that U.S. officials say is trying to spark a full-scale civil war in Iraq.

ITN Source | August 1, 2007

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