Day of violence in Iraq claims high number of casualties

[TexasLawyer]

Wed., February 09, 2005 Shvat 30, 5765 Israel Time: 06:53 (GMT+2)


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=537750

Day of violence in Iraq claims high number of casualties

By Haaretz Service and Agencies

BAGHDAD - A high number of casualties was claimed in a new surge of attacks on Tuesday in Iraq. Two Baghdad attacks, a suicide bombing and mortar shelling of a recruitment center, left a total of 35 dead Iraqis. In seperate incidents, an Iraqi politician?s car was sprayed with gunfire, and a militant group claimed to have killed an Italian journalist kidnapped on Friday.

In the first incident, Iraqis signing up for the country's security forces came under fire for a second straight day Tuesday, as a mortar attack killed up to 14 people on a Baghdad army recruitment center, officials said.

Police said insurgents shelled the old Muthana airfield in the heart of the capital, home to an Iraqi National Guard headquarters that has come under frequent attack in the militant campaign to undercut Iraq's fledgling security service. A day earlier, 15 people, most of them applicants for police jobs, were killed in a suicide car bombing in the city of Baqouba, north of Baghdad.

Officials at Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital said the barrage killed up to 14 people, all of them army recruits. Space ran out at the hospital's morgue, and bodies, some of them missing limbs, had to be placed on the ground. In another attack, a suicide bomber killed 21 people and wounded 27 in the west of Baghdad, a U.S. army spokesman said. He said that the bomber had been on foot. He said that none of the casualties had been from coalition forces.

Politician espcapes assasination

Elsewhere, an Iraqi politician who drew notoriety after visiting Israel, escaped assassination Tuesday but his two sons were killed, an Interior Ministry official said. The politician, Mithal al-Alusi, who heads the Nation party, escaped the attack unhurt.

<snip>

[lebkuchen]

1. We're undertaking another huge unit rotation as well

Hope March won't be as bloody as the last one.

[MGKrebs]

2. I love the smell of liberty in the morning.

edited for proper pronoun usage.