Iraqi policemen inspect the wreckage of a car used in a car bomb attack on a road in south Kirkuk, 255 kms (160 miles) north of Baghdad. Gunmen dressed as local security forces on Tuesday stormed into a heavily guarded state compound in Baghdad to kidnap the deputy oil minister in the highest profile abduction in Iraq for months.(AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)
10 Killed in Iraq Bridge Bombing
By JON ELSEN and DAMIEN CAVE
New York Times
A suicide attack on a bridge north of Baghdad killed 10 people today while disrupting an American supply route, as American and Iraqi forces began a big push north of the capital.
It was the second time in four months that the strategic bridge has been struck. This time, the explosion rendered the span unusable and sent at least three vehicles plunging 25 feet into a branch of the Tigris River. In addition to the 10 deaths, 6 people were injured.
The bridge connects two parts of Taji, a town near an American air base some 12 miles north of the capital, on the main road to Tikrit and other Sunni areas to the northwest.
In May, a car bomb damaged one lane of the two-lane bridge; the explosion early today destroyed the other.
The attacker detonated his payload after going through an Iraqi army checkpoint about 40 yards away from the span, The Associated Press reported, citing police.
American troops and divers pulled several bodies out of the river soon after the explosion.
Some 16,000 American and Iraqi troops began an operation north of Baghdad today that was aimed at insurgents who have fled a crackdown in Baquba, news services reported, citing the military.
The push, called Operation Lightning Hammer, began with a late-night air assault.
“Our main goal with Lightning Hammer is to eliminate the terrorist organizations,” said Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of American forces north of Baghdad, in a statement. Referring to a province in the area, General Mixon said the goal was to “show them that they truly have no safe haven — especially in Diyala.”
The operation is part of a broader American push, announced on Monday, that is meant to build on successes in Baghdad and surrounding areas by taking aim at the Sunni Arab insurgent group called Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and at Iranian-allied Shiite militia fighters around the country.
General Mixon said troops were pursuing militant cells that had been disrupted and forced into hiding by previous operations.
On Monday, three American soldiers were killed in an explosion near their vehicle in the province of Ninevah in the northwest. Another American soldier died during fighting in Baghdad on Monday, Reuters reported, citing a statement from the military.
Employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad and Taji, Iraq.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Suicide bomber destroys key Iraqi bridge
14 Aug 2007, 2126 hrs IST,AFP
Times of India
BAGHDAD: A suicide truck bomber destroyed a key bridge outside Baghdad on Tuesday, as US and Iraqi troops swept through flashpoints seeking to rein in militants ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The blast shattered the concrete bridge linking Baghdad to northern provinces and sent cars and three civilian plunging into the river below, killing eight people, security officials said.
In other violence, a car bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police Colonel Burhan Tayeb said.
Eight others, including three policemen, were wounded in the attack. In another brutal attack, the pregnant wife of a police chief was gunned down while four people were shot dead while they lay sleeping on a rooftop in Iraq.
The US military, meanwhile, reported that another five American were soldiers killed.
The insurgent attacks came despite a massive operation -- codenamed Phantom Strike -- launched on Monday targeting Shiite extremist networks and insurgents affiliated to Al-Qaeda.
The US military said four suspected Shiite militants were killed in a raid on Baghdad's volatile slum of Sadr City on Tuesday while dozens of others were arrested during crackdowns in other parts of the country.
Sadr City is a notorious bastion of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and the target was a "rogue" militia leader and his operatives suspected of attacks against US forces in Baghdad, the military said.
"These militants are also known to have ties to illicit materials smuggled from Iran that have been used in extra-judicial killings," it said, adding that they had broken away from the main Mahdi Army militia of Sadr.
The US military accuses Shiite militants and Sadr's Mahdi Army of being behind the deaths of thousands of Sunni Arabs since Iraq's relentless sectarian conflict broke out last year.
It claims some of the militants are members of special cells trained, armed and funded by Iranian-linked groups to launch attacks on US-led forces. Tehran denies it sponsors the militants.
Some 16,000 troops, meanwhile, have surged into restive Diyala province in an attempt to crack down on Sunni insurgents and "capture or kill Al-Qaeda responsible for the violence against Iraqi civilians," the military said.
Operation Lightning Hammer was launched late Monday in the province, the second most dangerous after Baghdad, with an "air assault into targeted locations," he added.
The nationwide crackdown is an attempt to curb violence ahead of Ramadan -- the Muslim month of fasting -- which begins in the second week of September.
General David Petraeus, the head of coalition forces in Iraq, is also due to give a crucial progress report on operations in Iraq in early September, a report that could radically affect Washington's war strategy.
The US military said separately that more than a dozen Shiite militants, mostly "rogue" elements of the Mahdi Army responsible for bombings and murders, have been arrested elsewhere in the country since Phantom Strike began.
Eight of those picked up in Baghdad were described as "high-level leaders linked to JAM (Jaish al-Mahdi) special groups that carry out attacks on Iraqi and coalition forces."
Sadr, who enjoys grassroot support among Iraqi Shiites, is a powerful political player in the embattled government led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has called for a summit this week of senior leaders from Iraq's bitterly divided communities to try to salvage his crumbling coalition.
Some of Iraq's leaders were already holding preparatory talks ahead of the summit.
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, the senior Sunni Arab in the government, met Massud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq, and was set to meet other Kurdish leaders on Wednesday.
On Monday, the influential Barzani also met Maliki and President Jalal Talabani to discuss the upcoming meeting of political leaders, for which no precise date has been publicly announced.
But lawmaker Omar Abdul Sattar from the main Sunni bloc, the National Concord Front that walked out of the coalition on August 1, feared Maliki would blame the opposition parties "for the political mess" at the upcoming summit.
Despite the crackdown, police reported that gunmen slaughtered the pregnant wife of a police officer, his brother and 12-year-old son in the town of Suweira, 50 kilometers south of Baghdad.
In another pre-dawn attack, gunmen killed three women and a man in the mainly Shiite village of Ghraiya, in Diyala, a local medic said.
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