BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber driving a tanker truck struck an Iraqi army checkpoint outside the capital on Saturday, killing at least 13 soldiers in the deadliest of a series of attacks against Iraqi forces as they try to take over their country's security.
In southern Iraq, an apparent rocket attack at the U.S.-run Camp Bucca detention facility killed at least six detainees and wounded 50, the military said. No American casualties were reported.
The U.S. military oversees some 21,000 inmates at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport. Military officials refuse to give a breakdown of how many prisoners are at each facility but say the majority are at Camp Bucca.
Diplomatic tensions also rose, with the Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoning the Turkish charge d'affaires and calling for an immediate halt of cross-border shelling into northern Iraq, saying such actions "undermine confidence between the two nations and negatively affect their friendship." The statement was the first government confirmation of the shelling.
Turkey has been building up its forces along the border with Iraq and scattered shelling has been reported while its leaders debate whether to stage a major incursion to pursue separatist Kurdish rebels who cross over from bases in Iraq to attack Turkish targets — an operation that could ignite a wider conflict involving Iraqi Kurds and draw in the United States.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, confirmed the meeting between Mahmoud and Turkish charge d'affaires Ahmet Yazal, but denied it was a "protest."
An American soldier was killed Saturday by small-arms fire in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, the military said. The death raised to at least 3,502 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Diyala, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency, has become increasingly dangerous since the beginning of the Baghdad security operation nearly four months ago. Militants have fled the capital to avoid capture and forced the U.S. military to dispatch about 3,000 more American forces to Diyala from already overtaxed reinforcements arriving in Baghdad.
The explosion that killed the Iraqi soldiers happened near the gate of the army unit's headquarters in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the capital, provincial police spokesman Capt. Muthanna Khalid said, adding that 30 other people were wounded.
Amir al-Saadi, a 40-year-old vendor who works nearby, said the explosion flattened the building.
"The suicide driver detonated the oil truck near the building of the Iraqi army unit. The explosion was very huge and it caused the building to collapse," he said. "Police, soldiers and residents are searching for bodies and people who are still alive but buried under the rubble, while others are carrying the wounded to the hospital."
In Baghdad, a parked car bomb struck a convoy of Iraqi police commandos, killing one of them and a pedestrian and wounding seven other people, and gunmen elsewhere killed one policeman and wounded another while they were on a foot patrol.
A roadside bomb that apparently targeted a police patrol in eastern Baghdad instead struck a minibus, killing at least five people.
AP Television News footage showed a young boy with his hands and legs bandaged being wheeled in a chair into the overwhelmed emergency room. Men hugged each other on stretchers in relief that they were still alive, and a woman shrouded in black who was brought in on a stretcher with bare feet.
In Baqouba, the provincial capital of Diyala, two suicide bombers on foot blew themselves up at a police checkpoint, killing a policeman.
Iraqi military and police forces are frequent targets of al-Qaida-linked insurgents bent on ending the government's cooperation with U.S. troops in Baghdad and surrounding areas.
At least 766 Iraqi security personnel have been killed since a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown began on Feb 14. During the same length of time immediately preceding Feb. 14, at least 593 Iraqi security personnel were killed, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press. The actual number in both cases is likely higher as many killings go unreported or uncounted.
The attacks came a day after gunmen stormed a senior Iraqi police officer's home northeast of the capital, killing his wife, two brothers and 11 guards and kidnapping three of his grown children, police said.
In Baghdad, sporadic clashes erupted for nearly two hours in Amil, a dangerous neighborhood that has divided into a predominantly Sunni western half and an eastern side controlled by Shiite militiamen.
The fighting began when Iraqi army patrols came under attack in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood and returned fire, an army official said, declining to be identified because he did not have the clearance to speak to the media.
The official said four civilians were wounded and the situation was brought under control with help from U.S. forces. The army official said the clashes occurred on the Shiite side.
Source : news.yahoo.com
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