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Baghdad Blasts Mock US Claims of Iraqi Progress    [

    10 Workers Kidnapped from Baghdad Bakery
    By Qais Al-Bashir
    The Associated Press

    Sunday 18 June 2006

    Gunmen seized 10 workers from a bakery Sunday in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, while a car bomb exploded near a university in the northern city of Mosul, killing a woman and wounding 19 other people, police said.

    The scattered attacks came after a day of unrelenting violence that killed more than two dozen people as insurgents foiled heightened security measures, dealing a blow to the Iraqi government's pledge to bring peace to the capital.

    The U.S. military, meanwhile, combed through the "Triangle of Death," a predominantly Sunni Arab region south of the capital for a second day looking for two soldiers missing since an attack Friday on a traffic checkpoint that also killed one of their comrades.

    Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops also set up outposts Sunday west of Baghdad as part of an operation to establish Iraqi army bases in the volatile Sunni Arab city of Ramadi.

    U.S. commanders stressed that the operation was not a large-scale assault on the city, despite reports by Arab television networks and some Western outlets of an impending attack on the city similar to the 2004 operation to root out insurgents in Fallujah.

    They said it was an "isolation" tactic to prevent insurgents from receiving supplies or reinforcements from outside.

    Two long columns of U.S. and Iraqi armored vehicles met little resistance late Saturday as they encircled the southern side Ramadi, the capital of volatile Anbar province, although a handful of roadside bombs were discovered and detonated.

    Insurgents also fired two mortar shells that landed about 500 yards away from where the troops were establishing the outposts on Sunday. U.S. troops fired back, but no injuries were reported.

    In Baghdad, gunmen arrived in two cars, broke into the bakery and abducted the 10 workers in the northern suburb of Kazimiyah, police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said. It was the same neighborhood where a mortar shell struck a well-known market Saturday, killing four people and wounding 13.

    A mortar shell Sunday hit the al-Sadiq University for Islamic Studies on Palestine Street, one of the capital's main thoroughfares, wounding five students and a teacher, police Lt. Ahmed Qasim said.

    The Mosul car bomb was apparently directed at U.S. convoy. It exploded near Mosul University, and most of the 19 wounded were female students, police Brig. Abdel-Hamid Khala said.

    Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of 10 men who showed signs of torture in several areas of Baghdad, and the body of a man who was shot in the head was found in Karbala, 50 miles south of the capital.

    Witnesses who said they saw Friday's attack against the American troops in a volatile area south of Baghdad claimed the soldiers were led away by masked gunmen. The reports could not be confirmed and the U.S. military had no comment on them.

    Ahmed Khalaf Falah, a farmer, said three Humvees were manning a checkpoint when they came under fire from many directions. Two of the vehicles went after the assailants, but the third was ambushed before it could move, he told The Associated Press.

    Seven masked gunmen, including one with what he described as a heavy machine gun, killed the driver of the third vehicle, then took the two other U.S. soldiers captive, the witness said.

    The New York Times also reported in its Sunday editions that Iraqi residents in the area said they saw two U.S. soldiers taken prisoner by a group of masked guerrillas. It said the two surviving soldiers were led to two cars and driven away.

    The U.S. military said Sunday it was continuing the search but had no new information to provide.

    The farmer also said tensions were high in the area as U.S. soldiers raided some houses and arrested men. He said the Americans were setting up checkpoints on all roads leading to the area of the attack and helicopters were hovering at low altitudes.

    Falah did not give more details and no new raids were announced by the military early Sunday.

    The spree of bombings and mortar attacks in the Baghdad area - including eight attacks Saturday that killed at least 27 people and wounded 27 - was an embarrassment for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who ordered more police and army checkpoints for the city last week to restore security for its 6 million residents.

 

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    Baghdad Blasts Mock US Claims of Iraqi Progress
    By David Usborne
    The Independent UK

    Sunday 18 June 2006

Following death of Zarqawi and visit by Bush, leaders fail to bring end to cycle of violence.

    A series of explosions ripped through Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 23 people and dealing a shattering blow to the new Iraqi government's attempts to impose a security blanket on the capital.

    The seven separate blasts at locations across the city are likely similarly to frustrate the efforts of the White House to demonstrate a degree of progress in Iraq since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi earlier this month, and the surprise visit to Baghdad last Monday by President George Bush.

    In the meantime, a new Pentagon investigation revealed details of abusive treatment of detainees in Iraq early in 2004 by members of US special forces. The report said the soldiers were continuing to use interrogation techniques that had been ruled unacceptable several months earlier by the Pentagon because they were too harsh, including feeding one inmate on bread and water only for 17 days.

    After President Bush stressed to Iraqi leaders the importance of their taking greater responsibility for security, the new government responded on Wednesday with a huge deployment of forces in Baghdad designed to bring an end to the cycle of violence.

    The security campaign included a ban on the use of private cars during the hours of prayer on Friday. However, even that measure was thwarted when a suspected shoe bomber detonated a powerful explosion inside one of Baghdad's most important Shia mosques, killing 13 people.

    Police described scenes of carnage in the capital after yesterday's bombings, which began with a mortar attack on one of Baghdad's oldest markets in the prominently Shia suburb of Kazimiyah. At least four people died. Shortly afterwards another market was struck by a bomb left in a plastic bag, killing two civilians. And a car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol left seven dead and 10 wounded.

    The renewed violence comes as President Bush was seeking to take advantage of the death of Zarqawi to convince a sceptical American public that the situation in Iraq was starting to improve. However, a new CNN poll showed 54 per cent of Americans still believe the war was a mistake, and the political pressure on Mr Bush is growing in the run-up to crucial mid-term elections for the US Congress.

    The White House public relations campaign on Iraq is also being clouded by the investigation into claims that a group of US Marines went on a rampage in the town of Haditha in November 2005 and indiscriminately killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including 10 women and children. Against this background, the new Pentagon report on the conduct of Special Operations forces in Iraqi prisons, released in heavily censored form to the American Civil Liberties Union, threatens to make President Bush's job still more difficult.

    Some of the contents of the investigation, carried out by Brigadier General Richard Formica, were passed to members of Congress a year ago. No charges have been brought against the soldiers involved, as Gen Formica concluded that the problem lay with "inadequate police guidance" rather than "personal failure" on their parts.

    Aside from the man on a ration of bread and water, other detainees were locked in cells so small they could neither lie down nor stand for several days, while interrogators played loud music to stop them sleeping.

    The report also said that interrogators sometimes stripped detainees of their clothes, doused them with water and allowed them to stand shivering in air-conditioned rooms. It said one detainee subject to such treatment by Navy Seal interrogators in Mosul had died during questioning.