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    US Blames Iran-Backed Group for Baghdad Bombing
    Reuters

    Saturday 24 November 2007

    Baghdad - Iranian-backed militants were behind a bombing that killed 13 Iraqis at a Baghdad pet market, the U.S. military said on Saturday, raising concerns that Shi'ite militias might be switching tactics.

    U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said it appeared the Shi'ite militants wanted Friday's bombing, the deadliest attack in Baghdad in two months after a lull in violence, to look like the work of al Qaeda.

    Most big bombings that cause mass casualties are blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

    Shi'ite militias, many of which the military says are backed by Iran, are more commonly accused of sectarian killings and kidnappings rather than what the U.S. military calls "spectacular," or large-scale, bomb attacks aimed at civilians.

    Smith told a news conference that overnight raids by U.S. and Iraqi forces had captured four people who U.S. forces believed were responsible for the "horrific act of indiscriminate violence" at the pet market.

    The bomb, placed inside a birdcage, was packed with ball-bearings to maximize casualties.

    "Based on subsequent confessions, forensics and other intelligence, the bombing was the work of an Iranian-backed 'special groups' cell operating here in Baghdad," Smith said.

    Washington accuses Iran of funding, training and arming Shi'ite militias in Iraq. The military has often displayed weapons, including rockets and roadside bombs, it says have been supplied by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite Qods Force.

    Tehran denies the charge and blames the violence in Iraq, in which tens of thousands of people have been killed, on the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.

    "I'm not saying that yesterday Iran ordered the bombing of the pet market," Smith said. "What I'm telling you is that the forces that are inside Iraq that have historically received training, funding, equipping and so forth by Iran is the group responsible for that attack."

    "Twisted Intent"

    U.S. officials in Iraq had appeared to soften their tone towards Tehran in recent weeks, noting several positive developments in Iran's involvement in Iraq, although the military says Iranian influence is still widespread.

    Among those developments, U.S. officials have noted a ceasefire ordered in August by anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Mehdi Army militia which is accused of links to Iran.

    "This bombing demonstrates that there are individuals who continue to ignore Moqtada al-Sadr's pledge of a ceasefire," Smith said.

    In Sadr City, a sprawling Shi'ite slum and Mehdi Army stronghold in northeast Baghdad, thousands of Iraqis rallied on Saturday to pledge their support to the young cleric Sadr. Many carried banners reading "No, No America ... Yes, Yes Moqtada."

    Smith said those behind the market attack intended to make it look like the work of al Qaeda in order to convince Iraqis in the area they needed the protection of Shi'ite militias.

    "It was a very twisted intent ... but we accept that to be the motivation," he said.

    Violence has fallen across Iraq in recent months, with attacks down by 55 percent since an extra 30,000 U.S. troops became fully deployed in mid-June, and something like normal life has been returning to Baghdad.

    Baghdad officials reopened Abu Nawas street on Saturday, a famous thoroughfare along the Tigris River that was closed as residents retreated behind concrete blast walls at the height of the violence.

    "We will poke terrorism in the eye," said Lieutenant-General Abboud Qanbar, head of the Baghdad security plan.

    In the northern city of Mosul, two suicide bomb attacks against an Iraqi police checkpoint on Friday killed 21 people, Smith said, including 10 civilians. Police had previously said nine people were killed.

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    Editing by Dean Yates and Elizabeth Piper.

    Go to Original

    Mortars Hit Baghdad Green Zone
    By Waleed Ibrahim
    Reuters

    Thursday 22 November 2007

    Baghdad - Al Qaeda militants killed at least eight members of a neighborhood police unit in southern Baghdad on Thursday, raking them with machinegun fire from a stolen Iraqi army vehicle, police said.

    Separately, police said insurgents fired 10 mortar bombs at Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone just before dusk, in attacks coinciding with Thanksgiving.

    A Reuters witness said he saw what appeared to be a body hanging from a damaged minibus in the zone, which houses the U.S. embassy and many government ministries. Police said there were casualties, but had no details.

    The spike in violence ran against the trend of a sharp drop in attacks in recent months.

    Al Qaeda in Iraq militants opened fire on a neighborhood police patrol in the Hawr Rajab area of Baghdad, a mainly Sunni Arab area, approaching in at least one of two Iraqi army "humvees" they stole after shooting at least two Iraqi soldiers.

    An Interior Ministry official confirmed that eight "Awakening Council" police patrol members had been killed. He said three Iraqi soldiers were killed and another three were wounded, and that two al Qaeda gunmen had also been killed.

    The U.S. military said in a statement that two al Qaeda fighters were killed and two wounded when helicopters attacked a van being used by the militants in the attack. It said a U.S. F-16 warplane then dropped a 500-pound bomb on the vehicle.

    Mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone were almost a daily occurrence earlier this year but have fallen off dramatically, along with overall declines in levels of violence in Baghdad and elsewhere.

    The falls in attacks have been attributed to a "surge" of 30,000 extra U.S. troops, which became fully operational in mid-June, and the growing use of neighborhood police units.

    Mainly Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs have been organizing young men into the local police units, known as concerned local citizens, to drive out Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

    In a Thanksgiving message, Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno, the number two commander of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, said "remarkable progress" had been made on the security front.

    "We've now had more than 21 straight weeks of declining violence ... There is a renewed sense of optimism on the streets of Iraq and people around the world are rethinking what's possible here," he said in a letter to U.S. troops.

    Vehicles Seized

    Police at Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital said the two Iraqi army "humvee" vehicles had been seized at the start of the attack at Hawr Rajab. The police patrol did not challenge the occupants because they took them for soldiers.

    The bodies of eight of the patrol and two soldiers were taken to the Yarmouk hospital in western Baghdad, Iraqi police said. Another four were wounded.

    Reuters Television footage showed several coffins being loaded onto the back of a police truck to be taken to hospital. Another was tied to the top of a dilapidated car.

    A young woman and two toddlers, one of them crying, sat on the ground next to one simple wooden coffin.

    Separately, Iraqi soldiers supported by U.S. forces killed 19 al Qaeda fighters north of the city of Baquba, Major-General Abdul-Karim al-Rubaie, the head of Iraqi military operations in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, told Reuters.

    The al Qaeda fighters were killed in an area controlled by the al Qaeda-linked group Islamic State in Iraq, he said. Two members of a neighborhood police unit there were killed in the operation and another three were wounded.

    The neighborhood patrols, backed by the U.S. military as part of a counter-insurgency strategy, were pioneered last year in western Anbar, once the most dangerous province, and are spreading through other areas.

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    Additional reporting by Wissam Mohammed and Dean Yates; writing by Paul Tait, editing by Andrew Roche.