BAGHDAD, Iraq — A car bomb exploded outside a police station in the
northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday, killing at least five people and
injuring 53 others, police said. The blast followed a night of clashes
between U.S. troops and insurgents that killed 12 Iraqis and wounded 39
others in the battleground city of Fallujah, west of the capital.
Northwest of Baghdad, insurgents detonated a bomb late Saturday that
wounded four U.S. troops, who shot dead one attacker, the military said
Sunday.
In central Baghdad, guerrillas set off a roadside bomb Sunday that
killed two civilians and wounded two others, said policeman Fawad Allah.
A driver for the British Broadcasting Corp. suffered
non-life-threatening wounds to the head, the BBC's Baghdad bureau chief
said. The blast sent plumes of black smoke rising above Abu Nawas
street, on the eastern bank of the Tigris River.
Meanwhile, U.S. authorities released 128 prisoners from the Abu Ghraib
prison, west of Baghdad, bringing the total number of detainees released
since January to 7,000.
The 8 a.m. blast in Mosul occurred when a white four-wheel drive vehicle
sped into a restricted entrance outside the Summar police station,
prompting guards to open fire, said Abdella Zuheir, a policeman at the
scene. The vehicle then came to halt and exploded, he said.
The bomb killed at least five people, including three police, said Abdel
Azil Hafoudi, an officer at al-Salam hospital. He said 53 people were
wounded, 8 police officers among them.
Insurgents have been pressing a campaign to destabilize the interim
government despite last month's transfer of sovereignty from the U.S.
occupation authority. About 160,000 coalition troops, mostly Americans,
remain in Iraq.
"We were expecting such terrorist attacks against us," Zuheir said.
"This is a cowardly act."
Witnesses said the police station was also damaged, along with five cars
and several nearby shops.
The blast left a nine-foot crater and spread shattered glass and debris
across the road. The engine of one car, presumably that of the bomber,
was laying in the road. One policeman sat outside the station weeping.
In Fallujah, 12 people were killed and 39 wounded during fighting late
Saturday and early Sunday in the eastern part of the city, a Health
Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. The U.S. military said
it had killed 10 assailants during the clashes.
Huge explosions were heard in Fallujah overnight as U.S. forces briefly
entered the city, residents said. Clashes occurred on the eastern edge
of the city and U.S. helicopters fired up to eight rockets into an
industrial area, they said.
The U.S. military said assailants firing mortars, machine-guns and
rocket-propelled grenades "repeatedly attacked a position held by
Marines," who returned fire with tanks but suffered no casualties.
"The fire was directed at enemy fighters in civilian attire observed
firing several hundred meters (yards) away," the statement said.
Coalition aircraft dropped guided bombs on a building in an industrial
zone, from where "at least 20-armed men were observed firing," the
statement said.
Elsewhere, four U.S. 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded when
guerrillas attacked their patrol in Samarra, northwest of Baghdad, with
a roadside bomb just before midnight Saturday, said military spokesman
Maj. Neal O'Brien.
The patrol returned fire on a palm grove, killing one of the attackers,
he said.
In other violence, two policemen were killed and three injured when
their truck was attacked by insurgents in Haswa, 40 miles south of
Baghdad on Saturday, police Lt. Ali Aubeid said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi militants said they kidnapped two Turks and threatened
to behead them within 48 hours, the latest in the country's unrelenting
wave of abductions.
The Tawhid and Jihad group of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
demanded the Turks' employers leave Iraq in a video aired on Al-Jazeera
television, which showed three masked, black-garbed gunmen standing
behind two seated men holding various forms of identification, including
what apparently were Turkish passports.
Al-Jazeera identified the men as two Turkish truck drivers working for a
Turkish company delivering goods to U.S. forces in Iraq. The network
said the militants threatened to decapitate the men if their demands
were not met.
The video did not indicate when the 48-hour period ends.
Militants loyal to al-Zarqawi have claimed responsibility for a number
of bloody attacks and beheadings of previous foreign hostages, including
U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean translator Kim Sun-il and
Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov.
Also Sunday, efforts intensified to secure the release of seven foreign
truck drivers - three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian - taken
captive by other insurgents. India sent its ambassador to Oman, Talmiz
Ahmed, to Iraq to help in the negotiations, and the drivers' Kuwaiti
employer sent a representative to meet with tribal leaders acting as
mediators.
Rana Abu-Zeina, spokeswoman for the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co.,
said negotiations were going well.
"God willing within hours or, at the maximum, a day or two the problem
will be solved," she told Al-Arabiya television station on Sunday.
More than 70 foreigners have been kidnapped by insurgents in recent
months in a campaign aimed at pushing out international troops and
companies backing U.S. troops and reconstruction efforts.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Find a Car
