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Two Car Bombs Kill 7 In Baghdad

Car bombs exploded during morning rush hour in two business districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing as many as seven people and wounding 19, including three American soldiers, officials said.

The worst blast occurred near a cinema in al-Nasr Square, a main intersection of shops, offices and apartment buildings, sending a huge plume of black smoke up into the sky near the east side of the Tigris River, said an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

A police officer with the Interior Ministry said on condition of anonymity that at least seven people were killed and 16 wounded by a suicide car bomb as it exploded just as a U.S. military convoy of Humvees and armored vehicles was passing. Al-Arabiya television confirmed those casualty figures.

A U.S. military spokeswoman, Capt. Kelly Lewis, confirmed the car bomb attack, but said it apparently targeted an Iraqi army patrol, wounding at least 10 Iraqis, including security forces and civilians. Three American soldiers were also wounded, Lewis said, but she could not confirm whether they were part of a convoy.

Firefighters and ambulances raced to the scene, where at least five heavily damaged vehicles were burning. Police fired warning shots in the air to force away a crowd of people gathering at the scene and closed the area, the AP reporter said.

About an hour later, three policemen were wounded when a car bomb exploded several miles to the south of al-Nasr Square in Abu Nawas, an area of the capital once famous for its riverside restaurants and nightclubs, police said.

Black smoke rose into the sky behind the U.S.-protected Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament meets and many embassies are located.

In other recent developments:

  • Gunmen kidnapped the governor of Iraq's western Anbar province Tuesday and told his family he would be released when U.S. forces withdraw from Qaim, the site of a major new offensive against followers of Iraq's most-wanted militant, relatives said. Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi, his brother, Hammad, told The Associated Press.
  • Italy's foreign minister suggested Tuesday that Italian troops could stay in Iraq into early 2006 after Iraqi elections are held. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had previously said a withdrawal could begin in September. Asked by reporters when Italy's 3,000-strong contingent would return, Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said the pullout could coincide with "the final act of the U.N. path" setting elections in December. He said, though, that the elections themselves could be delayed by another month or two, thus pushing back any pullout. "I don't think perspectives will be longer than that," he said.
  • Japan's defense chief said Tuesday that the apparent kidnapping of a Japanese man by a militant group in Iraq will not affect Tokyo's troop deployment there. The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed on its Web site that it had kidnapped Akihiko Saito, 44, after ambushing a group of five foreign contractors. It said Saito was "seriously injured" and the others had died. The site carried a photocopy of his passport, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry confirmed it was authentic, but said officials were still rushing to verify information about the case.
  • The military reported that a U.S. Marine was killed Monday by a homemade bomb in a town near Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad.

    U.S. forces backed by helicopter gunships and warplanes swept through a large area of western Iraq near the Syrian border for a third day Tuesday, raiding desert outposts and safe houses belonging to insurgents, the U.S. military said.

    As many as 100 militants have been killed since Operation Matador, one of the largest American military offensive in Iraq in six months, began Saturday night in the border town of Qaim, 200 miles west of Baghdad, the military said.

    At least three U.S. Marines have been killed in the offensive, which was hunting for followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, said U.S. officials.

    A fourth U.S. Marine died Monday, but it was not immediately clear if that happened during the offensive, the military said.

    A Los Angeles Times reporter embedded with the offensive said 20 U.S. troops also were wounded, but the U.S. military could not immediately confirm that.

    On Tuesday, fighting was reported in Obeidi, 185 miles west of Baghdad, and the two nearby towns of Rommana and Karabilah, an Associated Press reporter in the region said. He said large numbers of Qaim residents were fleeing the area.

    On Monday night, insurgents attempted to launch a counterattack 5 miles from U.S. Camp Gannon in Qaim, said U.S. Marine Capt. Jeffrey Pool. They attacked a Marine convoy with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and two suicide car bombers, Pool said in a statement.

    One bomb damaged an armored Humvee, and a suicide car bomber was destroyed by a Marine tank, but no Marines were killed and 10 insurgents surrendered, Pool said.

    The offensive by more than 1,000 Marines, sailors and soldiers included helicopter gunships, fighter jets, tanks and light armored vehicles. U.S. officials described the area as a known smuggling route and a haven for foreign fighters involved in Iraq's insurgency.

    The New York Times reported Tuesday that Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighters dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs and fired 510 20-millimeter cannon rounds Sunday against insurgents around Qaim and that Marine F/A-18 fighters fired 319 20-millimeter cannon rounds.

    The paper quoted U.S. Col. Bob Chase, chief of operations for the Second Marine Division, as saying: "The enemy honestly felt that they had a sense of security up there. It had been a safe haven, and a lot of folks up there were former Baathists," referring to Saddam Hussein's former ruling party.

    "Now it is no longer a safe haven, and it will never be a safe haven again," said Chase. He was quoted as saying insurgents have had a network of illegal "rat lines" of men and materials moving from Syria into Iraq that had to be stopped, and said the offensive would continue for several days.

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