Iraq Suicide Bomber Kills At Least 17

35 Wounded; Truck Exploded In City Bush Cited As A Success Story

(CBS/AP)  A suicide truck bomber hit a crowded public market in the northern city of Tal Afar late Tuesday, killing at least 17 people and wounding 35, police said. U.S. troops rushed to the scene to treat the injured, officials said.

The attack occurred about 8:30 p.m. in the center of Tal Afar, according to Col. Abdul-Karim Mohammed of the Nineveh provincial police, who gave the casualty figures. The director of the city hospital, Saleh Qado, said 20 people were killed and 70 injured.

Officials said the blast occurred near closing time as people packed the market to finish their shopping. Qado said U.S. medics were providing first aid to the injured on the scene before they were transported to his hospital.

Lt. Col. Ali Rasheed of Iraq's Interior Ministry said the death toll was between 15 and 20 and the attack occurred near a police station within the market area.

In March, President Bush cited Tal Afar, a mostly Turkomen city 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, as a success story after U.S. troops regained control there last year.

U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an operation in September aimed at cleansing the city of insurgents, the second such attempt in a year.

In other developments:

A U.S. soldier was killed in a bombing in east Baghdad, the U.S. military said Tuesday. The soldier died Monday but the American statement gave no further details.

Iraq's prime minister-designate said Tuesday the main stumbling blocks to forming a new Cabinet have been overcome and he expects to present his team to parliament for approval by the end of the week. Nouri al-Maliki said representatives of the country's political parties agreed on what factions would hold the "main posts" but were still discussing the distribution of "a few" of them, including the ministries of oil, trade and transportation, he said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the killing of an Iraqi reporter and a media worker whose bodies were discovered south of Baghdad on Monday. Laith al-Dulaimi, a reporter for Al-Nahrain, and Muazaz Ahmed Barood, a telephone operator for the station, were kidnapped and shot by men disguised as police officers at Diyala Bridge while driving home.

Suspected insurgents stopped a bus Monday carrying Higher Education Ministry employees to work in western Baghdad, fatally shooting the driver and wounding a policemen who was working on the bus as a guard, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

A chemical weapons expert for a major Islamic extremist group was killed by security forces, American and Iraqi officials said Monday. Ali Wali, a member of Ansar al-Islam, died at about 1 p.m. Saturday during a raid on a suspected militant safe house in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour, the command said in a brief statement.Wali's body was recovered from the scene by civilians and later identified at a morgue, the officials said.

However, by the end of September, a woman suicide bomber slipped into a crowd of recruits, killing at least six people and wounding 30.

Since then, the city has been hit by several suicide attacks. In October, a suicide bomber plowed his explosives-packed vehicle into a crowded outdoor market, killing 30 and wounding 45.

In March, another suicide bomber struck a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base near the city, killing at least 15 and wounding as many as 30.

A month later at least six people were killed in the city in another suicide attack.

In addition to the suicide attack Tuesday, in other violence, two drive-by shootings killed four Iraqis in Baghdad, including Raad Mohammed al-Dulaimi, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni Arab political party. A roadside bomb also hit a police car in Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding two.

The bodies of 17 Iraqis were found: five in the capital; one in northern Iraq; eight, including a 10-year-old boy, in a river 30 miles south of Baghdad; and three Interior Ministry police commandos in Mahawil, 45 miles south of the capital.

They all appeared to be victims of sectarian death squads that have kidnapped and killed hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis in the last few months and dumped their bodies on city streets or in remote areas. Insurgents sometimes carry out such killings to punish Iraqis who are working for Iraq's military, police forces or government.


©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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