String Of Attacks Rattles Iraq

Suicide Bomber Kills 4; Violence Amid Plan To Quiet Insurgency





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(CBS/AP) Unrelenting violence took over Iraq Thursday, which the prime minister says can be ended by bringing insurgents into the political process.

Iraqi police say a suicide car bomber struck a funeral in Kirkuk, killing 4 people and wounding 27. Meanwhile, a trash collector and the head of security for Baghdad University were also slain Thursday.

At least six other deaths were reported in the capital, including two merchants, a baker, an electrical worker and a woman sitting in her car with three of her sons, who were wounded. Police also found the body of a man who had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the head in western Baghdad.

The violence came a day after insurgent and government officials said 11 militant groups have offered an immediate halt to all attacks, including those on American troops, if the United States agrees to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq in two years.

Withdrawal is the centerpiece of a set of demands from the groups, which operate north of Baghdad in the heavily Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala. Although much of the fighting has been to the west, those provinces are increasingly violent and attacks there have crippled oil and commerce routes.

The trash collector, a Shiite, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting early Thursday in western Baghdad, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

Gunmen in a civilian car also intercepted a car carrying Kadhim Challoub, who was in charge of the guards at Baghdad University, ordered his driver and his guard out, then killed the security chief on the eastern side of the capital, according to police Lt. Mohammad Khayoun.

A roadside bomb aimed at a police patrol in northern Baghdad missed its target but killed one civilian and wounded another.

In other recent developments:

  • Gunmen on a motorcycle killed a policeman and attackers firing from a car shot to death a 34-year-old man in separate attacks in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, health officials said.

  • Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu said Thursday he ordered the defense minister to withdraw Romania's 890 troops from Iraq because of high casualty levels and the cost of the operation. "The death and serious injury of Romanian soldiers is becoming a concern," said Tariceanu.

  • Osama bin Laden will issue a videotaped message paying tribute to slain al Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a message posted on an Islamic militant Web site said Wednesday. The message did not say when the video would be posted or whether bin Laden himself would appear in the video. The al Qaeda leader has issued three audiotapes this year but has not appeared in a video since one issued on Oct. 29, 2004.

  • National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said a key al Qaeda suspect wanted in the bombing of a Shiite shrine, a Tunisian identified as Yousri Fakher Mohammed Ali, was captured. However, he said the Iraqi mastermind of the attack that pushed the country to the brink of civil war, Haitham Sabah Shaker Mohammed al-Badri, was at large. There never was a claim of responsibility for the bombing.

  • A Marine and one-time recruiter who appeared in Michael Moore's documentary film "Fahrenheit 9/11" has died in a roadside bombing in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar, 30, died Monday of wounds suffered while conducting combat operations in Iraq's volatile Anbar province, the Defense Department said Tuesday.

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