Sunni Bomb Attack Kills 37 Shiites

(CBS/AP)  A bomb claimed by a little-known Sunni Arab extremist group killed at least 37 Shiites and wounded another 40 in Baghdad on Saturday as they stocked up fuel for Ramadan, just days after the U.S. military warned sectarian violence would surge during the Islamic holy month.

Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader also reappeared in an old video posted on the Internet just as Sunni Arabs declared the start of Ramadan.

Abu Ayyoub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, was shown killing a Turkish hostage — a possible signal to his Sunni Arab followers. In early September, he had called on Sunnis to step up attacks against American forces.

Iraq's armed forces said they made some headway against groups affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq, announcing the arrest of a senior leader of Ansar al-Sunnah — a radical Sunni group responsible for deadly attacks against U.S. forces, kidnappings and beheadings.

A Sunni extremist group, Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba — or Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions — claimed responsibility for the attack against Shiites in Sadr City, a sprawling slum that is home to more than two million people and a stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The group said it carried out the bombing to retaliate for a Friday attack by a death squad against Sunni Arab homes and mosques that killed four people in a mixed Baghdad neighborhood.

These attacks are part of the cycle of rising sectarian violence that has forced American and Iraqi troops to mount a massive security crackdown in the Iraqi capital, CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports.

But even that has so far failed to slow the killing, and the top U.S. General in charge of Baghdad says he still doesn't have the extra Iraqi troops he needs to get the job done, Logan reports.

In other developments:

U.S. military authorities are reporting the deaths of three American soldiers in Iraq Saturday. They say one died in a roadside bombing in Baghdad. Two other troops were killed after a bomb exploded near their patrol in a town 150 miles north of Baghdad. The U.S. command says three other soldiers were injured. No further details have been released.

A classified assessment of global terror by U.S. intelligence agencies found that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has contributed to the birth of a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that terror is on the rise since the attacks of 9/11, the New York Times reported on its Web site Saturday.

An al Qaeda-linked group posted a Web video Saturday purporting to show the bodies of two American soldiers being dragged behind a truck, then set on fire in apparent retaliation for the rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman by U.S. troops from the same unit.

In one success against al Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqi officials announced the arrest of a senior leader in the linked Ansar al-Sunnah group. Muntasir Hamoud Ileiwi al-Jubouri and two of his aides were captured near Muqdadiyah, 56 miles northeast of Baghdad late Friday, Brig. Qassim al-Mussawi, spokesman for the General Command of the Armed Forces, told The Associated Press. The Sunni militant group has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide attacks, the August 2004 execution of 12 Nepalese hostages and a December 2004 explosion at a U.S. military mess hall in Mosul that killed 22 people.

In northern Beiji, about 155 miles north of Baghdad, gunmen threw the decapitated heads of 10 Iraqi army soldiers into a popular open-air market, police said.

In Kut on Saturday, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, eight apparent death squad victims were turned in to the morgue. They had been dumped into the Tigris river.

Iraqi insurgents are no longer using just volunteers as suicide car bombers but are instead kidnapping drivers, rigging their vehicles with explosives and blowing them up, the Defense Ministry said Thursday. In what appears to be a new tactic for the insurgency, the ministry said the kidnap victims do not know their cars have been loaded with explosives when they are released.

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[ronniehm]

"Iraqi insurgents are no longer using just volunteers as suicide car bombers but are instead kidnapping drivers, rigging their vehicles with explosives and blowing them up, the Defense Ministry said Thursday. In what appears to be a new tactic for the insurgency, the ministry said the kidnap victims do not know their cars have been loaded with explosives when they are released."

I guess they're running out of idiots. They've gone to the draft. Who says were helping them recruit?

[drgoodwin12]

We are into our second month of cracking down with more U.S. troops in Baghdad and the violence has not abatted.The Iraqi goverment and members of its military obviously have ties to the insurgents,militias and terrorist. How else could a member of the goverment be kidnapped with 19 bodyguards in broad daylight?No news organiztion has followed up on that story(this occurred about May).Iraq with the new death tolls for July and August has slipped past that thin grey line of civil war.We are caught in the quagmire and do not have the leadership to tell the Iraqi goverment and military to shape up.