Baghdad Car Bomb Kills At Least 22

Attack Breaks 10-Day Period Of Relative Calm In Iraqi Capital

(AP)  A bomb tore through a busy square in Baghdad at midday Saturday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 54, the Iraqi army said, demonstrating the precariousness of the relative calm that Iraq has been enjoying for months.

An Iraqi soldier and two other people were killed in a separate bombing south of the capital, police said.

Although violence has dropped by more than 80 percent around Iraq and particularly Baghdad, devastating attacks still occur. Saturday's attack broke a 10-day period of comparative calm since the last major bombing in the Iraqi capital, which just one year ago was wracked by an average of 180 daily attacks and sectarian killings.

Police also said a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq fugitive was killed in a gunbattle with police in the western city of Ramadi. He was one of four suspected al Qaeda in Iraq members who escaped during a jailbreak and ensuing riot at a Ramadi police station on Friday that left six policemen and seven insurgents dead.

The U.S. military and Iraqi officials said the Baghdad blast occurred at al-Zahra square, in the northern Baghdad Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah. Associated Press Television News footage of the scene showed scorched vehicles peppered with shrapnel and an engine block that was all that remained of the car bomb.

The office of Iraqi army spokesman Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the blast killed at least 22 people, while a U.S. military spokesman, Capt. Charles Calio, said 20 were killed and 25 wounded. Conflicting casualty tolls are common in the chaotic aftermath of bombings in Iraq.

Also Saturday, an Iraqi soldier and two other people were killed when a car bomb exploded as they were trying to defuse it in Musayyib, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, according to local police.

The two nonmilitary victims were members of the local awakening council, also known as Sons of Iraq, one of several names used to refer to the Sunni insurgents and tribesmen who have turned against al Qaeda in Iraq and joined the U.S. military in the fight against the terror group, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

He said 10 other people were wounded in the blast. The U.S. military said three were killed in the blast and two injured, and that all were Iraqi soldiers, according to initial information.

In Ramadi, police said they killed the escaped prisoner, Emad Farhan, in a gunbattle inside the home of a family he had taken hostage. Three police were wounded but the family was not harmed, said the officer who could not be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Another man who escaped was arrested Friday, and police are still searching for two others.

Police in the northern city of Kirkuk also arrested six suspected insurgents, including the former driver of Hassan al-Majid - Saddam Hussein's cousin who is also known as "Chemical Ali," for ordering poison gas attacks against Iraq's Kurdish minority in the 1980s. Police Col. Bastoun Qafari said they were arrested in a pre-dawn raid. Earlier this month al-Majid received his second death sentence from an Iraqi court for his role in crushing a Shiite uprising in the wake of Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.

The U.S. military has said attacks are down from 180 a day last year to about 10 a day this year.

The last major bombing was on Dec. 17. On that day, 18 people were killed and 52 others wounded when a car bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad followed by a roadside bomb minutes later as police rushed to the scene, according to police and hospital officials. The U.S. military reported nine killed and 43 wounded.

On Dec. 11, a suicide bomber killed 55 people in a packed restaurant near the northern city of Kirkuk where Kurdish officials and Arab tribal leaders were trying to reconcile their differences over control of the oil-rich region.

[antoniof123]

More bad coming out of that area of the world.

Why are we there again?

WMD, freedom, democrocy and the rest but why?

They don''t want us there, they love to fight they have been doing it from the begining of recorded history and yet we are trying to get them to live together.

Let them kill each other it would be better for everyone involved.

[promaclaura]

O.K. earache4, I''m going to say it, "you''re such a fake"! You stated a while back that you wanted Saddam ousted during the 1st Gulf War, the one you served in. Saddam didn''t change, but you did and decided it was ok for him to stay in power. I say you can''t have it both ways, once you decide Saddam is evil and needs to go, that gut deep belief doesn''t just disappear due to partisan reasons or whoever is in office. YOU believed Saddam should go once and his tactics as a dictator didn''t change, but Bush hate changed your mind and that''s why I don''t respect your opinion.

[harbinger09]

About that surge and its effectiveness.......LOL

[runningralph]

The religion of peace strikes again.

[erb0087]

"I"ll be cheering when the American troops have left and the Iraqis are policing their own country."

It won"t be perfectly safe, but here in America we had an insane terrorist in a Santa Claus suit murdering people on Christmas Eve.

It isn"t perfectly safe here either.

[erb0087]

"Allah needed some fresh blood. And in the background liberals cheered."
Posted by downsteamjim at 07:46 PM : Dec 27, 2008

I"ll be cheering when the American troops have left and the Iraqis are policing their own country.

They should have been doing that a long time ago.

Saddam Hussein fell from power in 2003 -- almost 6 years ago.

[downtowner97]

Everyone in favor of Bush getting to go home early, raise your hand. I thought so.

[slinginrich]

....Asked for comment, a word, anything, from the President, spokesperson Dana Perino said that the President was busy with other, more pressing matters, like learning how to flip a burger, while actually keeping it on the grill, a goal which he has not yet mastered.

[hetup-2009]

That''s a nice made car to stand up to a bomb blast like it did. No UAW in that car plant

[downsteamjim]

Allah needed some fresh blood. And in the background liberals cheered.

[hetup-2009]

If we are occupying Irag to teach them democracy based on ours in the US. They are screwed, democracy doesn''t exist. Flip through this site and read the comments, I can''t say ***, ***, ***, or any other word you can hear on tv prime time. Poor *** in Irag, I feel for your poor ***.

[fleura-2009]

I am holding my breath now to be hearing from Condelica Rice. I used to think she had brains...with a PhD...now I am not so sure.

[fleura-2009]

We want to hear from the current Administration...

The Democrats need to hear from the Rice or Cheney or Bush-himself to make it more dramatic...

We need a word...PERIOD!

[fleura-2009]

no...they''d rather discuss and debate Carolin Kennedy''s non-questionable appointment by her own Yankees who so adore her.

What a bunch of mindless-brain-deads.

[fleura-2009]

What we True Democrats would love to see is somekind of Statement from the Bush-Clan. Something in the lines of "The Bush Administration supports or resents..."

Get me you people!!!

[fleura-2009]

Roscoe,

Welcome back...now drop the Tequilla okay...Hunuaka or Heinken break is over!!!

[samrt-2009]

What "relative calm?" I''ve been reading about incidents like this nearly daily -- mostly in the overseas media -- for months.

Which raises the question: If a bomb goes off in a Baghdad square and isn''t reported in the U.S. press, does it make a sound?

Evidently not.

[petro49l]

Iraq needs a police task force. Al Qada operates a sophisticated crime syndicate. Law enforcement does not rely on missiles, tanks, and rocket banks. George W. Bush seriously uses hard liquor, street narcotics, illicit porn, and gambling. President Obama must reduce American Troops in Iraq. Baghdad should purchase police technology and deploy SWAT Teams against Bin Laden''s Terrorists.

[hetup-2009]

Now we finally are beginning to see the truth which could not be told to the American public to protect the integrity of the USA silent services. When they said weapons of mass destruction, they were talking about every car in Irag is a car bomb. Now the invasion and occupation makes sense.

[smirk22-2009]

Bush told us two years ago that we had the enemy on the run in Iraq. Now, if that were true, the enemy would have run out of Iraq by now even if they were on the run very slowly. Yet, they can still strike Baghdad even today. I bet the enemy sleeps at night locally and never has been on the run.