22 Killed At Iraq Police Station
Insurgents attacked a police station south of Baghdad under cover of darkness Sunday, killing 22 Iraqi police and soldiers, police said. Gunmen seized four Egyptians technicians in Baghdad in the second kidnapping of foreigners in the Iraqi capital within a week.
Elsewhere, one U.S. soldier from Task Force Baghdad was killed and two others were wounded Sunday afternoon in a roadside bombing north of the capital, the U.S. command said. No further details were released.
Fourteen attackers also died in the nighttime clash in Mahawil, 50 miles south of Baghdad, police Capt. Muthana Khalid Ali said. The dead included five Iraqi National Guardsmen and 17 policemen, he said.
Earlier Sunday, the multinational command said two Iraqi National Guard soldiers were killed and three more injured Sunday in a rebel ambush in the same area.
Elsewhere, two rockets exploded near Baghdad International Airport and a third slammed into an Iraqi National Guard building in a western suburb. There were no reports of casualties.
In other developments:
Sunday's violence was the latest sign that insurgents are stepping up attacks against Iraq's fledgling security forces, which the United States hopes can assume a greater role in fighting the rebels once a newly elected government takes office.
The latest attacks and the re-emergence of kidnappings raise new concerns about security following a brief downturn in violence after the Jan. 30 elections, when Iraqis chose a new National Assembly in the first nationwide balloting since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
A final tally is expected by Thursday, but initial returns point to a landslide by Shiite Muslim candidates endorsed by their clerics. Shiites are believed to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
On the other hand, many Sunni Arabs, estimated at 20 percent of the population and the core of the insurgency, are believed to have stayed home, either out of fear of rebel reprisal or because of a boycott call by Sunni clerics.
Four Egyptians were seized early Sunday near the Mansour district of western Baghdad, Egyptian and Iraqi officials said. They worked for Iraqna, a subsidiary of the Egyptian firm Orascom Telecommunications, which operates the mobile phone network in Baghdad and central Iraq.
Six other Egyptians working for Iraqna were kidnapped in two separate incidents in September. All were ultimately freed although Orascom said at the time that it was committed to continuing its work in Iraq.
No group claimed responsibility for the latest abduction.
Two other foreigners — Brazilian engineer Joao Jose Vasconcelos Jr., and French journalist Florence Aubenas — were believed kidnapped last month. Al-Jazeera aired a claim of responsibility for Vasconcelos by a group that showed his identification cards. No group has claimed responsibility for kidnapping Aubenas.
More than 170 foreigners have been taken hostage in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, and some have been beheaded on graphic videos distributed on the Web or to Arab television stations.
The wave of abductions subsided after U.S. and Iraqi troops stormed the insurgent bastion of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, last November, discovering what U.S. officials termed "hostage slaughterhouses."
However, the abductions of five foreigners in Baghdad within three days raised fears of a new wave of kidnappings.
Elsewhere, an Iraqi civilian was wounded Sunday by a roadside bomb that exploded but missed an Iraqi police patrol in the southern port city of Basra, police said.
Attackers gunned down an Iraqi contractor who apparently worked with the U.S. military, and police in the Shiite city of Karbala reported that a suicide car bomber struck a U.S. convoy south of the city Sunday morning, destroying a U.S. vehicle. There was no word on casualties.
Elsewhere in the city, gunmen fired rifle shots at a gasoline tanker truck, and the vehicle exploded into a huge ball of fire. No one was hurt, said police Capt. Mushtaq Talib.
The tanker was heading to an illegal port used by oil smugglers in the city, Talib said.
In another attack, gunmen fired on a group of Iraqi policemen working to dismantle a roadside bomb on a main street in central Baghdad, injuring two officers, a police official said.