World

70 Killed In Surge Of Iraq Violence

August 2, 2006 / 10:14 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Bombings and shootings claimed more than 70 lives Tuesday in a surge of violence as U.S. forces prepare to take back Baghdad's streets from the gunmen. The dead included 20 Iraqi troops killed in a bus attack and 14 people killed in a car bomb explosion at a bank where soldiers and police were getting their pay.

Officials confirmed that about 45 Shiites had been kidnapped over the last two weeks on the main highway to Syria and Jordan — which passes through Sunni insurgent strongholds west of Baghdad.

The deadliest attack Tuesday occurred when a roadside bomb devastated a bus packed with Iraqi soldiers near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. All 24 people aboard the bus were killed, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said.

All but four of the dead were Iraqi soldiers, police said.

In other developments:

A nephew of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was killed in combat July 29th in Iraq. Marine Cpl. Phillip E. Baucus, 28, died in the province of Al Anbar, the Department of Defense said.

The U.S. military announced Tuesday that an American soldier assigned to the 16th Corps Support Group died Monday before when a roadside bomb struck a supply convoy south of the capital.

A British soldier was fatally wounded in a mortar barrage before dawn Tuesday on a British base in the southern city of Basra, Britain's defense ministry said. Britain has lost 115 soldiers in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. There was no claim of responsibility for the barrage.

A Sunni Arab politician, Mohammed Shihab al-Dulaimi, was kidnapped Tuesday in Baghdad, his associates said. Al-Dulaimi is the spokesman for a coalition of political groups that rejected the results of the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.

Top Democrats in the House and Senate called on President Bush to begin pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. In a letter to the president released Monday, the Democrats – including Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and his House counterpart Nancy Pelosi – backed a plan for the "phased redeployment" of troops.

The Iraqi government said Monday that 30,359 families have fled their homes to escape sectarian violence from mid-February until July 30, or roughly 182,000 people. Baghdad accounted for the highest number of displaced.

In Baghdad, 14 people died and 37 were injured when a car bomb exploded in the Karradah district at bank where police and soldiers were picking up their salaries at the first of the month, police Lt. Col. Abbas Mohammed Salman said.

The blast set several other cars ablaze and scattered dismembered bodies along the street as bystanders carried limp bodies of the injured to awaiting ambulances.

"A big explosion slammed me four meters (12 feet) into a wall," said Abdul-Hassan Mohammed, 62, a retired teacher who had gone to the bank to pick up his monthly pension. "My friends took me to one of their stores, gave me water and asked me to relax ... I didn't even get my pension," he said.

"I was uncomfortable from the beginning as I knew today is pay day," said Salman Hamid, 50, a vegetable and fruits vendor. "Karradah used to be a nice, calm neighborhood. Now it is the most dangerous place," he said.

It was the third major attack in less than a week in Karradah, a fashionable, mostly Shiite neighborhood in central Baghdad and home to several prominent Iraqi Shiite politicians. Last Thursday 31 people were killed in a massive attack that included rockets, mortars and a car bomb.

On Monday, gunmen dressed in military fatigues abducted 26 people from the offices of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and a nearby mobile phone company.

In Najaf, Gov. Assad Abu Kilal said 45 people from his province had gone missing while traveling by bus through the Sunni-dominated area west of Baghdad. He demanded the government take measures to stop it or he would send his own forces to protect the road.

A senior Interior Ministry official, Saadoun Abu al-Ula, confirmed that more than 45 people from the Najaf area had been seized on the highway but said "it's been going on for the past two weeks — like two or three people snatched per day."

U.S. officials have also grown alarmed over the rise in Sunni-Shiite violence and the role of sectarian militias. Those tensions are now considered a greater threat to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki than the Sunni insurgents.

The U.S. military is moving at least 3,700 soldiers from Mosul to Baghdad and is gearing up for a new security operation to take back the streets of the capital from Shiite militias, Sunni insurgents, kidnap gangs, rogue police and freelance gunmen.

U.S. officials have described the Baghdad campaign as a "must-win" for al-Maliki, whose national unity government has been unable to curb the rise in violence since it took office May 20. American troops will work alongside U.S.-trained Iraqi forces, which have been overwhelmed by the surge in sectarian violence.

As part of the campaign against militias, U.S. troops Tuesday arrested a local Baghdad area representative of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army is among the most feared armed groups.

The arrest of Sheik Ahmed al-Ashmani was reported by al-Sadr's staff, which said 10 other members of the cleric's movement were detained. There was no confirmation from the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, gunmen ambushed a minibus carrying employees of a power station to their homes in the Shiite district of Sadr City, killing five passengers and wounding six, police said.

A car bomb killed seven people, six of them civilians, Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad and a flashpoint of Sunni-Shiite tensions. Three Iraqi soldiers were killed Tuesday evening when a suicide car bomber attacked a checkpoint in the northern city of Tal Afar, the Iraqi army said.

The other victims reported by police died in a series of small scale shootings and bombings, mostly in Baghdad.