Baghdad Car Bomb Kills Two
A car bomb detonated by remote control exploded in a crowded central Baghdad square Thursday moments after an American military convoy passed, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding two others, the U.S. Army said. There were no U.S. casualties.
South of the capital, the bodies of 20 Iraqi truck drivers who had been shot were found dumped on a road, their hands bound behind their backs, police Capt. Ahmed Ismail said. Some of the trucks were owned by the government, Ismail said.
With violence on the rise after the Jan. 30 election, Iraqi authorities announced the country's borders would be sealed for five days this month around the time of a major Shiite religious holiday. Last year during the holiday, about 180 people were killed in suicide attacks at Shiite shrines.
Most of the latest attacks have been against Iraq's security forces in a bid to undermine public confidence after police and soldiers managed to prevent catastrophic attacks during the elections.
In the latest violence, gunmen fired on an Iraqi police patrol Thursday in Baqouba, north of Baghdad, setting off a gunbattle that killed a civilian bystander and wounded two police officers, a security official said. Assailants also gunned down a police lieutenant in Baqouba, the official said.
In other developments:
An insurgent video surfaced Thursday showing gunmen shooting to death four blindfolded men who identified themselves as Iraqi policemen. The video, which was obtained by Associated Press Television News, showed the four young men sitting cross-legged on the floor of a room. A date stamp on the video indicated it was recorded Feb. 3.
It was unclear where the policemen had been captured. The men in the video were seen in what appeared to be a remote desert area, kneeling down with their hands tied behind their backs and wearing blindfolds.
Several gunmen with assault rifles standing just steps away from the captives fire repeatedly at the men one by one, shooting them in the back of their heads.
Also in Mosul, American forces raided the house of a high-ranking Iraqi National Guard officer and arrested four of his security guards, an Iraqi officer said. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.S. forces burst into the house of Brig. Gen. Moataz Taqa, head of a security force command center, after dawn Thursday.
Taqa was not at home at the time, he said. A U.S. military spokesman said he had no information on the purported raid.
Iraqi officials, meanwhile, said they will have to recount votes from about 300 ballot boxes because of various discrepancies, delaying final results from the country's landmark national elections. Up to several thousand other ballots were declared invalid because of alleged tampering.
Election officials had expected to release final results Thursday from the vote for a National Assembly, provincial councils and a regional parliament for the autonomous Kurdish north. On Wednesday, however, election commission spokesman Farid Ayar said the deadline would not be met because of the recount.
"We don't know when this will finish," he said. "This will lead to a little postponement in announcing the results."