Blasts Rock Baghdad
Large explosions shook the center of the Iraqi capital late Saturday, only hours after a bomb detonated near a U.S. consular office in southern Iraq, killing one person and wounding another.
The blasts in Baghdad occurred about 10:10 p.m. and were part of a series of strong detonations that rattled the heart of the city throughout the day.
In the late night barrage, three or four projectiles - mortar shells or rockets - slammed into a group of apartment buildings off Firdos Square across the street from the Palestine and Sheraton hotels where many international journalists are based.
Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry official, said there were no reports of casualties around the apartment houses. Earlier Saturday, mortars or rockets exploded near the "Green Zone" in the capital, and at a U.S. in northern Baghdad but no casualties were reported.
In Basra, Iraq's major southern city, a bomb exploded outside a Saddam Hussein palace that now houses a U.S. consular office. Police said one person died and two were wounded - all believed to be Iraqis.
Also in Baghdad, a U.S. warplane launched an airstrike on militants loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Saturday as American and Iraqi forces attacked militants hunkered down in the sprawling eastern Baghdad slum of Sadr City.
In other developments:
The U.S. warplane fired on a team of militiamen manning a machine gun, said U.S. Capt. Brian O'Malley of the 1st Brigade Combat Team. Residents reported that gunfire rocked the city before the attack, but there was no word on civilian casualties.
"They spotted the team from the air...and they engaged and destroyed the team," O'Malley said.
To the north of the capital, more residents fled the city of Tal Afar amid a siege of the largely ethnic Turkish city where Iraqi and American forces say they are trying to root out hundreds of militants and restore government control, the military said.
The extent of the exodus was not immediately clear, but the military said the International Red Crescent was offering help and medical care to the displaced.
U.S. commanders have insisted they will limit traffic into and out of Tal Afar for as long as it takes to subdue what they said were foreign fighters holed up there. Lt. Col. Paul Hastings said U.S. forces and Iraqi National Guard troops are screening anyone who wants to return.
"They're very careful about letting people back in the city," he said, adding that the military wants to prevent foreign fighters from slipping back in.
The siege of Tal Afar, which the Americans describe as a hub for militants smuggling fighters and arms from Syria, has been criticized from within and outside Iraq.
A leading Shiite Muslim politician, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, said the Americans' caused "catastrophes" by using force - a situation that he said would have been avoided if the Iraqis were in charge of security. U.S. troops have said they were fighting "a large terrorist organization."
Turkey has also appealed to the United States to end its military operations in Tal Afar quickly because of the risk of civilian causalities among the city's ethnic Turk population.
The campaign was part of a recently launched American effort to restore government authority to lawless areas of the country - either through negotiation or by force.
In one city involved in a peaceful handover, Samarra, the U.S. Army reopened a bridge spanning the Tigris River. The main entry point into the city had been closed after attacks on U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.
The bridge was open for three hours in the morning and was to reopen for another three hours in the late afternoon, said Maj. Neal O'Brien, spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division.
Under the agreement with the Americans, U.S. troops will oversee reconstruction and development projects while Samarra's local leaders, in turn, will do what they can to guarantee that no one attacks them.
On Saturday, the U.S. military said Iraqi police raided a house north of Baqouba and arrested two Egyptian men along with a large cache of weapons, including bomb making gear and 20 Kalashnikov rifles.
Army Maj. John Reynolds, the operations officer of a 1st Infantry battalion based nearby, said the men appeared to belong to a cell of foreign fighters, perhaps conducting training for Iraqi insurgents in the area. A third Egyptian man escaped during the Friday raid, he said.
Iraqi police delivered the men to the U.S. Army, and they have since been shipped to the U.S. base at Baqouba, where they are being interrogated, Reynolds said.