World

Iraqi Explosions Kill More Than 30

August 28, 2006 / 8:47 AM EDT / CBS/AP

A wave of bomb attacks and shootings swept Iraq from north to south Sunday, killing nearly four dozen people despite a massive security operation in the capital and appeals from Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for an end to sectarian fighting.

Al-Maliki insisted bloodshed in Iraq was decreasing and that his government was making progress in efforts to combat sectarian clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, and attacks by insurgents.

"The violence is not increasing. We're not in a civil war. Iraq will never be in a civil war," he said through an interpreter on CNN's Late Edition. "The violence is in decrease and our security ability is increasing."

But the killings persisted, with at least 47 people dead across the country.

A group of assailants in three cars raked an open-air night market with gunfire Sunday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 25 others, police said.

The gunmen fired indiscriminately at throngs of people at the main market of Khalis, a mostly Shiite town, 50 miles north of Baghdad, said the Diyala provincial police.

The U.S. military command said two U.S. soldiers were killed — one by small arms fire in eastern Baghdad Sunday afternoon, and the other on Saturday night when the vehicle he was traveling in was hit by a roadside bomb southeast of the capital.

In downtown Baghdad, a bomb in a minibus exploded outside the Palestine Hotel, killing nine people and wounding 16, while a car bomb outside the offices of a government-run newspaper left three dead and at least 29 wounded, police and witnesses said.

Two back-to-back suicide car bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk — one of which targeted the house of a cousin of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani — killed nine people and wounded 22 Sunday evening, hours after an earlier suicide car bomb killed one person and wounded 16.

In Basra, Iraq's second largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, a motorcycle bomb at an open-air night market killed four people and wounded 15, the governor's office said.

Earlier in the day, another six people were killed when a bomb exploded in the town of al-Khalis, on the outskirts of Baqouba north of Baghdad.

In other developments:

Kidnapped Sunni lawmaker Tayseer al-Mashhadani was released Saturday after being held for nearly two months, an adviser to the prime minister and a senior official from her party said. Al-Mashhadani and seven of her bodyguards were seized July 1 by gunmen in a Shiite area of east Baghdad as they were traveling from nearby Diyala province to attend a parliament session the following day.

Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on two sisters walking in Iraq's second-largest city today. Iraqi police say one woman was killed in the Basra attack, the other seriously wounded. They both worked as translators for the British consulate. A man claiming to represent a Shiite militia has since called The Associated Press to take responsibility for the attack. He referred to the women as "agents" for British forces.

Republican Sen. John McCain said Friday he supports the U.S. mission in Iraq, days after faulting the Bush administration for misleading Americans into believing it would be "some kind of day at the beach." McCain said in a statement Friday: "I have never intended my concern that the American people be fully informed about the conduct and consequences of the war to indicate any lessening of my support for our mission there."

Thursday, top U.S. commanders expressed confidence that their deployment of 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers to Baghdad would stem sectarian violence. "I believe there is a danger of civil war in Iraq, but only a danger. I think Iraq's far from it," Abizaid said. Referring to the violence in Baghdad, Casey said: "I think everybody has seen an improvement in the situation in Baghdad over the last weeks because of the operations of the Iraqi security forces supported by the American Army."

The Baghdad car bombs came as the U.S. military said Iraqi and coalition forces were expanding a security operation in the capital that aims to crack down on violence neighborhood by neighborhood. Security forces were to conduct a cordon and search operation of all the buildings in the Sunni district of Azamiyah in north Baghdad, the U.S. military command said in a statement.

Since Aug. 7, about 12,000 additional U.S. and Iraqi troops have been brought in to the capital as part of the security effort, dubbed "Operation Together Forward," and have covered four of the most problematic of the capital's neighborhoods.

The security sweep has already "resulted in a 36 percent reduction of murders across the city of Baghdad," said Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad.

On Saturday, the prime minister appealed to Iraqis to support his national reconciliation plan to end the bloodshed.

But the persistent killings showed that his plan is still a distant goal, even though it was endorsed by hundreds of tribal chiefs at a conference on Saturday who signed a "pact of honor" to support the prime minister's effort.

The reconciliation plan seeks to bridge religious, ethnic and political divisions, which are tearing the country with almost daily violence that has left about 10,000 people dead since May when al-Maliki's government took office.

Among other things, the plan offers amnesty to members of the Sunni-led insurgency not involved in terrorist activities, calls for disarming primarily Shiite sectarian militias and promises compensation for families of Iraqis killed by U.S. and government forces.

But no major Sunni Arab insurgent groups has publicly agreed to join the plan, and many of the Shiite militias are controlled by legislators themselves. Al-Maliki hopes the tribal chiefs can help draw Iraqis away from violence.