Lethal Weekend For Iraq Insurgents
Insurgent violence has left a U.S. Marine and five American soldiers dead in separate incidents in Iraq this weekend, along with 15 civilians and eight insurgents.
The military says the Marine was killed yesterday when a U.S.-Iraqi patrol was ambushed in a firefight that began with a roadside bomb. Fifteen Iraqi civilians also died in the blast. The military says eight insurgents were killed in the subsequent battle as Marines and coalition troops fought back. It happened in the town of Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Five more American soldiers were killed and five wounded in two other roadside bombings yesterday in northern Iraq.
The military also says a soldier injured in an attack last week has died at a U.S. hospital in Germany.
At least 2,090 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The soldiers were assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division and were on patrol near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, the statement said.
Three of the wounded were transported to a U.S. military hospital, and the two others were treated and returned to duty, the statement added.
Names of the victims were withheld pending notification of kin.
In other violence, a suicide attacker killed at least 36 people and wounded 20 more in a Shiite funeral procession Saturday north of Baghdad, while a car bomb near a market just outside the capital killed 13 and wounded 21, police said.
CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports that the pattern of tit-for-tat bombings –
– is getting worse.The funeral was attacked at sunset while dozens of people were offering condolences to Raad Majid, the head of the municipal council in Abu Saida, for the death of his uncle, police officials said. Abu Saida is near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The suicide attacker drove his car into the gathering and detonated the bomb, the command center said. Ambulances and police rushed from Baqouba, as well as other nearby towns, to help in the rescue operations.
The market explosion occurred earlier near the Diyala Bridge area just southeast of Baghdad as dozens of people shopped, police Col. Nouri Ashour said. The dead included five women.
Saturday's bombings come a day after two suicide bombers wandered into the Sheik Murad mosque and the Grand Mosque in the border town of Khanaqin during noon prayers and detonated explosives strapped to their bodies, police and survivors said.
Reported death tolls ranged from 76, provided by Kurdish officials, to at least 100, provided by police. Hospital officials said Friday that 74 people were killed and more than 100 injured in the largely Kurdish town, about 90 miles northeast of Baghdad.
Such suicide attacks frequently are attributed to al Qaeda in Iraq, a fundamentalist Sunni Islamic group. The group's leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has advocated attacks in the past against Shiites, whom he considers apostates.
It was the deadliest attack since Sept. 29, when three suicide car bombers struck in the mostly Shiite town of Balad just north of Baghdad, killing at least 99 people.
In other developments:
The "special voting" will take place on Dec. 12, Farid Ayar said. The rest of the country will vote on Dec. 15 for legislators who will serve for four years, he said.
Almost immediately, a fierce firefight broke out, and three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves. Five more died fighting, while four police officers also were killed, he said.