Suicide Bombers Kill Five In Iraq
Two suicide attackers detonated car bombs in northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least five Iraqis, while the government confirmed the death of a Japanese hostage abducted earlier this month.
Akihiko Saito was among a group of five foreign workers — four of them who had earlier been confirmed dead — who were ambushed in the vast Anbar province west of Baghdad.
"The Iraqi minister of national security, Abdul Karim al-Inizi, condemned the assassination of the Japanese hostage by his abductors," said a statement released by the government.
In other developments:
Operation Lightning has received planning and logistical support from U.S. troops who are keen to train and equip Iraqi security forces so they can eventually take over security in the capital.
More than 200 foreigners have been abducted, and at least 30 killed, in Iraq during the raging two-year insurgency, which U.S.-led forces and the new Shiite-led government have struggled to put down.
At least 23 people have been killed in the past 24 hours, including three men trying to plant a roadside bomb that detonated in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
Another five Iraqis slain in Saturday's twin suicide car bombing at the entrance to an Iraqi military base in Sinjar, about 75 miles northwest of Mosul, a police official said on condition of anonymity.
The bodies of least five Iraqis killed in the attack were brought to Sinjar Hospital, said hospital official Ahmed Ali. He added that 45 people had been wounded.
A roadside bomb blast targeting a U.S. convoy in Mosul killed three Iraqi civilians, including a 10-year-old boy, and injured nine, said Dr. Saad Khalid from al-Jumhouri hospital.
Ten Iraqis were killed and their bodies dumped Friday in the volatile western border city of Qaim after returning from a pilgrimage to a holy site in neighboring Syria, police commander Brig. Abdul Wahab Al Adily said Saturday.
Al Adily said relatives of five of the victims told police the group had been visiting the Sayda Zeinab Shiite Muslim shrine in Damascus and returned via the Waleed border crossing, about about 140 miles southwest of Qaim.
At a funeral Saturday for four of the victims in the predominantly Shiite Muslim city of Diwaniyah, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, many of the 150 mourners chanted for revenge.
Violence continued throughout cities south of Baghdad in a region dubbed the Triangle of Death, where scores of bodies have been found in an apparent tit-for-tat wave of sectarian violence.
Two civilians were killed and three wounded when clashes erupted late Friday between militants and Iraqi soldiers in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Dawood Al-Taie of Mahmoudiya hospital.
Gunmen killed another five people Friday during a car exhibition in the nearby city of Latifiyah, police Capt. Muthana Khalid Ali said Saturday.
Ali said police have also found the bullet-riddled bodies of five Iraqis in a car on a road in the volatile Anbar province, west of Baghdad, before they were returned to their home city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol instead killed three civilians Friday in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, police Lt. Khudhair Ali said. Six policemen were among 24 people wounded.
The Iraqi confirmation of the Japanese hostage's death follows Friday's Internet release of a video in the name of the Ansar al-Sunnah Army terrorist group showing the bloodied body of an Asian man, apparently Saito, lying on his back with arms outstretched.
A statement accompanying the video said the body was Saito's and that he died after being seriously wounded during clashes that broke out after the ambush.
Saito, a 44-year-old security consultant employed by Hart Security Ltd., a British firm based in Cyprus, became the sixth Japanese national to be killed while working in Iraq.
"Apart from what was shown on the Web site we have our own sources that confirmed the killing of the Japanese hostage," al-Inizi's chief media officer, Rasha Ali, told The Associated Press.
"This criminal act aims at destroying the Iraq-Japan relations," Ali added.