World

Twin Blasts In Baghdad

September 17, 2004 / 10:21 AM EDT / CBS/AP

A car bomb exploded in downtown Baghdad Friday as a police convoy drove by, officials said, killing 5 people and wounding 20 others.

Officials say six police cars were approached by another vehicle on a main downtown street. When the vehicle reached the police cars, the driver blew himself up.

A witness said shrapnel rained down on his stationery shop in the central Al-Mutanabbi Street.

"People coming from the blast location said that a car, a Chevrolet type, exploded," said Haqqi Ismael, 25. "Iraqi police and American soldiers are there now."

A second blast shook the city less than an hour later. The cause of that explosion was not immediately known.

U.S. military and Iraqi Interior Ministry officials had no immediate information on either blast.

In other recent developments:

American and Iraqi forces raided suspected insurgent hideouts in the Iraqi capital on Friday, sparking a gunbattle on a main Baghdad thoroughfare. More than 50 suspects were detained during the sweeps on Haifa street, a virtual "no-go" area for U.S. forces. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Also Friday, U.S. military officials say a car packed with explosives tried to ram a checkpoint on Haifa Street in Baghdad, but soldiers killed the vehicle's two occupants before it reached the cordon.

Thursday, three U.S. Marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed by hostile fire in separate incidents in the western Anbar province while conducting security operations, the military said, without providing details.

Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, on a visit to The Hague, Netherlands, on Thursday insisted that security was Iraq's priority and that it was "a little bit too premature to decide" whether elections would be held as planned.

Drafts of a report from the top U.S. inspector in Iraq conclude there were no weapons stockpiles, but say there were signs that fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to people familiar with the findings. The 1,500-page report, which isn't yet completed, is said to find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.

A new CIA report paints a bleak picture of Iraq's immediate future, reports CBS National Security David Martin. The National Intelligence Council presented President Bush this summer with several pessimistic scenarios regarding the security situation in Iraq, including the possibility of a civil war there before the end of 2005.

Earlier Friday, U.S. forces pounded suspected hideouts of an al Qaeda-linked group in and around the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah and battled insurgents in Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 44 people.

The clashes came a day after a team of kidnappers grabbed two Americans and a Briton in a dawn raid on their home on a leafy Baghdad neighborhood - a bold abduction that underlines the increasing danger for foreigners in the embattled capital as violence soars ahead of national elections planned for early next year.

An initial wave of strikes late Thursday targeted a compound in Fazat Shnetir, about 12 miles south of Fallujah, where militants loyal to Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were gathering to plot attacks on coalition forces, the military said in a statement.

Rebels who survived the strikes later sought refuge in nearby villages, but U.S. forces said that they quickly broke off an offensive to hunt them down, in order to avoid civilian casualties.

Residents of Fazat Shnetir were seen digging mass graves Friday to bury the dead in groups of four.

Blood covered the floors of the Fallujah General Hospital as doctors struggled to cope with a flood of casualties, many brought to the hospital in private cars with ambulances overwhelmed. Relatives pounded their chests in grief and denounced the United States.

Health Ministry spokesman Saad al-Amili said at least 44 people were killed and 27 injured in the Fallujah strikes. He said 17 children and two women were among the wounded. Hospital officials in Fallujah said women and children were also among the dead, but exact figures were not immediately available.

Religious leaders switched on loudspeakers at the Fallujah mosque to call on residents to donate blood while chanting "God is great."

The military said that intelligence reports estimated that up to 60 suspected insurgents may have been killed. U.S. forces, however, have not patrolled inside Fallujah since ending a three-week siege of the city that left hundreds dead.

Iraq has seen a surge of violence in the past week that has killed more than 250 people nationwide.

Insurgents have turned to kidnappings and spectacular bombings as the weapon of choice to pressure the United States and its allies to pull out of Iraq and embarrass the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

More than 100 foreigners have been kidnapped, some in a bid to collect lucrative ransoms. Many have been executed, creating a seige-like mentality among the dwindling international community.

The U.S. Embassy identified the Americans kidnapped Thursday as Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, but the identity of the British man was not disclosed.

The three worked for Gulf Services Co., a United Arab Emirates-based construction company. "They were doing work under contracts with them in Baghdad," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

The abduction took place Thursday in the al-Mansour neighborhood, one of the most affluent in Baghdad.

The team of about 10 attackers drove to the head of the tree-lined street in a minivan, walked up to the house, circumvented a concrete wall and snatched the Westerners without a gunfight, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry official.