Posted on 03/22/2005 2:19:10 PM PST by FreeManWhoCan
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militants in the northern city of Mosul targeted a U.S. patrol with a roadside bomb Tuesday that killed four civilians, and Baghdad shopkeepers and residents traded gunfire with masked insurgents, killing three of them along a main thoroughfare. In the south, officials found the corpses of six Iraqi soldiers, their hands bound and their bodies riddled with bullets.
The U.S. patrol was hit by a homemade bomb in a northwestern neighborhood of Mosul, damaging a Humvee as it crossed a bridge, hospital officials said, citing witnesses.
Four civilians in a car near the blast were killed, the officials said.
It was unclear whether any American troops were hurt, and U.S. military officials were not immediately available for comment.
Gunbattles erupted out in the streets of the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Doura, where militants wearing black hoods and riding in three cars opened fire on people shopping on a main street. Shopkeepers and residents returned fire, killing three assailants. A man, woman and child were injured and taken to a hospital.
Dr. Iyad Yass of al-Yarmouk hospital said four victims were admitted to the hospital with gunshot wounds.
"Two of them are risky. One of them was admitted to the operative theatre," he said.
Earlier, gunmen in the same quarter killed a policeman as he drove to work, said police Lt. Col. Hafidh Al-Ghrayri.
Iraq (news - web sites)'s next likely prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, indicated to a U.S. congressional delegation that he was in no hurry to have U.S.-led coalition troops leave.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said al-Jaafari was not as "upbeat as our people, who seem to be very excited about the quality of the Iraqi police force."
"My sense was, he was certainly in no rush to hand over security to his new police force," Boxer, a vocal opponent of the war, said during a visit to Baghdad.
Insurgents have carried out countless attacks on Iraq's army and police — fledgling security forces the American military says must gain better control of the country before any major U.S. troop pullout from Iraq, now in its third year of the post-invasion conflict.
The U.S. military reported the death of a Marine in a restive western province. The Marine, assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed in action Monday in Anbar province, which contains the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the U.S. military said.
As of Monday, at least 1,522 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The corpses of the six Iraqi soldiers were brought to the morgue in Kut, a city about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, said Hadi Al-Itabi of Al-Zahraa Hospital. The soldiers' hands were tied and their heads and torsos were riddled with bullets.
Iraq Defense Ministry officials said they had no information on the incident.
Separately, six Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, an area known as a rebel stronghold, Ramadi police major Mohamed Al-Dulaimi said Tuesday. Witnesses said about a dozen masked men grabbed the soldiers, who were dressed in civilian clothes, as they headed to a bus station.
In Mosul, a convoy of security officials was ambushed late Monday, sparking a gunbattle that killed 17 militants, said Col. Wathiq Ali, deputy police commander. No security forces were hurt, and 14 militants were detained, Ali said.
Among those in the convoy was top police chief Brig. Gen. Abu Al-Waled, he said.
Mosul residents said five mortar shells landed in a Kurdish enclave of the ethnically mixed city 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, injuring one person.
Three rockets landed overnight on the town of Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, killing one child, said a local police official, who asked not to be identified, fearing retribution from militants.
In the eastern city of Kirkuk, the director of the Iraqi Army's legal department died Tuesday of wounds suffered late Sunday when gunmen shot him outside his home, said Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin of the Iraqi army.
Meanwhile, Iraq sought to soothe relations with neighboring Jordan, with both agreeing to return their respective ambassadors after a weekend diplomatic dispute over terrorism.
On Tuesday, Iraq's national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said his nation's ambassador to Jordan would return "as soon as practically possible." The announcement came a day after King Abdullah II ordered the return of Jordan's top diplomat in Iraq, the official Jordanian news agency reported.
Both countries withdrew their envoys Sunday after arguing about the infiltration of Jordanian insurgents across their common border.
Tensions between the two boiled over last week. At one point, Iraqi demonstrators angered over the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a deadly suicide bombing, hoisted the Iraqi flag above the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad.
An armed society is a polite one.
The left and doubters kept asking when the Iraquis' were going to start defending themselves. Seems the time in now.
The Iraqis know who these people are and the coalition forces don't really.
This is means curtains for the insurgents. Once the locals start shooting them, they're finished.
No payment for terrorist families, but a promise of amnesty for any who accidently off any family members in the crossfire of hunting terrorists.
There was a story about terrorists threatening residents if they voted in the Iraq elections. The residents voted anyway. The terrorists came back. The residents killed the terrorists.
I heard this story on FR; not from the MSM.
Quite interesting. I wonder if that story ever made it over to National Review Online?
Not news, of course, by MSM standards. One of the things that bothers me is I read the Wall Street Journal every day, and these stories are mainly missed there as well. Thoush some great ones do appear there.
By the way, when you see a story like that, the people over on the Iraq section of the Military Discussions at strategypage.com would love to see it posted and probably give you some feedback if you did.
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