The scene at the site of a car bomb which exploded at lunchtime outside the popular Habayibna restaurant where police officers often meet for lunch, in the Talibia area of northern Baghdad, Iraq Monday, May 23, 2005, killing at least three people and injuring more than 70 according to eyewitnesses and hospital officials. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)
Busy Baghdad Restaurant Hit by Car Bomb
By PAUL GARWOOD, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded Monday at a Baghdad restaurant popular with police, killing at least four people and wounding about 70, and militants assassinated a top national security official. Five U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs and a vehicle accident.
U.S. soldiers survey the scene following a car bomb attack at a restaurant in Baghdad May 23, 2005. A car bomb at a restaurant in northern Baghdad caused more than 50 casualties May 23, Iraqi police said. They did not know how many people had been killed and how many wounded, but said at least 52 people had been caught up in the blast, which struck the restaurant at lunch time. (Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters
U.S. and Iraqi forces detained 300 suspected insurgents in the biggest sweep in the capital to date.
The car bomb in the busy Talibia neighborhood was detonated outside the Habayibna restaurant at a time when police officers usually meet there for lunch, said police Lt. Zaid Tarek.
Casualties were taken to three Baghdad hospitals, and they included four dead and 54 injured at al-Kindi hospital, according to admission records. At least 10 more wounded were taken to Imam Ali hospital and five to the Medical City hospital.
Earlier, two carloads of gunmen killed Maj. Gen. Wael al-Rubaei, a top national security official, and his driver in Baghdad's latest drive-by shooting.
Al-Qaida in Iraq, the group run by Jordanian terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for killing al-Rubaei in a statement posted on an Internet site used by the group. The claim's authenticity could not be verified.
The brother of the driver cries out over his brother's body at Yarmouk hospital, after Maj. Gen. Wael al-Rubaei, director of the National Security Ministry's operations room, and his driver were assassinated by two carloads of gunmen in a drive-by shooting on their way to work, in Baghdad's Mansour district in Iraq Monday, May 23, 2005. State employees and security forces have been prime targets of insurgents bent on disrupting the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)
Al-Rubaei's killing came a day after another senior government official, Trade Ministry auditing office chief Ali Moussa, was killed as part of an ongoing terror campaign that has killed more than 550 people in less than a month.
AP - Mon May 23, 6:42 AM ET The coffin of Ali Moussa, the director general of the Iraqi Trade Ministry who was killed with his driver by gunmen in western Baghdad on Sunday, is carried in the funeral procession in the al-Salam neighbourhood of Baghdad, in Iraq Monday, May 23, 2005. State employees and security forces have been prime targets of insurgents bent on disrupting the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)
The U.S. military said Monday that three American soldiers were killed Sunday and one was injured in two separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Another two Task Force Liberty soldiers also were killed in separate incidents Sunday. The first was killed when his patrol was attacked with a car bomb just north of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. The other was killed in a vehicle accident near Kirkuk.
As of Monday, at least 1,634 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
In other violence around Iraq, a suicide bomber killed five people and injured 13 when he drove an explosives-packed pickup truck into a crowd outside a municipal council office in Tuz Khormato, 55 miles south of Kirkuk, said police commander Lt. Gen. Sarhat Qader.
A US officer secures the site of a suicide car bombing outside Tuz Khurmatu town hall. An insurgent killer squad shot dead the commander of Iraq's new counter-insurgency headquarters as he drove to work in Baghdad, as US and Iraqi troops conducted a massive sweep for insurgents.(AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)
Another two people were killed and two were injured in Kirkuk when a mortar round landed on a house, police Capt. Farhad Talabani said.
In the former insurgent stronghold of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, three suicide bombers tried to attack an American military base, injuring three soldiers, the military said.
Local residents view a house destroyed by a suicide car bomb attack in the northern Iraq town of Samarra, May 23, 2005. Three suicide bombers attempted to attack a U.S. military base in Samarra, killing two Iraqis and injuring nine people, including four U.S. soldiers, military and civilians officials said. Photo by Stringer/Iraq/Reuters
The joint offensive, dubbed Operation Squeeze Play, appeared to be winding down Monday. It involved seven Iraqi battalions backed by U.S. forces and was centered on western Baghdad's Abu Ghraib district, targeting militants suspected of attacking the U.S. detention facility there and the road linking downtown to the international airport, the military said.
"This is the largest combined operation with Iraqi security forces to date," said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Clifford Kent. "The Iraqi Security Forces have the lead in this operation while we perform shaping and supporting roles."
Three Romanian journalists who had been held hostage in Iraq for nearly two months arrived home aboard a military plane Monday, a day after their release.
From right television reporter Marie Jeanne Ion, Romanian President Traian Basescu, Romania Libera reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian and cameraman Sorin Miscoci, hold hands shorthly after the three Romanian journalists freed from Iraq descended from a military aircraft in Bucharest Romania Monday May 23 2005.Three Romanian journalists who were held hostage in Iraq for nearly two months arrived home aboard a military plane Monday, a day after their release.(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
TV reporter Marie Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Miscoci, and newspaper reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian were kidnapped in Baghdad on March 28 with their guide, American-Iraqi Mohammed Monaf. The four were freed Sunday.
Former hostage Sorin Miscoci is hugged by relatives as he arrives at Bucharest military airport. The three Romanian journalists, Marie Jeanne Ion and Sorin Miscoci of Prima TV and Eduard Ohanesian of the Romania Libera newspaper, along with Iraqi-American Mohammed Munaf, were set free 22 May after being held hostage for nearly two months(AFP/Daniel Mihailescu)
Iraqi insurgents had demanded Romania withdraw its soldiers from Iraq. Bucharest rejected the demand. The three journalists were greeted Monday by Romania's President Traian Basescu and hundreds of journalists and friends.
Separately, Iraqi security forces captured Ismail Budair Ibrahim al-Obeidi, a "terrorist" close to al-Zarqawi's network, in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, a government statement said.
The suspect, also known as Abu Omar, planned car bomb attacks in Baghdad and rigged booby-trapped cars for foreign fighters, the statement said.
Meanwhile, aides to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr sought to defuse tension between Sunnis and the majority Shiites after a recent series of sectarian killings. Sunnis are believed to make up the bulk of Iraq's deadly insurgency.
The senior aides met Sunday with the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, a key Sunni group, in a bid to soothe tensions that have flared and resulted in the deaths of 10 Shiite and Sunni clerics in the past two weeks.
From left, Muqtada al-Sadr's aide Hazim al-Araji, Muqtada al-Sadr's aide Abdul-Hadi al-Daraji and Senior Sunni Cleric Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi leave a meeting between the two religious groups at Baghdad's Sunni Um al-Qura mosque in Iraq Sunday. (AP/Karim Kadim)
The association's leader, Harith al-Dhari, last week pinned the killing of several Sunnis, including clerics, on the Badr Brigades, the military wing of Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The militia denied the charge and accused the Sunni association of trying to start a civil war.
Al-Sadr said in a television interview broadcast Sunday that the talks were aimed at settling the feud between the association and the Badr Bridges. Al-Sadr has resurfaced after lying low following fierce battles between his supporters and U.S. forces last year in the southern holy city of Najaf and Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City.
Sunni leaders have formed an alliance of tribal, political and religious groups to help Iraq's once-dominant minority break out of its deepening isolation following a Shiite rise to power after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.
___ Associated Press reporter Alison Mutler in Bucharest, Romania, contributed to this report.
