57 Killed In Separate Incidents Iraqi

Juan Cole 02/11/2004

57 Killed in Separate Incidents; Iraqi Police Targeted

About 57 people were killed yesterday in separate incidents in Iraq. A powerful truck bomb exploded yesterday outside a police station [in predominantly Shiite Iskandariyah] south of Baghdad, killing up to 53 people and wounding scores of others, apparently all of them Iraqi including would-be recruits lined up to apply for jobs on the force. In Baghdad, four Iraqi policemen, one of them a major, were killed in an ambush yesterday in the capital’s Baladiyat district, the Interior Ministry announced. The assailants escaped.

Some 150 persons were wounded in the Iskandariyah attack, as well.

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page