21 Dead, 40 Wounded in Guerrilla Violence
*At a checkpoint between Baghdad and Baquba (to the northeast of the capital) at Khan Bani Saad, guerrillas sprayed a police checkpoint with machine gun fire, killing 4 and wounding 7. When help came, a car bomber struck, wounding another three soldiers.
*In Tikrit a guerrilla in a car bomb detonated his payload near an Iraqi police patrol. He killed 3 persons [Knight Ridder] and wounded 17.
*In Samarra, a car bomber targeted an Iraqi army checkpoint. He killed 3 soldiers and wounded another 5. A roadside bomb killed another Iraqi soldier. A major battle was fought at Samarra, involving 70 guerrillas ranged against Iraqi security forces, that left two Iraqi police commandos and two soldiers dead.
*In Baghdad, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb, killing 2 Iraqis (at least one a police officer) and wounding 5.
Al-Zaman, depending on the Interior Ministry, said that altogether car bombs in the capital killed 3 and wounded 20 on Monday.
*An Iraqi gendarme guard was shot dead near Baiji, a center of oil refining.
*In Dhulu’iyah guerrillas assassinated a businessman as he was leaving a US base.
*In Baghdad, six bodies were found, most of them having clearly been tortured before being killed.
*In Dur, the body of an Iraqi soldier was discovered in the river.
*Al-Zaman reports that a roadside bomb killed one child and wounded another in Salman Pak on Monday.
Mortar shells fell on a wake in the al-Hurriyah district, wounding 7 civilians.
Iraqi tribes are said to have decided to turn over suspects to the central Iraqi government.
Guerrillas kidnapped Jaymon Qadir, a Kurdish women’s rights activist in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday. She is an activist in the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
*Aamer Madhani of Knight Ridder reports:A guerrilla in a car bomb targeted the HQ of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a relatively moderate Sunni group. The explosion came only 10 minutes after the departure of the acting US ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, who had been conducting consultations with the IIP leadership. The car bombing wounded two US soldiers and killed a 6-year-old little girl.
Although the ambassador was probably not the target of the blast, it is a hell of a note when the acting US ambassador cannot go out of the green zone without risking bodily harm. The bombing was probably intended to punish the Iraqi Islamic Party for cooperating with the Americans.
Al-Zaman/AFP The constitution drafting committee in parliament began work Monday on writing the new constitution, even though the issue of Sunni representation remains unsettled.
Reuters reports, “Iraqi doctors say they are concerned over an increase in Tuberculosis (TB) cases in the southeastern city of Amarah, fueled by a shortage of medicine and poor living conditions.” Iraqi governments during the past 50 years had gotten the problem under control in that region.
My count of dead and wounded for Monday is many times higher than that in the mainstream media, whether the Washington Post or even the wire services. The numbers are arrived at by collating incidents reported in AFP and by Knight Ridder, and adding in incidents and casualties reported in the Baghdad daily, al-Zaman. Bad as things are in Iraq, I still don’t think the full tragedy is getting out to the American public.
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