6 Us Soldiers Were Announced Killed On

US Air Raid on Diwaniya Allegedly Kills 10 Civilians
6 US Troops Killed
Iran Denies US Charges of Covert Ops in Iraq

6 US soldiers were announced killed on Monday in Iraq. They were all killed in Sunni Arab areas.

Militiamen in the southern Shiite city of Diwaniya, probably tied to the Mahdi Army, launched an intensive mortar barrage at Camp Echo on early Monday morning. The US responded with airstrikes. Iraqi police said that they killed 10 civilians along with the targeted militiamen. A crowd gathered to protest the civilian deaths, sparking a further clash that left a man dead and two policemen wounded.

The Iraqi cabinet approved key changes in a draft of the country’s petroleum law on Monday. Parliament is expected to take it up on Wednesday. But some elements of the law are not expected to be settled for months.

Reuters reports other political violence in Iraq on Monday, including the discovery of 17 bodies in the streets of Baghdad.

‘ BAGHDAD – [11] people were killed and 33 wounded by a car bomb parked near a market in the religiously mixed district of Binoog in northern Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD – One person was killed and two wounded in a mortar attack in Bayaa, south west Baghdad, police said. . . Gunmen killed two people and wounded three in a drive-by shooting in Bayaa.

BAGHDAD – Gunmen killed three Iraqi soldiers and one civilian when they attacked an Iraqi military checkpoint in eastern Baghdad on Sunday evening, police sources said. They said three people were wounded. . .

DIWANIYA – A man was killed and two police guards were wounded during an exchange of fire between police guarding a government building and dozens of demonstrators protesting what they said was a pre-dawn U.S. air strike in the city of Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. . .

MOSUL – A roadside bomb killed a policeman and wounded four people, including two policemen, when it struck their patrol car in Mosul, police said.

MOSUL – The Iraqi army killed 12 insurgents, including three al Qaeda members, during overnight raids near the northern city of Mosul, the army said. Troops found lethal roadside bombs called explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, during the raid. . .

KIRKUK – Gunmen killed the preacher of a Sunni mosque in the northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday, police said.’

McClatchy has more details, especially of violence in Khalis in Diyala province.

The story about the Lebanese Hizbullah and Iran kidnapping US troops in Karbala, Iraq, seemed to me to hang an awful lot on the activities of one person. It is not surprising that a few Lebanese Shiites with a background in Hizbullah and good contacts in Iran have gone to Iraq to fight the US. What is surprising is how few they have been. It is also surprising that the US has lost relatively few men to fights with the Shiites.

The US has 19,000 persons in custody in Iraq, and hundreds of foreigners. Almost all of them are Sunni Arabs. They appear to have exactly one Lebanese Shiite.

Why put all this emphasis on this one guy and ignore the hundreds from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc.? It is to build a case against Iran in preparation to bombing it.

Iran is denying the charge.