IRAQ Police are killed in 3 car bomb attacks

About 200 people have been killed in two days of violence.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Suicide car bombers struck a southern Baghdad neighborhood three times Thursday, leaving as many as 23 Iraqi police dead in the second day of torrid violence in the capital.
The latest attacks occurred as Iraqi President Jalal Talabani addressed the United Nations and called on world leaders to redouble their efforts to help his country.
Talabani asked the world community to be patient with Iraq as it tries to cobble together a working democracy and fights a determined insurgency. He once again appealed to creditor nations to cancel mountainous debt that Iraq had accumulated under the former regime.
"Today, Iraq is facing one of the most brutal campaigns of terror at the hands of the forces of darkness," Talabani said.
Thursday's violence came after 14 car bombings in and around Baghdad a day earlier left scores dead, including 112 people killed when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near a gathering point for day laborers looking for work. Nearly 200 people have been killed in two days of bombings and ambushes.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, described the worsening violence as a predictable attempt by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq, to "derail democracy."
Retaliation
In a message posted on a Web site used by terrorist organizations and attributed to Al-Qaida in Iraq, the group said Wednesday's violence was a response to the recent joint operations by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Tal Afar to rid the northern city of insurgent elements. In a tape recording purportedly of al-Zarqawi disseminated Wednesday, the speaker declares he has launched a war on Iraq's Shiite community.
With a national referendum to decide whether to adopt a constitution to govern Iraq set for Oct. 15, Lynch said insurgents are certain to ramp up the violence in coming weeks.
"It happened again today, and it can happen again tomorrow," Lynch said Thursday in Baghdad. "We are convinced that we are going to fight our way to the elections."
There have been spikes in violence around other benchmark events throughout the 2 1/2-year insurgency in Iraq.
Previous spates of violence
Most recently, militants killed hundreds of civilians in attacks over several weeks after Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his government in late April. In January, before national elections, insurgents launched a barrage of attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces.
On Thursday, the deadliest attacks were suicide car bombings targeting police in the Dora district in southern Baghdad.
In the first, the suicide attacker drove his vehicle into a police checkpoint and killed at least 16 officers, according to police.
Later Thursday morning in Dora, two suicide bombers driving separate explosives-laden vehicles launched simultaneous attacks less than a mile apart that appeared to be targeting police. At least three officers were killed, according to police.
An Interior Ministry official put the death count at 23 for the three bombings in Dora.
In a separate incident in Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a Ministry of Industry bus, killing three, The Associated Press reported.
Elsewhere in the country, two Iraqi police were killed and four others were injured in the northern city of Kirkuk when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle. U.S. forces and militants also clashed in the western city of Ramadi, AP reported.