U.S.: Shiite group set off deadly blast
A soldier from Northeast Ohio was killed Monday in Iraq.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD — U.S. military officials on Wednesday accused a Shiite militant group of carrying out a truck bombing in northwestern Baghdad on Tuesday evening that killed at least 65 people, the deadliest attack in the capital since March.
The accusation was startling because the bombing in the Hurriyah neighborhood had the hallmarks of earlier large-scale attacks in predominantly Shiite areas that had been attributed to Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq.
A U.S. military spokesman said intelligence reports indicate that Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi, the leader of a Shiite “special group,” planned the bombing in an effort to fuel animosity toward Sunnis in the largely Shiite district. The U.S. military uses the term special groups to describe what it says are smaller Iranian-backed militias.
The bombing followed aggressive U.S. and Iraqi military operations against Shiite militias and the so-called special groups in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, a soldier due home next month on leave from Iraq was killed by an improvised explosive device, his father said.
U.S. Army Pfc. Jason Cox, 21, of Elyria, died Monday, his father, Gregory Cox, told The Chronicle-Telegram of Elyria.
Cox had been deployed in Iraq for a year and was scheduled to return to Ohio in mid-July. After his leave, he was to serve another eight months.
“We’ll miss him,” Gregory Cox said. “But we know he was saved. He was a Christian, so I have confidence he’s with Jesus Christ in heaven.”
Cox followed two older brothers into the military.