Eight U.S. soldiers killed in attacks

Eight U.S. soldiers killed in attacks

Two explosions occurred in Shiite Muslim districts.

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Bombers unleashed a wave of explosions in Baghdad and north of the capital Monday, including two attacks that killed eight U.S. service members in the deadliest day for the military this year, American and Iraqi authorities said.

The other blasts targeted Iraqi security forces, militias and civilians, hitting a police station, a hotel, a busy traffic intersection and near a mosque and a hospital.

The combined death toll of at least 22 included 14 Iraqi casualties, on the heels of twin bombings that killed nearly 70 people Thursday in a Baghdad shopping district, indicated that Sunni Muslim insurgents are reasserting their presence at a time when large-scale attacks had dipped to record lows.Authorities couldn’t say for certain whether any of Monday’s bombings were coordinated.

Two of the explosions occurred in militia-controlled Shiite Muslim districts, signaling that bombers still can strike in the heart of Mahdi Army territory. Another blast ripped through the front gate of a hotel in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah in the autonomous Kurdish region, which had been among the safest places in Iraq.

“The terrorists want to send a message to the Kurdistan region and to all those concerned that they can make big security breaches at any time, in any place they want,” said Suzan Shihab, a Kurdish member of parliament who represents Sulaimaniyah.

In the worst attack on U.S. forces in Baghdad in nearly a year, five American service members died after a suicide bomber approached their foot patrol and detonated an explosives vest in the once-upscale central Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour, according to the U.S. command in Baghdad.

Four soldiers were killed at the scene and another later died from his wounds, the military said in a statement. Three more American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were wounded.

“These soldiers were walking in the neighborhood conducting a presence patrol. They were among the Iraqi people we have sworn to protect, where they live, work and gather,” said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad.

Three other American soldiers and an interpreter were killed Monday by a homemade bomb — what the military calls an improvised explosive device — in the town of Balad Ruz in the Diyala province northwest of Baghdad.

Another brazen attack in Diyala killed Sheik Thaeir Ghadhban al-Karkhi, a tribal leader from the province who belonged to one of the controversial U.S.-sponsored Sunni militias that have pledged to fight al-Qaida in Iraq.

Police and relatives of the victim said a young woman had come to the sheik’s home in the city of Kanaan late Sunday night pleading for his assistance to free her kidnapped husband. She was granted an appointment Monday morning and wasn’t searched when she entered the home for the second time, said Duraid Mahmoud Ghadhban, the nephew of the slain tribal leader. The nephew worked as a bodyguard and was present during the attack.

The woman approached al-Karkhi and detonated her explosives vest, instantly killing the sheik along with his 5-year-old niece and two bodyguards, Ghadhban said. Police officials in Diyala confirmed his account.

“I saw her when she came today, but I was about to move to go somewhere else. Less than a minute later, I heard the explosion and I came back quickly and saw my uncle’s body. I couldn’t believe it,” Ghadhban said. “I cried, and was asking myself what the reason was, why this woman killed my uncle when he only wanted to help her.”