Posted on 09/10/2003 6:34:38 AM PDT by prairiebreeze
ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed himself and an Iraqi child and wounded more than 50 people, including six U.S. personnel, according to local people and the U.S. military on Wednesday.
In the fifth bomb attack in Iraq (news - web sites) in as many weeks, a four-wheel drive vehicle stopped suddenly in front of a house in the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq on Tuesday evening and exploded with the driver inside, residents said.
They said the house was being used by U.S. intelligence agents. A military spokeswoman initially said it had been a "safe house." Later, military press officers became tightlipped, confirming only that a blast had taken place in Arbil.
Fierce flames leapt into the night sky in the aftermath of the blast. A woman hurried away cradling a baby and an armed man carried a bloodied man over his shoulder from the scene.
Local people said the bomber had died. A Kurdish official told Reuters a five-year-old child had also died from injuries inflicted by the blast.
Forty-seven Iraqis were wounded, the U.S. military spokeswoman said in Baghdad. She said six Department of Defense (news - web sites) personnel had also been injured but had no details on whether they were civilians or soldiers.
NEW SETBACK
The bombing 220 miles north of Baghdad was the latest setback to U.S.-led efforts to pacify Iraq following the war that ousted Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) on April 9.
A U.S. soldier became the 68th to be killed in action in Iraq since the official end of major combat when his vehicle ran over a homemade bomb northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon, the military said. Another soldier was wounded.
Until Tuesday, U.S. forces had gone more than a week without having a soldier killed in action. Attacks against them had however continued at around the usual postwar rate of about a dozen a day.
Car bombs against foreign organizations in Iraq and against locals working with the occupying powers have intensified the postwar violence to a new pitch in recent weeks.
U.S. officials have mostly blamed diehard Saddam supporters for postwar attacks but are also increasingly pointing the finger of suspicion at foreign Islamic militants. Some are talking of a possible alliance between the two groups.
Officials have singled out Ansar al-Islam, a group with links to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaeda network which had a base in an enclave of Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq before the war, as a suspect in several recent bombings.
Vehicle bombers have hit the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, United Nations (news - web sites) offices and the capital's police headquarters. A top Shi'ite cleric was among more than 80 people killed by a car bomb in the city of Najaf last month.
MARINES SET TO HAND OVER NAJAF
A Polish-led force responsible for south-central Iraq said it planned to take over Najaf on September 21 from U.S. Marines, who postponed the handover after the bombing there in an effort to keep a lid on tensions in the city.
A senior U.S. general said the handover could take place even sooner -- "I would hope by the end of the week," Lieutenant General James Conway, who handed the rest of the Marines' zone to a Polish commander last week, told a Pentagon (news - web sites) briefing.
With the occupation of Iraq imposing a mounting cost in American lives and money, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) has launched a diplomatic drive to bridge differences between the United States and its critics over the future of Iraq.
Annan has asked foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council members to meet in Geneva on Saturday to seek a compromise on U.S. calls for international support to increase security and speed reconstruction in Iraq.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose country has a rotating seat on the Security Council, told the German parliament he was not convinced sending more troops would solve Iraq's problems.
"I believe that those, also in the United States, who say what we really need is the training of Iraqi police and the training of Iraqi military are right," he said, adding Berlin was ready to help with training programs.
Washington is seeking 15,000 more soldiers from other nations as well as reconstruction funds to back its own commitment of 130,000 soldiers and billions of dollars in Iraq.
Reuters strongly seeking appeasement I see. Pffft!
Prairie
Wounded, according to this story.
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