Iraq unrest claims 180

2005-11-25 10:46

Hilla - Iraqi officials have promised wide scale security sweeps ahead of general elections in three weeks time as rebels continue their bombing campaign, which has left more than 180 dead for the past week.

The latest attack took place on Thursday, south of Baghdad, and involved a suicide car bomb attack on a hospital in Mahmudiyah, which killed 30, and a car bomb in a shopping district of Hilla, which left three dead and 16 wounded.

Iraqi authorities said they would soon deploy up to 10 000 men to carry out security sweeps in troubled areas, ahead of the December 15 elections, the final stage in the country's transition to democracy after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

Insurgent strongholds

The United States forces, for their part, had just concluded a three-week wide scale operation, code-named Iron Curtain, in western Iraq designed to root out insurgent strongholds, near the Syrian border.

US major-general Rick Lynch said since mid-September, the US-led forces had killed more than 700 rebels and captured 1 500 in western Iraq, earlier this week.

However, both Iraqi officials and US had warned of the likelihood of increasing violence ahead of the elections.

Sunni extremist rebels, including Jordanian-born Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, had sought to spark sectarian war between Sunnis and Shi'ites in a bid to increase the chaos and discredit the US-backed government.

Religious leaders

Some of the bloodiest bomb attacks, including one a week ago against two mosques in Khanaqin on the Iranian border, which left 80 dead, had targeted Shi'ite civilians.

A number of Sunni Arab political and religious leaders had also been gunned down in targeted assassinations for the past weeks, including a Sunni tribal leader and four of his relatives early on Wednesday morning by gunmen dressed like Iraqi soldiers.

Meanwhile, the government warned of a possible new twist in terrorist attacks after the Iraqi army announced it had seized a number of booby-trapped children's dolls.

An army statement said the dolls were found in a car, each one containing a grenade or other explosive. The government said two men driving the car had been arrested in Abu Ghraib, western Baghdad.

Two US soldiers killed

A government spokesperson Leith Kubba said: "This is the same type of doll as that handed out on several occasions by US soldiers to children."

Kubba said insurgents were preparing to attack children.

A roadside bomb in Iraq killed two US soldiers on Thursday as troops celebrated Thanksgiving.

According to the Pentagon, the latest deaths brought to at least 2 110 the number of US military personnel killed since the March 2003 invasion.

US soldiers in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Djibouti consumed 130kg of turkey and 65kg of boneless ham on the occasion of Thanksgiving, with troops in Iraq roasting whole pigs on spits.

- AFP