30 Iraqis Slain in Baghdad
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BAGHDAD — Nearly simultaneous attacks against two police stations and a Shiite Muslim mosque killed at least 30 Iraqis here Friday, ending the relative lull in violence in the capital that had followed U.S.-led offensives against insurgents in Fallouja and northern Babil province.
A third police station, within the compound of the Ministry of Housing and Construction, was targeted this morning by a massive car bomb. Casualty figures were not immediately available, but witnesses reported seeing several wounded after the 9:30 a.m. blast, which rocked buildings miles away.
A group claiming to represent Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi claimed responsibility on an Islamist website for one of Friday’s police station attacks, in which 11 carloads of insurgents stormed a headquarters near the Baghdad airport. A dozen Iraqi officers were killed and five wounded, hospital officials said.
The claim, which could not be verified, made no mention of a separate suicide car bombing near a Baghdad mosque that killed 17 civilians, including some worshipers leaving morning prayers.
If Zarqawi devised the police station attack, it would mark his deadliest strike against Iraqi security forces in Baghdad since U.S. troops invaded Fallouja on Nov. 8 to wrest control of the Sunni-dominated city from insurgents and capture him.
The station assault began shortly after dawn Friday, when nearly 50 insurgents surrounded the Amil precinct building in southwest Baghdad, peppering it with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.
“We heard heavy machine-gun fire and RPGs showering us from every direction,” said Mohammed Farhan, 24, an Iraqi police officer who was shot in the leg.
After a 15-minute gun battle, insurgents stormed the building and freed several dozen prisoners, witnesses said. One prisoner was killed in the fighting, hospital officials said.
More than 300 Iraqi police supported by U.S. soldiers attached to the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division responded at the scene, U.S. officials said. They confronted the attackers, secured the station and searched house to house in the neighborhood for fleeing insurgents and freed inmates.
A U.S. military convoy was caught in the crossfire and a Humvee was damaged, but there were no U.S. casualties reported, said Lt. Col James Hutton, a military spokesman.
Last month, insurgents launched similar daytime raids against police stations in Mosul, but rarely have they attempted such audacious strikes in Iraq’s capital.
About the same time Friday morning, just as a government-imposed curfew was ending, the Adhamiya police station in northwest Baghdad was hit by mortar fire.
“The shells fell near and inside the police station, but Iraqi police chased the attackers away,” said Najim Aboud, a police officer at the station. No injuries were reported.
A few blocks away, a suicide car bomb exploded near Najar Husseiniya Mosque, which serves Shiite Muslims in the largely Sunni district. Shiites have long been a target for Zarqawi, who has attempted to ignite religious tensions between Iraq’s Muslim sects.
The blast occurred shortly after morning prayers, killing 17 people and injuring 20, witnesses said.
“Most of those hurt were poor civilians living in this neighborhood,” said Ghaleb Daham, a resident.
The explosion shattered windows at the mosque and damaged walls, scattering torn posters of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of most Iraqi Shiites, in the street.
Firefighters raced to extinguish blazes in half a dozen cars and a house.
In other violence Friday, two American soldiers were killed in roadside bomb attacks in north Baghdad and Kirkuk. Five soldiers were wounded in the incidents, military officials said.
In the northern city of Mosul, which has become a hot spot for attacks by insurgents in the last month, skirmishes resumed Friday as government sites were hit with mortar and small-arms fire.
More than 30 mortar rounds struck the offices of the governor and mayor, the courthouse, the Kurdish Democratic Party building, a guesthouse where the governor lives and the headquarters of the regional Iraqi national guard leader, said Mosul Deputy Gov. Khasro Koran. Hospital officials reported two Iraqis killed and six injured in the fighting.
Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin and Suhail Ahmed and special correspondents Saif Rasheed in Baghdad and Roaa Ahmed in Mosul contributed to this report.
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