Security Summary: November 11-13, 2006

Aftermath of a car bomb in Baghdad on Sunday

November 13, 2006:

BAGHDAD - Police recovered 46 bodies scattered around Baghdad in the 24 hours to Monday evening, an Interior Ministry source said. Most had been tortured and were apparent victims of sectarian death squads.

BAGHDAD - Police Major Muhammed Salim from the central Karrada district of Baghdad was abducted and later found dead, an Interior Ministry source said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen stormed the house of police Major Maher Moussa, commander of the Rashad police station in eastern Baghdad, and took him away, an Interior Ministry source said. His fate is unknown.

BAGHDAD - Five employees of the state-owned North Oil Company, one of them a women, were ambushed and killed in the northern outskirts of Baghdad as they drove into the capital, an Interior Ministry source said.

KUT - A police officer was shot dead in front of his home in the centre of Kut, 170 km (110 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police in the mainly Shi'ite city said.

BAGHDAD - Mortars injured two people in the northern Baghdad suburb of Husseniya, police said.

KIRKUK - Four male primary school teachers were killed while driving in their vehicle in the oil city of Kirkuk in the north. They were killed by gunmen riding in another vehicle, police said.

TIKRIT - Two U.S. soldiers were killed on Sunday when a car bomb exploded near their vehicle in Salahaddin province, the military said on Monday. Two more soldiers were wounded.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed a police officer in the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR KIRKUK - A roadside bomb exploded near the convoy of army General Anwar Amin and wounded three of his guards near Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb targeted a U.S. military patrol and wounded two civilians in al-Ardun square in western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen stormed a petrol station on Sunday and seized 18 men, the Conference of Iraqi People party, one of the three Sunni parties forming the Iraqi Accordance Front, said. They killed four of them and released the others, the source added.

BAGHDAD - An Interior Ministry source said gunmen attacked cars carrying guards of Vice-President Adil Abdul Mahdi, killing two and wounding a third, but the vice-president's office denied his guards were involved. Abdul Mahdi was not present at the time.

BAGHDAD - U.S.-led troops killed eight suspected insurgents the military said were believed linked to members of an al Qaeda cell. The military said in a statement 41 suspects were also detained during raids in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - A blast that police said was caused by a suicide bomber killed 11 people and wounded 18 more on a minibus in the northern district of Shaab in Baghdad.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed Mohammed al-Ban, a cameraman for the TV station al-Sharqiya, in Mosul, police said.

YUSUFIYA - Police found the bodies of five people between the towns of Yusufiya, 15 km (9 miles) south of Baghdad, and Mahmudiya, police said. Two had been beheaded, the others shot.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed Kamil Salih, a traffic police brigadier, in north Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

BAQUBA - Police Lieutenant Colonel Amer Nisaif in Baquba, north of Baghdad, said police received reports on Sunday of many bodies dumped in a drainage ditch behind an electricity compound but after a thorough search only five bodies were found.

DIWANIYA PROVINCE - Gunmen matching the description of those who kidnapped a group of Shi'ite travellers in the town of Latifiya late on Saturday kidnapped 10 people in the town of Efeg on Sunday, police said. Police backed by U.S. forces were conducting a major search for the kidnappers around Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded in a park near the Iranian embassy in central Baghdad, near the international Green Zone, wounding one civilian and damaging 13 cars, police said.

From Reuters/Alternet

November 12, 2006:

BAGHDAD - Police found the bodies of 22 people in various parts of Baghdad in the past 24 hours, an interior ministry source said.

BAQUBA - Around 40 bodies that were collected at the Baquba morgue over the past few weeks and unclaimed by relatives were buried on Sunday, an interior ministry source said.

BASRA - Four British troops were killed and three seriously injured in an attack on their patrol boat on the Shatt al Arab waterway in the southern city of Basra, the Ministry of Defence in London said on Sunday.

FALLUJA - Three U.S. soldiers died on Saturday from wounds suffered in combat in the western Anbar province, the U.S. military said.

NAJAF - A roadside bomb exploded in front of the home of a man who worked in an office associated with the senior clerical figure in Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, killing two of his children and seriously wounding a third, according to Sistani's office. Police and Sistani's office said the bomb had been buried in sand that construction workers delivered to the house and they did not believe the man was the intended target.

MOSUL - Two bodies with gunshot wounds were brought to the hospital in Mosul, a hospital official said.

KIRKUK - Gunmen killed the director of the main electricity power station in Kirkuk, police said.

HIT - The U.S. military said U.S.-led forces killed three suspected insurgents after an attack on a patrol in the city of Hit. Residents had said on Saturday that U.S. forces killed eight civilians in a raid in Hit, about 175 km (105 miles) west of Baghdad. It was not immediately clear if the U.S. statement referred to the same incident.

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber walked into a police recruiting centre in Baghdad and blew himself up, killing 35 people and wounding 58, Interior Ministry sources said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb followed by a roadside bomb killed three people and wounded seven others in central Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

TIKRIT - A roadside bomb wounded police colonel Abbas al-Dulaimi, head of the U.S.-Iraqi Joint Coordination Centre in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

YUSUFIYA - A car bomb near a primary school killed three people and wounded 15, including students, in the town of Yusufiya near Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed two people and wounded seven in the central Karada district of the capital, an Interior Ministry source said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed two people and wounded 13 in the southwestern Radhwaniya district of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb wounded five people in southwestern Um al-Maalif district of Baghdad, police said.

MAHAWEEL - The bodies of two people were found shot dead in the town of Mahaweel, 75 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen wounded a traffic police brigadier and his driver in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces detained 10 suspected insurgents with ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq, the U.S. military said.

MOSUL - Mortar rounds landed near a police station, wounding five people on Saturday, police said.

LATIFIYA - Police searched for a group of Shi'ite travellers kidnapped after gunmen stopped their buses in the town of Latifiya south of Baghdad late on Saturday. Police in Diwaniya, the town were the travellers came from, said 58 were kidnapped. Latifiya police said 13 were snatched.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb in Baghdad's Amiriya district killed three civilians and wounded three others on Saturday, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two roadside bombs went off in central Baghdad, killing four civilians and wounding 10 others, police said.

MOSUL - Police found 12 bodies in the northern city of Mosul on Saturday.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on Sunday for a sweeping cabinet reshuffle, responding apparently to his six-month-old government's failure to rein in sectarian violence and reverse economic collapse.

BAGHDAD - Around 1,600 bodies were taken to Baghdad's morgue in October, an official said. The tally is the highest since July, when the toll hit 1,815, and was up 10 percent from 1,450 in September.

From Reuters/Alternet

November 11, 2006:

LATIFIYA - Gunmen stopped three minibuses carrying Shi'ites in the town of Latifiya south of Baghdad, killed nine passengers and kidnapped 13 others, police said. The buses were on their way from Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, to the capital when the attack occurred at nightfall.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi special forces, backed by U.S. military advisers, conducted a raid in Baghdad's Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City on Friday in a hunt for a death squad leader blamed for sectarian killings, kidnapping and torture, the U.S. military. Five suspects were detained, it said.

BAGHDAD - Two soldiers, a Pole and a Slovak, were shot dead when gunmen attacked them moments after a bomb targeted their military humvee near the city of Kut, 170 km (105 miles) south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. Two other soldiers, a Pole and an Armenian, were wounded.

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi army said it killed four militants and arrested 13 in different parts of Iraq during the last 48 hours.

KIRKUK - A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol wounding three civilians in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two car bombs killed eight people and wounded at least 38 others when they exploded in quick succession in central Baghdad's wholesale Shorja market, Interior Ministry sources said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed one motorist and wounded five others in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad, killing one civilian, Interior Ministry sources said.

BAQUBA - A suicide car bomber attacked a police station, killing two people, including one woman, in the town of Zaghinya to the north of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead an intelligence officer in southern Baghdad's Bayaa district, Interior Ministry sources said.

BAGHDAD - Police found five bodies, including a woman, bearing signs of torture and bullet wounds, in different parts of Baghdad, Interior Ministry sources said.

KIRKUK - A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, seriously wounding four policemen in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said.

From Reuters/Alternet