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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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August 5th,
2009 - Nine Killed in Iraq Violence |
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By Ammar Karim Agence France Presse August 5, 2009 Baghdad - Nine people were
killed, including a woman and six policemen, by violence across Iraq on
Wednesday, Iraqi police said. In the deadliest attack, a
roadside bomb exploded as policemen were travelling by car through a market
in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora, killing five of them, police
said. A further eight people were
wounded, including three policemen, in the midnight blast in the
predominantly Sunni district, a police official told AFP, requesting
anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media. In the restive city of
Mosul, 370 kilometres (230 miles) north of Baghdad, one policeman was killed
when three gunmen in a car opened fire on a police checkpoint in the north of
the city and then fled the scene. The shooters then moved on
to a second checkpoint in the area, which had been informed of the violence
nearby, and entered a gun battle with police there. Two of the three gunmen were
killed in the clashes, while a third was injured and arrested by police. A car bomb Wednesday morning
in Ramadi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of the capital, killed a woman and
wounded four other people, including two policemen, a local police official
said. The explosion, near a mosque
in the centre of the city, also destroyed two cars. Ramadi is the capital of the
western province of Anbar, a one-time bastion of the Sunni insurgency that
has seen a sharp drop-off in violence over the past 18 months as local tribes
allied with US-led forces. But attacks have in recent
weeks begun to spike in Anbar again - a car bomb in a popular market in
Haditha on Sunday killed four women and three children, while a suicide attack
on Thursday close to a police station in the town of Al-Qaim near the Syrian
border killed three people and wounded 30. Violence in Iraq as a whole
has dropped off markedly in recent months, but attacks against security
forces and civilians are common in the capital and Mosul. The number of violent deaths
in Iraq fell by a third from the June figure of to 437 to 275 in July, the
first month local forces have been in charge of security in urban areas since
the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein. The figure in May was 155,
the lowest of any month since American troops arrived. Copyright © 2009 AFP. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gwIwMUJ0o1nOSzJX66s85h8CuEjQ |