Baghdad

Children going to the Al-Amel primary school have to take Baghdad’s airport road, considered the most dangerous in all of Iraq. But that’s just one of the many threats they face in the war-torn city. ”I dream there’s an explosion, a big one. Then I wake up and I’m scared,” said eight-year-old Nour as she sat in a school classroom in southwest Baghdad.

A suicide car bomber killed seven people when he struck a checkpoint at Baghdad’s Green Zone early on Tuesday, the second attack in two days at the district that houses Iraq’s interim government and foreign embassies, officials said. At least 13 people were injured in the blast, said Dr Hassan Abdel Satar from Baghdad’s Yarmouk Hospital.

A United States soldier is expected to be sentenced on Saturday after being found guilty of murder for shooting to death a severely wounded Iraqi civilian, while the US army pressed its sole supplier of armored Humvees to increase production amid a growing domestic controversy over armour for troops.

The scale of killings has been obscured by the United States military’s refusal to collect data. According to Brigadier General Vince Brooks, the deputy director of operations at US central command, ”…If we are going to be honourable about our warfare, we are not out there trying to count up bodies. This is not the appropriate way for us to go”.

Iraq’s interim president accused Iran on Wednesday of meddling in the Iraqi election process, adding to mounting concerns about the viability of the landmark vote scheduled for January 30. But United States President George Bush once again scotched any notion that the elections might be delayed.

Five Arab foreign fighters who had escaped from Fallujah were arrested near the southern port city of Basra, where they were planning to attack coalition bases and police stations, authorities said on Thursday. In Fallujah, the United States military said it had uncovered the largest arms cache yet.

About 5 000 United States marines, British troops and Iraqi forces launched a new offensive aimed at clearing a swath of insurgent hotbeds across a cluster of dusty, small towns south of Baghdad on Tuesday. Tuesday’s series of raids and house searches was the third large-scale military operation this month aimed at suppressing Iraq’s Sunni Muslim insurgency.

Thousands of United States, British and Iraqi troops swept through insurgent bastions south of Baghdad on Tuesday in the latest push to reclaim lawless enclaves ahead of elections planned for January. The operation, in an area known as the ”triangle of death”, came as world powers and Middle Eastern states meeting in Egypt threw their weight behind the war-torn country’s first free and multi-party elections in decades.

Four people were killed in bomb attacks in Iraq on Thursday and United States forces shelled rebel holdouts in the restive city of Fallujah, as differences over Iraq moved back into the spotlight at an Anglo-French summit. The world also voiced more outrage over the suspected murder of British aid worker Margaret Hassan.

At least 10 people were killed, many burnt to death in their cars, when a car bomb exploded in the middle of a traffic jam at the crossroads of a shopping street in Baghdad on Thursday. Flames raged around one car with four children trapped inside after the blast ripped through a line of vehicles.

At least nine people were killed on Tuesday in two separate car-bomb attacks in Baghdad, the Arab news channel al-Arabiya reported. At least five Iraqis died when a car bomb exploded outside a building of the Education Ministry in the capital’s Adhamiya district. The attack occurred after most officials had arrived for work.

The deputy governor of Baghdad was shot dead on his way to work on Monday, in the latest attack by insurgents against the United States-backed Iraqi regime. Hatim Kamil was killed when gunmen opened fire on his car in the southern Doura neighbourhood, an interior ministry spokesperson said. Two of his bodyguards were wounded in the attack.

Seven people were killed and 19 wounded when a car bomb exploded outside the Baghdad offices of an Arabic television station on Saturday, gouging a hole in the front of the building and sending thick plumes of black smoke into the air. The Al-Arabiya satellite channel had received threats in recent weeks warning it of an attack.

Nearly 800 members of British forces began leaving their bases in southern Iraq on Wednesday, heading north to replace United States troops who are expected to take part in an offensive against insurgent strongholds. The deployment came hours after Iraq’s most feared militant group released a video threatening to behead a Japanese captive.

Three Iraqis were killed and 15 people wounded, including two Australian soldiers, when a car bomb exploded on Monday near an Australian army convoy in Baghdad. Meanwhile, two car bombs rocked Mosul on Monday, with one person killed in an attack on a local government building.

A United States soldier at the heart of the prisoner-abuse scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a range of charges, from making hooded inmates masturbate to punching them in the chest. The soldier admitted that he thought his actions had been indecent and immoral.

Dozens of men lined up for the third day on Wednesday to hand over their weapons at police stations in the Iraqi capital’s Sadr City slum in line with an initiative by radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi hailed the programme as the first step to restoring security and stability to Sadr City.

Iraqi forces backed by United States soldiers and marines raided mosques on Tuesday in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi and detained a prominent cleric following fierce clashes that hospital officials said killed at least four people. Angry residents accused Americans of disrespecting the sanctity of city mosques.

For the first time in more than 35 years Iraqis are free to talk, discuss and debate — publicly and relatively without fear — the political and social aspects of their daily life. But for most of them all they can talk about is violence. What happened this morning? How many mortars fell on your neighbourhood yesterday? Did the Americans free your cousins or are they still being ”interrogated”?

At least four people were killed and two wounded on Sunday in an early-morning rocket or mortar attack near the Oil Ministry in the Iraqi capital, according to medical sources, police and an AFP correspondent at the scene. The heavily fortified Oil Ministry building is the target of frequent mortar and missile attacks by insurgents.

Insurgents unleashed a pair of powerful car bombs near the symbol of United States authority in Iraq — the Green Zone, where the US embassy and key government offices are located — and hotels occupied by hundreds of foreigners. Two other explosions brought the day’s bombing toll to at least 24 dead and more than 100 wounded. The day’s violence also included assassinations of three Iraqis, and US attacks against targets in insurgent-held Fallujah.

Dozens of children were killed on Thursday when three car bombs exploded in a coordinated attack in Baghdad that left 44 people dead and more than 200 injured.
Health ministry officials said at least 34 of those killed were children. Dozens more were injured. Many suffered shrapnel wounds; others had limbs amputated.

Suicide attackers detonated a car bomb on Wednesday near an Iraqi national guard recruiting centre in west Baghdad, killing at least six people and injuring 54, authorities said. Another car bomb shook the capital’s upscale Mansour district in the afternoon, police and witnesses said. Six people were wounded there, the military said.

At least five policemen were killed and another 20 wounded, many of them policemen, when a suicide bomber smashed a powerful car bomb into a police patrol in Baghdad on Friday, the Health Ministry and police sources said. The suicide bomber rammed his car against a police vehicle, one of eight in a patrol.

At least 47 people were killed in a massive car bomb blast outside the main police headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday, leaving a trail of carnage and chaos in a bustling area of the Iraqi capital. Meanwhile, 12 Iraqi policemen and their driver were killed and two others wounded when gunmen sprayed their vehicle with bullets in Baquba.