Fallujah

A suicide car bomb targeting mourners at a funeral killed at least 27 people and wounded more than 30 others in Fallujah, west of the Iraqi capital, on Thursday, hospital and police officials said. The bomber was targeting a large crowd in a funeral procession for a man who was killed earlier on Thursday.

Insurgents with two chlorine truck bombs attacked a local government building in Fallujah, western Iraq, on Wednesday and 15 Iraqi and United States security forces were injured, the US military said. It said no Iraqi or US. forces were killed in what it called a ”complex attack” using mortars and small arms as well as the truck bombs.

Nearly 70 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up on Thursday outside a police recruitment centre in the western Iraqi town of Ramadi, hospital doctors said. Earlier on Thursday, a huge explosion rocked the centre of the city of Karbala, 100km south of Baghdad, killing at least 42 civilians.

The Pentagon said on Monday night it was opening an investigation into the shooting of an unarmed and wounded Iraqi in Fallujah, following the release of television footage showing what appeared to be a close-range execution-style killing. The Iraqi was one of five wounded prisoners left in a battle-scarred mosque after marines fought their way through the city at the weekend.

United States troops pushed into the centre of Fallujah on Tuesday, fighting their way from house to house and shooting through bands of militants in their drive to recapture the city that has been the centre of insurgency since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Thousands of American troops fought their way into the most dangerous parts of Fallujah on Monday night at the start of an all-out assault to win back control of the Iraqi insurgent stronghold. The much-heralded attack began shortly after dusk in a two-pronged push by marines into suburbs in the north, while United States army soldiers fired volleys of mortars into the southern parts of the city.

United States marines are on guard outside the rebel bastion of Fallujah, where they believe at least 2 000 fighters are ensconced, the majority of them followers of Iraq’s most-wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The US military believes some of Zarqawi’s top men are in Fallujah, but is not sure about the whereabouts of the leader himself.

Twelve people were killed and the bride at a wedding party was among the wounded when US warplanes bombed the rebel-held Iraqi city of Fallujah early on Friday, doctors said. The US military said it was a ”precision strike” targeting leaders of Iraq’s most wanted man, the Al-Qaeda-linked militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

United States forces launched attacks on Friday in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah and in nearby villages, killing at least 30 people and wounding 40 others, the military and hospital officials said. The strikes began on Thursday and stretched into Friday and targeted allies of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, separate military statements and witnesses said.

At least four people were killed and 13 wounded when United States forces made a new assault on Iraq’s flashpoint city of Fallujah early on Monday, with fighter jets blowing up a civilian car and house, medics said. Four dead bodies, ravaged by the missile strike, were taken straight to the cemetery for burial after a US warplane struck a civilian car driving along a new motorway west of Fallujah.

A United States army Apache attack helicopter was shot down in Iraq on Tuesday, the third downed in less than two weeks, though the crew escaped unharmed. In Baghdad, US troops reacting after a deadly roadside bomb shot at a car, killing its Iraqi driver and a 10-year-old boy, relatives said.

At least six people, including schoolchildren, were killed on Tuesday when a car bomb exploded near a police station in this flashpoint town west of Baghdad. The blast, which also wounded several people, came one day after five suicide car bombings in Baghdad killed 43 and wounded more than 200.

The doodles on the desk at the guardhouse tell it all. ”Stuck here forever,” an angry sergeant at the sand-blown US army base outside this desert town has scrawled with a felt-tip pen, alongside some scatological sketches.