Insurgents launched coordinated attacks Thursday against Iraqi army checkpoints northeast of Baghdad, killing six Iraqi soldiers, police said. Roadside bombs killed two U.S. soldiers and ignited a train carrying fuel in the south of Iraq's capital.
The attacks began about 2:30 p.m. against four Iraqi checkpoints along a road near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police Col. Mudhafar Mohammed said.
Attackers fired automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades during the attacks, he said. There was no report of insurgent casualties.
The attacks occurred a day after a total of three American soldiers died in two separate bombings - one in Samarra, 60 miles north of the capital, and the other in northern Baghdad. Two U.S. soldiers died in the Baghdad attack.
On Sunday, four American soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were killed when their vehicle ran over a roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad.
On Thursday, a train carrying fuel exploded when it was hit by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding six others, police said.
The attack, which sent a massive cloud of smoke over the southern part of the city, occurred in the southern neighborhood of Dora, an area where insurgents are known to be active, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.
The bomb appeared to have targeted a nearby police commando checkpoint, Mahmoud said. One of those killed and four of the injured are security force members, he said. The rest were civilians.
It wasn't clear if the train, which was heading south, also was the target.
Most of the wounded suffered serious burns, Thaer said.
An Internet posting in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq, the country's most feared terror group, claimed responsibility for the train attack.
The violence came a day after al-Qaida said it killed two kidnapped Algerian diplomats because of Algeria's ties to the United States and its crackdown on Islamic extremists.
The diplomats' deaths brought to three the number of foreign envoys reported killed this month as part of a militant campaign to isolate Iraq's embattled government within the Arab and Muslim world. Two other apparent kidnapping attempts against diplomats were foiled.
Algeria opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, although it has in recent years become a close U.S. ally, particularly in investigating and arresting Islamic extremists. Al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, linked the killing of the diplomats to the Algerian crackdown.
Algeria's chief envoy Ali Belaroussi and fellow diplomat Azzedine Belkadi were slain because their government represses Muslims "in violation of God's will," said a chilling Internet statement posted in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq.
The statement provided no photographic evidence of the deaths, and the statement's authenticity could not be confirmed.
Belaroussi, 62, and Belkadi, 47, were dragged from their cars and kidnapped at gunpoint July 21 in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood. They appeared - blindfolded and in captivity - in a video posted Tuesday on the Internet.
The Bush administration has been eager to maintain political momentum in Iraq, hoping a broad-based government can lure Sunni Arabs guerrillas away from the insurgency. A key step in that strategy is a new constitution, which is to be completed by Aug. 15 and presented to the voters in a referendum two months later.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld came to Baghdad to urge the Iraqis to finish the draft charter on time. "People are simply going to have to recognize that (in) any constitutional drafting process, compromise is necessary. It's important. It's understandable. It's the way democratic systems work," he said.
The electricity ministry said six attacks in the last 10 days on the power grid has led to a reduction in the electricity supplies to Baghdad and nearby southern provinces, according to government newspaper al-Sabah. Power in Baghdad is down to a half an hour of electricity followed by a six-hour blackout. |
Al-Qaida in Iraq says it has killed two kidnapped Algerian envoys because of their government's support for the United States, according to an Internet statement. The statement was posted on a website on Wednesday often used by the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Its authenticity could not be immediately verified. But the killings were confirmed by the office of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Algerian police have arrested a former leading member of an Islamic group for voicing support for Iraqi fighters as the country mourned the death of two of its diplomats killed in Iraq. 
Two people have been arrested in connection with the abductions of two Algerian diplomats last week, an Iraqi official said. Assistant Interior Minister Major General Hussein Ali Kamal told Aljazeera on Monday that the two were detained over the Baghdad abductions.