Guerrilla Violence at Feverish Pace as Attacks Kill 34 Iraqis

Insurgents killed at least 34 Iraqis on Thursday in a spree of attacks that included three suicide bombings, booby traps on motorcycles and a convoy of militants firing into a crowd at a Baghdad bus stop.

Also, saboteurs blew up a key stretch of pipeline in the north, further hampering efforts to return Iraq’s vital oil industry to full production.

Rebel attacks have intensified in the five weeks since the new government took power. At least 800 people, mostly Iraqi civilians, have died in the barrage of bombings and shootings. More than 90 suicide attacks in the last month have accounted for most of the casualties, U.S. authorities said.

The U.S.-led military coalition also reported the deaths of two U.S. troops, bringing to at least 1,660 the number of Americans killed since the March 2003 invasion.

A serviceman working with a Marine unit died Wednesday when he was hit by small-arms fire while passing through Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold in the Sunni Muslim region west of Baghdad. The other soldier died in Kirkuk of noncombat wounds, the military said, without providing details.

Thursday’s attacks began at breakfast time when a suicide bomber in Tuz Khurmatu plowed a car into a restaurant where the security detail of Deputy Prime Minister Rosh Shawais, a Kurd, had stopped on its return to Sulaymaniya from Baghdad. Twelve people died, including at least one of Shawais’ bodyguards, and 40 were wounded. The Al Qaeda-linked militant group Ansar al Sunna claimed responsibility.

Tuz Khurmatu was the scene of two other suicide attacks in the last 10 days that targeted Kurdish leaders who have cooperated with Iraq’s new Shiite Muslim leadership and the coalition.

Al Qaeda’s network in Iraq, headed by Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, said in an Internet posting that it had carried out a suicide bombing in Baqubah almost simultaneously with the 8:30 a.m. explosion in Tuz Khurmatu. The Baqubah blast killed the deputy chief of the Diyala province governing council and four of his bodyguards.

About 10 minutes later, a third suicide driver attacked a convoy of vehicles from the U.S. Consulate in Kirkuk that was carrying civilian contractors to Northern Oil Co. in the Arafa district. An Iraqi woman and child died in the blast and 13 people were wounded. None of the victims were U.S. citizens, local police commander Torhan Yousif said. Two of the consulate’s armored sport utility vehicles were destroyed.

It was the Northern Oil pipeline that was bombed and set ablaze about 8 a.m. Fire and black smoke poured from a vast oil spill in the village of Amsha, witnesses said. The pipeline is guarded by 2,500 Iraqi soldiers and security guards, but for more than a month insurgents have succeeded in breaking the flow of oil to Turkey’s Ceyhan port.

In Mosul, a volatile city wedged between the war-torn Sunni Triangle region and Kurdish territory in Iraq’s north, insurgents detonated explosives wired to two motorcycles parked outside a cafe, killing five people.

Gunmen traveling through the Hurriya neighborhood of Baghdad in three cars opened fire on a throng of shoppers waiting for minibuses, said Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, head of the Interior Ministry’s information department. Nine people died in the late-morning attack, the colonel said.

A ministry source also reported that a Turkish truck driver was shot to death when insurgents attacked the convoy in which he was traveling in Baiji, about 120 miles north of the capital.

Iraqi newspapers reported the death of a national guardsman Wednesday from poisoned melon distributed to six guard units in Sharqat, on the road to Mosul. Twelve others were hospitalized in critical condition after eating the fruit, which was brought to the soldiers by the driver of a pickup truck who claimed to be a farmer.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr hailed an ongoing anti-guerrilla sweep in the capital as a success, which he attributed in large part to the work of Sunni security forces.

Sunnis make up about 60% of the contingent manning roadblocks and searching neighborhoods suspected of harboring insurgents, he said. That has encouraged the Sunni population to provide crucial intelligence to the operation.

At least 28 militants have been killed and 700 suspects detained, Jabr said. Eighteen explosive devices have been seized, including three car bombs, as well as 17 tons of explosives, he added.

Jabr and his counterpart at the Defense Ministry, Saadoun Dulaimi, had announced that 40,000 police and special forces troops, backed by U.S. and other foreign soldiers, would mount a massive crackdown on insurgents.

Checkpoints have been set up on several key roads into Baghdad, and dozens of convoys carrying hooded, machine-gun-wielding Iraqis have been driving around the capital since Saturday. Gunfights have erupted, but the operation so far has failed to deliver the devastating blow officials had promised.

Times staff writers Louise Roug and Raheem Salman in Baghdad, special correspondent Ali Windawi in Kirkuk and special correspondents in Mosul and Baqubah contributed to this report.