Insurgent Attacks Rise as Regime Touts Crackdown

Insurgents lashed out with a wave of shootings and bombings, including a blast aimed at the heart of Iraq’s security apparatus, despite a highly publicized crackdown by Iraqi forces seeking to halt violence here in the capital and bring credibility to the new government.

More than 30 Iraqis were killed or discovered dead in the Baghdad area Friday night and Saturday as insurgents set off three bombs in the capital in less than 18 hours. The U.S. military also disclosed the deaths of two Marines assigned to the 2nd Division who were killed Friday. They were killed near the town of Saqlawiya, west of Fallouja, by a roadside bomb.

The violence underscores Iraq’s continuing security woes as the recently installed transitional government and U.S. forces attempt to bolster Iraq’s police and military and assure the public that the insurgency is losing ground.

In Baghdad, a suicide car bomb went off in front of the Slovak Embassy, injuring four people, as Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr was wrapping up a news conference across town to tout the successes of the crackdown on guerrillas, called Operation Lightning.

“Iraqis have noticed that the number of terrorist attacks has decreased,” Jabr said as technicians flashed slick graphics with English titles on screens above him. “The number of car bombs has decreased.”

He added that security forces had rounded up more than 1,300 suspected insurgents and criminals, seized more than $6 million and killed 36 suspected militants during Operation Lightning, which began late last month. “We are tightening the noose on the terrorists in Baghdad,” he said.

In the boldest of Saturday’s insurgent assaults, a bomber infiltrated the Baghdad headquarters of an elite Iraqi commando unit called the Wolf Brigade, blowing himself up along with three members of the unit during roll call. Jabr told reporters the attacker was a uniformed former member of the counterinsurgency brigade who had managed to get past layers of security. Jabr said the bomber probably was trying to kill Brig. Gen. Mohammed Qureishi, the unit’s commander.

Meanwhile Saturday, U.S. warplanes and helicopters carried out airstrikes on the outskirts of Karabila near the Syrian border, killing about 40 insurgents who were stopping and searching civilian cars, the military said.

Two Iraqi security contractors escorting a convoy of supplies to an American military base near Fallouja were also killed Saturday, apparently by U.S. soldiers who mistook them for insurgents, said an Interior Ministry official and an executive at the victims’ company, the Sandi Group. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Boylan said he could not confirm the account.

“Obviously there was some kind of misunderstanding,” said the representative of the Sandi Group, which is under contract with security firm DynCorp of Reston, Va.

The executive, fearing for his safety, agreed to speak on the condition that his name not be published. “The Americans, whenever they see a car with armed guys, they consider that a threat.”

Thick sandstorms veiled much of central Iraq in a coat of fine dust Saturday, adding to Baghdad’s misery.

The rise in violence occurred after more than a week of relative calm. It began when a car bomb exploded Friday night in front of a clinic in the lower-middle-class Shuala neighborhood, killing 11 people, including a pregnant woman. “What is the sin of the baby, who suddenly died inside its mother’s womb?” cried Umm Jumaa, the nickname of a local midwife who knew the deceased woman.

The bullet-pocked bodies of slain Iraqis, many of them Shiite Muslims with ties to the government, continued to show up throughout the country.

Police in the town of Latifiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, discovered the corpses of 10 Iraqis shot to death and found three people clinging to life. The provincial police commander, who asked to be identified by the nickname Abu Harith, said most if not all of the victims were Shiite laborers heading north for work in the capital when they were apparently attacked by Sunni Arabs.

Gunmen killed three members of Iraq’s special forces in the Washash district of the capital before speeding away. In the Khadra district, the bodies of an Oil Ministry official, his brother and their cousin were found with bound hands and signs of torture, according to police, and the bodies of two Sudanese immigrants were discovered in Shuala.

The Slovak Embassy suffered light damage in the car bomb blast. The Central European nation has contributed about 100 troops to the U.S.-led war effort, operating in the Najaf area under Polish command. At least three Slovak soldiers have been killed since the conflict began.

In Najaf, a city considered holy by Shiites, a mortar shell apparently left over from last year’s fighting between U.S. forces and Shiite militiamen exploded in the sacred Valley of Peace cemetery, killing two Iraqis who had come to pay their respects to relatives.

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Times staff writers Shamil Aziz and Suhail Ahmad and special correspondents in Baghdad and Najaf contributed to this report.