At Least 38 Killed in a Day’s Violence
A series of suicide attacks and shootings Monday killed at least 38 people, and 17 more bodies showing signs of torture and execution were found around the capital.
The U.S. military said Monday that two soldiers had died Sunday in Baghdad.
Most of the deaths Monday came from suicide bombings, and the heaviest tolls occurred in the north, where the U.S. military presence has diminished as troops have been redeployed to bolster security in the capital.
In Tall Afar, once a model of U.S. counterinsurgency tactics, a bomber detonated explosives while waiting in line for cooking oil, killing himself and 21 people, all but two of them civilians. Nineteen people were injured.
In Ramadi, where U.S. Marines are struggling to sign up Iraqis for a police force, a car bomb killed 13 recruits and injured 10.
Four police officers were ambushed and slain by gunmen along a road near Mosul, and police in the northern city said they had found the bodies of four apparent homicide victims.
In the south, Basra police said they had found the body of a counter-terrorism officer who was kidnapped several days ago.
Meanwhile, testimony continued in the trial of former President Saddam Hussein on charges that he ordered a series of poison gas attacks, aerial bombings and artillery assaults on ethnic Kurds in 1987 and 1988.
Prosecutors presented two more Kurdish witnesses, both of whom said they suffer lingering effects of gas attacks allegedly ordered by Hussein and carried out by his northern military commander at the time, Ali Hassan Majid, also known as Chemical Ali.
The first witness, Darwan Abdullah Ali Tawfiq, told the court he was exposed to gas attacks in Kurdistan and still suffers burning, itching and poor eyesight.
Hussein and Majid reacted to Tawfiq’s testimony with disdain, saying Iran was the culprit in the gas attacks.
Attorneys for the two attempted to discredit the witness after he admitted to giving a false name while seeking asylum in the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq’s national security advisor, released a letter attributed to an Algerian Al Qaeda figure.
The letter from Atiya Jazari warns Abu Musab Zarqawi, the late leader of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq, to treat followers and prospective recruits well and “to be careful, very careful, not to oppress, humiliate, frighten, judge or punish them in a way that they will not understand.”
The letter was distributed via e-mail by the Coalition Press Information Center, a U.S.-led joint public affairs office in Baghdad, but U.S. military spokesman Army Lt. Col. Barry Johnson disavowed its dissemination, calling it an “error.”
In other developments, tribal leaders and clerics in Ramadi, capital of violent Al Anbar province, met last week and set up a force of about 20,000 men “ready to purge the city” of Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters, Sheik Fassal Gaood, a tribal leader from the city, told the Associated Press.
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Times correspondents in Baghdad; Kirkuk, Iraq; Mosul; and Ramadi contributed to this report.
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