- BAGHDAD (AP) -- Saboteurs
brought a trainload of U.S. army supplies to a fiery halt west of Baghdad
on Thursday as a Ramadan campaign of terror bombs and escalating attacks
spurred a new Iraq pullout by international aid groups.
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- An explosion rocked a row of shops in Baghdad's Old City
late Thursday, killing two people, according to police, and deepening the
unease in the Iraqi capital.
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- Many Baghdad parents apparently were keeping their children
home from school out of fear of further bombings like the four that killed
three dozen people and wounded more than 200 across the capital Monday,
start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
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- "We heard rumours about big bombs that will go off,"
said Duha Khalid, 18, most of whose friends stayed home Thursday from her
girls' high school, situated near a police station.
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- The police, prime targets in the bombings Monday, were
targeted again Thursday, when officers intercepted a motorist who tried
to toss a hand grenade into a police station on the edge of Baghdad's heavily
guarded green zone, the headquarters enclave for the U.S. occupation.
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- As October's heat finally gave way to cooling winds off
the desert, rumours of looming trouble spread through this city of five
million, focusing on the start of the week - Saturday in Iraq.
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- One leaflet on the streets, purporting to be from Saddam
Hussein's Baath party, called for a general strike Saturday through Monday
"to prove to our enemy that we are united people."
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- The plainly typed flyer will further feed the debate
over the identity of the shadowy underground of bombers striking Iraqi
cities and ambush teams harassing U.S. forces: Are they die-hard Baathists,
other anti-U.S. nationalists, foreign Islamic fighters, or some combination?
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- The identity of those swarming over the sabotaged train
Thursday was clear: they were Iraqis from the Fallujah area, 55 kilometres
west of Baghdad, who fell upon the crippled train to loot it of computers,
tents, bottled water and other army supplies.
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- The goods had been bound for the town of Haditha, 160
kilometres up the Euphrates River from Fallujah, when a makeshift bomb
exploded along the tracks six kilometres west of Fallujah. As the uninjured
engineer fled, four shipping containers on flatcars went up in flames,
and more than 200 area residents descended on the other cars to make off
with whatever they could carry.
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- No U.S. forces came to the scene, but at one point the
looters scattered when two American helicopters whirred in for a look.
At another point, Iraqis backed trucks up to the bombed train to offload
goods.
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- The six-month-old U.S. occupation is particularly unpopular
in Fallujah and in much of the rest of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, a
favoured region under the Baathist regime toppled by the U.S. invasion
force last April.
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- Monday's bombings, one of which devastated the Baghdad
headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, prompted
international aid organizations to quickly review their presence in Iraq.
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- On Wednesday, the ICRC announced it would reduce its
30-member international staff in Iraq but would continue operations. Among
other things, the Red Cross, which has 600 Iraqi employees, tries to ensure
the rights of prisoners of war and other postwar detainees, has worked
to improve water quality, particularly for hospitals, and delivered medical
supplies to Iraqi hospitals.
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- A smaller medical aid group, Medecins Sans Frontieres
- Doctors Without Borders - also said it was pulling its international
staff out.
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- Later Wednesday, the United Nations, whose Baghdad headquarters
was devastated by a bombing in August, said it will temporarily withdraw
its remaining international staff from Iraq - approximately 60 people,
including 20 in Baghdad. The UN staff in relatively peaceful northern Iraq
will remain.
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- "It's not our intention now to pull out totally,"
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told The Associated Press in New York on
Thursday.
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- "Of course, it depends on what further developments
are coming. We want to reassess our position and our posture and also try
and assess the new developments on the ground."
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- The U.S. command reported Wednesday that the number of
attacks in the past week had jumped sharply to an average of 33 a day.
In one incident early Thursday, a bomb exploded near a U.S. army convoy
in the northern city of Mosul, slightly wounding a 101st Airborne Division
soldier.
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- In other developments:
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- * A hand grenade blast in the southern city of Karbala
late Wednesday wounded Sheik Abdul-Mahdi al-Karbalai, a representative
of Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Rivalries among Shiite
factions have led to occasional bloodshed since the war's end.
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- * Early Thursday, U.S. 4th Infantry Division soldiers
raided a half-dozen houses in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, and detained four
people suspected of planning attacks on U.S. forces.
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- * Iraqi oil officials said bad weather halted exports
of crude oil from its southern Basra terminal for three days. Iraqi and
U.S. officials are counting on oil revenues to help boost Iraqi reconstruction.
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