- BAGHDAD (AFP) - A teenager
was killed and five people wounded when a bomb exploded on a busy Baghdad
street as US troops and Iraqis were trying to defuse it, police said.
-
- Haidar Khodayr, 15, had been playing football in an abandoned
lot with friends when people spotted a bomb hidden in a garbage bag on
the city's Haifa street, said Sergeant Mohi Naimi.
-
- "People stayed near the bomb, people wouldn't leave.
The Americans put something on the bomb to cover it. When the soldiers
backed off from the bomb, someone detonated it by remote control,"
Naimi said.
-
- Five others were wounded, two of them seriously, with
the oldest of the casualties being 30 years old, he said. Medics confirmed
the toll.
-
- Police had attempted to push people back, but even after
US troops arrived onlookers remained and were caught in the blast when
the device was remotely detonated, Naimi said.
-
- At the city's Al-Karkh hospital, family members claimed
Khodayr's body and fastened his wooden coffin to the top of a beaten-up
car.
-
- "No to America, No to Saddam, No to Bush,"
Khodayr's distraught older brother shouted, his arms trembling, before
his family drove away.
-
- The US military earlier confirmed the blast but said
only that three civilians and a translator were wounded.
-
- The Iraqi capital has been hit by a string of attacks,
including a New Year's Eve car-bomb blast at a popular restaurant that
killed eight people.
-
- Coalition officials warned that the incident could herald
new tactics in the insurgency as guerrillas switch to softer targets in
their efforts to destabilize US-controlled Iraq.
-
- In Hawijah, north of Baghdad, seven people were injured,
including four Iraqi Civil Defence Corps personnel, when two attackers
threw grenades at a government building Wednesday during a meeting attended
by US troops, the US military said.
-
- One of the assailants was wounded when a US Bradley armoured
vehicle guarding the building opened fire, but he managed to evade capture.
-
- In a separate attack on the same day, gunmen fired on
a convoy travelling near the northern town of Samarra. US troops returned
fire destroying the attackers' vehicle but it was not known if they inflicted
any casualties.
-
- Three Iraqi civilians were injured when insurgents fired
rocket-propelled grenades at US troops in the flashpoint town of Fallujah
on Tuesday.
-
- Police there said US troops were responsible for killing
two Iraqis and wounding three in the town when they opened fire on attackers.
-
- US forces regularly clash with insurgents in Fallujah,
a Sunni Muslim town which was a bastion of support for the Sunni-dominated
regime of Saddam Hussein.
-
- Demonstrators gathered there Friday to demand the release
of Khamis Sirhan al-Mohammad, one of the coalition's "most wanted",
who was captured by troops on Sunday in Ramadi, another stronghold of Saddam-loyal
Sunnis.
-
- Protestor Mohmaed Kamel, Mohammad's nephew, said the
former chief of Saddam's Baath party in the central town of Karbala was
"innocent and did not commit crimes against the Iraqi people".
-
- Meanwhile in Baquba, north of Baghdad, heavy security
was thrown around two mosques in the town following threats of a repeat
of an attack last Friday which killed five people during main weekly prayers.
-
- The unabated unrest came as coalition ground forces commander
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez hailed successes against Saddam loyalists,
urging rebels to throw down their weapons and end a nine-month insurgency.
-
- "We've had great success in the last five weeks
in taking down former regime elements and anti-coalition elements that
are operating in the environment.
-
- "The timing is perfect for the anti-coalition forces
and former regime elements to make a decision that it's time to embrace
the future," he said.
-
- Copyright © 2004 Agence France Presse. All rights
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of Agence France Presse.
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