- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- Car
bomb attacks brought more carnage to the streets of two Iraqi cities on
Monday, killing at least 26 people as the interim government struggles
to stamp out an insurgency ahead of elections scheduled for January.
-
- More than 100 people were wounded as bombers struck twice
in Baghdad and once in the northern city of Mosul.
-
- In the first Baghdad blast, a car blew up near an
entrance
to the heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the interim government,
killing
at least 15 people and wounding 80, a hospital official said.
-
- A second bomb exploded about an hour later as a U.S.
military convoy passed along Sadoun Street, a major thoroughfare east of
the Tigris river, where several hotels used by foreign contractors are
located.
-
- No U.S. troops were killed or wounded, a spokesman
said.
-
- In Mosul, a car bomb exploded outside a primary school,
killing five people, including two children, police said.
-
- Islamic militants distributed a video to an international
news agency showing the killings of two men who identified themselves as
an Italian of Iraqi origin and a Turk. A militant who appeared in the video
accused the two of spying.
-
- They were shown blindfolded and kneeling in front of
a ditch before being shot, a scene likely to raise fresh concern over the
fate of foreign hostages in Iraq. They include British engineer Ken Bigley
and two French journalists.
-
- Two Indonesian women who had been held hostage by an
Iraqi militant group were handed on Monday to the United Arab Emirates
embassy in Baghdad, Abu Dhabi Television reported.
-
- U.S. forces kept up operations against rebel-held towns
elsewhere aimed at establishing control throughout the country ahead of
the nationwide polls. Air strikes were launched against suspected militants
in Falluja.
-
- CAR BOMB
-
- In Baghdad's Sadoun Street, witnesses said a small truck
charged toward a group of four-wheel-drive vehicles and detonated,
destroying
half a dozen cars, shattering scores of shop windows and spraying wreckage
across the street.
-
- At least six people were killed and more than a dozen
wounded, a source at Iraq's Interior Ministry said.
-
- "I saw a head in one place and a leg in another.
This was a suicide bombing," said one bystander as thick clouds of
black smoke billowed behind him. U.S. helicopters circled overhead.
-
- The car bomb in Mosul may have exploded prematurely,
a U.S. officer at the scene said, as there was no obvious target in the
area, a quiet district in the south of the city.
-
- The death toll of five included two children, police
said, adding that 11 people were wounded, including five children.
-
- SAMARRA CALMER
-
- Operations to restore government control continued in
Samarra, a city north of Baghdad that U.S. and Iraqi forces overran on
Friday.
-
- In a 36-hour blitz, some 3,000 U.S. troops and 2,000
Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. warplanes and artillery, stormed the city,
60 miles north of Baghdad, in an effort to dislodge an estimated 500 to
1,000 guerrillas.
-
- U.S. forces said they killed 125 fighters and captured
88 in the assault, which destroyed dozens of buildings and, according to
locals, inflicted a heavy toll on civilians.
-
- Residents tried to bury their dead on Monday -- the
cemetery
was off limits on Sunday -- progressing through the streets of the city
waving sticks with white flags, weeping as they bore the coffins for
burial.
-
- Iraq's interior minister, who comes from Samarra, said
he did not believe any civilians had been killed in the offensive, a
statement
which drew an angry response from residents. The U.S. military said it
had tried to avoid civilian casualties.
-
- Much of Samarra still lacked water and
electricity.
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- BATTLES AHEAD
-
- The two biggest challenges facing U.S. and Iraqi forces
are Falluja and Ramadi, guerrilla strongholds west of Baghdad which the
U.S. military tried unsuccessfully to capture in April.
-
- There are also areas of Baghdad, including the Shi'ite
slum district of Sadr City, that will have to be seized from rebels.
-
- The U.S.-backed interim government hopes the offensive
against insurgents and militants will stabilize Iraq and encourage people
to vote in the national assembly elections.
-
- But Iraqis are less confident they will vote in the
elections
than they were three months ago, an opinion poll released on Monday
showed.
-
- In Baghdad a senior official in Iraq's Science and
Technology
Ministry was assassinated as he drove to work and the chief of police in
Balad Ruz, a rebel bastion just north of the capital, was also
killed.
-
- The U.S. military said two American soldiers were shot
and killed in Baghdad on Sunday at a joint traffic control point.
-
- On Monday, U.S. warplanes bombarded areas of Falluja
for the third consecutive night, targeting suspected hideouts of Jordanian
militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers.
-
- Doctors in Falluja said at least seven people were killed
and 14 wounded and said some were civilians. The military said it was a
building used by Zarqawi's group to store weapons.
-
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