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Saturday, April 23, 2005

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  The attack occurred near the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, which was at the center of a prison abuse scandal last year after photographs were publicized showing U.S. soldiers humiliating Iraqi inmates.

It was one of at least three explosions in Baghdad. Another bomb detonated on a busy road that connects with the perilous highway to the airport, police Capt. Thamir Talib said. One Iraqi was killed and seven wounded, hospital officials said.

In eastern Baghdad, two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their car, said police Capt. Mahir Abdelsatar.

The U.S. military said troops identified a roadside bomb on the highway itself and conducted a controlled detonation that caused no damage or injuries.

In other attacks Saturday:

-An Iraqi civilian was killed by a roadside bomb on a highway in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, said police Lt. Qassim Mohamed.

-A suicide car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in Abu al-Khasib, a town near Basra in southern Iraq, wounding two people, said police Col. Karim al-Zeidi.

-In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army convoy, wounding three soldiers, said Dr. Bahaaldin al-Bakri at the city's hospital.

The violence was part of a surge of militant attacks that have caused heavy casualties in recent weeks, ending a relative lull since Iraqis voted in historic Jan. 30 elections. Iraqi leaders are struggling to form a Cabinet that will include members of the Sunni minority, believed to be the driving force in the insurgency.

On Friday, a car bomb ripped through a crowded Baghdad mosque during midday prayers, killing 12 people and wounding 22, police and hospital officials said.

Investigating Helicopter Crash

The U.S. military sent investigators to the grassy field north of Baghdad where a helicopter carrying 11 foreign civilians was shot down Thursday. The Bulgarian company that owns the aircraft identified a man shown being shot and killed after the crash in footage released by militants as one of its pilots.

Al-Jazeera television aired part of another video in which it said a militant group was threatening to kill three kidnapped Romanian journalists and their Iraqi-American translator unless Romanian troops leave the country within four days.

After the mosque attack, which targeted Iraq's Shiite majority, frantic worshippers searched through rubble for loved ones, and women wailed and beat their chests in grief. Body parts were strewn at the scene among piles of bricks, shattered glass and pools of blood. One man clutched a child's foot, shaking and weeping.

The car bomb exploded at Al-Subeih mosque in the capital's Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighborhood, said police Col. Ahmed Aboud. Witnesses said the vehicle used in the attack had been parked outside the building since the morning.

Shiite mosques and funerals have become a frequent target of Sunni-led insurgents.

In February, suicide bombers attacked a number of them during the Shiite commemoration of Ashoura, killing nearly 100 people. In recent weeks, police have pulled dozens of bodies from the Tigris River in a region south of Baghdad that has seen retaliatory kidnappings and killings by Shiite and Sunni groups.

In violence targeting the coalition, one U.S. soldier was killed Friday by a roadside bomb north of Tal Afar, 95 miles east of the Syrian border, the military said.

On Thursday, a U.S. Marine died in a non-hostile incident at Camp Delta, near Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, the military said. More than 1,500 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war two years ago.

Two militant groups claimed responsibility for shooting down the Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter Thursday and released video to support their claims.

A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq posted footage on the Internet purporting to show militants capturing and shooting the lone survivor, found lying in the grass near burning wreckage and charred bodies.

Heli Air, the Bulgarian company that owns the helicopter, confirmed Friday the man seen in the footage was one of the aircraft's two pilots.

Al-Jazeera broadcast another video from a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Army in Iraq that shows the helicopter in flames, arcing toward the ground, apparently after being hit by a missile.

There was no independent confirmation of the authenticity of either video.

The chartered flight between Baghdad and Tikrit was believed to be the first civilian aircraft shot down in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. A spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq said an American medical team arrived at the site within a half hour of Thursday's crash and found no survivors.

The dead included six American bodyguards for U.S. diplomats, three Bulgarian crew and two security guards from Fiji, officials said.

The hostage video showed the three Romanians - Marie Jeanne Ion, Sorin Dumitru Miscoci and Ovidiu Ohanesian - sitting cross-legged against a wall with their hands chained. A man said to be their translator, Mohammed Monaf, was shown sitting alone, hands bound. Gunmen stood on either side of him, pointing an automatic rifle and a pistol at his head.

The four were kidnapped on March 28 near their Baghdad hotel shortly after interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. They appeared a day later in a video aired on Al-Jazeera.

More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April 2004, and at least 17 are believed to still be in the hands of their captors. More than 30 others were killed by their kidnappers.

© 2005 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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