IRAQ: 8 KILLED IN DOUBLE BLASTTwo blasts rocked Baghdad on Monday morning killing at least 8 people and wounding 16 when a suicide bomber drove his explosive truck into the basement of the building housing guards for the hotel.
As reported by the local police to CNN, the kamikaze hit the Sadeer Hotel checkpoint at about 6 o'clock in the morning. The Sadeer is normally used by foreign workers. Witnesses have told al-Jazeera that the sound of machine-guns firing was heard right after the explosion of the bomb.
The second car bomb apparently exploded at an Iraqi police commando checkpoint west of the capital at 8:45 a.m. (12:45 a.m. ET). Two commandos were killed in the attack and eleven injured.
The two attacks happened a day after the killing of 25 people and the wounding of 33 others at the al-Rashad police station in Baghdad. According to the police, this explosion destroyed 25 vehicles as well as 8 shops. Also on Sunday, another bomb went off near a minibus killing a child and wounding six other Iraqi civillians. The event took place in the area of Kamishly at about 8:45 a.m. (12:45 a.m. ET), according to police sources in Hilla.
Another deadly attack targeted a government building, where mortar rounds were fired against Iraq's Interior Ministry compound on Sunday morning, killing one official and wounding another.
Meanwhile, the chief of the al-Kadhimiya police station, Lt. Col. Imad Hatem Khalaf, was killed on Sunday in Baghdad's Huriya neighborhood by a group of armed men.
According to a military statement, an American soldier was killed on Sunday in a base near Balad during an attack by "indirect fire". Another soldier from Task Force Liberty was wounded. An American marine was also killed in the area of Rubath "during combat operations", by a makeshift bomb.
The number of US soldiers killed during "Operation Freedom" is now 1,773, according to the Pentagon.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the new US ambassador in Iraq, commented on the facts during his visit to the government,
"They want to intensify violence; they want to, on occasion, cause civil strife and civil war in Iraq. Iraqis want to succeed like people everywhere," said Khalilzad, adding,
"Insurgents, terrorists do not want reconstruction to take place; they do not want economic progress to take place."
CNNal-Jazeera
Il Romanaccio at 10:22 AM
