Suicide car bomb kills 16 Iraq policemen
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-23 23:08

A suicide car bomber set off an explosion Saturday at a police station near a U.S. Marine base in western Iraq, killing at least 16 policemen and wounding 40 other people, officials said.

An injured Iraqi policeman receives attention from hospital staff after a suicide car bomb exploded near a U.S. marine base in the western town of Al Asad on October 23, 2004. [Reuters]

The explosion occurred at about 7 a.m. outside the gates of Marine Camp Al Asad in Baghdadi, about 140 miles west of Baghdad near Ramadi, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

No American soldiers were hurt in the attack, the U.S. military said. Some of the wounded were being treated at a U.S. military medical facility, while others were flown to civilian hospitals, a spokesman said.

The blast came hours after the U.S. military arrested an aide to Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and five others during raids on a safe house in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, officials said. The aide had risen to prominence in recent weeks as other al-Zarqawi staff had been killed, according to intelligence sources.

The 1:30 a.m. raid in southern Fallujah targeted a site being used as a safe haven by al-Zarqawi's inner circle, according to a military statement.

Fallujah residents said the raid occurred at the home of Abdel-Hamid Fiyadh, 50, who was arrested along with his two sons, Walid, 18, and Majid, 25, and three relatives. Relatives insisted the men had nothing to do with al-Zarqawi, who has a $25 million bounty on his head from the United States.

An Iraqi National Guard secures the area after gunmen opened fire on a convoy of trucks in Mosul, northern Iraq, Saturday, Oct. 23, 2004, killing two drivers and wounding two others, hospital and police officials said. [AP]

American forces have stepped up operations in Fallujah in a bid to root out al-Zarqawi's terror group, Tawhid and Jihad, which is believed to operate from there. The group has been blamed in numerous suicide bombings — including recent twin blasts inside Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses the U.S and Iraqi leadership — and beheadings of foreign hostages.

Among the most shocking of the kidnappings was that of Margaret Hassan, an aid worker with joint British, Irish and Iraqi citizenship who has spent nearly half her life delivering food and medicine in Iraq. Hassan, who is married to an Iraqi, was seized Tuesday in western Baghdad as she rode to work in her car.

On Friday, Hassan appeared in a wrenching televised statement begging for her life and urging British Prime Minister Tony Blair to withdraw his country's troops from Iraq.

The gaunt, 59-year-old woman's statement puts new political pressure on Blair's government shortly after it agreed to a U.S. request to transfer 850 British soldiers from southern Iraq to the Baghdad area to free American forces for new offensives against insurgents.

"Please help me, please help me," Hassan, who heads CARE International's operations in Iraq, said in a grainy videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television. "This might be my last hours. Please help me. Please, the British people, ask Mr. Blair to take the troops out of Iraq, and not to bring them here to Baghdad."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the video "extremely distressing."

Unlike most previous hostage tapes, this one featured no hooded gunmen, no banners identifying the militant group and no explicit demands for the captive's freedom. Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based station, said it received the tape Friday but did not say where or how.

On Saturday, CARE International secretary-general Denis Caillaux made an appeal on al-Jazeera to Hassan's kidnappers to release her.

"She is a naturalized Iraqi citizen and always holds the people of Iraq in her heart. CARE joins with many of the people whose lives Mrs. Hassan has touched over her decades of service in Iraq in reaching out to her captors to appeal to their humanity," he said.

The British and Irish governments called for her immediate release.

"Taking Margaret from her family is a cruel and shocking act," Irish premier Bertie Ahern said in Dublin. "To harm her in any way would be unthinkable. I call on her captors, on behalf of the government and people of Ireland, to release her immediately."

Militants have kidnapped at least seven other foreign women over the past six months, and all were released. In September, Italian aid workers Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, were kidnapped from their Baghdad offices. They were freed three weeks later.

By contrast, at least 33 foreign male hostages have been killed, including three Americans beheaded by their captors. Insurgents, nevertheless, have targeted Iraqi women working for the Americans or their allies, including Thursday's deadly ambush on a bus carrying female airline employees on their way to work at Baghdad airport.

Hassan has done aid work in this country for nearly 30 years. She joined CARE soon after it began operations in Iraq in 1991, managing a staff of 60 Iraqis who run nutrition, health and water programs throughout the country.

In other developments Saturday:

-- A roadside bomb detonated near a U.S. military patrol along the highway leading to the Baghdad airport, wounding six soldiers, the U.S. military said. None of the wounds were life-threatening.

-- A mortar round landed in a central Baghdad neighborhood, killing two people and injuring one.

-- A suicide driver detonated a car bomb near an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint south of Samarra, killing four guardsmen and injuring six, police said.

-- An unexploded mortar was found inside Japan's military base in Samawah, southern Iraq, the first since hundreds of Japanese troops arrived on a humanitarian mission, a Japanese official said. There were no injuries.

-- Gunmen opened fire on a convoy of Turkish trucks in Mosul, killing two drivers — a Turk and a Yugoslav — and wounding two others, hospital and police officials said. The attack occurred about noon in the center of the city.

Close

Today's Top News     Top World News
Blast death toll rises 79; search continues         Economy grows 9.1% in third quarter         Draft property rights law to be discussed         US limits sock imports from China         Abducted aid worker in Iraq begs for life         Bush, Kerry turn campaigning into a zoo	Powell spurns N. Korea demand on talks       Quakes hit Japan; 3 dead, over 300 injured       Suicide car bomb kills 16 Iraq policemen       Bush, Kerry turn campaigning into a zoo       US forces bomb Falluja, seize Zarqawi aide       Kyoto Protocol clears key hurdle in Russia