15 Dead 52 Wounded In Iraq Violence Al

15 Dead, 52 wounded in Iraq Violence

Al-Zaman says that violence killed 15 and left 52 persons injured in a series of explosions and attacks on Sunday and Monday, in Baghdad, Mosul, Baqubah, al-Hillah and Tikrit.

AP reports that In Mosul on Monday, a car bomber ran into a civilian convoy, leaving one dead and four wounded.

On Sunday in Mosul, guerrillas detonated a car bomb on a bridge. They killed five Iraqis and wounded 15 others.

In western Baghdad late on Monday, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb, wounding three US soldiers.

In Baghdad late on Sunday, guerrillas detonated a car bomb next to a police convoy in Jadiriyah. The explosion left six people dead, including 3 policemen, and injured 26. Also, a commander in the Shiite paramilitary, the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, named Qasim al-Ma`muri, was assassinated with a pistol that had a silencer attached.

In the eastern city of Baqubah, according to az-Zaman, police fought guerrillas, with 7 police being wounded, along with a woman and a child.

In Balad near Tikrit, a headless body (probably a Turk was discovered). Elswhere, guerrillas killed two Macedonian hostages.

Muhsin Abdul Hamid, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member in the National Council, complained that US forces had killed a commander of the IIP on the road three days before. This according to al-Zaman. He said that everyone had to admit that the US military had committed atrocities against civilians in Iraq. He and others in the National Council put forward a demand that US forces be kept out of Iraqi cities and garrisoned in the countryside. (Muhsin Abdul Hamid served on Bremer’s Interim Governing Council). Abdul Hamid has also been critical of the US demand that Fallujah hand over Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, saying that the latter moves around a great deal and the Fallujans just did not know where he was.

At the urging of caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, the US released from custody Sheikh Khalid al-Jumaili, who had engaged in peace talks with the guerrillas in Fallujah. Bizarrely enough, the US arrested this negotiator and interrogated him. It is true that al-Jumaili leads his own militant group, but the arrest appears to have been a simple mistake, as the US military now admits. Al-Jumaili now says that the city’s insurgent leadership has instructed him to cease a ttempting to negotiate.

As the US positions itself for a major attack on Fallujah in November, clerics in Fallujah called for a campaign of civil disobedience in various Iraqi cities to forestall an American attack. Almost daily US bombing of the city has left much of it in ruins and killed many innocent civilians.