Security Incidents for Friday, June 08, 07

ARMY comrades, family and friends were united in grief for the funeral of a brave Black Country soldier killed in Afghanistan.

In Country:
#1: Georgia's parliament on Friday overwhelmingly approved President Mikhail Saakashvili's proposal to increase the ex-Soviet republic's military continent in Iraq to 2,000 servicemen, more than doubling its size.


Baghdad:
#1: In Baghdad, U.S. army artillery fired at least nine rounds Friday morning into a Sunni Muslim-dominated farming area in the city's southwestern sections of Arab Jibor and Albu Aitha, police reported. A police officer, who asked anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to media, said the shelling targeted "selective areas" where Sunni militants were active.


Diyala Prv:
Kanaan:
#1: In a dawn strike Friday, unidentified gunmen attacked the house of the police chief in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, killing his wife, two brothers and 11 guards, Diyala provincial police reported. The attackers also abducted two sons and a daughter of police chief Col. Ali Dilayan al-Jorani, police said. The chief, head of central Baqouba's Balda police station, wasn't at home at the time, they said. The children were described as young men and a young woman, but their ages weren't immediately available. The two slain brothers were serving as guards at the house, in Kanaan town northwest of the city of Baqouba, which is 56 kilometres northeast of Baghdad. The bodies of some guards, many of whom were also al-Jorani relatives, were found on a nearby road, apparently after being seized at the house, police said.

Baquba:
#1: A roadside bomb killed two high-ranking police officers and wounded a third south of Baquba, police said.

Around 1 p.m. an IED attack targeted a police convoy in AL Sakran area, about 35 Km north of Baqouba. The attack led to the death of 2 officers and injuring one. Colonel Mahmoud Saeed Al Ameri, head of Khan Bani Saad police dept, LC Muhsen AL Difaei the commander of the 3rd police commandos’ battalion in Diyala were killed and injured Colonel Hashim Al Mamouri head of Al Sakran police dept. The officers were heading to Baqouba city, the province’s capital, to attend a security meeting. Their convoy consisted of 4 vehicles and the IED targeted the vehicle that the officers were using.

#2: On Thursday night a member of Baqouba local council was killed, Sheik Jabar Ahmed Al Timimi, when gunmen attacked a police station as he was in the station a police man was killed and another was injured in the same attack in Dura area east of Baqouba

#3: (see #1) A senior police officer who was injured on Friday morning in a blast just north of Baghdad died upon arrival at al-Kindi hospital in Baghdad, a security source said. The blast severely injured "Col. Hashim al-Maamouri, the Mohammed Sakran police director, who died upon arrival at al-Kindi hospital in Baghdad," the source, who asked not to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq


Muwelha:
#1: Babel Governor Salem al-Maslamawi survived an assassination attempt on Friday while traveling to Baghdad for a meeting with a government official, a spokesman for the governor said. "Unidentified gunmen set an ambush on the highway near Bridge 19, near the area of Muwelha, (60 km) north of Hilla, and showered Maslamawi's motorcade with bullets," Jawad al-Hassoun told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq. The bodyguards "fired back and forced the gunmen to escape," he added. Eyewitnesses in the area told VOI by telephone that two of the gunmen were wounded in the clashes.


Qurnah:
#1: Later in the morning in southern Iraq, a parked minibus exploded at a bus terminal in the town of Qurnah, and a hospital director said at least 16 people were killed and 32 wounded. A witness, taxi driver Salim Abdul-Hussein, 35, said the blast damaged the terminal and many cars and surrounding shops, striking an area crowded each morning with farmers coming to town to shop and sell their produce and animals in Qurnah, 360 kilometres south of Baghdad. Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hammadi, police chief in Basra, the provincial capital 96 kilometres to the south, said a minibus loaded with rockets, ammunition, C4 explosives and benzene blew up and caused a nearby car to explode in flames - leading to an early report of two car bombs.


Basra:
#1: The Iraqi military has surrounded striking oil workers in southern Iraq, labor organizers report, as the workers’ remained defiant in their action to block strategic pipelines near Basra. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed a harsh response as the shutdown’s effects begin to ripple through Iraqi markets, and at least one neighboring province braces for worsening fuel shortages. The strike began Monday with the Iraqi Pipelines Union, which organizes workers who transport petroleum products via Iraq’s pipeline system, targeting pipelines that deliver refined products to Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq

Kirkuk:
#1: In other violence, unknown gunmen speeding by in the northern city of Kirkuk shot and killed a soldier, Adnan Mahmoud, as he drove with his 2-year-old daughter around 6:30 a.m. Friday. The child also was killed, said police Capt. Jassim Abdullah

#2: Two suicide bombers have a Shi'ite mosque and a nearby police station near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, with more than 25 people killed or wounded, police say. The simultaneous explosions occurred at about 2pm, local time, in the predominantly Shi'ite town of Dakok, about 45km south of Kirkuk, police Brigadier General Burhan Taieb Taha said. He gave the casualty toll as more than 25 people but said he could not immediately provide a breakdown of how many were killed and how many were wounded amid the chaos. The two men detonated their explosives vests near a Shi'ite mosque as Friday prayers were being held, as well as a nearby police station, Taha said.


Kurdistan:
#1: Turkish artillery shelled areas inside Iraqi territories with no reports of casualties, local residents and Kurdish military sources said on Friday. "Areas near the villages of Dasht Dakh, Barkh Siyara, Kashan and Mula Khamtiry of Zakho district came, late last night, under Turkish artillery shelling and machine-gun fire for almost two hours, setting villagers into a panic, but no casualties resulted," Mohammed Saleh, 52, from the nearby Darkar village told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq. Luqman Keisti, 28-years old from Keista village near the Turkish border, told VOI "areas near the villages of Keista, Karah, Bitkar and Spindar came under heavy bombardment last night from the Turkish artillery." Iraqi Kurdish military sources confirmed the Turkish shelling but declined to give furthers details.

#2: Meanwhile Abdul Rahman Mahmud, 55, owner of a bees farm near the border village of Nazdor, told VOI "three Turkish helicopters landed at the Kumer military site near the Iraqi-Turkish borders this morning."Mahmud expressed his belief that the copters were on a surveillance mission.


Al Anbar Prv:
#1: U.S. and Iraqi soldiers killed one suspected insurgent and detained 12 others in raids targeting al Qaeda in Iraq in Anbar province west of Baghdad, police said.

al-Khalidiah:
#1: The bodies of four men kidnapped from Ramadi were found in al-Khalidiah near Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. All had been tortured and shot.



Afghanistan:
#1: A remote-controlled roadside bomb struck a police vehicle in Panjwai district on Friday morning, killing two policemen and injuring four others, Bismullah Khan, district police chief, told Xinhua

#2: Meanwhile, another roadside bombing killed two policemen and injured two others in Shorabak district, the police said.

#3: another officer was killed in a gunbattle in Zabul province that also left four Taliban dead.

#4: And police say nine militants were either killed or wounded in a police operation in Arghistan district

#5: Thugs attacked and beat Afghanistan's attorney-general, a critic of some of the country's factional leaders and former warlords, on a road north of Kabul on Friday, an aide to the attorney-general said. A group of men stopped Abdul Jabar Sabet's car on Friday morning at a road block and hit him with clubs and rifle butts after he got out of the vehicle, said the aide. The aide, who said he had witnessed the attack and spoke on condition of anonymity, said some assailants were bodyguards for a general inside the interior ministry. Sabet had been taken to hospital, he said. The aide did not have details of his injuries.