Security Incidents for Monday, June 25, 07


(1) Yesterday, MNF-Iraq issued a press release stating that two soldiers were killed and three injured in an attack involving a roadside bomb followed by small arms fire in eastern Baghdad on Saturday, June 23rd. Today MNF-Iraq has issued a statement that would seem to indicate that one of the injured soldiers died later of his wounds. We will list this death on the 23rd for now, pending the DoD's publication of the actual date of death.

(2) A Task Force Marne Soldier died in a small arms fire attack today

(3) The British Ministry of Defense is announcing the death of a soldier from the 1st Battalion, The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters in an explosion about 6 km outside of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on Sunday, June 24th. Four other soldiers were injured in the blast.

(4) Three foreign security contractors were killed in an ambush on a private security convoy south of Basra in southern Iraq on Monday, an Iraqi security source said. Details of the attack, which took place near the Sunni town of Al Zubair, about 15 km (9 miles) southwest of Basra, were sketchy. The security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the convoy had been attacked by gunmen and that at least two four-wheel-drive vehicles were destroyed. The attack involved at least one roadside bomb and there were unconfirmed reports that it was carried out by a Shi'ite militia.


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Baghdad:
#1: A suicide bomber killed 12 people in the lobby of a busy Baghdad hotel on Monday, and the U.S. military said six tribal leaders opposed to al Qaeda were among the dead. Police said a bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives blew himself up after walking into the lobby of the Mansour Hotel, where Sunni Arab tribal leaders from western Anbar province had gathered for a meeting. "According to initial reports, six sheikhs are among the dead," Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told Reuters. Iraqiya state television said prominent tribal leader Fassal al-Igoud, a former Anbar governor and onetime deputy minister of agriculture, was among the dead. Iraqiya said one of its journalists was also killed.

#2: In other violence, two mortar rounds Monday morning struck Baghdad's Fadhil district, a Sunni enclave in the central city, killing two civilians and wounding three others, police said.

#3: Gunmen killed Dr. Shihab Ahmed Shihab, the head of a children's hospital, in al-Mansour district in western Baghdad on Sunday, police said.

#4: A U.S. chopper-backed force killed two civilians in Sadr City, eastern Baghdad, in a raid on several houses, local residents in the city said on Monday. "The attack occurred during the early hours of Monday in the 70th and 71st sectors of the main street of Abu Zhar al-Ghafari, where the U.S. helicopters pounded two houses, killing two civilians and severely wounding a woman," an eyewitness from the city, whose house was hit by some shrapnel, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Gunmen clashed with the U.S. forces in the area and the Americans fired back in clashes that lasted for two hours, he said.

#5: A Task Force Marne Soldier died in a small arms fire attack today


Hilla:
#1: Police also said eight people died when a suicide car bomber struck outside the governor's office in the southern Shi'ite city of Hilla.


Basra:
#1: Police said they found the body of an Iraqi army colonel in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said. He had been shot.


Baiji:
#1: In the northern oil city of Baiji, 18 people were killed and another 40 wounded when a suicide bomber rammed a fuel tanker into protective walls outside a police headquarters, Baiji police Captain Ghazwan al-Janabi said.

#2: In Beiji, 200 km north of Baghdad, dozens of gunmen with machine-guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers attacked a U.S. military convoy on the main street of the town at about 10:00 a.m. (0600 GMT), the source said. Casualties were not known as the Iraqi and U.S. troops blocked the town, he said.


Siniyah:
#1: A suicide car bombing struck an Iraqi army checkpoint outside a U.S. airbase in the Salahudin province on Monday, killing at least two Iraqi soldiers, a provincial police source said. "A suicide bomber drove his explosive-borne vehicle into the checkpoint on the eastern entrance of a U.S. airbase outside the Siniyah town, 7 km west of oil refinery town of Beiji," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The attack resulted in the killing of at least two Iraqi soldiers and three others wounded, the source added.


Mosul:
#1: In Mosul, about 120 km north of Baiji, a parked car bomb blew up in a residential area, killing three and wounding 40.

#2: A 35-year-old Iraqi journalist was shot to death Sunday on her way home from work in Mosul, the second female journalist to be killed in the northern city this month, officials said. The attack on Zeena Shakir Mahmoud occurred even as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki marked Iraqi Journalists` Day by acknowledging the high numbers of media workers killed in the country, saying their "blood was mixed with the blood of Iraqi people who die every day for the sake of defending Iraq."


Kurkuk:
#1: Two policemen were wounded in a roadside bomb attack on their patrol in Kirkuk on Monday, police said.

#2: Gunmen killed a policeman and wounded three others in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, on Sunday, police said



Afghanistan:
#1: At least 15 Taliban rebels were killed in two operations by Afghan and international forces in southern Afghanistan, officials said Monday. Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops killed 13 militants and wounded another 17 Sunday night after a police checkpoint came under attack, resulting in the death of three police officers, Kandahar provincial Police Chief Syed Agha Saqib said. The incident occurred in the Zherai district, where the forces were conducting an operation to rid the area of insurgents. Separately, the Afghan Defence Ministry said in a statement that National Army troops gunned down two militants in the Sewri district of south-eastern Zabul province and seized arms, ammunition and a communications device from the slain fighters.

#2: A British soldier has been killed in southern Afghanistan after his armoured vehicle was caught in a roadside explosion. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said four other soldiers from First Battalion the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters were injured in the blast, which occurred 6km outside of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province. In the minutes following the deadly explosion that took place at 09:58 local time (06:28 BST), one Afghan man were killed after failing to stop at an army perimeter.

#3: An unmanned surveillance aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition forces crashed in Nangarhar province of eastern Afghanistan on Monday, spokesman of the provincial police department Abdul Qhafur told Xinhua

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