War News for Momday, October 15, 2007

MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Multi-National Division - Baghdad soldier in an improvised esplosive device attack in a southern neighborhood of Baghdad on Sunday, October 14th. Three other soldiers were wounded in the incident

MNF-Iraq is also reporting the death of a Task Force Lightning soldier from a non-hostile, unspecified cause in Ninawa Province in the north of Iraq on Sunday, October 14th.


Security incidents:


Baghdad:
#1: At least two civilians were killed and eight more were wounded on Monday night when a suicide bomber blew up a car crammed with explosives in al-Harethiya street in western Baghdad, a police source said.

The car bomb near the amusement park exploded in the religiously mixed neighborhood of Harthiyah, considered one of the capital's safer districts, and the six dead and 25 wounded, police said. The car was apparently left on a side street with several other cars _ about 900 yards from the amusement park _ to avoid a parking ban on Baghdad's main streets designed to prevent such bombings. Many of the businesses on the street were closed for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

#2: About 15 minutes later, a roadside bomb struck a police vehicle in central Baghdad's predominantly Shiite area of Karradah, wounding three policemen and a bystander, authorities said.

#3: Police found 5 dead bodies throughout Baghdad. 1 in Ur, 1 in Sleikh, 1 in Shuala, 1 in Doura, 1 in Jihad.

#4: U.S. forces killed three insurgents and detained 20 suspects during operations to disrupt al Qaeda in Samarra, Ramadi and Tarmiya, the U.S. military said.


Diyala Prv:
Khalis:
#1: Unknown gunmen on Sunday blew up a bridge linking 25 villages to Baaquba, capital city of Diala province, while gunmen deployed in the area following the attack, a security source said. "An armed group blew up, today at noon, al-Windiyah bridge in al-Salam area, Khalis district," the source, who requested anonymity, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The source added "the bridge links 25 villages to Baaquba city."


Diwaniya:
#1: Shiite militiamen attacked a military base south of Baghdad and U.S. helicopters fired back during clashes Monday that killed five Iraqi civilians, including two children, and wounded 17, according to police. The U.S. military said it was looking into the report. The fighting in Diwaniyah, a mainly Shiite city 80 miles south of Baghdad, began when fighters from the Mahdi Army militia fired at least a dozen mortar rounds at the base, according to a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety. Eight of the mortar rounds landed on the base, but there was no immediate word on military casualties or damage. The four other mortar rounds hit the city's nearby joint security center, which is run by Iraqi, U.S. and Polish forces. Mahdi Army fighters emerged from alleys and swarmed the building, the police officer said, adding the clashes lasted about 30 minutes.

A medical source from the Diwaniya public hospital on Monday said that the hospital received five bodies and admitted 23 wounded in the clashes that flared up between a joint force of Iraqi and U.S. personnel and gunmen, while a police source asserted that the clashes left more than 25 casualties.

Gunmen launched simultaneous mortar and machinegun attacks on two mainly Polish military bases in southern Iraq on Monday, after Shi'ite militants vowed to step up pressure on Polish soldiers to force them out. In Monday's attack, gunmen fired mortars and machineguns at a base manned by Polish and Iraqi soldiers in Iskan, a southwestern neighborhood of Diwaniya, the provincial capital, killing four civilians and wounding 17, Polish military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Wlodek Glogowski told Reuters.

Two Polish soldiers suffered minor injuries in the clashes in Diwaniyah, a mainly Shiite city 80 miles south of Baghdad, the Polish Defense Ministry said.


Kut:
#1: Gunmen killed a man in drive by-shooting in central Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.


Basra:
#1: Police patrols this morning found the body of Amin Abdul Aziz Sarhan, who was kidnapped on Sunday near his house in 50 Housh region in northern Basra by unidentified gunmen," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) under condition of anonymity. "The dead man was a professor in the Baghdad University," he added.


Balad:
#1: A suicide car bomber killed six members of an anti-al Qaeda tribal police unit when he struck their checkpoint near Baghdad on Monday, police said. Police said several others were wounded in the attack near Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of the Iraqi capital.


Dalouiya:
#1: Meanwhile, a police source said that more than 50 U.S. tanks, backed by choppers, have being engaged since morning in a joint operation with Iraqi army forces to hunt down wanted men in Beshkan and al-Mashrooa villages, east of Dalouiya.

#2: US troops killed by mistake three anti-al-Qaeda tribal fighters in Doualiya city in Salahaddin province, a media report said Monday A US aircraft shelled areas linked to Doualiya tribal forces while it was chasing al-Qaeda militants Sunday evening, killing three resistance forces, injuring one and damaging a vehicle, Sheikh Hamid al-Ahmed from an anti-al-Qaeda Doualiya council told independent Voices of Iraq news agency.


Tikrit:
#1: One U.S. soldier was killed by sniper fire in central Tikrit on Monday afternoon, a police source said. "A sniper managed to kill a U.S. soldier in central Tikrit on Monday afternoon," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) under condition of anonymity. "U.S. forces opened fire randomly after the attack, killing two civilians and injuring another one," he added.


Hawija:
#1: A gun attack on Monday on a convoy of tribal leaders spearheading the fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq's central Salaheddin province killed three people and wounded five, police said. The attack occurred at the town of Hawijah, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, said Brigadier General Sarhad Qadir of the Kirkuk police. "Three members of the Salaheddin Awakening Council were killed and five others wounded in the attack," Qadir told AFP.


Kirkuk:
#1: An armed group opened fire at dawn on Monday on two cars carrying Iraqi journalists on a road in south-west Kirkuk province, killing one and injuring two, a security source said. The victims worked for the newspaper Salahaddin, which is funded by US forces in Iraq and has been published since 2005.

Tikrit police said two journalists working for a local newspaper were killed in an ambush between Tikrit and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Three security guards were wounded in the ambush.

#2: A roadside bomb wounded four people in central Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.


Mosul:
#1: Also Monday, a Catholic priest in Mosul said two other priests from his church had been released a day earlier, hours after they were kidnapped on their way home from a funeral in northern Iraq. The priest requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media and the report could not immediately be verified.

Also Monday, a priest from a Catholic church in Mosul said he gave out incorrect information that two kidnapped priests had been freed. The Rev. Shamoun Matti said he was initially told by relatives of the priests that they were to be freed Sunday, and that he had mistakenly assumed the release had occurred.

#2: Four people, including two working for a U.S. private security firm, were wounded and a civilian vehicle burned in a road accident in the district of Buishiqa, northwest of Mosul, local residents said on Monday. "A GMC vehicle within a convoy of a foreign private security company collided with a civilian vehicle. Two Iraqi civilians were wounded and their vehicle burned in the accident," an eyewitness told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The security firm workers sealed off the area and treated their wounded, the witness said. Another eyewitness told VOI that the firm workers remained in the scene for two hours and denied access to pedestrians then left and let the civilian vehicle burn. The witnesses could not identify the name of the firm. No comment was made by the Mosul police on the accident.

#3: Police said they found two bodies shot and bound in the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. One of them was a member of the Mosul city council.


Dohuk Prv:
#1: Shelling of Iraqi border villages by Turkish troops targeting Kurdish rebel bases died down on Monday, with officials reporting the frontier quiet after two days of sporadic bombardment. There were no further reports of shelling after a late night attack on the hamlet of Kani Masi, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of the town of Dohuk, said officials in Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdish region. Kani Masi came under fire during the night but there were no reports of casualties, an Iraqi border guard said. "The shelling began soon after 10 pm (1900 GMT) on Sunday and carried on sporadically for an hour or so," the guard


Al Anbar Prv:
Al Baghdadi:
#1: An Iraqi police officer and four of his family members were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vehicle near his house in the district of al-Boghdadi, Anbar province, police said on Monday. Eight neighbors of the police major were also wounded in Sunday evening's attack that caused severe damage to five houses including the officer's," a security source, who asked not to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq

Ramadi:
#1: Police patrols on Monday found three unidentified bodies dumped along the main highway near Ramadi city, 110 km west of Baghdad, a police source said.



Afghanistan:
#1: Three Afghan civilians were killed when international war planes bombed an area outside Kabul during a fierce battle with Taliban rebels, provincial police said. Five Taliban were also killed in Sunday's prolonged battle near Jalriz, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Kabul, acting Wardak province police chief Mohammad Asif Banwal told AFP.
Seven other civilians were hurt, he said. Banwal said the fighting erupted after a foreign patrol struck a mine and was ambushed. "The troops called in air support which bombed the attackers. I believe one of the bombs hit a civilian home," Banwal said. "A man and his wife and another man were killed in that attack," he said. The US-led coalition and separate NATO-headed force could not immediately confirm the incident.

#2: Fourteen troops from the NATO-led force in Afghanistan were wounded in a Taliban ambush southwest of the capital Kabul, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Monday. The troops came under fire during a patrol in the province of Wardak, immediately southwest of Kabul, on Sunday. The troops called in air support, but there was no word on Taliban casualties and no reports that any civilians had been hurt in the fighting, the spokesman said. Turkish troops make up most of the ISAF contingent in Wardak

A dozen 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers were wounded Sunday in an ambush in central Afghanistan. The paratroopers — assigned to the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment — were evacuated to Bagram Airfield. All were in good condition, officials said Sunday night. The soldiers were patrolling a village in the Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul, when they came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. The soldiers had just moved into the area, which was known to be volatile. “We knew it was a bad area. We were expecting something, but not at this level,” said Spc Cody Curtis after the attack. His face was red and puffy from dozens of small shrapnel wounds.
The paratroopers were ambushed by an estimated 50 to 75 Taliban insurgents, Staff Sgt. Stephen Edging said. He was also suffered minor shrapnel wounds from a rocket-propelled grenade. “These guys knew what they were doing. These guys were trained,” Edging said. “These guys did not break contact. They were moving on us.”

#3: A Danish soldier was injured during an advance in southern Afghanistan, Denmark's military said Monday. The soldier, a member of a mechanized infantry company, was evacuated to the Danish base where he received medical treatment, the Army Operational Command said. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jess Rasmussen said the injury was "on the serious end of the scale." He declined to elaborate.